Page 49 of In Sheets of Rain

17

I Kicked Butt

“Carl resigned,” Ted said as I was filing paperwork in the station office.

“He what?” Carl had been a life support paramedic for more than twenty-five years.

“Quite the surprise, I’ll tell you.”

“What made him dothat?” Martin, the e-car ambo, asked.

“He said,” Ted offered, “there’d been one too many horrific jobs of late. He was sick of not making a difference.”

An upscale apartment building. A broken-down elevator. Maintenance overalls. Blood spread across the floor where it had been splashed by the force of the lift lowering.

Ted looked toward me. “He mentioned that decapitation. The one you went to with him. Pretty nasty stuff.”

He didn’t ask. There were others present. And I wasn’t entirely sure he would have asked anyway.

It’s just not done.

“Youwent to that decapitation?” Martin said with all the enthusiasm of a brand new medic. “Gruesome!”

“Yeah,” I said. “It was.”

Stepping over the body. Making sure my booted feet didn’t touch the blood. Knocking on the partially open door of the apartment leading to the landing where the maintenance worker was.

“Did the head come clean off at the neck?” Martin asked.

“Martin!” Ted reprimanded, chuckling.

Half a skull. A crushed head.

“How did it happen, anyway?” Martin asked, not put-off on his quest for gory details by Ted’s warning.

Excuse me? Paramedics, ma’am. Just wanted to let you know there’s been an accident. Out by the elevator. It would be best if you didn’t leave your home until the police allowed it.

“He was working on the lift,” I said, voice neutral. “It was supposed to be in maintenance mode. It moved when he was leaning into the shaft, fixing something. He couldn’t get out in time.”

You don’t have to go back up there, Kylee.

It’s OK, Carl. This is what we do.

No one should have to see that. Try to avoid it if you can. Best advice I can give you.

“Shit,” Martin said.

“Shit,” Ted agreed.

Carl had been right. But then, it occurred to me; I’d been wrong about so many things since becoming a paramedic — so many things.

“Yeah, shit,” I said and kept on filing.

* * *

“Iwas talking to Alice Westerman at church,” my mother said over the phone. “Her grandson wants to join the police force. I told her you were a paramedic. Very successful. If he wanted to talk to someone about emergency services work, he should drop you a line.”

“I’m not that successful, Mum.”