Lights and Sirens

by Lisa Henry

  He expected Kate to laugh, but she only raised her eyebrows. “Huh.”

  “What does that mean? Huh?”

  “You.” Kate shrugged. “I’ve known you for three years, and I’m not used to you being so prickly about a guy.”

  Hayden gave her the side eye. “I’m not prickly.”

  Kate snorted. “Sure you’re not.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  The thing was, Kate wasn’t wrong. In their three years working together, Hayden had never had a boyfriend. He’d had a shitload of random hook ups with the occasional encore performance thrown in, and Kate probably knew more about the ins and outs of Hayden’s sex life than anyone short of his GP should have, but relationships? Hayden didn’t have relationships.

  Something about Matt Deakin felt different.

  For some reason Hayden hadn’t figured out yet, he was different.

  Or maybe he wasn’t. Maybe it was Hayden who was different. Maybe he just happened to be at a point in his life where he was open to the idea of a boyfriend, and Matt had turned up at the right time. Or maybe it was both: the right guy and the right time.

  “It’s new,” Hayden said at last, glancing at Kate. “I’m still trying to get my head around it.”

  He gazed out the windscreen at the traffic, at the day, at the clouds rolling in and trapping the heat. He was already looking forward to tonight. He and Matt were both supposed to finish at midnight—fingers crossed on that—and Matt was going to come over for a while before he had to head home.

  “Well,” Kate said, her voice uncharacteristically soft, “I’m just glad he’s not the total dickhead you thought he was.”

  “That was a whole lifetime ago,” Hayden replied airily.

  “It was last week.”

  “A lifetime,” Hayden repeated, his mouth tugging up in a grin.

  Kate snorted.

  They picked up coffee from the place with the drive through at the Lakes, and then headed back along Hugh Street to the station. Most of the vehicle bays were empty; the other crew were out on jobs. Friday late shifts were usually hectic, but at least the time flew.

  Hayden checked his phone as he climbed out of the ambulance. No texts from Matt yet, but he might have hit the ground running.

  Hayden followed Kate through the door to the interior of the station, knowing that it wouldn’t be long at all until they were rushing out again.

  He was right. He was taking a piss when their next call came in. His radio, hanging from his epaulette, spat out a burst of static and a high-pitched squeal that bounced off the tiles in the toilets. Hayden ignored it, and concentrated on hitting the trough and not his boots, and let Kate write down the details in the break room. A six-year-old child had fallen from a tree, and was breathing but unconscious. His stomach clenched. He hated jobs with kids. They always got under his skin the most, like it was suddenly paper-thin, brittle, and they were always the hardest jobs to shed again at the end of a shift.

  Hayden finished up and washed his hands, and met Kate in the corridor.

  “I heard,” he said, tramping down the stairs after her.

  They were halfway to Belgian Gardens when he remembered he’d left his coffee in the break room.

  It was late afternoon; the sunlight hit the city in long, slanting rays that burned everything golden and caught in flashes in the scratches on Hayden’s sunglasses.

  “Get out of the fucking way,” he muttered as they slowed at an intersection. A blue sedan was blocking their path, failing to move aside despite the fact they were running under lights and sirens. “Come on, dickhead, move.”

  He flicked the siren over to yelp for a few beats and Kate leaned on the horn.

  The blue sedan inched painstakingly out of their path, and Hayden resisted the urge to give the guy the finger as they passed.

  They made good time to the incident despite arsehole drivers. Hayden heard a child screaming even as they pulled up outside the address. The sound was high-pitched, and nails-on-a-blackboard raw. It made Hayden’s skin crawl, but he also hoped it was their patient and not a sibling. Screaming meant conscious.

  The frantic father met them on the footpath and ushered them in.

  The yard and the house were neat and well kept, with no obvious hazards. It looked like the place was lived in by decent, average people, unlikely to be the sort who’d suddenly want to punch an ambo in the head. Experience had taught Hayden never to put money on those kind of assumptions, though.

  The screaming grew louder as they hurried with the father around the side of the house. Their patient was lying on the ground under a large mango tree, her mother kneeling over her. The mother’s head was tilted as she sandwiched her phone between her head and her shoulder. She was doing her best to keep the child still, and the kid was probably screaming because she wanted to be held, not held down.

  “Okay,” Hayden said, kneeling down next to her. “Are you on the phone to Triple Zero?”

  The mother nodded, red-faced and teary-eyed.

  “You can tell them we’re here now,” Hayden said, “and you can hang up.”

  The kid on the ground continued to scream, blood running down the side of her face.

  Nothing wrong with her lungs at least.

  Hayden and Kate worked quickly, Hayden checking the little girl over while Kate mostly ran interference with the parents and allowed him room to work. The girl stopped screaming as Hayden snapped his gloves on.

  “Hi,” he said, shining his torch into her eyes to check her pupils. They both constricted, but the left remained larger than the right. A definite concussion then. “Can you tell me your name, princess?”

  She was wearing a pink taffeta dress and there was a plastic tiara lying on the grass not too far away.

  “Isa—Isabella!”

  “With a name like that, you really must be a princess.” She was breathing okay, so Hayden turned his attention to the gash in her hairline. It looked deep, and would probably need to be glued once she was at the hospital. Hayden held a dressing onto it. “Can you tell me where you’re hurting, Princess Isabella?”

  “M-my head! And my t-tummy!”

  Hayden pressed his fingers gently against her abdomen. “Does it hurt more when I do this, or does it hurt less?”

  “More!” Isabella wailed.

  “Okay,” Hayden said. He pinched her fingers to check her circulation, and then did the same to her toes. “We’re going to take you up to the hospital, so the doctors can check your tummy and your head. Have you had a ride in an ambulance before?”

  “No!” She blinked rapidly, her pain clearly fading now he had engaged her interest.

  “Well the best part is, we get to carry you on a stretcher.” Hayden hoped that the concussion was the worst of Isabella’s injuries, but they’d put her on a backboard until x-rays at the hospital ruled out a spinal injury. “And we’d better take your crown with us, otherwise the doctors might not know you’re a princess.”

  Isabella rewarded him with a watery smile.

  It took a few minutes to get Isabella situated on the backboard that Kate fetched from the ambulance.

  “Now we do the straps up,” Hayden told her, “to make sure you don’t wriggle around too much. It feels funny, I know, but I need you to be a brave princess for me, okay, and stay as still as you can?”

  “Okay,” Isabella said, her voice shaking.

  “And Mum’s gonna ride with us, and hold your hand the whole way.”

  Hayden rode in the back of the ambulance with Isabella and her mother, describing the equipment to Isabella, and polishing her dirty tiara with an antiseptic wipe. It was shining by the time they made it to A&E and wheeled Isabella inside.

  Hayden handed Isabella to the nurse in charge of intake, and solemnly presented her with her tiara before she was whisked off into triage.

  Then they were off to the next job, and the next, and the next.

  Night fell, and the shift blurred into a haze of flashing lights an
d radio transmissions, of strangers’ houses and the smell of antiseptic. They attended a few jobs with the police, but not Matt and Sean. Hayden heard Matt’s voice once, on one of the copper’s radios. Just booking off at the station or something similarly unexciting, but it made him smile anyway.

  By the time his shift ended Hayden was wrung out but still buzzing with adrenaline. He checked his messages, disappointed when he read the text Matt had sent an hour or so before: Have overtime until 3 am. Raincheck?

  No problem, Hayden texted back.

  It was the reality of their jobs. And even if part of him was disappointed he wouldn’t be seeing Matt tonight, he was also looking forward to just crawling into bed and crashing out as well.

  Monique was still awake when Hayden got home: a thin band of light spilled out from underneath her door. A faint tapping of keys was coming from her room. She was probably on a study bender, so Hayden didn’t bother her. He went into the bathroom, and stripped off his uniform. He needed to do a load of washing tomorrow; he was fast running out of clean clothes. He showered quickly, ridding himself of the smell of work: nitrile, antiseptic, the hospital. At least nobody had thrown up on him tonight, or bled all over him, so Hayden was counting it as a win.

  Monique’s door was still closed when Hayden treaded back to his room with a towel around his hips. He dug a pair of boxer shorts out of his drawer, draped his towel over the end of his bed, then turned his light out and crawled under his doona. The air conditioning blew cold air into his room, chilling his exposed shoulders pleasantly. He checked for any new messages, played a few rounds of Solitaire, and then set his phone aside and closed his eyes.

  He thought of Matt, still working, and wished he was here instead.

  It took a long time for sleep to come.

  Hayden came up from sleep thrashing and gasping for breath. He threw his doona off, sweat chilling on his skin. It had been months since he’d had a nightmare. Months. But after last night’s shift he should have expected it. It was always the jobs with kids that did it. Princess Isabella might have been smiling by the time Hayden gave her tiara back, but those piercing screams when they’d first arrived…they’d been just the right pitch to hook into his subconscious and drag a nightmare out of him.

  He swung his legs out of bed and planted his feet on the floor, breathing deeply for a moment and waiting for his heart to stop racing.

  He reached for his phone.

  5:17 a.m.

  Hayden was dog-tired still, but he knew from experience he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. So he climbed out of bed, dressed in a pair of baggy basketball shorts and a shirt, and dug around in the bottom of his closet for his trainers.

  The sun was rising when Hayden hit the street. His soles slapped against the footpath as he followed Ogden Street towards Victoria Bridge. The streets were almost empty of cars, but there was some pedestrian traffic. It was that strange hour of the day when the dregs from the nightclub strip, drunkenly staggering homeward, crossed paths with the early morning joggers and cyclists. A few taxis zipped past, ferrying people away from Flinders Street. A dual cab ute towing a boat trailer headed toward the Breakwater.

  Hayden crossed Victoria Bridge. Dawn was slowly brightening the sky, and light glittered on the surface of Ross Creek. A drunk snored on one of the benches on the bridge. An empty beer can washed back and forth in the trap of a cluster of mangroves at the edge of the creek. An ibis stalked along the bridge, staring Hayden down and then scuttling out of his path when he got too close.

  Hayden squinted into the dawn and kept jogging.

  Forty minutes later he was unlocking the apartment door, stinking with sweat. He showered and changed, and then ate a bowl of cereal standing over the kitchen sink. Monique’s room was as quiet as a tomb and he wondered what time she’d finally crashed out.

  His phone buzzed with a call, and he pulled it out of his pocket to check the screen: Kate. What the hell was she doing calling him at this hour?

  He accepted the call. “Kate. What’s up?”

  “Sorry.” She sounded off. “Did I wake you?”

  “Nah, I was up. Are you okay?”

  “I’ve broken my ankle.”

  “What? When? It’s six in the morning!”

  “Yes, and at two in the morning I was going to the toilet, and I tripped over the fucking cat. I just got home from the hospital.”

  “Holy shit.” Hayden hissed in sympathy. “Jesus.”

  “So I’ve got surgery scheduled for Monday,” Kate said. “And I’m looking at least three months off the road.”

  “Shit.” Hayden’s stomach sank.

  “I wanted you to hear it from me before you heard it from John.”

  John Feehan was the officer in charge of the Townsville Ambulance Station.

  “Yeah, I appreciate that.” He and Kate had been partners ever since Hayden had been at the Townsville station: going on three years now. Hayden had never wanted to work with anyone else, and he knew Kate felt the same. They made a good team. “Do you need anything? Does Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy is a grown-arse man,” Kate said dryly. “If he suddenly can’t cope around the house because I’m stuck in bed, the only thing he’ll need help with is filling out the divorce papers.”

  “I see the painkillers have really brought out your soft and cuddly side.”

  “Fuck you.” But there was a smile in her voice.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No, I’m good for now,” Kate said. “I just wanted to give you the heads up.”

  “Text me if you change your mind,” Hayden said. “And rest up in the meantime, okay, my love?”

  “I will, dearest.”

  Hayden ended the call, and rubbed his forehead to try to ease the tension gathering there. Shit. He hoped Kate would be okay. Fuck her cat, seriously—now he was going to be stuck with some other partner for however long it took Kate to get back on her feet.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, and drew a deep breath.

  It’d be fine. Maybe he’d get a newbie. Get the chance to show off, and cultivate a little hero worship or something. God knew he’d never get anything like that from Kate. They knew each other way too well for that.

  He’d go and visit her in the afternoon.

  Hayden sighed, and tugged his fingers through his damp hair. His lack of sleep seemed to hit him all at once, despite his run and his shower, and he dragged himself back to his bedroom and into bed.

  When he woke up several hours later there was a text from Matt waiting: Want to come to my place for dinner tonight?

  Hayden stared at the screen bleary-eyed for a long moment, enjoying the sudden loop-de-loop of butterflies in his stomach. Because dinner with Matt at his place meant meeting his grandfather, right? Like a real boyfriend? Like a proper relationship?

  Yeah.

  Yeah, this was a thing they were doing.

  It felt good.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  Grandad’s house wasn’t exactly set up for a romantic dinner for two. The dining room was separated from the living room by a decorative wooden architrave instead of an actual wall, and eating dinner while listening to Grandad swear at the football on TV was not the vibe Matt was going for. The kitchen was more or less a cluttered mess, but at least it would be private in there. And Matt had cleaned up, kind of. He’d shoved what he could off the bench tops and into the cupboards, swept the worst of Charlie’s hair out the back door, and evicted the chicken that kept popping inside to see what was going on whenever the back door was open. That was as good as things were going to get, honestly. Grandad’s place was never going to look as impressive as Hayden’s apartment with its sleek modern lines, its impeccable kitchen, and its sweeping views of the park and Ross Creek. Grandad’s place had sweeping views of…the shed, and the back yard where Charlie was currently collapsed on the brown grass and a chicken was pecking at his tail. It wasn’t inspiring, but it was a step up from a public toilet. That
had to count for something.

  “What are you cooking tonight?” Grandad asked, hobbling into the kitchen on his cane.

  “Pasta.” Matt rattled around under the sink. “Do we own a colander?”

  “Don’t think so. You could drill a couple of holes in a salad bowl.”

  Matt shot him a look. “Do we own a salad bowl?”

  Grandad hissed through his teeth. “Doubtful.”

  “Maybe I should make something else.”

  “Matty.” Grandad sat down the table. “He’s not coming over for your cooking skills.”

  Matt straightened up. “Please don’t take that thought any further.”

  Grandad cackled. “Don’t worry. I’ll make myself scarce when he’s over. Leave you two lovebirds alone.”

  “If you could never use the word ‘lovebirds’ again, that would also be great.” Matt wet the sponge under the tap and wiped the bench top down. “We’ll probably just have dinner and watch a movie in my room or something.”

  Grandad’s eyes sparkled. “Is that what the young people are calling it nowadays?”

  “Jesus.” Matt winced. He turned back to the cabinets and wrenched one open. “Seriously, there has to be a colander in here somewhere.”

  “Oh, let me tease you a bit,” Grandad said. “You remember when you were a little fellah and had a crush on that friend of your sister’s? What was her name?”

  “Sheree. And I only had a crush on her because she looked like a boy and she taught me how to catch cane toads.”

  “It was hilarious then and it’s hilarious now,” Grandad said. “You’re a grown man, you’ve been in more blues than I have because of your job—you have a gun—and you’re absolutely shitting yourself because we don’t have colander.”

  Put like that and it didn’t sound hilarious at all. It sounded sort of pathetic.

  “I don’t want to screw it up,” Matt said. “I like him.”

  “And does he like you?” Grandad asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

  “Then he’s not going to give a rat’s arse if we have a colander or not.”