THE PARAMEDICS HOISTED Harry onto the portable gurney, marvelling at how light the man actually was. The layered and worn clothing gave the impression of far more substance than Harry carried on his bones. Ralph was standing beside him as they strapped him to the ambulance. People around the donut franchise looked on with curiosity.
Struggling weakly against the restraints, Harry looked at the two medical professionals as they went about their work. He could tell the woman paramedic tightening the strap around his body, someone the other one called Molly, was only weeks away from resigning her position. He was sure by the way she glowed that she was on the edge of a breakdown. Too many calls, too much stress, too much pressure was making her self-confidence ooze out — that was the best way Harry could describe it. She was leaving bits of herself on the floor of the Tim Hortons as she packed up the medical equipment. The other paramedic appeared okay. His eyes were where they were supposed to be, and he didn’t seem to be radiating anything negative. He was indeed a man who wanted to make the world a better place, and that was always a good thing.
Harry’s blood pressure was high, and his heartbeat was irregular. The paramedics kept asking him very annoying questions, none of which he wished to answer. He just needed to stop talking and thinking and he’d be okay. Yes, he knew he had made the decision to call over the police boy to talk, not thinking it would take such a toll on him. Now he just wanted to be left alone.
“Just leave me be. Take me to my grate.” Both paramedics looked at each other. They were trained to handle street people, who frequently had a different value system. Their voices were gentle but firm.
“Ah, no, sir. Can’t do that at the moment. Do you know where you are?”
Deciding not to answer, Harry let his head fall back onto the stretcher. This wasn’t his first encounter with Toronto’s medical shock troops. Every once in a while, his latent diabetes would end up giving him some unwanted attention, but today he just wasn’t in the mood.
“Look, just give me a donut and let me go!”
Ralph stepped up to the prone, anxious man. “Harry, just go with them. They’ll make you better.”
“Better than what?”
Maybe if he finished what he’d started, he might feel better, like closing the door on an unpleasant smell or getting off a bumpy plane — though Harry had never been on a plane, he felt the metaphor was just — would ease the nausea.
“Police boy, you want to know about the Horse?”
Ralph nodded.
“Don’t look. You may not find what you think you will. They change. People change. Horses change.” The paramedics tried to calm Harry down, but he barely saw them. “Go home.”
Ralph stepped up to the stretcher, despite the protestations of the medical personnel. “I can’t. I have to find out what happened. See if I can help … even all these years later.”
“Why?”
“Because. That’s why I became a cop.”
For financial reasons, Ralph had spent the morning, one of several, pacing back and forth in front of a construction site. That didn’t fit in with his reasoning at the moment, and when the time came, he would have to reassess that stone in the foundation of his life. But right now, in front of Harry, he was so close to solving a mystery that had haunted him his entire life.
“I wanted to be one of the good guys. I didn’t like being … impotent.”
Harry’s head was now throbbing. Distant memories and images of a long-ago life began to pop up. Once again, he heard the police boy’s voice.
“Tell me, Harry, where can I find Danielle?”
Focusing on the Native man’s face through the haze of his past life, with errant memories of long-forgotten people and a barely remembered language bombarding his consciousness, Harry uttered his last words.
“Where would you be if you were a horse?”
The paramedics pushed the policeman aside as the man on the stretcher suffered a seizure.
Once again, Ralph could only watch from the sidelines.