Page 23 of In Sheets of Rain

“Ambulance Emergency,” I heard in the background.

“LSU 1-5, Priority One to Grey Lynn. R6.”

“Is the patient breathing?”

“Return to station, Thames 3-5-6.”

“The ambulance is on its way. Stay on the line.”

“Station Six. LSU 5-6. Priority One. LSU 5-6. Priority One to Takapuna. R4.”

“Hey, A 1-8,” a guy said, sitting off to the side, near the door.

“Hi,” I said, staring around the room, stunned.

It was a living, breathing thing. Alive in a way that being on the road sometimes wasn’t. Safe behind four walls. Watching our world through a computer screen. The faces behind the voices over the radio in our trucks. The voices of angels on the airwaves.

“Have you not been in here before?” the guy asked.

I shook my head. Comms had been a mystery.

“Huh,” he said, standing. He held out his hand to shake. “I’m Gregg.”

“Is that your Ducati out there?” Matt asked while I shook the guy’s hand. Matt was my newbie AO. I was in the hot seat. Not yet a paramedic, but close.

“Yep,” Gregg said. “My pride and joy, although the missus would argue with that.”

“Gregg was in a bad accident a while ago,” a woman said from the desk to the right of the door, practically alongside Gregg’s. “He fractured both femurs.”

I winced. Matt whistled. Gregg shook his head.

“That’s why he’s so short,” the woman dispatcher explained. “Lost a foot in height because of that, didn’t you, Gregg?”

I started laughing. Matt’s mouth hung open.

“Nice one, April,” Gregg said. “A 1-8, meet April, your North Comm dispatcher. That’s Steph, Nigel, and Karen,” he added, pointing to the rest of the Comms staff.

I smiled as I shook my dispatcher’s hand, nodding a greeting to the others. “Kylee,” I said. “This is Matt.”

“We know who you are,” April said. “Your names are in the system and up on the wall.”

“The wall?”

She nodded toward a huge whiteboard with magnetised name tags under station and truck numbers in a grid.

“Cool,” Matt said, wandering off into the room for a better look.

I stared at the board and searched for names I knew, aware there were more on the whiteboard than I’d ever met.

“The Service is big, huh?” Gregg said.

“Sure is,” I muttered.

“You’re making a name for yourself, though,” he added.

“I am?”

“Sure,” April said. “The ambo who tamed Sean.”