“Call for R27,” Simon told me.
I radioed for the Fire Service to back us up. We weren’t far from the Mt Eden Fire Station; they’d be quick. They were always quick. You could count on the Firies.
Sean always said, if someone was breaking into your house late at night, call the Fire Service, not the cops. The Fire Service would be there in a heartbeat. Four big burly firemen with axes to break down your door and deal with the intruder.
Funny how your mind wanders when in a crisis.
We couldn’t open the garage door.
Simon tried to jimmy it with a tire iron from the truck. It didn’t work. He banged. I shouted. Neighbours came out of the houses next door.
It was one week before Christmas and their homes were lit up with bright lights that twinkled. A cat watched us from the window of a house across the street, backlit with red and green and white flickering Christmas tree baubles.
The Fire Service arrived and broke through the front door. We navigated the house to the garage. Car exhaust fumes filled the space and Simon rushed in before the Firies could stop him, unlocking the garage door and throwing it up and out of the way.
I heard glass shatter through the smoke. The sound of the engine cut off.
“Kylee!” Simon shouted.
I didn’t want to go in the smoke filled garage, but it was clearing, and the car was now open, and Simon sounded relieved and worried in equal measure.
I pushed past a fireman and brought the med kit to Simon.
“Get the stretcher,” Simon ordered. “He’s breathing, but he’s pink.”
Carbon monoxide poisoning.
I tore off out of the garage as the firemen helped Simon pull the unconscious male from his car and carried him outside. By the time I was back, Simon had the O2 going and was putting in an IV.
Saline flushes and ECG electrodes. Pink skin under the razor’s blade. Red and white lights flashing. Green and red beating a rhythm that seemed crazy. Shouts and arms flailing.
He woke up in the back of the ambulance.
I felt immeasurable relief.
Simon let out a breath of air and turned for the driver’s seat, leaving me with the R13.
His name was Toby. He was twenty-three. His girlfriend had left him last week.
Two weeks before Christmas.
“Why did you do it?” he said to me.
“Do what, Toby?”
“Save me. I didn’t want saving. Why did you have to do it?”
“It’s what we do.”
“You had no right to interfere.”
“We couldn’t leave you there.”
“You ruined everything.”
I cried again that night but this time I didn’t cry for the dead, I cried for the living.
8
We Didn’t Stop Until Six
The word of the day was ‘incorrigible’. Adjective; not able to be corrected.
And I’d just used it in a radio call to Comms.
My cell phone went off and I answered it, grinning.
“You thought I couldn’t do it,” I said.
“Kylee! That was awesome!” Neal exclaimed down the line.
It was our thing. I couldn’t remember how it started. Probably over gin and tonics in our back yard. But Neal had been given a word-a-day calendar for Christmas and somehow it was now a competition between us to see who could use that word over the radio first.
Sean thought we were mad. That we’d get in trouble. Delta 10 was always listening in. And if he heard us misusing the radio in that way, we’d get written up.
So far, so good.
“One point to me,” I said.
“I think you might be winning,” Neal told me, laughing. “But tomorrow’s word of the day is much harder.”
“What is it?”
“Malicious.”
“Ooh,” I said, making Neal laugh harder. “I might have to find a malicious injury.”
“You can’t have a malicious injury,” he argued. “Maybe a malicious attacker. But the injury isn’t malicious.”
“It is if it’s life threatening.”
“I like the way you think.”
“It’s a talent,” I said dryly, just as the pager went off. I looked down and checked the screen. “Oh, shit,” I muttered.
“What?”
“We’ve been called into Comms.”
Neal started cackling.
“Do you think I’m in trouble?” I asked.
“Don’t know. But I’m sure as hell glad you won today and not me.”
Comms was in Mt Wellington, right next to the Mt Wellington Station; Neal’s station. He was probably on the road and so couldn’t save me. I walked into the Ambulance Communications Centre to face the music; head high, shoulders back.
I hadn’t realised my hands were wringing until I unlocked them to press in the code to enter Dispatch. I didn’t know I wrung my hands, at all. But there was no denying my hands had been wringing.
I decided to ignore that.
Pulling the large wooden door open, I stepped into organised chaos. Lights flashing, phone lines ringing, voices low in a hum that mixed with the background noise of copious amounts of computing equipment running.
There were half a dozen desks with three screens up on each, and in a glass walled room off to the side was a row of hardline telephones; all red. Each call centre staff member had a switchboard in front of them where their headset was plugged in. Buttons were pushed, lines were typed, codes keyed in.
“Ambulance Emergency,” I heard in the background.
“LSU 1-5, Priority One to Grey Lynn. R6.”
“Is the patient breathing?”
“Return to station, Thames 3-5-6.”
“The ambulance is on its way. Stay on the line.”
“Station Six. LSU 5-6. Priority One. LSU 5-6. Priority One to Takapuna. R4.”
“Hey, A 1-8,” a guy said, sitting off to the side, near the door.
“Hi,” I said, staring around the room, stunned.
It was a living, breathing thing. Alive in a way that being on the road sometimes wasn’t. Safe behind four walls. Watching our world through a computer screen. The faces behind the voices over the radio in our trucks. The voices of angels on the airwaves.
“Have you not been in here before?” the guy asked.
I shook my head. Comms had been a mystery.
“Huh,” he said, standing. He held out his hand to shake. “I’m Gregg.”
“Is that your Ducati out there?” Matt asked while I shook the guy’s hand. Matt was my newbie AO. I was in the hot seat. Not yet a paramedic, but close.
“Yep,” Gregg said. “My pride and joy, although the missus would argue with that.”
“Gregg was in a bad accident a while ago,” a woman said from the desk to the right of the door, practically alongside Gregg’s. “He fractured both femurs.”
I winced. Matt whistled. Gregg shook his head.
“That’s why he’s so short,” the woman dispatcher explained. “Lost a foot in height because of that, didn’t you, Gregg?”
I started laughing. Matt’s mouth hung open.
“Nice one, April,” Gregg said. “A 1-8, meet April, your North Comm dispatcher. That’s Steph, Nigel, and Karen,” he added, pointing to the rest of the Comms staff.