Holding Still for as Long as Possible (14 page)

“I wanted to hurt your feelings.”

“Accomplished.”

“I'm flailing.”

I wanted to say something that could save the conversation. Remind us that we actually liked each other. Something sweet such as
Me, too. I can't even picture myself without you.

Instead I said, “We're getting a call.
Have to go,” and hung up. In reality I had been waiting with a patient on
OLD
for hours at Humber Church. I wouldn't even take my cat to that hospital. I had been standing outside the doors, trying to list off concrete things I could do to save our relationship. I came up short. I had been deep into feeling terribly sorry for myself.

After I hung up on Amy, I had watched a man who'd just been discharged walk towards his car. I turned around to light my smoke when I heard some yelling. At first, I couldn't figure out what was happening. I supposed the man had fallen down. A few other medics by the trucks ran over to him. “He's bleeding out!” yelled Anna. “Get a stretcher!” I ran to get one, but by the time I got back the stretcher was no help. The man died right there. Just fell. Blood everywhere. Everyone ran out to help, but there wasn't anything we could do.

Back in the crowded emergency room, a medic I didn't know and a nurse yelled at each other, brazenly unprofessional. “You shouldn't have discharged him! I can't believe this bullshit! He walked out and
DIED
!”

“We don't have time for this!” the nurse yelled back.

The medic was keyed up. He looked at me and said, “I can't believe how many people die from total carelessness! I knew that guy was really sick, and they didn't take it seriously.” It was the kind of statement that didn't require an answer. I nodded, though, and understood his frustration. Outside, he kicked a telephone booth. I wanted to suggest he book off on stress, but I hardly knew the guy so I just watched him for a second and then looked away. Then I asked my patient how she was doing.

There's something about watching someone die right in front of you that makes your petty relationship problems seem of little importance.

That was the kind of shift that made me thankful for opportunities such as
COHERT
. Today was a break from the routine and a chance at something outside
EMS
. I was afraid that my regular job was starting to fuck with my perception of the world and my place in it.

Now I emerged from the tent and blinked into the sun. It was 8:30 a.m. I watched a few airplanes land, and for a couple of minutes got sucked into the rhythm of watching rush-hour cars on the highway. The gutted and bloodied actors playing patients walked by in a team, their make-up artists trailing them, clutching giant black lunch boxes. I just wanted to get started.

Finally, our director, an emergency medicine specialist, instructed the staff to gather in the main tent. I met fellow members of Team C, which included two doctors, several nurses, and one other medic. We walked to our tent and I felt something reminiscent of the first day of elementary school. I was nervous, excited. We arranged the equipment how we wanted it. Then people started bringing in patients.

The Heavy Urban Search and Rescue Unit combed a blasted-out building, looking for survivors. The actors were triaged according to the severity of their injuries. Our first patient was an evisceration, organs falling out of a gash across his gut. The next few patients were eye protrusions, various blast injuries, and then there was a series of patients you would normally see on the road, heart attacks and psych patients.

Eight hours passed quickly. I didn't notice how hungry I was until I was physically in pain. I was shocked to see the time on my phone along with eight bursts of blue light. Texts from Amy, first playful, then needy. The last one just kind of sad.
Maybe we need some space. Maybe I should take a trip
?
I hated it when she forgot that I was at work, not tied to my text-message icon.

At dinnertime in the main tent, I found myself sitting among a bunch of medics and nurses talking about divorce. “Shift workers,” a guy with a red moustache said, “have a high rate of divorce, right?”

“I'm just tired of coming home and having to deal with more bullshit. I want to relax. My wife doesn't really understand it,” said his friend. “She tries, though. I'll give her that. She's got a lot of patience.”

“I need to space out sometimes, just watch
TV
. I don't want to think about anything.”

“I dunno what you're talking about,” said another guy. “Shelley and I are fine.”

“Isn't she an
ER
nurse?”

“Yeah.”

“So, she understands, right?”

I turned off my phone, tried to rub some feeling into my frozen feet, wished I could have a beer. One of the actors sat next to me and offered me a coffee. She had two mugs under the makeshift blanket poncho she was using for extra warmth. “I stole it from the
HUSAR
tent. They get real coffee, not this bullshit.” She pointed to the instant swill the other medics were drinking. “So, what are you guys talking about?”

“Marriage.”

“Ah. Fuck it. I'm never getting married,” she said.

“What's your name?”

“Head Trauma 1, Lost Child 2, and Hysterical Amputee 4. Or you can call me Jenny. I'm a student paramedic.” Jenny had wide blue eyes, and freckles across her nose.

“What do you think so far?”

“Well, it just got a lot more interesting.” She winked at me. Winks. I wasn't used to someone being so blatant. I had forgotten about this part — the moment when a new girl became interesting. She stood up suddenly. “Well, I gotta go make it look like my head's half caved-in. Another day, another dollar.”

I slept for maybe four hours that night, on a tiny cot inside a tent with the other paramedics. I had an awkward phone call with Amy, full of long silent pauses rather than words. The next morning, my first patient was Jenny, as Internal Bleeding Woman. After she fake threw up into the pail beside her cot, she looked up at me and winked with the one eye not covered in imitation gushing. Maybe she just winked at everyone. After an exquisite fake death, we tagged her
VSA
, and she took a bow. The nurse and doctor weren't impressed with her theatrics, but Jenny saw me blushing.

We shared a cigarette behind the
HUSAR
tent on our break. I halved a dried fruit bar Amy had stuck into my knapsack pocket, and offered it to her. Jenny accepted it and chewed it with her mouth open, pausing to smoke and pick dried blood out of her hair. I pegged her as one of those girls who just did not give a shit about decorum, a tomboy who had grown into a woman other people probably pegged as a dyke.

“So, why a medic?” I asked her.

“Well, I was going to join the army, right? My whole family is in the military. But I suppose I wanted to do something a little different, and I'd never lived in a city before, right? I wanted to come here, and I wanted to help people.”

I smiled and nodded, though I felt like telling her the “wanting to help people” wish was going to fade fast.

“Plus, when I was a kid I was always wanting to perform surgery on animals or when people got hurt. I was totally fascinated by it. It just seemed natural.” Jenny put her cigarette out on a rock, and looked at me. “I hope I get hired in Toronto. I'd love to be right in the action, you know?”

“It's definitely not all action,” I said. “It's lots of bullshit.” We got up, straightened up our clothes.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. It's all madness, all the time. You'll love it.”

After we had debriefed and packed up our stuff, I stood in the parking lot in front of the car for a moment, unsure if I had the energy to drive. Jenny appeared in a blink. “Wow, I guess you make a lot of money
,”
she said, leaning her knapsack against the back window of Amy's parents' old
BMW
. They had given it to us after my shitbox Toyota died
. “
Mind giving me a ride?”

“It's my girlfriend's parents' car. They gave it to us.”

“Girlfriend, huh?”

In regular clothes, Jenny looked like the kind of girl I used to work with at a campground in Guelph when I was a teenager. Roots sweatshirt, hiking boots, navy blue tuque, no make-up, kind of a jock. Tough. She threw her knapsack in the back seat before I could answer her.

She didn't ask me if it was okay to change the radio station. She selected some classic rock and sang along, terribly, to “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” She still had some fake blood on her face. “I live really close to Humber, not too far from here.”

Even though I had to take a winding, annoying detour and was so tired I was probably as dangerous as a drunk, I felt quite happy to be taking Jenny home. Her apartment was in a tacky suburban Etobicoke townhouse.

“I live in the basement,” she explained. “The family upstairs is all right. Quiet.” She gave me her number, scrawled in blue pen across a triage toe tag. “Call me,” she said. “I hardly know anyone in Toronto, and I guess I need to make some friends. So, you know, I hope you'll hang out with me some time.”

I knew I probably wouldn't call her, but I folded the toe tag and placed it in my wallet anyway.

[ 11 ]

Billy

I can remember the exact moment I stopped believing in the afterlife. I was on vacation with my best friend, Emmy-Lou Fielding, at her parents' camp north of Brandon. After four days of popsicles on the dock, canoeing, sleeping on thin mattresses, and whispering about Donnie and Dave, our respective crushes, I stepped on a wasp. I looked at my foot curiously and then I passed out. When I came to, Emmy's mother's face was hovering over me. “What on earth? Are you okay, Hilary?”

It occurred to me that in those ten or so seconds, I hadn't existed. Everything went on and I simply wasn't there. I can't describe what I felt exactly, but the next time I saw my grandmother, I asked her, “How do you know Heaven exists?” Her answer was not satisfying. “I have faith.”

After that, anytime someone asked if I believed in God, I felt the emptiness of those ten seconds.

[ 12 ]

Josh

I was walking towards him when he struck the match. He was standing in the middle of an alley, the one between Bathurst subway station and the back doors of the Bloor Street Theatre. There were kids bundled in snowsuits playing in the parkette to our right. The sun was going down. There were crowds of rush-hour commuters everywhere, still happy about the first December snow.

We headed towards one another like two cowboys about to square off. The 10-2s blocked the entrance behind him. Fire trucks bookended us. People gathered, curious, leaning over the barriers.

The gas can made a hollow sound when it hit the pavement. The match was struck. I watched.

Then I turned to yell at the 10-2s and Fire, and turned back. He laughed and flailed. This was one big show. This was the jacket sleeve of
Wish You Were Here.
Cops and Fire ran towards him. I didn't. I don't run towards flames. Instinct. I walked slowly.

Only when I got up close did I realize it was my father. I could pick out his features in the charred skin. My eyes. His eyes. The tear-drop tattoo on his face. I couldn't smell a thing but all around me the other medics, Fire and cops were gagging from the smell of his rot.

I smelled just like him. I was used to it. I realized then that my feet were bare and it was dark, a new moon above. I reached out to touch him . . .

My head hit the steering wheel. Close by: honking.

Dispatch: “3434, what's your 20?”

Diane's voice came from the back of the truck: “
JOSH
, the
LIGHT IS GREEN
, buddy! Wake up!” She laughed.

“We're 10-9, approaching Toronto Western.” My voice cracked. My watch read 5:30 a.m. — the time for silence, occasional hysterical laughter, and involuntary napping at intersections. We were five blocks from the hospital with a patient in the back, a senior needing a G-tube reinsertion. Foot to gas, blink blink blink. Honest Ed's lit up on my right as I passed. Jarring.
Wake up, buddy, wake up. Wake up.

At the hospital, Diane sat with the patient on
OLD
while I ran to Tim Hortons. I ordered one double double, one black. The lady behind the cash looked like my father's sister, except that her name-tag read
Anita
, which was not my aunt's name. Still, she looked at me longer than you usually would. My aunt's name was Betty. She's probably dead now, I thought. Raised next to a paper mill. Cancer got the ones who weren't in prison
. The ones in prison have cockroach genes
, my mother used to say.
They'll never fucking die
.

Oddly, our patient got a bed right away. Our coffees were still warm when Dispatch said the magical number combination:
10-19
. I made sure Diane drove back to 34 instead of me. I kept seeing my father on fire whenever I blinked.