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Series 15: 1. Bradford Nights

In Bradford, two of the 13 ambulance crews on duty this weekend are Phoebe and Bailey, and Rebecca and Sufyan. With the city’s large Muslim community preparing to celebrate Eid, the night shifts promise to be especially busy. \n\nThis episode offers a glimpse into the realities our frontline workers witness. They step into homes filled with warmth, love and laughter, and into others marked by loneliness and suffering. What emerges is a stark reminder of the dedication of ambulance staff, who devote their working lives to caring for people in their most fragile hours.\n\nCall handler Ellie is on her final night shift before beginning her training to join ambulance crews on the road. As colleagues speculate about what life outside the control room might hold, a call comes in from a worried husband whose wife has gone into labour. With an ambulance on its way to reach them, Ellie calmly guides the caller step by step through the delivery and successfully helps bring her first baby into the world over the phone.\n\nBest friends Phoebe and Bailey are dispatched to their first emergency of the night. Seventy-nine-year-old Ann is suspected to have broken her hip after a fall. But on arrival, they discover she has been out celebrating with a few glasses of wine ahead of her milestone 80th birthday. Ann entertains the crew with stories of her life, from her granddaughter who is also a paramedic, to her 59-year marriage to husband David.\n\nAs control tackle a surge of alcohol-related calls, Dewsbury-based crew Lucie and Sonja are sent to Leeds city centre, ten miles out of their usual area, following reports of a 24-year-old man who has collapsed. After a brief search, they find him asleep in the street and check him over before seeing him safely into a taxi. As they prepare to leave, a member of the public draws their attention to another man asleep in the bushes, quickly followed by a third lying on the pavement next to a canal. It’s a chaotic few minutes for Lucie and Sonja, dealing with the trio of drunken nap-takers, and they are glad when they can return to their ambulance.\n\nAs a new night shift begins, Rebecca and Sufyan talk about how Sufyan has at least been able to spend the day celebrating Eid with his family, before returning to work. Their next dispatch takes them to a 40-year-old man with a brain tumour, who has been found by relatives, foaming at the mouth. At the scene, the crew discover James has suffered a seizure. They do all they can to reassure him, but in stark contrast to those across the city who are celebrating, in the back of the ambulance he shares that he has been given a terminal prognosis.\n\nBack in control, police contact the ambulance service after discovering a young child running around naked in the street. It’s a sobering moment for dispatchers Sharon and Lyndsey, already managing a heavy load of life-threatening emergencies. With no ambulances free to respond, they have no option but to leave the child in the care of police until help can be found.\n\nMeanwhile, best friends Phoebe and Bailey are working their last night shift together before Bailey starts his training to become a lead ambulance clinician. They are dispatched to a regular caller in the grip of a mental health crisis. Bailey knows the patient well and is saddened to discover he has been self-harming. With gentle persuasion, the patient agrees to go to hospital for a mental health assessment. The call is a difficult one for Bailey, who opens up about his own family’s struggles with their mental well-being, revealing that when he was a teenager, his uncle killed himself, and it was a real shock. He had lost his job, which had affected him far more than anyone had realised.\n\nAs the shift continues to take a darker turn, control receive an update about the young child found naked and alone. Police reveal they have visited the address and discovered other children living in a state of despair. For team leader Sue, it’s a difficult moment.\n\nBack on the road, Lucie and Sonja are dispatched to Rizwana, who lives with multiple chronic health conditions, following complications from surgery in Pakistan. For Rizwana, Eid is marked not with festivity but quiet resilience, having to rely on her sister for care. Her story resonates with Lucie, who reflects on caring for her own father before he passed away after being diagnosed with Huntington’s disease.\n\nAs they near the end of their time working together, Phoebe and Bailey are dispatched to 91-year-old Ken, who is suffering head and chest pain. With a complex cardiac history, Ken needs to be taken to hospital. As they treat him, the crew learn he shares the same birthday as Bailey - 63 years apart - and hear about his lifelong dedication to the fire service.

Source: BBC 1