PortraitAssigned to the emergency and intensive care unit of the Lariboisière hospital in Paris, Abdelouhab Laâbidi continues to love this exhausting job he has been exercising for forty years. Despite the lack of recognition, the stress, which he removes by playing music.
The trouble with Abdelouhab is that he is modest. Not the type to get sucked up when asked about his job as a paramedic in the emergency room. Often, he responds as if everything went without saying, as if he didn’t spend his life taking drama in the face. However, who has not thought one day of the stress of these professionals stuck in a traffic jam, with a seriously injured in the back, a heart failure or a Covid-19 patient in respiratory distress? Since the start of the pandemic, new constraints and new risks have appeared for these men and women involved on the front line in relief efforts. But OK, ” we manage “, he tempers with a smile, running a finger over his salt and pepper mustache. A way, too, of saying that he has bottles.
At 59 years old, Abdelouhab Laâbidi is the dean of the six ambulance personnel of the Mobile Emergency and Resuscitation Structure (SMUR) of the Lariboisière-Fernand Widal hospital, in the 10e arrondissement of Paris (one of the most active SMURs in Ile-de-France, with 2,600 outings per year, for a single truck). An old man, in that exhausting job that many prefer to quit as they get older. Not him, no.
“Be careful, eh, I’m not spoiled, I still have the potato!” “, he exclaims, determined to occupy his post until retirement, in three years. “To hold out for so long, you have to to be robust and it is ”, confirms a doctor who has known for several years this tall and robust man whom everyone calls Abel, the first name appearing on his papers since his naturalization. Above all, Abdelouhab deeply loves this little recognized and yet irreplaceable profession, which he has seen evolve over the course of his forty years of experience.
Cowboy driving
Without him, of course, help would not reach the victims’ bedside. “Our first mission is to arrive quickly”, underlines this ace of the wheel who does not own a personal car and does not drive “Only in an emergency”. But then there, he does not hesitate to drive on the sidewalks or to take prohibited directions when he is stuck behind a garbage truck. (“I would be embarrassed!”).
And if his cowboy behavior sparks a few jokes in the service, (“Are you going with Abel? Take a vomit bag”), he prides himself on never having had an accident. The adrenaline, the permanent challenge, he loves it, “But I don’t do it for me”, he specifies. As for the bikers of the national police, responsible for opening the road in the most serious cases, it often happens to refuse their help. Who knows Paris and its shortcuts better than he?
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