Page 13 of In Sheets of Rain

Electrodes and the BP cuff. An IV line inserted; the slow drip of saline through the plastic tubing. Soft words and low moans. Keening when I pressed on her stomach. The rock and roll of the ambulance as it negotiated the road’s uneven surface and the higgly-piggly inner city traffic.

“Give me a number from one to ten,” I said to Sally. “One being hardly any pain at all. Ten being childbirth.”

She stared at me.

“Have you given birth before? Could you be pregnant?” I asked, suddenly thinking I might have missed something.

I heard Simon stifle a laugh up the front of the truck.

The woman blinked extra long and highly made-up eyelashes at me.

“Honey,” she said. “If I could give birth to a baby, I’d be onThe Late Night Showin a heartbeat.”

I was missing something.

“Oh, OK,” I said. “So, no childbirth.”

Simon finally burst out laughing.

“She’s a transvestite, Kylee,” he said with exaggerated care as if I were the crazy and not the patient.

My face warmed. Sally cackled with mirth and then moaned in pain dramatically.

Not an ectopic pregnancy, then, I thought.

I moved forward and poked my head through to the driver’s compartment.

“You’re never going to let me forget this, are you?” I said.

Simon just shook his head, laughed uncontrollably, and then blasted the ambulance’s bullhorn at a cyclist.

“Might have to start calling you, Queenie,” he said when we’d passed the wobbling lemming.

As in ‘Drag Queen,’ I guessed. Great. I had a nickname.

“Welcome to the city, Country Bumpkin,” Simon offered, chuckling.

I could almost hear the echo of his laughter back on station.

I smiled self-deprecatingly and went back to my patient.

“Well, Sally,” I said, trying to sound professional. “How about that number out of ten?”

The man dressed in women’s clothing, who looked better than I did when I dressed up for a date with Sean, smiled at me.

“Seven, honey,” she said. “It’s a seven out of ten.”

She patted my hand as if I needed the comfort and she didn’t.

I made her as comfortable as I could all the while Simon chuckled in the driver’s seat.

The next time, I paid better attention.

I was learning.