Holding Still for as Long as Possible (10 page)

Okay, maybe here's something. Sometimes I daydream about terrible things happening to me. Like I'll imagine almost drowning and getting pulled onto the beach, or getting kicked in the face and having a black eye and a big scar, and having to tell people what happened. I'll imagine Josh leaving me for someone else, and our big showdown fight in public, my tearful exit. I don't know why. Most people probably daydream about winning an Academy Award, but I spend a lot of time imagining my funeral or how I'd look in a body cast. I don't even get scared. I just like to imagine them, all these potential emergencies.

Book Two

[ Life 2 ]

6:55 p.m. Delta F, 27, car accident, head injury, confused speech.

You would probably like Alison. Most people do. She has a way of putting people at ease. Her teachers call her a natural choice for nursing. They have an intuition about her.

Alison's mother was in Tuscon making jam. Alison's husband was wiping dust out of several champagne flutes at their house in Cambridge. Alison's twin brother was minutes away from pulling over to the side of Highway One, outside of Monterey, because he felt the breath go out of him.

Alison drew back her thick, black hair into a ponytail and adjusted it in the rearview mirror of Jam, her little Jeep. She named most of her beloved inanimate objects. A curl of bang escaped onto her forehead. She was listening to the radio, a story about a girl who was talking on her cell phone and accidentally walked in front of a turning truck. “Shame,” Alison said out loud. When she got tired, she often spoke aloud to herself.

Key in the ignition, she traced the puffy dark surface under each eye in the rearview mirror, wishing she could be transported home magically. Jam was somewhat reluctant to start. Alison wished she didn't drive. She was a much better passenger. She liked to watch her husband drive out of the corner of her eye, observing how he seemed so sure of himself. She even loved his muttering at more incompetent drivers, his raised fist as he swore.

She still couldn't quite believe she had a husband, a house, all of these symbols of adulthood, when just two years ago she'd been in first year at nursing school, drinking at downtown clubs on the weekends, speculating about the future. The future was the present now, and it fit like a dress from her mother.

Alison's mother, in Tuscon, made a pot of green tea and let the cat back in. She was waiting to call her daughter at eight o'clock.

Alison reached back and inserted two fingers into the cage where Marmalade, a fat orange tabby, sat unfazed by his lack of freedom. Marmalade licked her fingers, and she purred at him in an effort to be comforting, although she didn't really need to. Whenever Alison got too neurotic, she thought about how Marmalade would handle things, and she just pretended to lick her palm and sigh and take a nap.

It started to rain;
AM
640 announced high winds. Alison didn't like driving on the highway, but she'd started to get used to the daily route from Ryerson to her house in the suburbs of Toronto, a house she'd bought with John when they decided they had better start planning for the future. She wasn't used to it yet, the new renovations, the quiet at night, having to drive to get anywhere.

Alison's twenty-eighth birthday was tomorrow. She sent a text message to John saying that she'd be home soon, with a certifiably healthy cat and all the necessary ingredients for the most kick-ass guacamole ever. Earlier in the day, he'd sounded weird, excited, and this confirmed Alison's hunch that he was planning a surprise party for her that night. She was pleased, even though she'd rather relax on the couch, eat takeout, and watch terrible
TV
.

John read the text from Alison and grinned, happy that he was able to lie; it was not his strong suit. He finished blowing up twenty-eight pink balloons and went to pick up the cake.

Alison drove slowly beside St. Mike's hospital. She saw an ambulance unloading a patient, and said a little prayer that she'd get a job soon in a downtown hospital. She was experimenting with creative visualization, envisioning the things she wanted in life in specific detail. It had worked with the wedding, the good grades, even the house.

She pulled onto Lake Shore and considered a cigarette, rummaged in her small green purse on the passenger seat. Visualizing herself as a non-smoker wasn't quite working. Her own hand pulling out the pack of Belmonts was the last thing she saw.

In Big Sur, Alison's twin brother Alex stopped his camper van on the side of the road. He couldn't breathe. It was as though someone had punched him in the sternum. He'd parked on the side of a cliff on Highway One, overlooking the Pacific, and now he took a hit from his inhaler, watching the sun go down. Something was wrong, he could sense it. He woke up his wife, Susan, who had been asleep in the back seat, cradling their Border collie.

“It's nothing,” she insisted.

“It's something.”

“It's the full moon,” she offered, letting the dog out the passenger door.

“No. It's Alison.”

Jenny was on her first call as a student medic. Her preceptor was Alisha, a non-stop dance party. Alisha drove lights and sirens through traffic while Jenny tried to stay calm, keep her heart rate steady. On the radio was the new Britney Spears single, and Alisha knew all the words, was singing loudly as she pinballed through traffic.

Jenny recited silently,
If you keep a clear head, you will have the right instincts and be able to work fast
. She noted that Mark, Alisha's partner, seemed a little annoyed by her presence. She sat on the jump seat in the back, chewing her nails, trying not to get carsick as the ambulance wove at an impossibly high speed.

On the Lake Shore, the medics arrived right after the cops and found one female critically injured. She'd collided with a truck driven by an obvious drunk. Of course the drunk was totally fine, noted Alisha.
They're too relaxed to anticipate injury, and always walk away, stupid motherfuckers.

“My cat is in the back seat,” said the patient to Jenny, when they finally wedged her out of the mangled car after about half an hour of struggle. Even though she was in serious distress, the patient was able to talk as if they were sitting on a park bench, chatting strangers, her words clear as day. She went into cardiac arrest twice, and they managed to get her pulse back each time.

Jenny found herself praying for the woman, watching as Mark put her on the spinal board, noting her injuries.
She's so young. Please, God, c'mon.

Later, at the hospital, Jenny sobbed into a coarse brown paper towel in the
ER
bathroom. She texted her mother:
I don't know that I can really handle this after all
.

She flushed her eyes with water, and tried hard to make it look like she hadn't been crying. She pushed through the Staff Only doors that led into the
ER
waiting area. Through the window, Jenny watched Mark and Alisha smoking and goofing around outside. Alisha handed Mark her smoke and spoke animatedly with her hands, then tried to do a cartwheel, half successfully. He clapped and laughed. Alisha then did a handstand, and Mark held her boots with both hands, a smoke in each. Another medic took a photo with her phone. Alisha's face turned red. Mark let go of her feet and she bounced into a standing position, took back her smoke, and bowed.

Jenny smiled a little to herself, but still couldn't shake her distress. Her phone buzzed again, her mother's number flashing. She pressed “silent,” walked past Security, and joined the others outside.

“You cool?” Alisha asked, punching her playfully on the shoulder.

“Yup.”

“Good, 'cause it's burrito time and there's no crying during burrito time.”

October to December 2005

[ 6 ]

Josh

I woke up abruptly to a loud noise. A definite crash. A thumping from downstairs. Amy slept beside me on her back, head tipped back slightly, mascara drying under her eyes.

“Amy! Wake up, Amy. Did you hear that?”

“What? Hear what?”

“That?”

As soon as I spoke, there was another series of rhythmic thumps from below. Unmistakable.

Amy turned away from me and into the pillow: “It's nothing.”

“No, it's totally something.”

Whenever I thought someone was breaking into our apartment, I froze. My instinct was to just stay very still. Amy was the opposite. She would walk towards the sound, turn on lights, reach for the baseball bat, the frying pan, or the empty bottle of wine, and she'd walk right up to the door or window. I don't know where she got that kind of fearlessness
.

“You
had
to have heard that.”

“Fine.” Amy was suddenly upright. “I'll go check it out. Relax.”

“No! Stay here! Just stay quiet.”

“Josh, relax. You're such a fucking pussy!”
Amy teased, laughing.

She found it so ironic that my job was dangerous yet I was terrified of bumps in the night.

Amy stood up and her knees cracked. She was naked, but didn't reach for a robe, just flicked on the light and walked down the hallway with exaggerated annoyance. I heard her pad softly down the winding carpeted stairs towards the darkness and the noise. I plunged under the covers, one ear exposed. Amy narrated every move.

“Josh, I'm downstairs. I turned on all the lights. It's nothing. It's just the wind.”

Crash.

I lifted my head. “What the fuck? What was
that
?”

Amy was silent for a few seconds. I was certain I'd find her pretzeled in the front alcove. Then I heard her laughing. This propelled me from paralysis. I ran downstairs.

Amy was standing in the front window of our living room, watching a family of raccoons going through our garbage, the crash having been the sound of them scattering the tin cans around. They looked up at us as if to say,
Wha
t? You want some?

She took my hand and squeezed it, leading me back upstairs. “You okay, baby?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, feeling foolish.

“I can't believe you're off to save the world next week from a fake terrorist attack or the bird flu, and cute little raccoons are making you shit your pants.”

“Shut up!”

“C'mon. It's the only time I get to feel macho.”

It's true, she did seem kind of tough. But the raccoons had been unaffected by our taps on the window, our stares. They were like brazen little masked pirates.

Until I met Amy, every time I had a conversation I would shut my eyes in protracted blinks. It was a symptom of excruciating shyness. The brief blips of darkness allowed me moments of repose when I could disappear from the agony of human interaction. As a kid I had thought this made me invisible. Amy was the only person ever to mention it. Everyone else politely ignored my propensity. We'd been dating for about two weeks when she asked, “Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Closing your eyes when you talk?”

“I don't know. I never thought about it.”

“You do it a lot. Maybe you have a tic. Are your eyes fucked up or something?”

The intense spotlight of Amy's gaze was so violently uncomfortable it almost felt like something of a relief. She was paying such close attention to my face, not letting me disappear into myself.

“It's just a habit, I guess.”

“Huh. I like your eyes open. They're so beautiful.”

I balked. But I felt a change, and from then on, tried to break the habit. She would put her hands on both sides of my face and look into my eyes. I couldn't help it. I shut them, laughed a little, then forced them open again.

“That's better,” she'd say.

When I was a student and got stressed out about exams, she would run her hands through my hair, kiss my forehead, press her fingers into my clenched jaw and make small circles, listing off all the things she liked about me.
I like that you divide your food up into sections and eat them one at a time. I like that you remember all the actors' names on
Facts of Life
. I like that you have a phobia of touching wet paper products. I like that you're the smartest guy on earth. I like that you're the best kisser.
She had endless items on her list, and it made me feel beloved.

Now she turned away from me at night. Any cuddling was accidental. We'd decided it must be a phase. I wasn't sure, though. Something had changed, and I couldn't quite figure out how to change it back. For all my mechanical intelligence, my ability to take things apart and put them back together with ease, I couldn't see the plan ahead for us.

My alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. but I'd been lying in bed awake since the raccoon incident. I got up, dressed, and walked through the park and up towards the Annex, clutching my Thermos of coffee and trying not to think of the long day ahead.

I liked watching the neighbourhood wake up when the sun was rising. I saw a guy going up Beatrice Street on his motorized wheelchair. If I didn't see that guy, I knew I was late. We nodded. Well, he didn't nod, because he's half paralyzed from a stroke, but he looked at me when I nodded. Every once in a while I'd see a woman in a nightdress shuffling up Markham with slippers on, surveying the garbage on the street.

I'd walk past houses I'd been in, immaculate houses some of them, even though the elderly people inside could hardly move.

The best part of my job was the time between when you got the call and when you were inside the house, and you wondered what you were going to see. I liked meeting people and seeing where they lived and imagining why they lived that way. If people called for you, they were generally happy to see you. People who might have been hostile to you on the street treated you with respect. They got out of your way.

Right before I walked into someone's house, I wondered what kind of décor they'd have. Maybe they'd have a really cool painting, or a strange collection of stuff. One time I spent an hour talking to a famous artist in her late eighties, in her condo overlooking the lake. She was fascinating. Medics get to glimpse these random lives lived.

Our first call today was on my street, a woman I'd seen with her small red dog in Trinity Bellwoods Park. She was giving birth, and the midwife was late, and the woman was a potential high risk so she called us just in case. Her husband was a small man wearing a robe, who let us in, a kid of about six trailing behind him. We carried the stretcher in, and mom was in bed, aglow and panting, the size of a truck.

After the usual introductions, I asked, “So, how can we help you get to the ambulance?”

“Oh, I'm not going to the hospital,” she said between exhalations.

My partner, a cute androgynous girl called Mandy, looked at me, brows furrowed. It was our second shift together. “But, uh, that's what we do. We're here to transport you.”

“Nope,” mom said, smiling. “I'm having the baby here. The midwife will be along shortly. She's just stuck in traffic.”

Mandy and I stood awkwardly. I had the birth kit out, but I'd only ever used it in practice. I'd witnessed a birth in the
ER
when I was a student, and that was all.

“Have you ever helped with a birth before?” the mom asked, perhaps sensing our hesitation. The father curled up on the bed beside her.

“Um, no,” I said, hoping Mandy had helped pop out a few.

“Me neither.”

Mandy suddenly looked about four years old and terrified. The day before, I'd watched her pick up a drunk guy who'd been punched in the face and throw him on the stretcher. When he called her a fucking dyke, she just grinned and shoved him harder. She weighed maybe a buck twenty at most, and he was over six feet tall, but she managed to strap him down. We hadn't even really needed to call the cops. She was tough. It was kind of funny to see her whimper in the face of a birth.

The mother smiled warmly at us. She reached out and touched my arm. “Don't worry, it's going to be okay.”

I laughed. “Awesome. So, what can I do to help you?”

The husband was telling his daughter what to expect from the birth. He looked up at me and motioned towards the dresser. “The olive oil, there's a bottle right there beside the mirror. Can you rub it on the perineum? To prevent tearing.”

I tried hard not to burst out laughing. Mandy turned away from the parents, towards the front window, and bit her lip. I could tell she was trying to hold back too.

“Oh, sure!” I said, a little too eagerly, though in truth I was scared. I willed the midwife to hurry up and get there.

I poured the oil onto my gloved hand and tried to look like I knew what the fuck I was doing. A pregnant woman with her legs spread is probably one of the most intimidating sights to behold, let alone when you have to go in and help everything work smoothly, so to speak. I managed the task somehow, asking questions about the mother's medical history and the last birth.

Once the midwife arrived, the birth happened quickly.

Pregnancy calls were probably the best ones, I decided. Excitement and happiness were the predominant emotions.

For the rest of the shift Mandy called me Olive Oil Boy, making a circular rubbing motion with her hand.

I decided I definitely liked her.

After work, I met Roxy at Sneaky Dee's for some burritos and a pitcher of beer. She brought her new roommate, Billy, and I regaled them with stories of placenta mania and hippy Annex parents.

“They're not getting out of bed for a week. They're just staying with the baby constantly so it will be immediately used to love and comfort.”

“That's fucking stupid,” said Billy. “They clearly don't have jobs.”

“It's called Attachment Parenting, and I think it's great. It makes sense,” offered Roxy.

I could never be sure if she was disagreeing for the sake of a debate or if she really felt the way she purported to feel.

“Aren't we all woo-woo all of a sudden,” Billy snorted.

“I don't know,” I said. “I suppose it's good when parents want to be parents that bad. That kid is going to get the best of everything, be the centre of the world.”

“He's going to think he's a little god, and be a total narcissist as an adult,” Billy said, dipping a chip into some guacamole.

We sat at one of the booths on the side of the bar, and the noise of weekday drinkers insulated us from the cold outside. Billy ordered three rounds of shots, and when she talked it was like she was half mad, speedy and hilarious and self-conscious all at once. It looked like she hadn't brushed her hair in weeks, but her eyes were lined expertly in black and her skin looked as if she was still thirteen, dewy and perfect. She was wearing tiny jeans and gold flats, a V-neck black T-shirt.

“I hear Julia and Jamie are having a baby,” Roxy offered. “It really does seem like the year for long-term couples to have babies.”

“Julia and Jamie break up every five seconds! I can't believe that,” Billy said.

“Well, couples often have babies or get new puppies right when they're about to break up, like grabbing for something else to focus on when they're panicking about losing each other,” Roxy said.

“Yeah, totally, I've noticed that too.”

Across from us, a really drunk girl fell off her bar stool. Billy dug her nails into my arm and we laughed so hard we almost threw up.

Roxy giggled and said, “Oh god, you guys are perfectly sick in the same way.” She got up to see if the drunk girl was okay, and helped her stumble to her feet.

“Wait, wait. Wanna hear my favourite joke?” asked Billy.

I nodded.

“Why'd the monkey fall out of the tree?” she asked.

Roxy rolled her eyes as she arrived back at the table.

“Why?” I said.

“ 'Cause he was
DEAD
!” Billy took her shot of Jäger and slammed it down with a grin. “Josh, I think you and I are going to know each other for a long time,” she said, stealing a few of my nachos.

When she reached out her arm, I saw a criss-cross pattern of cuts above her elbow. They were white, so probably old.

Billy noticed me noticing them, but looked at me like,
So wha
t?
She rested her chin on the edge of the table like a cat might, mostly because she was too short for the booths. She'd spent most of the night with her knees curled under her to stay at eye level. She looked up at me and grinned.

I felt like I'd been shot in the gut.