In Sheets Of Rain - Nicola Claire Page 0,6

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?”

I smiled and nodded eagerly. Details were swapped. A time was set.

A new friend made in the city.

The movie was pathetic, but the conversation afterwards was worth it. Tayla was Team Vampire. Cathy was Team Werewolf. I liked the police chief.

That one got a few laughs.

We ate ice creams and drank coffees, my body clock out of whack but loving the stimulants. My hips weren’t too worried that the ice cream was padding them further.

I tried not to be.

We sang songs in the car back to Cathy’s. Told dirty jokes and rolled around laughing on the settee. Drank more coffee and ate more full-fat things.

Cathy had met a fireman from across the road at Pitt Street and told us naughty things that were better left behind closed doors. Tayla scolded her because the fireman was married.

“Life’s too short to date ugly dudes,” Cathy said.

We all laughed again and talked about crazy jobs. R24s and R13s as if they didn’t matter. As if they weren’t real people.

Part of me knew I was doing it, but there was laughter and jokes and it was late at night and tomorrow I could go for a walk and work off the Black Forest chocolate cake and think better thoughts.

Or not think at all.

Cathy lit up a cigarette. Tayla abstained. I took a drag, remembering high school and bike sheds and sneaky smokes that didn’t feel deadly way back then.

“Life’s too short to be a goodie two-shoes,” Cathy told Tayla.

Tayla replied, “It’s your funeral.” And I stubbed out the last of my cigarette.

“Make sure you cry when I’m gone,” Cathy told us, seriously.

Tayla snorted.

“Kylee,” Cathy whined. “You’ll cry, won’t you?”

I didn’t tell them that I was already crying for all the dead.

4

Welcome To The City, Country Bumpkin

I was starving. We hadn’t stopped all morning. Autumn had struck with a vengeance and the high winds were messing with people’s heads. We’d dealt with two mentally unstable patients already and had just received a callout to a woman yelling obscenities at passing traffic on Karangahape Road.

“This should be good,” Simon said.

“K’ Road is always an eye opener,” I agreed.

“That’s why I work Pitt Street.”

“For the crazies?”

“Nothing like an R24 to spice up a dayshift.”

I laughed as the ambulance rolled out of the station.

It was a Priority Two dispatch, which meant we had to be assigned the job immediately but didn’t need to use our lights and sirens to get there. Pitt Street ran off K’ Road, so the distance was a factor. But also, the patient was thought to be a nuisance and not in immediate danger.

I wondered who made those assessments when we came upon the scene.

“Was she hit by a car?” I asked as Simon double parked the ambulance.

“Collapse maybe.”

We wouldn’t know until we assessed her. You didn’t know what you’d face from one job to the other and the categories Comms gave the jobs weren’t necessarily the correct ones. There was only so much a call-taker could glean from a frantic 111 phone conversation.

The patient was lying out on the cold pavement, wearing a short mini skirt and sequinned tank top. Her brown skin was pebbled with goosebumps and her eyes were rolled back in