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You’d think I’d be used to sirens by now. But tonight their piercing wail drives nails into my skull, and the side-to-side rocking of the tin can we’re in makes me queasy. The young paramedic reaches over my head, bangs three times on the cab wall separating us from the driver, and pauses for a response. A voice calls, ‘ETA in seven.’ The paramedic goes back to work alongside Charlotte. I go back to squeezing Anna’s hand.
Her palm is clammy, or mine is. She’s heavily medicated and wanting to close her eyes, but I can’t allow that to happen, not yet, not after we’ve come this far. I put my mouth to her ear, my voice firm when I tell her, ‘We’re almost there, Anna. Don’t let me down now, are you listening? Squeeze my hand if you’re listening.’
Easing my grip, I wait to feel her response, but her hand only loosens in mine, her fingers slip. And as the rocking of the ambulance eases, everything else does too... A slowing of time. A plunge under water. The sirens fade the deeper down from the surface we go, the engine lost to the airless silence. Charlotte and her colleague move in slow, fluid motions, working side by side in perfect synchrony, their mouths opening and closing in soundless partnership.
I drag my gaze back to Anna. She’s looking at me with eyelids half closed, lips apart, and a tear on her cheek that doesn’t fall. For a second, I think she’s gone. But then I remember it’s just that we’re here, in this breathless space right before something happens... Like raising a fist to knock on the door behind which the abused might still be under threat from the abuser. Climbing the steps to the bridge where the jumper leans from the wrong side of the rail, only his palms, sleek with sweat, between him and the fall. Meeting the eye of the man with the blade clutched in his hand, a bottle in the other, and nothing left inside of him but hatred. Walking the empty road after dark towards the twisted remains of a car crash no one could possibly have survived.
Something digs into my hand. A hard pressure that brings me back to the surface. Noises return; Charlotte’s instructions, the cab door opening and closing, the wail of a siren somewhere outside. I look down to where Anna’s grip is so tight her fingers are white with the effort. But not for long. As she lets go, the doors of the ambulance are thrown wide with a jolt loud enough that I jump and suck in a breath.
