Why my mother’s sense of pride in what I did felt stifling all of a sudden.
“You’re taking your meds, aren’t you, Mum?” I whispered in her ear as she hugged me goodbye the next day.
“Of course, honey. I never miss one.”
We pulled back and she patted me on the arm, her eyes flicking away to the side as if she couldn’t control them.
I looked at Dad over her shoulder and shook my head.
“I’ve got it, Ky,” he mumbled.
I wasn’t sure he had.
“You must take the medication, Mum,” I pressed, dipping my head down to try to catch my mother’s eye.
She stepped back. Wrapped her arms around her body. Bit her bottom lip.
I widened my eyes purposefully at Dad.
He said nothing.
“Has he proposed yet?” my mother asked all of a sudden.
“What?” I said, laughing nervously. “Who? Sean?”
“Unless you’ve moved onto another man,” my mother said.
Cold water slid down my spine and I straightened.
“We’ve only been dating a short time, Mum,” I said.
“You’re not getting any younger, Kylee,” my mother declared. “You’ll miss your chance if you don’t marry this one. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.”
My brow furrowed and I looked at my Dad. He just shrugged his big shoulders.
“Everyone keeps asking me when you’re going to settle down,” my mother went on relentlessly. “I tell them, it’s different in a big city. But you know how they are, they insist their child is doing better than mine. Everyone I know has more grandchildren than me. Sharon can’t be the only one to give us grandkids, you know.”
“I’m not ready for kids, Mum.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re nearing thirty. I’d had both of you girls well before then. Sharon had her two before then, as well. You’re letting life pass you by. You can’t be a paramedic forever, Kylee. What will the parish say?”
“I don’t think the parish really cares,” I muttered.
“Nonsense,” my mother said, rubbing her hands together as if to clean them of something distasteful. “Let the parish be your conscience, Kylee. Then you can’t put a foot wrong.”
“Whatever you say, Mum,” I said, backing away toward my car.
“Bring him home for Christmas,” she shouted.
“I’ll ask,” I said, opening my car door.
“I’ll cook a ham,” my mother said, probably thinking about going out and buying one right then if the way she jumped from foot to foot was anything to go by.
I waved goodbye.
Dad wrapped an arm around Mum’s shoulders and waved with her.
Mum never once looked at my car as it backed down the driveway.
Sean proposed the next week.
I wasn’t certain and I didn’t ask, but I thought he’d been talking to my mother without me.
The proposal was unexpected but he’d put thought into it—champagne and chocolate dipped strawberries, someone filming my reaction but unseen—so I decided to believe this was his idea and not my mother’s.
I said yes, because it seemed like the right thing to say and people were watching and cheering as they ate their picnic lunch on Mission Bay beach.
I didn’t know it was coming. I didn’t know about Weet-Bix boxes and choirs full of angels singing heartbreakingly. I was living the dream. Working out of the busiest ambulance station in all of New Zealand. Loved by a man who could do anything. Making my sick mother proud of me.
I had two families who understood me.
Or so it seemed.
Reality, though, is not always as comforting as the fantasy we create. And I’d started to create a wonderful fantasy.
I kept telling myself, I was living the dream.
But the dream was slowly morphing into a nightmare full of blood.
And it was coming down in sheets of rain all around me.
7
You Ruined Everything
My final shift with Simon before he qualified as a life support paramedic and lost his roster at Pitt Street was on a Friday night in December. A week before Christmas. The malls were decorated in red and green, flashing Christmas tree lights and dancing elves with striped red and white stockings.
I loved the holiday season in Auckland. The city came alive and the carparks were full and the cafes played Christmas themed music. There was just something about Snoopy taking on the Red Baron that sang to me.
I spent a lot of time inside my head, wandering the malls, window shopping. It was either that or playing Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation. Daydreaming while window shopping seemed better. I thought perhaps I had a story in me. Maybe one day, on a break from all the mad rush of saving lives, I’d write it.
Sean thought it was a great idea.
Thinking of Sean as we raced toward a callout in Mt Eden made me smile. We’d moved in together not long ago. Being engaged, it was the thing to do. Sharing the rent made it attractive also. Rent prices in the city were high, but the Service paid us well and I was earning more than I did back home as a foreign exchange consultant.
I checked the pager and jotted the details down on the run sheet. An R13. Suicide.
It was Christmas, after all.
Simon had the radio on full volume and we sang to Mariah Carey. Simon cracked me up. He was not the Mariah Carey kind of guy, but it was Christmas, so he sang All I Want For Christmas Is You with me. He hadn’t stopped flirting, but it was more a habit now than anything serious. He respected Sean. Everyone did. Sean had been in the Service a long time and had made a name for himself.
It felt good being with someone who understood life on the road; understood the pressures and the releases needed.
There was no denying that I was living the dream.
The address appeared on the right hand side of the street. Simon parked the ambulance facing the wrong way into traffic, but the street was residential and, despite it being a week out from Christmas and a Friday, it was quiet.
The house was small, in a row of similar houses, with little to no gardens and the garage out the front, directly off the road. There was a front door, but no one answered. We knocked. We banged. We called out.
“Ambulance! Open the door!”
No one came to let us in.
I checked in with Comms. The call had come from someone who knew the patient, who’d been talking to them on the phone not long before they called 111. They were concerned he would do something to harm himself.
“Probably gonna be R35,” Simon said, walking towards the garage door.
R35 meant we had attended a callout but were not needed, and were clear to respond to something else. We had a lot of R35s. We made a lot of cheese sandwiches and cups of sugary tea for recovering diabetics and medical alarm callouts. We held a lot of hands.
We got crank calls.
But it was Christmas and I was still humming Mariah’s song, so I didn’t answer.
“Shit,” Simon said, crouching down by the garage door. “I can hear a car engine running.”
I stopped humming.
Simon tested the door. It was locked. He banged on it, a sense of desperation entering his movements. No one answered. No one opened the garage door. The car kept running.