In Case of Emergency (33 page)

“I’m going to need a favor… You ever work a 72?”

Tom and I flip the heavy wooden kitchen table so it lies flat, then lift it by the legs and slide it into the bed of the rented U-Haul pickup truck. Marla has stopped pretending to help with the carrying of heavy furniture, and has now settled into the role of supervisor. And interrogator.

“Piper, for the love of—answer the question already. What do you mean you don’t know how she is?”

I shake my hands out, lean against the side of the truck. “We haven’t been talking is what I mean. What do we need to grab from inside? If there’s any more furniture, we should get it now.”

When Marla gets frustrated, her lower jaw thrusts forward like a four-year-old about to have a tantrum, and her heart-shaped lips puff up even more than usual. “Just the tall plant in the upstairs hallway, I think.”

“I’ll get it,” Tom says. I watch him bolt down the walkway that leads back to the apartment and try not to roll my eyes. Traitor. I’ve already gotten lectured once today: when Marla found out my plan to work a 72-hour shift in South Central, she was almost epileptic. I started to tell her I needed the money, but stopped myself when I realized how much more I would have to explain.

“Ayla and I broke up.”

She sputters for a minute, then asks, “When did this happen?”

“Three days ago.”

Three glorious days of the visions in my head thinning out, becoming a dull and barely-there presence, like a television that’s been left on in a different room. Three days of sleeping soundly. Of not remembering my dreams. Of going for long runs. Three days of looking at my phone every
fifteen minutes, reassuring myself that Ayla still hasn’t called or texted, and ignoring everyone else who has.

“Move in with us,” Marla says. Before I can answer she rushes on. “No, listen, I was going to ask you days ago but I haven’t seen you. There’s a little room we can fix up, and a garage for your stuff. You barely own anything anyway. Stop looking at me like that.”

“I might move in with Ryan, actually.”

She starts to say something, hesitates. “I’ve been really worried about you.”

“I know.”

“You guys are going to kill each other.”

“Probably, yes.”

She still looks guilty, like she can’t believe she didn’t drop everything to take care of me. I wish there was a way to tell her I’m glad she didn’t.

“Malcolm threw plates at him. Did Ryan tell you?”

“He threw
plates
at him?” This news sparks jealousy—I feel oddly left out.

“And broke the stereo! Fussy little Malcolm, who would have thought? Poor guy. Don’t tell Ryan, but I’m going to miss him.” She peers at me closely, as if looking for a mark or scar. “You’re really trying to tell me that you broke up with Ayla but you’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you still in love with her?”

“That’s not the issue,” I say, tired of the question. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

“Hello? Hello?”

“Dad, it’s me.”

“Piper?”

“That’s the one.”

“Hi, honey! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“No reason. Just, you know, wanted to call and tell you that I love you.”

“Hold on, I can barely—” He fumbles with the earpiece, experiments with speakerphone, and finally places the phone next to his ear. “Hello?”

“Still here.”

“That’s much better. What were you saying?”

“I love you, Dad.”

After Marla and Tom have left, and the apartment is barren, and I call my father, and I sit around, realizing how little I own, I decide it’s time to do laundry. I throw in all three sets of my A & O uniform. The one that used to have dried brain matter like a gray crust around the left knee and now has a mark on the tags as a way to remember, the one with the late Debbie Heinemann’s blood, and the last one as inconspicuous and pliable as a fresh white diaper. Adding enough detergent for several extra-large loads, I lean against the wall of the laundry room, listen to the hum of the washer, and wait for the moment when I add the bleach.

56

“So, Piper,” J-Rock says, “I heard you went crazy.”

“I did. But now I’m back.”

“Well, welcome back.”

“That’s not all,” Pep says, dropping a heavy hand on my shoulder and shaking me. “She’s not just back, she’s working a 72.”

I shrug. “What can I say, I missed the place.”

“Man, have you ever worked a 72 before?” J-Rock scowls. “Plus it’s a full moon tonight.”

Pep makes a sound like a bomb exploding. “You are so in for it.” He plops down at the table, unable to look anything but charming no matter what the topic. “Tell us, Piper. Did you forget what your ankles look like?”

“It’ll be fine.”

“The last time I worked a 72-hour shift,” J-Rock says, “I was hallucinating by the end.”

The three of us are ignoring the rookie, who’s making a fresh pot of coffee to go with the large box of doughnuts he brought. This morning I arrived to find J-Rock in his gym shorts and slippers, lecturing the gangly, fresh-faced boot on how
not
to wake up the sleeping crew who worked the previous shift, and maybe noisy activities like vacuuming could wait a damn minute. It was the first time I’d seen J-Rock without his hat on, his closely cropped hair a slick smiley face from the back because of the permanent indentation in it. I was relieved when the hat found its right place again.

My new partner’s name is Shel Lawrence.
Sheldon
. He’s already been warned we’ll find him a nickname.

“So what’s the gossip around here?” I ask. “Besides me, I mean.”

Pep and J-Rock mull it over. “Well, William got fired.” J-Rock sees my face and adds, “It was because he was late one too many times.”

“Right,” I say, nodding.

“You remember Toothless Eric? He died.”

“Eric was pretty young, wasn’t he?”

“Meth ain’t exactly the elixir of life.”

“Peter from 830’s got bit by a crackhead.”

“How bad?”

“I still say it’s bullshit.”

“Nothing crazy, just in the hand.”

“Wait, you mean Peter the
germaphobe
, Peter?”

“That’s why it’s bullshit.”

“Piper, who you working with for the rest of your 72?”

“Carl tomorrow and then Sheldon here again for the last 24.”

We all look at him, standing a few feet from the table, shifting from one polished boot to the other, clearly waiting to be invited. He looks no older than sixteen but must be at least legal. J-Rock kicks a chair at him and says gruffly, “This isn’t the fire department, buddy, and you’re not in training anymore. Re-
lax
.”

“That’s perfect,” I say. “Your nickname is ‘Buddy.’”

My new partner is what they call a black cloud, and in eight hours’ time we run a hemorrhagic stroke, a trip-and-fall, a nausea/vomiting, a crying baby stuck in a high chair, and a lawnmower accident where much of the time was spent studiously searching for the man’s missing thumb. It feels so good to be lost in the work: chasing 911 like a drug addict, the sound of sirens and assessments and station banter filling my head. I don’t even mind that Buddy is always underfoot and about as useful as an extra gurney, his safety glasses neatly wrapped around the back of his collar, even during meals, because it gives me more to do. Coffee coursing through my veins, watching my hands fly from medbox to patient to steering wheel to paperwork, anticipating the needs of whatever person-of-the-moment is in front of me, I discover that it all goes so quickly, one call after another, the minutes rushing by, the hours soaring.

Buddy and I have barely cleared the Santa Monica Trauma Center when we get our sixth call, for a forty-year-old difficulty breather at 76
^th
Street and Victoria Avenue. I tear back to our district, ignoring Buddy’s suggestion to take the 10 east during rush hour.

At the intersection of two small residential streets, our diff breather is easy enough to spot. She alternates between shrieking and hyperventilating—wild hair ballooning over an orange bathrobe and pink miniskirt—and she keeps pointing at something in the middle of the street.
We park the gurney on the sidewalk, and I try to calm her down.

“Ma’am, what seems to be the problem?”

“
Do
something, do something!” she bellows, both of her hands gripping my forearm. “Look at my little Figueroa…” Despite her rapid breathing—about forty breaths a minute—she’s got great skin color and a healthy tidal volume. The clump of fur in the middle of the street was once a cat. She breaks down into sobs again.

I awkwardly pat her padded orange sleeve. “I’m so sorry, ma’am,” I say. “Really I am.” Buddy’s fingers jab into our entangled limbs, trying to get the woman’s pulse as I look around, half-curious to see if I can catch the guilty look of the person who ran it over. The neighbors fidget in silence. I coax the woman to take a seat on the gurney, explaining that we need to take a look at her. If I can get her away from her pet, she might calm down enough for a proper assessment. She refuses. I insist. She places two flat palms on my chest and shoves me.

Finally I get it.

She isn’t our patient, and never was. From her gesturing I realize she expects us to do something to save her cat. Buddy pulls his safety glasses from around his collar and puts them on. “Well, maybe we could try—” he begins, and moves toward the smear of mangled fur and muscle.

Hooking him by the elbow I yank Buddy so hard he stumbles backward and almost falls. “Sorry,” I say, and pull him out of the woman’s earshot. I explain to him that supposing the cat was a viable patient, and not a mutilated carcass, we don’t know how to do animal CPR, and we don’t have the right equipment for it. Even our pediatric oxygen masks wouldn’t fit correctly over a cat’s nose.

Buddy’s face is like a windup toy coming to a slow halt: his mouth opens and closes, stretching a blank stare. All of a sudden I want to shake this rookie’s neck until I see true comprehension streak his eyes. A cat. A fucking cat. We didn’t work up a woman who’d been stabbed to death,
who’d only just gone cold, because there was no chance of saving her, and he wants to work up a scattered piece of roadkill.

I beg the neighbors to help the howling woman, reiterating that there’s nothing we can do. One man, long, lean, with kind gray eyes, takes a few steps toward her, his hands spread wide.

57

She tries to run away but he chases her, dodges traffic, gets cussed out by an irate taxi driver, and, when he finally catches up to her, shakes her violently. She is crying; she beats his chest with tiny fists, tells him to leave her alone even while her eyes tell him to never let her go. It’s a love story, and there’s no story more violent than love. She is telling him everything now, all the things she wanted to but couldn’t. At least I assume that’s what she’s saying. J-Rock turned the television mute during one of the commercials and never bothered to turn the volume up again.

“You’re lucky I don’t out you,” I say, shifting to find a better position in the unfurled recliner. “You like romantic movies more than any girl I know.”

He sits squarely in his upright easy chair, both feet planted, occasionally lifting a plastic cup to his mouth, spitting tobacco juice into it. “I’d deny it,” he says. It’s almost midnight. Our partners went to bed over an hour ago. I already told J-Rock, in a confidential tone, about how Buddy holds the rig’s radio transmitter up to his ear in order to hear Dispatch better, even though the stereo system is behind him. It was almost impossible not to tell him about Buddy’s
Ultimate Rookie Move
, starring a cat named Figueroa, but somehow I held back.

“I have a theory,” J-Rock says, “about those safety glasses.”

“Let me guess—” I remember J-Rock’s particular obsession with survival plans.

“He’s preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse.”

“Of course.”

“Think about it. Eyeballs are mucous membranes. Very infection-prone, an easy way to transmit disease. Buddy is more prepared than the rest of us.”

“He asked me what my worst call was.”

J-Rock winces. “Of course he did.”

We’d been driving back from a late-night dinner at the taco stand on Lennox when Buddy asked me, “So what’s the worst call you’ve ever had?” I pulled the rig over so quickly he threw his hand up against the window to brace himself. Turning toward him, I said in a low voice, “Don’t ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever
ask an EMT that question. Just don’t do it.” Buddy had nodded his agreement even though his face sprouted only more questions.

A preview comes on for the next romantic comedy. This one I’ve seen: it ends with him declaring his love at an airport, right before she’s supposed to get on a plane, or maybe he surprises her on the airplane. J-Rock picks up the remote, as if to raise the volume or change the channel, and then puts it down again.

“Hey, Rock?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you hear, anyway? About me going crazy, I mean.”

He glances sideways at me, his backward hat forcing an extra crease in the skin above his eyebrows. “Heard you ran a call on your girl.”