“I’ll see you later,” Brie said over her shoulder, slipping out the door without waiting for me to say goodbye. I held up my hand, waving at nothing as the door slammed shut in my face. Then I turned and made my way back to the kitchen.
“So… who was the girl?” Beck greeted me.
I raised an eyebrow. “You mean Brie?”
“I mean the Playboy bunny who just strutted out of here in a pair of high heels that probably cost more than my half of the rent.”
“Yeah, that’s Brie,” I nodded.
“Is she your girlfriend?”
“She’s just a friend.”
“Just a friend?” her blue eyes blinked up at me defiantly.
“Why do you wanna know?” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you jealous?”
“Jealous of what?” she scoffed. “Meaningless sex between two miserable people?”
“Who are you calling miserable?”
“You both looked like you were walking out of a funeral,” Beck smirked.
I frowned, watching as she dropped a giant shiny chrome pot of water onto the gas cooktop. She flicked one of the stove knobs and a ring of bright blue flames erupted. The stray drops of water that had dripped down the side of the pot immediately simmered.
“What’s cooking?” I asked.
“Comfort food.”
“Pasta?” I asked, eyeing a box of rotini that she had placed next to the cooktop.
“Cheesy noodles,” she corrected me.
“So… macaroni and cheese?”
“No,” she shook her head. “Cheesy noodles.”
Right…
“Is there enough for two?” I asked.
Her eyes flicked up to me and she glared.
“Never mind,” I said quickly. “I’ll just order a pizza…”
“No, don’t,” Beck said, rubbing her forehead wearily. “There’s plenty. You can have some cheesy noodles if you want…”
I grinned and popped open the fridge, reaching for a bottle of wine.
“Can I pour you a glass?”
“Um…” she raised an eyebrow, then peered over my shoulder. “Do you have any beer?”
I turned back to the fridge and replaced the bottle of pinot grigio on the shelf, then I grabbed two bottles of Corona by their necks and held them up.
“Much better,” Beck smiled, giving me a thumbs up.
“You really are like one of the guys…” I shook my head as I tapped open one of the cabinet drawers and fingered around for the bottle opener. “So… why do you need comfort food? You feeling homesick already?”
“Definitely not,” Beck shook her head.
“Ok… bad day at work then?” I popped the top off of one of the bottles and passed it to her.
“Do I need a reason to eat cheesy pasta?” she blinked up at me.
“Fair enough,” I held up my hands, surrendering.
She took a swig of Corona, then she wrapped her arms across her chest and turned to me.
“You never finished your story,” she said.
“Huh?”
“About going to see the Statue of Liberty with your parents.”
“You heard that?” my stomach sunk and I immediately felt mortified.
“Not intentionally,” Beck shrugged apologetically. “But the walls are paper thin…”
I played back my entire conversation with Brie, wondering what else I had said or done that I should be embarrassed about…
“I’m sorry,” I said, still cringing on the inside. “I forgot you were home. I shouldn’t have—”
I didn’t want to finish that sentence, so I just let my voice trail off. I glanced back at the window, but the sun had finished setting and it was too dark to see the river anymore; it had disappeared in the black shadows of the night.
“So this story…” Beck reminded me. “Did your parents take you to see the Statue of Liberty?”
“They agreed to go with me,” I nodded slowly. “We were supposed to go on a Saturday morning. But something came up, or maybe they just forgot… I don’t know.”
“Did that kind of thing happen a lot?”
“All the time,” I nodded. “My parents are…” my voice trailed off again. I wasn’t sure how to describe my parents: rich? Eccentric? Cold? Finally, I settled on: “Preoccupied.”
“So you didn’t get to go?”
“Oh, I still went,” I said. “By myself.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven or eight?” I shrugged. “Old enough to have my own MetroCard. I took the subway down to Battery Park, but I got lost.”
The water started to boil on the stove. We both ignored it.
“After wandering around on my own for a while, I finally found this family; a mom, a dad, and two little boys who looked like they were around my age. I followed them, but I made sure to stay a few paces behind so they wouldn’t notice me. I followed them all the way onto the Staten Island Ferry. It was a rainy day, so they sat on one of the benches below the deck.”
White tufts of steam filled the air, puffing up from the boiling pot of water, but neither of us moved…
“The ferry passed the Statue of Liberty and the family crowded around the window, pressing their noses against the glass. I squeezed in with them, pretending that I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty too. But I didn’t actually give a shit about the statue… I just wanted to know what it felt like to be part of a family.”
“As I was standing there with this family of strangers, I suddenly felt a hand land on my shoulder. The dad had mistaken me for one of his sons. It only lasted for a split second, but in that split second I felt something I had been desperately waiting for my entire life.”
“Love?” Beck asked.
I swallowed heavily, but I didn’t answer. Instead, I nodded to the pot of boiling water and said: “I think the water is boiling…”
The water had been boiling for several minutes, but when Beck glanced down at the pot, she seemed to notice for the first time. She absently tore the top off a cardboard pasta box, then she dumped the noodles into the water.
“I told you my story,” I said, changing the subject. “Now you tell me about this cheesy pasta.”
Beck sighed and bit her bottom lip as she swirled a wooden spoon through the bubbling water.
“My mom used to make cheesy pasta on the first day of school,” she said, keeping her eyes pointed at the pot. “It was our little tradition. I’d come home and she’d have a big bowl of cheesy pasta waiting for me on the kitchen table. Then we’d sit together and talk about what had happened at school; my new classes, which teachers I liked and which ones I hated, my friends…”
“Sounds like you have an awesome mom.”
“Had,” she corrected me, still not blinking up from the pot. “She passed away ten years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I figured that if my mom was here now, she would want to celebrate the first day of my new job with a big pot of cheesy pasta.”
“I agree,” I nodded. “We should honor that tradition.”
Then I reached for the wooden spoon that she was using to stir the pasta.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“You can’t cook your own cheesy pasta,” I said.
“Of course I can!”
“That’s not the tradition,” I reminded her.
She frowned, but she released her grip on the wooden spoon.
“Sit down,” I said. “I’ve got this.”
“You don’t know the recipe—”
“You can tell me as I go,” I shrugged, then I nodded to the bar stools that were lined up along the opposite edge of the kitchen island. “Have a seat.”
She slowly made her way around the island and slid onto one of the barstools, then she took a sip of her beer.
“All right, Olivia Beck,” I said, glancing up from the boiling pot, “Tell me about your day.”
CHAPTER TEN | OLIV
IA
“You must feel pretty special, huh?” Scott Fuller asked, glancing at me from the driver’s seat of the ambulance. He was drumming his hands on the black vinyl steering wheel, and he was wearing this outrageously cocky grin on his face.
“Why should I feel special?” I asked.
“You must have made a good impression on the boss man,” Scott said, stretching his smile even wider. “Perkins doesn’t usually let new EMTs go out on a bus during their first week.”
I shrugged. I had to admit, I was just as surprised as Scott seemed to be.
It was a Friday morning, which marked the end of my first week on the job at Hartford Fire Department. When I had gone into the office, I had assumed that I would be spending my Friday doing the same mundane desk jobs that I had been doing all week: filing paperwork, organizing incident reports, taking coffee orders…
But instead, Perkins had suggested that I spend the day out in the field, shadowing another EMT. I was so thrilled that I almost jumped for joy right there in his office. My joy quickly turned to horror, however, when my boss revealed the second park of his plan: the EMT that I would be accompanying was none other that office pervert, Scott Fuller.
Fuck. My. Life.
To call this arrangement “uncomfortable” would be an understatement.
Scott and I were sitting side by side in an ambulance, idling in the Save-a-Lot parking lot. It was a hot summer day outside, but inside the cab of the ambulance felt like an icebox. Scott had the A/C cranked all the way up, and I was shivering and freckled with goosebumps. I was wondering how Scott could possibly be comfortable with the bitter air blasting out of the vents, when I noticed the two little pinpricks poking through the chest of my crisp black EMT uniform.
I was mortified and immediately crossed my arms to cover my chest, but that didn’t stop Scott from stealing glances; every time I so much as shifted in my seat, his eyes flung to my chest.
Pervert.
A radio console was affixed to the dash, and every so often an emergency message would blip through the fuzzy speakers. All we could do was wait; wait for a call to come through the radio, and summon us to the scene of an emergency.
Unfortunately, all of that waiting meant that we had ample time and silence for smalltalk.
At around noon, Scott reached under the driver’s seat and grabbed a sandwich wrapped in cellophane. As soon as he pulled away the clingy plastic film, the pungent aroma of tuna fish filled the ambulance. I rolled down my window and leaned towards the crack, sucking in a gulp of hot, fresh summer air. Scott just laughed.
“So,” he garbled through a mouthful of sandwich, “you still owe me that drink.”
I stifled a groan as I remembered where my last conversation with Scott Fuller had left off: with him trying to lure me to some dive bar called Rusty’s.
“Listen, Scott…” I said. I was trying to work out the best way to let him down gently, when suddenly we both heard a scratchy voice break crackle through the radio speakers.
“Code one, Code one,” a voice chirped urgently. “Medic needed to 1025 Willow Haven Drive. We’ve got a ten year old boy, unresponsive. Do I have a bus responding?”
“That’s right around the corner,” Scott said. He threw his plastic-wrapped sandwich into the cup holder, then grabbed the radio’s handset.
“We’re responding,” he barked into the mouthpiece. He cranked down the gear stick and the ambulance screeched forward towards the road. The sirens blared from overhead, ringing through my ears.
My heart started racing. I had been out of the field long enough that I had almost forgotten the rush; the frenzy of responding to an urgent 911 call. Now, I remembered it all at once. The adrenaline pounded through my body like an electric shock.
“Just hang back,” Scott instructed me as he weaved the ambulance through traffic. “Remember, you’re shadowing me today, so you’re just there to assist—”
“I’m a qualified and experienced EMT,” I reminded him. “I may be new to Hartford, but I’ve been working in this field for years—”
Scott ignored me, spinning the ambulance around a corner. We were in a suburban neighborhood. The street was lined with square, boxy houses and dense green trees.
“This is Willow Haven Drive,” Scott said, glaring through the windshield. “The house number is 1025 — do you see it?”
“There!” I said, pointing to a mailbox marked with brass numbers: 1-0-2-5.
Scott jerked the steering wheel and the ambulance lurched up the curb, landing in the middle of a grassy front lawn.
The front door on the house flew open and a hysterical woman rushed towards us, fanning her face with her hands.
“Please hurry!” she cried, leaping towards us. Her flip flops slapped against the concrete driveway. “I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine, and then—”
“Where is he, ma’am?” I asked calmly.
She pointed back towards the house. Scott pushed his way in front of me as we both followed the woman through the house, then through a sliding glass door that opened to the back yard.
There was an in-ground swimming pool in the backyard. A table was set up on the pool deck, covered in confetti and a giant chocolate sheet cake. A banner hung over the table: ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!’
The party guests — a cluster of 10-year old boys — were huddled together by the side of the pool, shivering and dripping wet. This was supposed to be a birthday party, but they were completely silent; petrified.
Splayed out on the concrete at their feet, I saw the limp, lifeless body of a little boy. His wet hair was pushed away from his face, and his chest seemed perfectly still, like he wasn’t breathing.
I darted towards the boy, but Scott stopped me.
“I need you to clear the area!” he barked at me. He pointed towards the group of shivering boys, “They can’t be here.”
“We don’t have time for this!” I protested. “They’re not in the way—”
“Get them out of here!” Scott yelled. Then he turned to the woman — the only adult on the pool deck — and asked: “Is this your son?”
“No,” she shook her head frantically. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. “His name is Ben. He goes to school with my son. We invited him over for the birthday party—”
“We don’t have time for this!” I said again. This time, my voice was more urgent.
“Let me do my job, Olivia,” Scott snapped at me. Then he turned back to the woman: “We need to get in touch with his parents. Do you have their contact information?”
This is insane! I thought to myself. I glanced back at the boy on the pool deck. God knows how long he’d already been out for… we needed to act now. Every EMT knows that time is crucial; why was Scott wasting so much of our precious time?!
I have to take matters into my own hands, I decided.
Scott was still having a back-and-forth with the woman, so I turned to the cluster of kids.
“Can any of you tell me what happened to Ben?” I asked.
“He just starting gagging and fell over,” one of the boys offered. A tear rolled down his cheek as he spoke, and I felt my heart sink on his behalf.
“What did he do before that?” I asked.
“He ate some cake,” another boy said, pointing to the cake table. I glanced down: the cake had been cut into squares and served on round Spiderman paper plates. I grabbed one of the plates and inspected the spongy cube of chocolate.
Then I noticed the gooey creamy filling that was sandwiched in the middle of the cake…
“Does anyone know if Ben has a peanut allergy?” I asked the boys.
They mumbled amongst themselves uncertainly, then a single voice from the back said: “Yeah! I remember one time he got mad at me for eating Reeses Pieces in front of him, because he said peanuts could make him sick!”
Shit. He’s in anaphylactic shock.
“Scott!” I shouted over my shoulder. “I need an
EpiPen!”
He glared at me stupidly, then he glanced down at the paramedic kit that he was holding.
For a split second he hesitated. Then he flung the kit onto a pool chair and immediately started rifling through it, tossing aside bandages and suture supplies…
“I don’t have it!” he shook his head, glancing up at me. He didn’t look bossy or in control anymore; he looked scared. “I… I don’t have it.”
My eyes shot back down to the little boy. His face was drained of color and his lips were blue.
Shit, shit, shit, shit…
“We need to do an emergency tracheotomy,” I said, swallowing heavily. I turned back to Scott, and his face looked just as blue as the victim’s.
“I—” he stammered helplessly.
Fucking useless, I wanted to grunt. Instead, I flung out my hand and demanded: “Give me something sharp to make the incision.”
He nodded slowly, then he started digging through his kit again. He produced a scalpel wrapped in sterile plastic packaging.
“Gloves too,” I said.
Scott handed me a pair of purple latex gloves and the scalpel. I took a deep breath, positioning myself over the boy.
The only experience I had performing tracheostomies came during my training, when I had practiced on a rubber dummy. This was different; this was real life.
But if I don’t do this, I reminded myself, This little boy might lose his life…
I gulped down my fear and traced my gloved fingers along the boy’s throat. When I found the right location, I slowly dug the blade of the scalpel across his skin and made an incision.
I glanced up and saw that the audience of boys had gone pale as they watched in horror.
“Hand me one of those straws,” I told them, pointing to a package of neon plastic drinking straws that were left on the table. One of the boys jumped forward and passed me the straws. I carefully extracted one, then I pressed it into the opening in Ben’s trachea.
I leaned forward and breathed into the tube.
Once… Twice…
I felt the boy’s chest seize upwards under my palm as his lungs inflated with a breath… then a second breath. Color slowly faded back into his face and his eyelids fluttered open.
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