Page 3 of In Sheets of Rain

Part I

1

I’m A Confident And Competent AO

I’m a confident and competent AO.

I’m a confident and competent AO.

I’m a confident and competent AO.

The words were my mantra. I repeated them silently as we sped toward an RTC—road traffic crash—in the city. The roads were slick with last night’s rain and the headlights of the ambulance danced along the white lines down the middle of the street, almost blinding.

I was glad I wasn’t driving but sitting in the passenger seat meant it was my job; my turn to tend to the patient.

I’m a confident and competent AO.

I was well trained; passed my ambulance officer course with flying colours. But somehow the reality didn’t match the fantasy of saving lives for a living.

Still, I was living the dream. In the Big Smoke. Auckland City where everything and anything could happen.

We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

“Ho,” Simon said from the driver’s seat as we slowed to approach the scene. “It’s a goodie.”

If a goodie meant twisted metal and the smell of spilt gasoline and the pitter-patter of rain drowned out by the sounds of a big city.

I’m a confident and competent AO.

“Don’t forget your helmet and jerkin,” Simon reminded me.

“Got them,” I said, trying to smile, my voice almost cracking with the dryness of my throat.

“‘Course you do,” he said on a grin. “You got this, Kylee.”

I liked Simon. I thought he perhaps liked me in a way I wasn’t ready to explore just yet. He’d offered to show me around the city. Give me the lowdown on all the best places to go when off-duty. Show me the shortcuts to the major centres. That sort of thing.

I’d declined politely. I’d been dating a guy from back home at the time. I knew it was doomed but when everything in your life is changing, you cling to the familiar.

Plus, my mother liked Kent and leaving home had been upsetting enough for my mum, so we were trying the long distance thing.

I hadn’t spoken to Kent in over a week. I thought he might have met someone else. I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell me. Sooner or later, the length of time we didn’t speak would mean we were over. I wasn’t in a hurry to confirm a thing.

Then I’d have to face my mother.

Simon parked the ambulance across the street, blocking traffic to the crash site. I stared at the car and wondered if it was a Toyota or a Ford or maybe a Subaru. It was hard to tell and it didn’t really matter. The safety cell had held, even if the driver was still trapped inside the vehicle.

Firemen swarmed the scene; they’d beaten us here. It wasn’t the first time they’d done that since I’d started the job. I wasn’t sure how they beat us when their station was just across the road from ours. Maybe rocket engines or flying capes or something.

I forced my attention back on the scene. It was carnage. A solitary shoe lay in the gutter. The bike was underneath the wheels of a cement mixer. The car with the intact safety cell was scrunched up against the truck as if it had attacked it in retribution for hitting the cyclist.; David meet Goliath.

“Least the lemming is walking around,” Simon muttered.

“Lemming?”

“Cyclist,” he said and slid out of the ambulance without making a sound.

I donned my hard hat, slipped my arms through the sleeves of the reflective jerkin and then followed my partner out of the vehicle and into the rain.