The Last Guests

by J. P. Pomare

  When we go to leave, I check the letterbox. Nothing there. I stare up along the road and again the guilt hits me like a wave. I swallow and try to block out the memories of that night with Daniel. Find a way to pretend that woman, Anna, was someone else. The apple doesn’t fall so far from the tree; maybe I am just like irresponsible, selfish Lianne.

  I think about the nights I search my mother’s name. Sometimes it feels like I really do miss her, but it’s not just that. It’s something different. I think about those short spells I lived with her, in old flats in town, carpet swollen and peeling up at the corners like wet cardboard, loud second-hand fridges and moth-eaten curtains that barely closed. Then there was the parade of men. And of course, there was another presence in the house. Those empty casks of wine piling up, the addiction gripping her body and shaking her until only bones and skin remained. It took everything, drained her of love and filled her with spite. I don’t blame her, it’s a disease after all. But I blame her for running away from her parents’ home when she was fifteen and pregnant. I blame her for not seeking help, not accepting the hand her parents offered, and I blame her for trying to take me back even though she was unwell. Dragging us all through the courts. I’ve come to accept that my mother is a bad person. I told myself I would never become her; I’d be a better mother.

  ‘Cain,’ I say now, feeling the weight of guilt pressing down on me. ‘I think I’ve lost my ring. I’ll do one more big search at my locker at work, but what if it doesn’t turn up?’

  He’s beside me in the car, as we’re about to leave. A knot at the bend of his jaw. He sets his eyes ahead. ‘You’re going to have to find it, Lina. That was my mother’s, ’bout the only thing I’ve got left from my parents. You’re just going to have to find it.’ Then the car starts and we’re driving.

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  A family enters the house, a man in his late thirties, wearing a New York Yankees hat, drags two suitcases in and a heavily pregnant woman follows him, holding the hands of two children. She sits on the couch, and opens her handbag, fetching a packet of apple slices for the children, who appear to be twins. She bends forward now as the kids rush about checking the rooms. She reaches and unties her shoes, pulling them off, placing her socked feet on the coffee table. Meanwhile, on camera 3 the husband is removing his clothes. He wraps a towel around his waist and heads to the shower where camera 5 picks him up – 17 viewers. He points to the child as he passes the bunkroom, then points out into the lounge. She rushes out, grabs her bag and comes back into the room. The woman turns the TV on, scrolls through channels. Dissatisfied, after ten minutes, she gets up, goes to one of the suitcases and pulls out her laptop. At the couch she puts a US reality TV show on the screen.

  Later, they all bathe, get dressed in tidy clothes. Then when they’re all dressed, they leave for dinner, the place falls dark and the numbers drop again.

  SEVEN

  CHANGE YOUR PHONE number. The thought comes unbidden but once it’s there it lodges itself in my brain. Some thoughts are like that. The longer I wait the more likely Daniel will message me again and Cain might see it. This is the only way to ensure I’ve severed the thread running between Daniel and me. I can control the situation. It would mean a mass text to all my contacts to update them. I would have to explain the decision to Cain – maybe I’d complain about telemarketing calls or say something vague about protecting my identity. For now I keep my phone close at all times, when I’m in the shower, in the middle of the night, when we go out in the car.

  Today I keep my phone in the glove box of the ambulance. My partner Scotty is a veteran of the service with receding ginger hair on a slightly pink, ruddy head. Anything beyond about ten years qualifies as veteran status, but he’s spent around twenty-five years saving lives. The only times we don’t work together is when I pick up extra shifts on my days off.

  A suspected heart attack starts the day for us, a 61-year-old male at a golf course. He’d bent to pick his ball out of the hole and when he stood up again, he’d had intense stabbing pain beneath his sternum. His friends said he just stood rubbing his chest, red in the face. Then he dropped down to one knee.

  In any ambulance there’s the lead and the driver, and between jobs we swap to keep the workload even. For certain calls, a hierarchy instantly establishes itself where the most senior officer will take the lead but for this call, I’m responsible for the patient. Scotty hesitates at the edge of the golf course, looking out over the perfectly manicured grass.

  ‘Go,’ I say. ‘It’s dry.’

  He starts driving onto the grass of the course. I see a man rushing out of the clubhouse, waving at us. The wheels spin, flicking turf. My look tells the man to stay out of the way; his lips seal in a pale line.

  We see cardiac arrest calls once a month or so but this one sounds more like a garden variety heart attack.

  I find the patient lying down with a group of men in conspicuously bright golf attire, their carts parked off at a distance. They’ve not moved the patient, thankfully. I assess him. Pupils a little dilated, but fine. Heart rate is at ninety-two, blood pressure is low, ninety over fifty. Oxygen levels at ninety-eight percent. Everything else is fine. We’ve got time to get him to the hospital. I radio ahead. Scotty pulls the stretcher out, running it over. With his skinny limbs and pot belly, Scotty always reminds me of those middle-aged men who play social sport and drink too much beer after.

  ‘We’re going to help you stand and climb onto the stretcher, okay?’

  One of his friends comes forward, volunteering to help.

  ‘It’s fine, we can manage.’

  ‘He’s okay?’

  ‘He’s doing well, just need to get him to the hospital if you don’t mind.’

  One of the men says something I don’t quite catch but the two others with him snigger. I get it a little bit less now that I’m in my thirties. Years ago, I stopped wearing make-up at work. Now I don’t wear any jewellery at all, I keep my nails clipped short and free of polish. When my hair was longer, it was always pulled back tight into a no-nonsense ponytail.

  The patient looks sick in the face but gets onto the stretcher and lies down. We load him up and force the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. I notice that Scotty’s eyes are a little dilated.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s get him on the road.’

  I climb in the back and keep an eye on the ECG the entire trip. At the hospital I brief the triage nurse, then they wheel him into a monitored unit. I fill out the notes on the call, filing the report. By the time I get back to the ambulance Scotty still hasn’t finished cleaning and replacing the equipment and stretcher. He’s off the pace today. He can be a little aloof, with a sense of humour some would describe as un-PC and others would call crass or perhaps worse. I’m his eleventh partner but we’ve been working together for almost four years now. Someone has to work with him, and I find it easy enough to block out the crap. If nothing else, he’s always been a hard worker.

  The moment we are cleared from the job I expect the next call from the station but nothing comes through.

  ‘Greasy Spoon cafe?’ Scotty says.

  ‘Why not?’

  You learn early as ambulance officers to order food and drinks in takeaway containers. You never know when the next call is going to come. Scotty has finished his BLT and I’m two-thirds of the way through my salad when our pagers sound. We stride back to the ambulance and head out.

  It’s another standard call. A suspected broken wrist and possible concussion. A woman tripped and fell while carrying two bags of groceries from the car. Her son called it in.

  Scotty should be the lead, but we swapped so he could drive and I could finish my salad on the way.

  ‘Any plans for the weekend?’ he says, as he speeds through traffic. The sirens wail above us, and cars part, or shift to the road’s edge.

  ‘Nothing really, might head down
to Tarawera if the weather is nice.’

  A car ahead won’t get out of our way, Scotty leans on the horn. ‘Move!’ The grey-haired woman behind the wheel looks stricken.

  ‘You heading there to check on your WeStay?’ he continues to me, the red fading from his cheeks.

  ‘No,’ I say, wondering when I had actually told him about it. We’re driving through a wealthy inner-eastern suburb of Auckland.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Good, just waiting for the bookings to come flooding in. It’s been two weeks without much traction.’

  The conversation abruptly ends as we pull up in front of the house.

  ‘Look at the state of this place. Rich bastards,’ he says.

  It’s palatial. Even for this part of town, a few kilometres from the CBD where properties are big enough to have their own postcodes. The garage is open, and I see hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of vehicles parked side by side. A sports car with a rearing stallion and an SUV with the distinct boxy font of Porsche.

  Scotty turns his head to smirk as he pulls into the driveway.

  I climb out and knock hard on the door, twice. A man, with impossibly white teeth, a tan he’s picked up somewhere tropical and silver-fox slicked-back hair. ‘Hi, thanks for coming out,’ he says. ‘But I think we’ve got it covered now.’

  ‘I’ll just have to see her to complete paperwork.’

  His smile falters. ‘Sure. Come on through.’

  She’s a small thing, sharp clavicle and birdlike bones showing through the back of her hands. When she meets my eyes, she tries to smile but there’s pain in it.

  I kneel down to speak to her at eye level, check her pupils, her heart, her ears.

  ‘Do you still have a headache?’

  ‘Umm, no it’s okay now.’ The husband is there, right over my shoulder when Scotty comes in.

  ‘Any dizziness?’

  ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Scotty?’ The man’s voice is loud. I turn. Scotty’s eyes are open wide, but he’s smiling. ‘Rick?’ he says. ‘Rick Reynolds, is that you?’

  They’re shaking hands now, clapping each other’s back.

  ‘You’re a paramedic these days.’

  ‘Twenty-four years now.’

  His eyebrows rise. ‘Far out. Twenty-four years, straight out of high school. I had no idea. You’ve lost a lot of weight since high school too.’

  Scotty gives an awkward cough. ‘I’ve seen your billboards,’ he says.

  Billboards? I thought I recognised him. He’s the politician. The upstart businessman espousing populist ideals. A NZ Trump, except he’s hardly gaining much momentum. A few of the crazies have probably bought in though. ‘Hoping to get into parliament and start taking out the trash,’ he says.

  I try to block out the boys’ chat and focus on the woman.

  ‘What’s the day of the week today?’

  ‘Tuesday.’

  ‘How did you fall?’

  ‘I, umm, I just stumbled. I wasn’t concentrating.’

  A sound in my mind like a distant alarm. She doesn’t appear to have concussion, but she mumbles the answer as if unsure of herself.

  ‘Who called it in?’ I say, turning back to the husband, interrupting his catch-up with Scotty.

  ‘Ah my son,’ the man says. ‘He’s eleven and got a bit spooked.’

  I turn back to the woman. ‘Alright, let me get a look at that wrist.’ I go to lift her sleeve, but her left hand flies across, holding it down.

  ‘Sorry, I just need to get a look at it,’ I say.

  Her eyes go to her husband, then back to me. My senses are tingling. Something is not quite right here.

  I peel the woman’s fingers away gently, then lift the sleeve and hold the wrist up, supporting it. Then I see what she’s hiding away. Those four grey spots, finger marks leading up her forearm. I look into her eyes; she looks away. The boys are laughing about something now, reminiscing.

  Examining the large kitchen we’re in, I see no sign of groceries, so unless this man, Rick, put them away while his wife was in pain, there never were groceries. I spy a fruit bowl on the marble benchtop, limp bananas and soft apples. Not fresh produce.

  ‘Does that hurt?’ I say, gently testing the wrist.

  She winces. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And that?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘On a scale of one to ten, how painful is it?’

  ‘Seven or maybe eight.’

  ‘Well I’d say there might be a break in there. You’re going to need an x-ray. We can drop you at the hospital, if you like, or you can organise to see a radiologist through your own doctor.’

  ‘I’ll go later,’ she says.

  I administer fentanyl for the pain. Scotty chooses to complete his report inside, so he doesn’t need to stop talking to Rick. I go to the ambulance and come back a moment later. ‘Hey, Scotty, can you give me a hand finding something?’

  He glances up from the iPad. I give him a look that says, don’t ask.

  ‘Sure. Be right back.’

  Outside, tucked out of sight from the house behind the ambulance, I stop him. ‘I think she’s got signs of abuse.’

  He frowns, his ruddy cheeks pinken. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I know the signs, she’s hiding bruises.’

  ‘They’re from the fall, surely? You might be jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘She might have been pushed or hit.’

  ‘Hit,’ he says, and the word tumbles into incredulous laughter. He’s a bit off today. If we suspect domestic violence, we have a duty to report it. Even if it turns out not to be the case. ‘He’s a politician, Lina. He’s a good guy and there’s nothing to suggest he has hit her.’ He has an odd, serene smile – is it possible I’m overreacting? ‘Come on, Lina. I’d be the first one to phone it in, you know that, but there’s no real evidence of abuse here.’

  He can’t be serious. The guy who’s called the cops on every potential domestic violence situation we’ve seen. But those cases were almost always lower socio-economic homes. The violence was obvious. Children with black eyes. Women with cigarette burns. Scotty knows this man.

  I shrug. ‘I’ve got to ring it in. If there’s nothing to hide, it won’t hurt them at all.’

  He touches my arm as I reach for my radio. ‘Let me speak to him, please. I’ll get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘Scotty, no,’ I say. ‘We don’t warn them, we don’t let them get a story straight. That’s how men like him get away with it.’

  He pulls his hand away, shows me his palms as if to say, your call. ‘Alright. Can you wait until we’ve wrapped it up at least?’

  ‘Okay,’ I say.

  Scotty goes back inside to finish the report. When he comes back, I add to it. Noting the bruises, the wife’s demeanour. Police don’t need the wife to confess to what has happened, they need only to suspect abuse before they intervene. The eleven-year-old son probably called 111 before he knew what he was doing. How will that man punish the kid if that is the case? Or it could all be a mistake. Those finger bruises could be from some adventurous role-play. Or a judo class she takes. There’s no certainty, just a balance of probability. Scotty is at one end of the scales and I’m at the other.

  Rick comes out to the ambulance. ‘What’s going on?’ he asks, that smile gone now. ‘What’s taking so long?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘We’ve almost finished up the paperwork here.’

  ‘Right.’ He looks to Scotty, raising his eyebrows as if this is one of those women things. Thoroughness, am I right?

  ‘Sorry,’ Rick adds now, zeroing in on me. ‘Have we met before?’

  ‘Me?’ I say. Feeling a sudden flush. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  His eyes narrow just a touch. ‘I could have sworn I recognise you from somewhere. Maybe not.’ He stands uncomfortably close, hands on hips, forcing his suit jacket open. ‘No, I have seen you somewhere. It’ll come to me. Or maybe you’ve just got one of those faces.�
� Then he lets out a laugh and slaps Scotty’s shoulder, before retreating to the house. I radio for the police and we stick around outside the property until they arrive and I explain what I saw. Then, Scotty insists we clear off. He doesn’t want to see his friend’s face when the officers knock on the door.

  I back out of the driveway, look once more at those vehicles, that house, then ease my foot down on the accelerator and head towards the station. Scotty is quiet, unreadable. He’s playing on his phone and barely speaks for the rest of the shift. I’ve ruined his little catch-up with an old school friend who appears to be doing well for himself. Maybe Scotty could see a friendship re-forming before I snuffed it out. At six-thirty when we get back to the station, he simply says, ‘See you next shift,’ signs out and takes his bag to his car without another word.

  •

  ‘How was work?’ Cain asks. He’s got his tattered light boxing gloves on and has been hitting the bag in the yard.

  ‘It was okay, had an odd call this afternoon. Have you heard of Rick Reynolds?’

  A spark of recognition. ‘Yeah, I have actually. I think I’ve seen him at Axel’s gym. Tallish, Pākehā fellow? Pretty lean.’

  Everyone in Auckland is connected somehow. ‘That’s him. He’s running for prime minister with about zero point one percent of the population behind him.’

  ‘Careful, there is plenty of looneys that will probably vote for him in the next election.’

  ‘We got called to his house. His wife had bruises.’

  I see a vein near his temple. This is one of Cain’s rules: men should never hurt women or children. They shouldn’t hurt other people at all unless it is completely necessary.

  ‘You sure?’ he says.

  ‘No, but my intuition with this stuff is normally pretty good.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  I pinch the bridge of my nose, massage my eyelids. ‘I called the cops, Scotty wasn’t too pleased about it.’

  ‘You called the cops on him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Peephole