And be crushed by it.
3
Life In The Big City
The party was in full swing. I gathered it was always like this at Cathy’s.
Tayla sat down beside me on the settee and took in the raucous crowd.
“You’re hiding,” she said, offering me a chip from a bowl she was holding.
Tayla worked the opposite AO roster to me. When I was on the e-car, she’d be on the life support unit. Then we’d swap over for the next four-on week. She was also best friends with Cathy.
“No, I’m not,” I argued, accepting the chip peace-offering begrudgingly. I’d put on weight since I’d moved down to the big city. Shift work and snacks for meals, plus the odd meat pie from the service station on Pitt Street while refuelling the ambulance in the middle of the night had finally caught up with me.
I was going to have to start exercising. But who had time for that?
“We won’t bite, you know,” Tayla said, shoving a chip into her mouth and grinning toothily.
“I’m not hiding,” I repeated. “I just don’t know everyone yet. There’s a lot of people here.”
“The Service is big,” she agreed.
We watched the partygoers; boozing, and laughing, and smoking.
“Come on,” she said a moment later. “I’ll introduce you to a couple.”
I got up off the couch, bemusedly noting I’d placed myself in the corner behind a potted palm tree. I had been hiding. Shaking my head, I followed Tayla into the throng of people.
A few words here and there caught my attention. Scaring a cyclist on K’ Road with the bullhorn. Fishtailing along Tamaki Drive in a storm. Diesel instead of petrol at one in the morning, and the copious amounts of incident forms that followed. Laughter and black humour and camaraderie.
It was starting to feel like home to me.
We approached a group of people leaning against the railing on the balcony. Voices were raised and spilling over each other. Laughter frequently punctuated the air. One guy stood out, everyone laughing at his jokes, sharing his stories as if they were their own, back slapping and clinking glasses.
He wasn’t the tallest or the loudest, although he did hold his own in the crowd. He wasn’t the best dressed or even the best looking, but he carried himself in a way that called. His eyes came up from where he’d been staring at his shoes, laughing, and connected with mine.
I couldn’t look away.
He smiled at me.
“Everyone,” Tayla said loudly. “This is Kylee. Kylee, this is everyone.”
“That’s your idea of introductions?” I asked, smirking despite everyone’s attention being on me.
“Hey,” Tayla said, “I got you up off the couch, didn’t I?”
“You got a seat on the couch?” the guy I’d shared a look with said. “Lucky. We got shoved outside because we were too loud.”
“It’s loud by the couch,” I told him.
“Yeah, but I bet the conversation is better.”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “What were you talking about?”
“Music,” someone said. I didn’t look at them. The guy hadn’t stopped staring at me and I found myself unable to look away from him, too.
“Someone wanted to play some Black Sabbath,” he said and I wrinkled my nose. “Exactly!” he agreed, laughing. He had a good laugh. “Then we started arguing over rock music versus country.”
I arched my brow. The rest of the group forgotten.
“I was about to suggest we play a little Willie,” the guy said; as in ‘Willie Nelson’ I guessed.
Someone snorted.
The guy smiled at me.
I said, “I don’t know you well enough for that . . . yet.”
The laughter that followed flowed all around me, wrapping me up, and welcoming me home.
“Maybe we should remedy that,” the guy said.
His name was Sean and he’d been in the Service longer than Cathy. He was also a paramedic, so more qualified than Cathy or me. We spent the evening talking. The rest of the party blurred into the background; white noise that meant nothing to him or me.
And suddenly, the Big Smoke didn’t seem so smokey.
Suddenly, I felt like I’d found a home away from home.
He wasn’t a New Worlder but I was definitely living the dream.
“He’s a lovely boy ,” my mother said. “He’s not Kent. But he’s lovely.”
“He’s from Waikato,” I said to appease her. “So, he understands what it’s like to move to the city.”
“It’s good to meet people from your home,” Dad offered. He spoke from experience. He was an Englishman in New Zealand, after all. A long way from his homeland.
Mum started rearranging the little china ornaments on a shelf beside her seat. Dad shifted in his oversized armchair. I flicked my gaze from one to the other and then said cheerfully, “I like him. I think I like him a lot.”
“That’s good, honey,” Dad said, genuinely pleased for me.
Mum started rearranging the furniture. My heart squeezed.
“You don’t need to do that, Mum,” I said softly.
“If I don’t do it, no one will.”
“But the sofa’s fine where it is.”
“No it isn’t,” she argued fervently.
“Ky,” Dad said. “Leave her be.”
The wind blew little dust flurries into the corners of the ambulance bay. Ours was not the only one at ED right then. But the ambulance beside A 1-8 belonged to Mt Wellington Station. I didn’t know the crew well. I’d seen them around, but not worked alongside them.
In the Service, though, we were all one big family.
“Hey, Kylee!” someone called out as I hauled a couple of repurposed hospital pillows with me into the rear of the bus. “Heard you went to that house in Belmont. North Shore’s Zoo.”
I laughed. The house had been an old weatherboard bungalow, with bare floorboards and peeling wallpaper. That hadn’t been what made it stand out.
The seventeen ducks and geese hanging out in the lounge was what made the job memorable.
“I had to wash duck poop out of my hair back on station,” I said.
The guy came over. He was an ambo, like me. Not a paramedic. But one grade higher than my entry level. His name was Neal and he seemed like a good guy when I’d run into him occasionally.
“Were you dive bombed?” he asked as he came alongside the rear of the truck.
I climbed up and stashed my stolen goods. We wouldn’t make it back onto station again for a long while, and we’d lost our last two pillows to Resus patients.
“Nah,” I said, turning to face him. “They were roosting on the roof beams.”
“Do ducks roost?”
“These ones did.”
He laughed. “I went to a house once and was greeted by one of those miniature ponies in the hallway. Had to battle my way past a pissed off dwarf-horse to get to my patient.”
“Life in the big city,” I said laughing.
“Hey!” Neal said. “What are you and Sean doing on Friday? Wanna double date with the wife and me?”