I smiled.
Sharon smiled.
“Good call,” she whispered and patted me on the head like an obedient little dog.
We had three engagement parties. We’d decided not to have engagement parties until we set the date for the wedding. It had just taken longer than we expected to set the date.
One party was in Auckland with all our friends. There was music and laugher and wine and much to eat. Black humour and dirty jokes. Back slapping and jelly shots.
One was in Hamilton with my aunts and cousins. Cakes and coffee and delicately wrapped presents. Mum flittered about from one guest to the next, so happy, so proud, beaming.
The last was with Sean’s family in Otorohanga. Lamb steaks and fish kebabs on the barbie. Gin and punch and raucous laughter.
Everyone was so happy.
Everyone was so sure.
They were sure enough for me.
The day of our wedding was sunny. Not a cloud in the sky.
My dress was beautiful. Everyone said I was beautiful, too.
Sean looked dashing in his suit. My niece and nephew looked cute in their outfits.
Wine flowed freely.
We toasted absent friends.
We toasted each other.
I’m not sure why it bothered me, but Sean shouldn’t have painted his ring finger’s nail red so I would know which one to put the wedding band on.
The red looked a lot like blood.
We honeymooned in Australia. Ate too much. Walked too much. Drank just enough.
I was married.
I worked in a big city.
I had so many friends and wonderful opportunities.
The Service sent a gift basket.
Sean told me we were lucky.
“Kylee,” he said. “We’re like the Homecoming King and Queen. Everyone loves us.”
They loved us enough for me.
Sean took a roster in Warkworth. Unlike Silverdale, it wasn’t four-on; four-off. It was seventy-two-hours-on; seventy-two-hours-off. As far as rural stations went, Warkworth was the Homecoming King.
“That husband of yours can do anything,” April told me when I visited her in Comms.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a go-getter.”
“You’re working with him tomorrow?”
I smiled and nodded my head eagerly.
“Managed a shift swap. Finally some hours together.”
“On an ambulance,” Gregg said, laughing.
April joined in, so how could I not?
Besides, tomorrow Sean and I would be the King and Queen of LSU 1-8.
It was New Years. Christmas just last week. I was back on the road working out of Pitt Street.
The pager said collapse, unknown cause. The callout over the station speakers said it was an innocuous R6. Medical.
We screamed toward the scene with beacons flashing and siren wailing. Sean was driving.
It was my turn to look after the patient; the second crewed seat.
I didn’t repeat a mantra. I didn’t need to tell myself something that was already true.
I filled out the job sheet and talked about the weather and what we would have for dinner when we got home.
I checked the intersections with Sean, calling out “Clear” when it was safe to cross.
The siren wailed and the beacons flashed and the clouds built.
I carried the med kit and oxygen bottle. Sean grabbed the defib and handheld radio.
The front door was open. The patient’s daughter standing out in the bare garden, hands wringing.
“Any medical conditions?” I asked as she led the way toward the house.
“No. No medical conditions. I don’t know why he collapsed. I just don’t know.”
“How old is he?” I asked.
“Seventy-three.”
She stood aside at the entryway and I offered her a professional nod of the head. Stepping inside, I saw them. They weren’t visible from out on the front step.
Row upon row. Stacked a mile high. A small path between them.
I didn’t know stepping through that door what they meant.
The writing had always been on the wall, but for whatever reason, I’d not read it. Or maybe, I'd just not spoken the language well enough; it took a long time for me to become fluent in despair. It took ducks and geese in a house in Belmont. And blue snot down a once white t-shirt. It took an R13 who didn’t want us. And an R24 who was a man disguised as a woman; better dressed than I was. It took two overdoses at once and a pseudo seizure. Surfers with broken backs and diabetics aplenty. A radio call: R4-7-7 and R25 for urgent police assistance. It took a medical alarm when all they wanted was a cup of tea.
It took so many things over so many months.
It took a house full of Weet-Bix boxes.
Life went on. I did, too. Homecoming Queen. Living the dream.
Life went on and the clouds grew thick, until they burst apart; too heavy.
And the blood came down in sheets of rain all around me.
Part II
11
Sting Kept Singing
The streets were slick. The inner city lamp lights reflected off road markings and blinded the eye. Screeds of people were falling out of a nightclub opening. Faces distorted through the windshield wipers. Laughing. Stumbling. Wrapped up warm for winter.
“Chest pains,” Ted said, looking down at the pager. “But they could be trauma-related; he fell apparently.”
I nodded my head and slowed at an intersection. Our red and white strobe lights painted the petrol station beside us in candy stripes.
“Did you do anything interesting today?” he asked. I opened my mouth to reply, but he beat me to it. “Watch out!”
I hit the discarded box at sixty. The crunch of the cardboard beneath the ambulance’s axles sounded loud, even over the sound of our sirens.
“It’s just cardboard,” I said.
“I’d rather you hadn’t hit it. What if it had damaged the truck?”
What if it had damaged us?
“It’s fine,” I said. “I can see it flattened behind us.”
He remained silent.
The address was in a suburb I wasn’t familiar with. Auckland City is large, and when you enter the inner burbs, it can become a rabbit warren. Left. Right. Right. Left. Number 14. Left-hand side.
I parked, and we grabbed our gear, hauling close to ten kilos up the garden path. The outside lights were on, illuminating a metal sculpture of a duck flying on the side of the refurbished bungalow.
The door opened before we reached it; an older woman, back stooped, face wrinkled, hands liver-spotted, showed us inside. It smelled of camphor and tea. I immediately thought of the Weet-Bix Guy. But our patient was fully conscious; clutching at his chest, face pallid, sweat beading his brow.
“So, how are we doing?” Ted asked.
We look like shit, I thought, but just pulled the electrodes out to attach to the patient’s — Joe’s — chest.
“Bad,” Joe said. “It hurts.”
“Joe,” I said, calling his attention. “I’m just going to shave your chest slightly. You’re a woolly mammoth.”