AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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 sangAll I Want For Christmas Is Youwith 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.
“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.
