In Case of Emergency (25 page)

“Wait, what?”

Ayla grins at me. “I got it mixed up. Who knows, maybe I buried a glove where the seeds were supposed to go.”

I smile back at her. “Did you tell your mom you’ve got a greener thumb now?”

“I told her I lost my job. She thinks it’s a good thing. I’ve been wanting to go back to school anyway.”

When I nudge her, she admits interest in becoming an occupational or speech therapist.

“I figure I can work with people worse than me,” she says. She talks about Sasha, an occupational therapist at the VA center, who’s been helping Ayla ever since she moved to California two years ago. Sasha’s been coaxing Ayla to finish her general ed classes at West LA College and apply to grad school next fall. I wonder if that’s where Ayla got the idea in the first place. “So she’s older?”

“Maybe in her thirties. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Just wondering how long these things take, you know, to go through school and get a good job.” What kind of name is Sasha anyway? An erotic dancer name? I can’t help but wonder if she is the reason for the vibrancy in Ayla’s voice. In my head Sasha is sultry and coy, with glossy
blond hair that flows straight down to her waist. But she sounds like the intellectual type, so I modify the image. Sasha coils her hair into a thick braid that wraps around one shoulder. She wears stylish black-rimmed glasses and bright red lipstick.

“Piper?” Ayla is tapping the side of a beige ceramic coffee cup. I turn my attention back to her from the window. “Where’d you go this time?”

I suggest a trip to West LA College and Ayla begs off. It’s such a new idea, she says, and she’s not sure she’s ready.

“It’s only twenty minutes from here.” I signal for the check, determined to be more helpful than the brainy, sensual Sasha. “I’ll drive you.”

Except for a few squat clusters of offices, classrooms, and trailers, the sloping grounds of West LA College are dominated by parking lots and athletic fields. We hike up the hill in the middle of campus, looking for the Admissions and Student Services office, steering around clumps of chattering students.

“Do you see any letters?” I ask Ayla. “We’re looking for C-something.”

She runs a hand over her forehead. “I don’t know. I don’t see anything.”

I glance at her. “You okay?”

“Just hot. I feel kind of hot.”

“Are you dizzy? Do you want to stop for a second?”

“No, no, I’m not dizzy. I’m—it’s fine.”

A self-important crowd passes by us, talking loudly and cackling. A backpack bumps my shoulder. No one turns around to apologize. I glare at the group, trying to spot a guilty backside. Everyone carries the same thin pamphlet. “You know, I think it’s some kind of orientation day,” I say, turning back to Ayla.

Ayla’s breaths are too shallow, too quick. Her eyes bulge; her neck and ears have sprouted crimson.

“Ayla? Are you okay?”

She slumps over a little. “Damn it.”

More students approach from the top of the hill. I look around for an escape route. To the right of us there’s a patch of grass with an anorexic palm tree and an empty park bench. I drag her over to it and we sit, facing a panoramic view of downtown Culver City. She puts her head between her knees and says something, but her words are muffled.

“I can’t hear you. Talk to me?”

She lifts her head, revealing a stricken expression. “My heart. It’s going fucking crazy, beating way too fast. I can feel it in my throat like a frog is in there. Like it’s going to pop. Make it stop, Piper, please—what’s it doing?”

A hundred apologies brim inside of me. I flip her left hand so it rests, palm up, on her knee. I place two fingers lightly on the thumb-side of her wrist and find her pulse. Her thumping, steady, urgent pulse.

“How is it? Is it fast? It feels really fast.” She taps her collarbone. “My chest is exploding in a million directions. And I’m really hot.”

“Hold on,” I say. “Just a second.” I have the urge to shush her, which of course is the wrong tactic.

Clicking the timer on my watch, I find her pulse again, and wait for the second hand to get to fifteen seconds before beginning the count. When the timer reaches forty-five seconds, I press the button again and do the math: 32 beats in thirty seconds. “Your pulse is 64 beats a minute,” I tell Ayla, relieved. “That’s a perfect pulse.”

“So I’m just being a crazy person right now? Fuck you.”

“Ayla.” I know that just because this is an anxiety attack and not a medical emergency doesn’t abate her symptoms in the slightest. “Ayla, honey, I need you to try to slow your breathing down.”

“I bet you think I’m a real idiot, always telling you the same stories over and over again.”

“Ayla, no, please. Try to take some deep breaths.”

“I used to want to be an architect.” Her words are coming out in gasps.
“I used to be really good with my hands. My fucking heart is—it’s not like I’m doing this on purpose, you know.”

“No, no, I know, just—please. Try to take a few deep breaths. Close your eyes. That’s it. Now breathe.” Ayla’s shoulders rise and fall as she forces deep respirations; I’m reassured when her color starts climbing back to normal. “That’s it, babe.” I wrap an arm around her shoulders and kiss her cheek.

Her eyes pop open; she jumps up, pushing me away so hard my spine slams against the bench. Her shoulders are thrown back as she stands there glaring at me. For the first time I can see, really see, the physical strength of the veteran in front of me.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“What?”

“Someone could see us.”

“But that’s—what does that matter?”

“They can’t find out.”

“Ayla, please, what are you talking about?”

“They’ll never let me go here if they know.”

I feel a chill at her words. “Ayla, honey, there’s no—you’re not in the army anymore. Or Wisconsin. No one cares if you’re a lesbian.”

She looks around, remembers where she is. Her embarrassment is obvious. She walks toward the palm tree at the crest of the hill. When I catch up to her, she’s staring at the crisscrossing bark of the palm tree’s base, the hairs sprouting out of it. She keeps her voice low.

“What am I to you, anyway? Between the memory shit and the vertigo and the fact that we’re both broke, you want to act like it’s all just dandy? Let me tell you something. I was doing just fine before I met you. I can handle my own shit, so if this is some kind of pity—”

“It’s not like that.”

She has the look of someone who wants very badly to destroy something. There’s only me and the palm tree.

“I knew it was too soon to come here.”

My eyes fill with tears. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m going home.”

“Ayla—”

“I’ll take the
bus
.”

“Ayla, wait, please…”

I try to follow, not knowing how to stop her, scared to try to touch her again. She pays no attention to my jumbled pleadings. Throwing herself down the hill, walking swiftly along the sidewalk, she disappears around the corner of Overland Avenue and Stocker Street and I’m left there, looking at an empty intersection.

36

The blond nurse glares at William. “You have plenty of saline,” she tells him. “Now go away.”

“I need a
banana bag
,” he insists. “All those vitamins and nutrients do a body good.”

We are a pretty pair, William and me, him with ashy skin from partying all night, and me with hollowed half-moons under my eyes. And yet it’s oddly invigorating to be back at work. When I arrived this morning everything looked a little different—just the sight of the ambulance parked in front of station reminded me of the GSW’s swollen eyelids and defiant expression—but it also felt good to have survived that shift and then returned. Seeing Phil’s friendly face and hearing Steve’s corny music while he worked out was like coming home.

The blond nurse is pretending to restock the crash cart but at this point she’s just rearranging it. After a glance down the hallway, she turns to him. “I suppose you want me to start the line on you, too?”

He’s trying to be charming; it’s like watching a hyena flirt. “I’ll let you put it in my femoral,” he offers.

I wince as I picture the vein snaking along William’s groin, but the nurse laughs. “Follow me.” They disappear into the stockroom.

An ER tech I’ve never talked to before nods at me. News of how I handled the GSW call seems to have traveled in roughly this format: Piper did everything she could, got blood and brains on her, didn’t have a breakdown afterward. The increased eye contact and nods of recognition aren’t helpful; these gestures only remind me of him. People might see grief in me and change their minds.

J-Rock and Pep emerge out of Room 3, Pep pushing a stripped gurney on which fresh linen has been piled.

“Piper!” Pep says. “I hear you owe the station ice cream.”

“I swear you two only ever work with each other. Why all the overtime?”

“Our anniversary is coming up.” Pep raises his eyebrows meaningfully at J-Rock, who scowls. “How’s William? As big a dick as everyone says?”

I know that William is the one who spread the word that I’m a good partner, a decent rookie, and that I kept my head when it mattered, but I gossip about him anyway. They tell me about how Carl almost got written up for mouthing off to a firefighter. As it turns out, the firefighter was trying to ship a legitimate shortness of breath patient without so much as a lung-sounds check or an oxygen saturation reading.

“Ruth vouched for him,” J-Rock says. “So the supervisor went easy.”

“Yeah, having a partner who’s employee of the year comes in handy.”

“I bought you a doughnut this morning.”

“You’re a real sweetheart.”

When William emerges from the stockroom, they take that as a good time to leave.

“Happy anniversary,” I call after them.

William’s arms are crossed to hide and hold in place the banana bag tucked underneath his uniform shirt.

“Nice baby bump.”

“Laugh all you want,” he replies, uncurling his left arm to show me the line already secured on the inside of his elbow. The narrow tubing zigzags away from the embedded needle and disappears between two buttonholes. “There is no better cure for a hangover.”

Our first call this morning is a man on a bicycle who got doored by an eccentric older woman. He’s not wearing a helmet, just a T-shirt and ratty jeans; she’s wearing a trim little hat with a large purple flower, gaudy earrings, and crooked makeup. She keeps looking at him, lying on the concrete in front of her, at the blood rushing out of his broken nose and the wrist bent at a cockeyed angle. She keeps saying, over and over, “But I checked my rearview mirror three times before I got out of the car.” And she holds up three fingers as if to prove it. He responds, his speech slurred by a trauma-thickened tongue, “Then that’s
three
times you would’ve seen me, lady, because I was
there
.” And he holds up one finger before passing out.

When William and I go to load our patient, I look into the yawn of the back of the ambulance and feel my eyes burn. Turning to him, I say very slowly and deliberately, “I’m driving,” and hold my hand up for the keys. To my surprise, he places them in my palm without a single snide word.

As the day moves on, William and I say very little to each other, but find a rhythm just the same. We get a call for a GSW, and en route to the residence I become anxious, my skin prickling. But upon arriving at 8421 Gramercy, we find a man who shot a hole through his own left foot by accident. He’d been cleaning his rifle and forgot to empty the chamber.

We get put on standby for a bomb threat for about two hours, twenty-five pounds of TNT. Later we find out Dispatch made a mistake—instead
of posting us a safe distance away, they put us right on top of the supposed explosives.

We pick up a woman outside the Inglewood courthouse who claims a penis has been stuck inside of her vagina for the last six years, and the firefighters ask me to do the assessment since I’m the only one who isn’t doubled over with laughter. I comply, scribbling down notes on their run sheet. Onset: sex with her ex-husband, six years ago. Palliation: gets worse (and grows larger) with thoughts of sex. Quality/Radiation/Severity: 9 out of 10 severe throbbing pain that’s intermittent. We drop her off at CRH with a pillow under her knees, and shake our heads when Shilpa asks if we visualized the chief complaint.

I’m grateful to drive; I can understand why William never wants to be the attendant. The driving is relaxing somehow. Organized, methodical. William’s brief and confident mapping instructions are impressive—he could probably navigate the entire Los Angeles area strung out and blindfolded. After getting on scene, it’s just a matter of loading the patient, driving to CRH, and, afterward, disinfecting everything. If it’s a Code 2 transport, drive nice and slow and even. If it’s a Code 3, anticipate at least three intersections ahead, try to brake slowly so things don’t shift too much in the back, and assume every driver on the road is a half-blind moron listening to music so loud it could drown out a nuclear explosion. I get a delicious shiver every time I jump into the opposing lane.