Page 34 of In Sheets of Rain

“Any allergies?” my partner asked. Joe shook his head, his breath hitching. “Ever had atropine before?” Another head shake, his skin paling. “OK, here’s what we’re going to do, Joe.”

I watched as Joe, the geriatric gigolo, stiffened, his face turning ashen, and then he started to convulse.

Intravenous lines and saline flushes. Defib pads and 360 joules. Ampules of drugs and cracked ribs. The indignity and necessity of an intubation tube. His wife sitting in a chair to the side, her hands up to her cheeks; rocking.

“We’re going down South,” she said afterwards. “Weweregoing down South. On the weekend. To see our new great-grandchild.”

“Is there anyone we can call for you?” I asked.

“They all live down in the Waikato. We used to live there too, but Joe loves — loved — the city. Said it kept him young.” A shaky sob.

“Perhaps a neighbour?” Joe’s wife nodded her head.

I met Ted’s eyes, and he nodded, face solemn.

“Number 16,” Mrs Joe said as I left the room.

Droplets of rain made diamond-like sparkles beneath the street lights. A soggy cat peered out from beneath a box hedge, its yellow eyes shining briefly red as the light caught them at just the right angle. The wet smell of Auckland City in the middle of the night met my lungs, and I inhaled deeply.

I could still smell the camphor and tea and desperation and dashed hopes.

I knocked on the glass door of number 16.

Best offer I’ve had in years.

To see our new great-grandchild.

Can’t keep me down for long.

“Hello?” a middle-aged woman said. The door had opened, and I hadn’t even noticed. “Is everything all right?” She glanced at her next door neighbour’s drive, taking in the ambulance. “Is it Norma and Joe? Are they OK?”

“My name’s Kylee,” I said, “Norma needs some support tonight. I’m sorry to tell you that Joe has died.”

It’s strange what you think of when people grieve. How their pain feels for a brief moment as if it is your own. How you wonder if you’d break down and cry, like the woman before me. Or straighten your shoulders and grit your teeth. Offer the bereaved whatever support they need in their hour of sorrow.

I’ve done enough crying for the strangers I’ve met. I’d like to think; I’d like tohope, if the time ever came that I had to grieve, I would have done my fair share already. I knew it was a futile hope. But there’s only so many tears a person can shed in one lifetime.

Or so I’d like to believe.

The ambulance was quiet as we drove back to station. It was early. The birds were singing; I could hear them through the closed window. The sun hadn’t crested the horizon or anything, but the promise of dawn was right there. The streets seemed brighter. The rain had even lessened somewhat. As if it too had shed enough tears for tonight.

“You’ll get the O2bottle?” Ted asked. I nodded and slipped out of the passenger seat once the vehicle rolled to a stop in its allotted carpark. He wandered off to the office and the safe, to replenish his drugs. I hauled the bottle out of its slot and detached the delivery head, walking it toward the new oxygen bottles at the rear of the garage.

The soft sound of rain pattered down on the tin roof. A car horn blasted out on the street. Someone switched up the volume on a radio somewhere, and Sting started singingDon’t Stand So Close To Me.

Within minutes we had the truck restocked. My partner regaling the e-car team about some course he was about to go on for station managers. I stared at the O2bottle as it sat innocuously in its cubby hole at the side of the ambulance.

No one asked.

No one offered a slap on the shoulder or even a momentary meeting of eyes.

Sting kept singing. The e-car got a callout.

And Joe would never get to meet his great-grandchild.