Pain & Wastings (3 page)

Chandra and Holly drink tea. The cop doesn't drink anything. Marshall nurses his constant cup of coffee. I have a glass of water in front of me, but I haven't taken a sip. I want to, but I feel like if I make even the slightest motion, things will shift badly. So I sit very, very still while Holly
presents me with her proposal. It sounds too good to be true.

“Instead of criminal charges, you come with me, as a ride-along, for a block of shifts.”

“He's got school,” Marshall says.

“We'll take care of that.” Chandra glances around the kitchen, clearly approving of its cleanliness. She loves clean. So does Marshall, which is one of the reasons they like each other so much. “The shifts can count toward his Career Prep hours. I already checked with his teacher.”

I'll get out of school, with permission, because I broke the law? I shift my eyes to the cop. There has to be a catch, and he's likely to deliver it. But he's not even listening. He's looking at his cell phone. He smiles at it and starts a text message, using his thumbs. He never even looks up.

“That's two nights, two days,” Holly's saying. “Twelve hours each. Six to six.”

I have a million questions, like, will the charges totally disappear? Do I get to sleep on the nightshifts? Do I have to wear one of their stupid polyester uniforms? Will I have to actually touch
puke or blood? And is she going to mention my mom? Because if I'm trapped with Holly in the back of an ambulance for forty-eight hours, she better not. I'll pound her face in and then she'll be needing her own ambulance.

That makes me smile. A paramedic needing an ambulance.

“What is it?” Chandra's mouth is set in a frown. “This amuses you, Ethan?”

I shake my head.

“Then you'll agree to it?”

“Come on, Chandra.” I look at the ceiling. “You got candid cameras somewhere? This is some kind of a joke? You honestly expect me to believe that you will let me out of school to go hang out on an ambulance for four days instead of being charged and going to juvie?”

“You don't agree then.” Chandra tidies her papers, chopping them on the table to square the edges. “Fine. Officer Omar will process you downtown. You can go with him.”

Officer Omar looks up now, surprised. “What?”

“Wait!” I put my hands up in protest. “No, I'll do it.”

Chandra stands. “I don't have time for your sarcasm, Ethan.”

“I'm sorry. Of course I'll do it. It just seems too easy, you know? Like I'm being set up.”

“Perhaps it is difficult to believe that someone wants to offer you a helping hand.” Chandra purses her lips in that way that makes her look matronly, despite her fashionable clothes and smart haircut. “But Holly is doing just that. I suggest you take her up on the offer. Concessions are being made for you, Ethan. Holly has even managed to get approval for you to do this despite your criminal record. She had to go to her superintendent for special permission. This is a rare opportunity for someone like you. Don't be flippant about it. Unless you really want to go hang out with Harvir for a while.”

“No.” I look at Holly. She doesn't smile at me. She's got wrinkles around her mouth. Probably a smoker. Her expression is even. She's not giving anything away. I have all kinds of ideas about how she might've known my mother, but I can't settle on the one I want to believe. And I don't want to ask her. And she better not bring it up.

The first shift is a dayshift. Chandra comes and picks me up. When I get in the car she gives me a disapproving shake of her head.

“I told you to dress nicely. That means no sneakers.” She hands me a bag from the thrift store. “No jeans. Change into this.”

I look in the bag. Navy blue slacks. And a white button-up shirt.

“And wear the boots we got you for those community service hours you did at the recycling depot.”

I stare at her.

“You still have them?” she asks.

“Yeah. You want me to wear this crap?”

“You
will
wear it, and you will
not
be argumentative for me or Holly. Not at all. Or the deal is off and you go to juvie. And I'll make sure you're going in just as Harvir is coming out, so don't think for one minute that you two would get a chance to even say hello. I told you to go get changed, so go. And put on a white undershirt.”

I go back inside and get into the clothes. It's all a little big and smells of the thrift store, stale and slightly sweet. Chandra's gotten me a belt too, a thin one with a dainty gold buckle that might suit an airline steward or a pedophile who likes to watch children play in the park.

Chandra honks her horn. I yank out the belt, dig around in the mess on the floor at the foot of my bed, find my studded belt and jab it through the loops as I run down the stairs.

“That's a big improvement.” Chandra grins as I get in. “You look sharp. That's a much better belt.”

“I look like a waiter in a really cheap restaurant.” I pluck at the collar of the shirt.
It's been washed so many times you can practically see right through. “Good call on the undershirt.”

I don't know where I thought the ambulance station would be, but I did not imagine it would be right downtown. Smack dab in the heart of the notorious Downtown Eastside. Ten square blocks of drugs and prostitutes and poverty and violence. When Chandra turns onto Hastings, I speak up.

“Where exactly is it?”

“Cordova and Heatley.”

That's only a couple of blocks from Main and Hastings, which is called Pain and Wastings for a reason. Hell, a million good reasons.

“Were you going to tell me that? Ever?”

Chandra takes a hand off the wheel to find some music on the radio. “Was I supposed to?”

“You've read my file.”

“Uh-huh.” She cranks up the radio. Jazz. It would be. “So?”

There are three bay doors, and one of them is opening as we pull up. An ambulance rolls out,
with Holly and John in front. John turns on all the emergency lights as Holly rolls down the window.

“You're late! Get in!”

I glance at my watch. It is one minute past six. Chandra thrusts a paper bag at me.

“Your lunch. Go!”

I fumble my way out of Chandra's car and into the side door of the ambulance, not even getting into the jump seat before John peels onto the street and starts the sirens up. There is a small square cutout in the wall that separates the front from the back. The only place for a third person is back here, so I can't see where we're headed. All I can see is out the back window, as the traffic merges into the lanes behind us after we pass.

“Where are we going?”

As an answer, Holly hands me a laminated tag with the ambulance service logo on it and
Observer
in big letters.

“Clip that to your shirt pocket. Don't touch anything, don't talk to anyone, don't puke and don't faint.”

“Where are we going?” I can hear the panic in my voice. It's the sirens, and the speed. I
twist sideways in the seat and crane my neck so I can peek out the front. It's a weekday and busy already. We're cutting right down the middle of the street, spreading the traffic to two sides as we go. John lays on the horn whenever someone doesn't get out of his way fast enough. The radio is on, AC/DC competing with the siren and John's steady commentary about stupid drivers.

Holly is writing something on a form on a clipboard in her lap. She's got the map book open and checks it now.

“Left at the next street,” she says, hardly looking up.

“Where the hell are we going?” I practically scream.

John tosses Holly a dirty look. I bet he does not want me here at all. Holly finishes writing on her form. She checks the map again as we veer to the left, onto a side street. “Right at Maple,” she says to John, and then she finally turns to me, just as John cuts the siren and throws the ambulance into park. “Sudden death.”

We're led into a housing project, where an obese woman in a stained nightie is pacing in front of
the door, a cigarette in each hand, one lit, one waiting to be lit.

“It's my mom!” She points with the lit cigarette. “Up there!”

“Put these on.” Holly hands me a pair of latex gloves. “Follow me.”

“No way!” I back against the railing.

“For Christ's sake,” John says as he shoves me ahead of him into the stinking apartment. “Don't be such a pussy!”

“My mom!” the woman yells behind us. “Go help her!”

I'm sandwiched between John and Holly, with nowhere to go but up the stairs. We congregate in the tiny hallway at the top.

“Stick with me,” Holly says. “Carry the jump kit.” She points to their bag of first-aid gear, which weighs at least seventy pounds. John opens the first door and sees nothing. Same with the second. Holly turns in to the bathroom.

“In here.”

An elderly woman is sitting on the toilet, her slacks bunched around her ankles. An overwhelming stench hits us as we get closer.
The old lady is leaning forward, sort of hugging her knees.

“Ma'am?” Holly moves the woman's lank gray hair out of the way and puts a finger to her neck. “No pulse, John.”

“Do something!” I yell. The old lady doesn't look dead. She looks like she was taking a dump and decided to have a snooze. Holly lifts up the old lady's blouse and puts her stethoscope to her back. “No heart sounds.”

“Can't you guys give her cpr or something?”

“Sure, Ethan. Great idea.” John leans in the doorway. “Why don't you help her onto the floor?”

Without another thought, I grab the old lady's bony shoulders and pull. She comes forward fixed in her sitting position. Rigor mortis. I let go with a horrified shove. The old woman teeters back onto the toilet and then tips to the left, the bathroom counter sparing her an ugly tumble to the floor.

John laughs. “See the blood pooled in the skin where she's been sitting?”

The wrinkly flesh of her butt is purple and blotchy.

“She's been dead a while. There's no cpr in the world would bring her back.”

Holly steers me back into the hall. “Why don't you go wait outside?”

I turn a foggy circle, knowing the stairs are right in front of me, but not knowing how to work my feet to take a step forward, let alone navigate the stairs without falling.

“Mommy?” I shake her. Nothing. “Mommy? Wake up!” I sit beside her on the cold bathroom floor for a while, eating crackers out of the box, dipping my fingers into the peanut butter jar. When I'm full, I try to wake her up again. I want her to go get some milk. There's none in the fridge. In fact, there's nothing left in the fridge. I want her to wake up so we can go to the store together. I push with all of my kid might, and she budges, but all wrong. All stiff and hard. Not floppy, like when she's been like this before.

I don't remember going back to the ambulance, but that's where Holly finds me when they're finally ready to go. They had to wait for the police to come before they could leave. I don't know how much time has passed. I've just been sitting in the back of the ambulance with the cot lights off, thankful for the cool dark quiet.

“Ready to go, kiddo?” Holly secures the oxygen tank back in its place.

“What the hell are you trying to prove?”

She smiles at me. A generic smile that gives
nothing away. “If you don't cinch it tight, it rattles when we drive.”

I meant what is she trying to prove by dragging me along? I meant what is she trying to prove by making me see stuff that brings it all back? I meant what the hell is she trying to prove—that I'm not the badass everyone thinks I am? And who the hell is she? And what does she know about my mother?

She pats the tank. “Snug as a bug in a rug.”

I glare at her.

“You want to talk about the call?”

“The call?” I ratchet my glare up a notch.

“The dead lady.” John's at the back door, putting away the jump kit. “The call.”

“No.” I let him in on the glare too. “I do not want to talk about ‘the call.'”

“Okay, then,” Holly says. “Put your seat belt on.”

I put my seat belt on. John and Holly climb in the front.

“Chinese food?” John says, even though it's barely seven in the morning now.

“I'm more in the mood for a hamburger, I
think.” Holly turns in her seat. “What do you feel like eating, Ethan?”

“I don't.”

“First dead person, kid?” John says as he pulls the ambulance into traffic.

I decide not to answer him, because I don't want to get into it. I eye Holly, but she's not answering for me. How much does she know?

The silence stretches out awkwardly. “Well,” John glances in the rearview mirror. His expression is generous for once, and not patronizing. “Either way. If you want to talk about it, we're here.”

That first shift is the longest twelve hours ever. We only get back to the station twice, for less than twenty minutes each time. We do thirteen calls, all in the Downtown Eastside, my old neighborhood. I haven't really spent any time there since I was little, but it hasn't changed much. Drug dealers, hookers, junkies, crazies, bums, winos, street kids, johns and pimps. Pawnshops selling stolen goods, seedy bars with rat-hole rooms for rent upstairs, twenty-four-hour porn shops and convenience stores with buzzing
fluorescent lights, storekeepers with baseball bats and tall cans of mace behind the counter. Every alley reeks of piss and festering garbage, each shadowed doorway has a drug deal going on or someone shooting up or a pile of cardboard and blankets hiding someone trying to sleep.

When we're finally done, Holly offers to drive me back to Harbor House. We get into her car and turn onto Hastings without saying a word. Neither of us says anything until we're well out of the Downtown Eastside.