At the Warrigal hospital, paramedics share the same lounge as nurses, doctors, and other staff. Elise ignores them all, sitting on an L-shaped couch, her legs crossed at the ankles, drinking a cappuccino from a paramedic-themed mug Kiara bought for her. The slogan reads: drive carefully, or I get to see you naked.
She watches through the window as two police officers lead Ms Dubois to their patrol car. They help her into the back seat, their hands on her elbows. She looks frail, moving like someone three times her age. Elise has read somewhere that the cold keeps you young, but it must only work up to a point.
In the ambulance on Monday, Elise had simply wrapped the woman in a heated blanket; once they reached the hospital, things got more high tech. The nurses treated her hypothermia with blood rewarming: her blood was pumped out, cooked in a haemodialysis machine and then pumped back in, raising her body temperature.
Elise doesn’t need to turn around to know Rafa is behind her. He breathes loudly; it’s like he’s snoring even when he’s awake.
‘You want something, boss?’ she asks.
‘No.’ He settles into the couch next to her. He’s bearded and squat, with bulging eyes and sleeve tattoos.
‘Checking on me?’
‘Yeah.’
This isn’t uncommon. Last year, Elise endured a horrific trauma. She was abducted and held prisoner for almost a week in an underground septic tank on a disused sheep farm. She barely escaped with her life. She wants to forget the whole thing and move on, but she can’t, because people keep checking if she’s fucking okay.
She swallows the anger. ‘How’s Daisy?’
‘Don’t see much of her at the moment,’ Rafa says. ‘She’s at work all day, I’m at work all night—you know how it is.’
Most people would accept this excuse. But if Rafa wants to spend more time with his wife, Elise wonders why he’s playing the pokies at Kingo’s almost every evening.
‘She’s a special lady,’ Elise says.
‘She is.’
‘You’re a lucky man.’
‘I am.’ He changes the subject. ‘You okay? You seemed jumpy this morning.’
Elise is still anxious after the near miss. Her phone rang, and Kiara nearly answered it. If Elise hadn’t got to it first, she doesn’t know what the man on the other end would have said—pretended he’d dialled the wrong number, maybe? But that would have made Kiara suspicious, because wrong numbers don’t really happen anymore.
‘I’m fine.’ Elise points at the police car, which is shrinking as it cruises away down the hill. ‘What do you think happened?’
‘I think it’s none of our business.’
She nods. But she’s seen how rapidly things can become your business. You don’t ignore a bushfire just because it’s on the other side of a fence.
A siren screams overhead: another car accident, or a drug overdose, or something else involving clammy flesh and wails of pain. Elise sculls the last of her coffee and stands up, ready to work.