Chapter 14
Aiden
I remember all the people I’ve had die on the job.
My first was in my second year running: a pulmonary embolism, dead before we even got him on the rig. My second, a car crash, two victims. My third, an MI, husband in the rig with us, watching his wife breathe her last. Twenty-three in all, over my ten years running, first as an EMT and later as a medic. It seems morbid, maybe, to keep a count, but I guess I think it’d be more morbid not to, to have it become commonplace, to not remember.
But I’d give anything, anything at all, to forget the last hour.
The call had come in at 5:06 a.m. Female, twenty-five, possible overdose. Lights and sirens, the dispatcher had said, which meant we needed to hustle. I’d done overdoses since Aaron; they were too commonplace to avoid. But they still made me sweat a little harder, made my hands a little unsteadier.
You want to tell yourself, I guess, that you’ll be going somewhere seedy, somewhere where there’s cooking spoons on the dresser, hollow-eyed spectators who scatter under the lights of the rig like cockroaches. You want to tell yourself that there’s a type, because that helps you make sense of things. But there isn’t, so I wasn’t surprised to be headed to a nice neighborhood. I wasn’t surprised to pull up to the large, perfectly maintained Tudor, professional landscaping, fancy lights lining the walk. I wasn’t surprised by any of the details I learned over those next frantic twenty minutes: Sidney, her name was. Living with her parents, sleeping in her childhood bedroom. A bad back injury while playing on her college soccer team. Addiction to prescription opioid painkillers. Just home from rehab yesterday.
Unconscious.
Unresponsive.
In the rig, her parents following us to the hospital, Ahmed and I had done everything. Intubation. Twelve lead to monitor heart function. IV line to pump her full of Narcan, sodium bicarbonate. Ahmed doing CPR when she’d lost her pulse, me putting pads on for the AED. Epinephrine, trying to get a shockable rhythm. Over and over again, until it started to feel awful, like we were just rag-dolling her around, Charlie in the front, calling ahead to the hospital. One more time, I’d thought, more epinephrine in her line, and I’d opened my mouth to say her name, to shock her back—Sidney!—but instead I’d said his name, quick, automatic, and utterly humiliating.
Aaron.
Across from me, Ahmed had stiffened, and I’d corrected. “I’m fine,” I’d said quickly. “I’m fine.”
No change by the time we’d gotten to the hospital, and Ahmed and Charlie had taken over, covering the transfer and paperwork. It takes longer than you’d think, the hanging around, the paperwork. Long enough to find out the doctors couldn’t do any better than we had done. Long enough to find out Sidney was gone.
I’m quiet on the ride back to the station; we all are. But while Charlie and Ahmed manage at least a few duty-related exchanges—meds we’ll have to replenish, paperwork we’ll have to file—I say nothing, a black, twisting pain in my throat that’s nearly choking me. When we pull up, it’s two minutes until our shift is over, and the next crew is in the bay, sipping coffee, laughing and talking. It’s normal—it’s so fucking normal, and I feel frozen in this seat. I feel like if I move, it’ll just be to destroy this truck with my bare hands. It suddenly seems so wrong to ever use this vehicle again. It should be buried, set on fire, put out to sea, something.
When Charlie and Ahmed get out, I see Charlie shake her head, a slight turn, but the expression on her face must convey something, because the new crew adjusts, turns solemn, one of them looking my way in sympathy. That’s all I need to extract myself, to get moving. Med stops me, a big hand on my shoulder. “Take off, man. Charlie and I will close out.”
“I’m all right.”
“I know,” he answers, giving my shoulder a firm slap of recognition. “No shame in needing some time, though.”
“Yeah,” I manage. “Thanks.”
I don’t look at him, or at Charlie, or at anyone else as I grab my things from my locker and head out. But in my car, I feel as lost as I did in the rig, unsure where I should go next. It’s seven in the morning, and before the call we’d all gotten a few good hours of interrupted sleep, and I doubt I could get any shut-eye even if we hadn’t. Even now, when I blink, I see her open eyes, the green cast to her skin. I can so easily rearrange her features. Make them into Aaron’s. She was slight, like he was. Fine bones underneath thin skin.
I drive without seeing, the kind of autopilot where you get home and think, How did I get here?, where you remember none of the traffic lights you stopped at, none of the intersections you passed through. Except I haven’t gone home. I’ve gone to Zoe’s. I’m parked right outside her building, the place where I’ve waited for her, or where she’s waited for me, every time we’ve left for Stanton Valley.
There is not one person who I should want to be around less after I’ve watched a woman die from the same thing that killed my brother. But should means nothing to me right now. It’s only been two and a half days since I dropped her off here, after our weekend, and it feels like a lifetime. If I’m honest it felt like a lifetime even before this morning. When I’d dropped her off on Sunday, I’d lingered at this same spot, not wanting to be apart from her after a weekend that had been damned near perfect, after the days before where we’d spent stolen time at my place. There’s something new between us now, though neither of us had been able to say it, and she’d slid from my car like she does every Sunday. I don’t think I’d stopped thinking of her since, not until these last frantic couple of hours, where my head had been full with trying to put color back in Sidney’s sunken, wasting skin.
So right now, all I want is to see Zoe’s smooth, bright skin, her hair in the sun when it gleams and changes color. I want her smile, her sharp, clear voice. I am too wrung out to care about why.
I’m greeted in the lobby by a black-suited doorman who sits behind a high, granite-topped desk, a headset in his ear. He greets me with a grating, cheerful, “May I help you?” I didn’t even know this place had a doorman, didn’t think much past getting in the door. Now I wonder what will happen if I have this guy call up, if Zoe will not, in fact—despite how things are between us now—want to see me at seven o’clock on a random Wednesday morning, no phone call first. But I don’t think about turning back. My seeing her feels as necessary as my next breath.
“I’m here to see a resident. Zoe Ferris.”
He nods, asks my name, and types something onto his laptop, and in a few seconds he’s speaking quietly into his headset while I try to make myself look calm and disinterested, like I don’t feel as if I could tear this place to pieces just to get what I need. I catch sight of myself in a mirror across the lobby, wincing at the state of my uniform, the dark circles under my eyes.
“You can go on up, sir,” the doorman says. I hear a buzzy click that must open the glass doors behind him, leading into a bay of elevators. I head toward them, then pause and turn back, embarrassed. “I don’t know her apartment number.”
If he thinks it’s odd, he doesn’t reveal it, telling me where to go. In the elevator, I keep my hands tucked into my pockets, my head down, not wanting to see anyone or anything until I get to her. And when the doors ping and open, she’s there, standing right in front of them, dressed like I haven’t seen her since that first day—sleek, fitted dress, this one black, a green cardigan buttoned over top. Her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, her lips glossy pink. For a second, I think I must visibly deflate at seeing her this way. What I wanted, I think, was my Zoe.
“Aiden?” she says, her brow furrowed. I pause so long that she has to hold a hand out to stop the doors from reclosing, so I step out, expecting to make this quick. I notice, for the first time, that she’s not wearing shoes.
“Sorry,” I manage to grind out. “I don’t know why I came. I should’ve figured—fuck.” It dawns on me what Zoe must be doing, dressed like that. “Fuck, is this your first day? I’m an asshole.” Behind everything I’m feeling is a whisper of satisfaction that she’s doing it, that she took the leap, same as she did this weekend, when I was so proud of her that I felt like I’d burst.
“It’s not my first day,” she says, quickly, sharply, that voice I wanted to hear. “I was making breakfast.”
“Dressed like that?”
She looks down at herself, then back up at me. “Aiden,” she says again, her tone serious. “Tell me what happened.”
“Bad night at work.” It’s all I can stand saying about it, at least right now. “Only thing I could think was—I don’t know. Just came here.”
Her face flushes, and she looks—she looks so alive. I focus on her face, ignoring the prickle of unease I feel at seeing her in her professional clothes, a sense memory of something ugly between us. “Come have breakfast with me,” she says.
“I probably shouldn’t. I didn’t think this through. I need a shower.”
“You’ve got clothes in your car?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Go get them. You can shower here. The code for the front is star 1631. I’ll leave my door unlocked. We’ll have eggs and toast. Would you like coffee or tea?”
Thank God for her professionalism, for that starched-up way she looks. My body feels like it’s loosened a little as she’s given me these instructions.
“Coffee,” I say, and proceed to follow every one.
* * * *
When I step out of Zoe’s bathroom after my shower, I feel normal enough, less fuzzy headed and shocked, to take in my surroundings. Zoe’s place isn’t big, but it’s expensive looking, wide-open space for the kitchen, dining room, and living area, almost everything in shades of white or pale gray, a dark wood floor beneath. If I weren’t in here myself, if I hadn’t just washed my hair with a shampoo that smells like her, I wouldn’t even believe someone lives here. There are no family photos, no stacks of mail or tangled cords sticking out from the plugs, no pairs of shoes resting by the door. On the marble island she has a glass bowl filled with lemons, the only spot of color in the place except for her. She holds the phone to her ear with one hand, speaking quietly; the other she uses to pour coffee from a French press into a white mug. When she looks up and sees me, she offers a small smile, nods for me to sit at the island.
She ends her call and shuts off her phone, setting it out of the way on the counter.
“I’m sorry if I messed up your morning.”
“You didn’t. I got an early start today. I don’t need to be anywhere for a little while.” She turns away, busies herself with plates and silverware that she sets in front of me. She opens the oven and peeks in, same with the broiler drawer underneath, and within minutes she’s served me a huge portion of eggs, fat slices of toast alongside it, a small white dish of butter set onto my plate, already perfectly softened.
And then, Zoe just—talks. She’s not much of a cook, she says, but her dad used to make big breakfasts. That’s why she likes going for brunch with her friends, but she’s pretty good at the basics, eggs and toast like what we’re eating now. Once, she tells me, during a particularly rough stretch of weeks at her job, she’d fallen asleep at the breakfast bar where we’re sitting while she waited for her frittata to cook, and she’d had a small fire that she’d had to pay a hefty fine to the condo board for. She’s on that board, and they’re in the middle of a complicated vote about new equipment to purchase for the fitness center. She likes it here, mostly, though when Kit bought her place she thought about a house. Then again—she says, having the conversation entirely with herself—Kit’s house is a little shabby, under construction all the time, and sometimes she comes home from there and has to take a bath to relax. “I like simplicity,” she says, gesturing around her with her fork. “In case you couldn’t tell.”
In the pauses she takes to sip her coffee, or to take a bite of her food, I realize that I too am relaxing, bit by bit. Zoe has filled up all the space in my head with this chatter, these details that don’t matter really but somehow do, the little things about her life that get me out of that rig, that stop me thinking about death and failure and being just a few minutes too late. She talks all through the meal, and she talks when we stand to clear our plates, when I rinse them and she slides them into the dishwasher, when she takes a white towel from the edge of the sink and wipes her smooth, perfect hands with it.
The truth is, I want to fall at her feet, to press my face right against her middle and cling to her in great, aching gratitude for the way she’s chased away the worst of this morning. But that’s not who we’ve been to each other, not so far. We’ve touched each other in all kinds of ways—for show, for sex, and last weekend, for celebration—but not really for comfort. So I settle for a gruff, inadequate, “Thank you.”
She shrugs, refolding the towel and placing it back in its spot. When she looks at me, she’s calm, assessing, completely untroubled by my strange presence here, or at least she’s doing a damn fine performance. “Want to walk me to work?” she asks, and then quickly corrects, “To volunteering, I mean?”
What I should say is no. On that walk I’ll have to engage in some kind of conversation, and really, I don’t think I could. What I can handle is what we’ve just had—me, quiet, and her keeping the wolves at bay. But she doesn’t stick around for my answer, slipping away into her bedroom, returning after a minute with her hiking boots on, a pair of high heels hooked on two fingers of her right hand. “Look at me,” she says. “I’ve become one of those people.”
And then she smiles at me, and I suspect I couldn’t say no if I tried. If talking is what it takes for me to stay close to her, even for just a few minutes more, I’ll fucking talk.
* * * *
“You’re nervous?” I ask her, when we’re about a block from her place. It’s cold, probably too cold for a walk. I’d offered to drive her instead once we’d cleared the front door of her building, though I’d hoped she’d say no. The cold felt good, bracing, and anyway if I drove her that’d be less time for me to take her in. “The walk will do me some good,” she’d said, and kicked one of her booted feet out in front of her. “Plus I don’t want anyone to miss this amazing outfit I’m wearing. This dress is Alexander Wang. I think the boots really make it sing.” I’d silently put Alexander Wang on my Google list and said a prayer of thanks she’d passed on my offer.
She’s quiet for a minute beside me, swinging the black tote where she’d tucked her heels, her breath puffing in white clouds in front of her. “I’m not nervous. I did a couple of hours, yesterday afternoon. It was—good. Strange good, but good.”
We stop at a crosswalk, Zoe’s shoulders up and back, her chin held high. She’s got sunglasses on, big ones, and even in the boots I can see the way she’d look, going to work every day. The two other guys who wait alongside us are both in suits, and I can see one sneaking a glance at her out the side of his eyes. I resist the urge to make him eat his briefcase.
“How strange?” I say, once we’re moving again. My hands are tucked into my pockets, Zoe’s wrapped in leather gloves that match her camel-colored coat, belted tight at her waist. I wonder what it’d feel like to walk with her hand in mine, and then make a fist in my pockets instead of grimacing at how ridiculous this thought is. It must be the hiking boots; they’re scrambling my brain. This isn’t camp, this isn’t my truck, and this isn’t my house. It’s none of the places we do this thing between us.
She makes humming noise in the back of her throat, and Jesus, I have to remind myself that this isn’t bed, either. “I did one callback yesterday, my first one. It was a client whose father just got diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.”
“Ah.” We’ve got a few regulars at Sunset Terrace with Alzheimer’s. Even with good care they’re sometimes a liability to themselves, with us getting called in for self-inflicted injuries that require our help.
“Anyways, I had to do some work before I called back. I had to refresh myself on a few things, durable versus springing power of attorney, how you name more than one agent, that kind of thing. That was a branch of the law I hadn’t done much of when—well, you know.”
“Sure,” I say, and wait for some answering plane of distance to open up between us at the mention of her last job. But it doesn’t come. That plane doesn’t even exist anymore most days. I’m still thinking about holding her hand, after all.
“But I did well, or at least according to Marisela I did well—she runs the place—and I think I really helped this woman. When we got off the phone, she sounded like she knew what she wanted to do.”
“That sounds good. Doesn’t sound strange at all.”
We split, steering around a woman walking a small white dog that’s barking persistently at a leaf skittering across the sidewalk. She waits until the sound won’t drown her out to speak again. “But then when I looked down at the log list, where all the calls are waiting, there was—there was a ton of stuff. Debt relief, foreclosure assistance, two more power of attorney requests, an identity theft case. And you know what I felt, looking at all that?”
I look over at her and she breaks stride for a few seconds, looking up at the sky and taking a deep breath before breathing out: “I felt excited.” Then she marches forward, and I hustle to catch up to her. This time, I ignore every reasonable cell in my brain and take her hand in mine, keeping my head down and my eyes on our feet, which move hypnotically in step.
“Seems like it’s been good for you, starting this,” I say, to cover the strangeness of this moment, of us walking down the city street as if we’re a couple, as if it’s Take Your Boyfriend to Work Day.
“But—I just wonder, is it that way for you?” she asks, and I think my hand may jerk in hers, because now I know where she’s going with this. “It’s weird, knowing that every single thing on that log list is causing someone on the other end a lot of stress and hardship, while I’m—I don’t know. I’m almost grateful to have them to call back. I’m glad to have the chance to solve a problem. I ought to make another—” she cuts herself off, shakes her head before continuing. “Do you feel that way? You see people at their worst moments, you know? Do you ever feel glad to be there, glad you can fix them?”
I swallow back what feels a whole fucking lot like tears, and I’m glad it’s so cold out here, in case I need some weather event to pass my stinging eyes off on. “I can’t always,” I say, and she stops. A woman behind her clucks in annoyance, brushing past us with a murmured, “People are trying to walk here.”
She tugs my hand, pulling me so we’re tight against one of the granite pillars that flanks a bank entrance, out of the way of pedestrians. She takes her hand from mine and pushes up her sunglasses, looking up at me. “Is that what happened, then?”
I offer a quick nod. “Overdose.”
I wait for her to say something soft, pitying—maybe an Oh, Aiden, with breathy sympathy and sad eyes. Maybe she’ll do like Ahmed, a gentler version of his shoulder pat. I’m braced for it, I guess, knowing that when she does, it’ll break the spell of this morning. I didn’t want her pity. I only wanted her, only wanted to be around her.
But she doesn’t say anything, not for maybe a full minute. She just watches me, her eyes searching back and forth between mine, her lips set in a firm line, that strong set of her jaw slightly upturned. “Who was it?” she asks, finally, and it’s not at all what I expected, but it’s the right thing, the exact right thing.
I look away, look at the sun gleaming off one of the windows of an office building across the way. We must be pretty close to wherever her new office is, I figure. “I can’t say much,” I tell her, knowing it won’t hurt her feelings. Zoe knows all about HIPAA, patient privacy, my legal obligations as a provider. But I can tell her the things that are sticking with me: how young the patient looked to me. How her face looked pained, no matter what drugs she was taking to manage pain in the first place. How narrow her wrists had been. How she’d reminded me of my brother, and how I’d fucked up and said so, in the rig.
It only takes me a couple of minutes to say what I can say, but it still feels like I’ve set down some of the weight I’ve been carrying. I watch Zoe’s gloved hand while I talk, the one clutched around her bag. When I’m finished, she doesn’t say anything at all, and that’s the right thing too. It’s like the two of us have agreed to a moment of silence for what’s happened. We’ve agreed that there’s nothing at all to say.
But when we start walking again, it’s Zoe who talks first. “What’s the status of your story?”
“Uh. What?”
Her glasses are down over her eyes again, her posture still straight and elegant as we walk.
“Your story,” she repeats. “The presentation. Basically it’s three days away,” she says, and she obviously doesn’t have one shred of regret for busting my balls about it; that’s clear as day. What’s more surprising is that I’m pretty sure I’m enjoying it.
“Right, three days.” I clear my throat. “It’s rough,” I tell her, because that’s the truth. I’ve been working on it every day since that party Kit threw, and it’s gotten easier since I’ve made one major change that’s required a good deal more logistics but a lot less staring at the computer with a sick feeling in my stomach. But it’s not all that polished, not yet. It’s going to need a lot of work to look as refined as what Val had done, or as authentic as what Sheree and Tom had put up.
“Aiden,” she says, stopping again, and this time, when another irritated pedestrian clucks in displeasure, she offers a curt, “Oh, cut the shit,” at his back. I’ll bet he feels that verbal slap all day. Then she looks at me again, lifting a hand to further block the sun that’s shining right on her. “Do you still, really, want to do this? The camp?”
I take a deep breath, look down the street, wait until the noise of a city bus passes. “This is for my brother.”
“It’s going to be every day, Aiden. Every day, you’ll have people at that camp who are suffering. Who you may not be able to save. You’ve got to be prepared for that.”
I swallow, thick and uncomfortable. I don’t know if you ever get prepared for that. I think I must understand that better than she does. “I’m all in,” I tell her. “I’ve got to be all in.” I look back at her, wish she’d lift those glasses up again, so I could look in her eyes and see what she’s telling me with them. But she doesn’t make a move. She stays still, those tiny parentheses at the corners of her mouth.
“Okay,” she says, finally. “Tonight we’re going to get drunk and do a puzzle.”
I blink after her, confused, as she starts walking again. “That sounds…” I trail off, not knowing how to finish that sentence. It sounds fucking weird; that’s how it sounds.
“Here’s the thing, Aiden,” she says, her voice in that bossy, no-bullshit register she’s got. “One way or another, you’re giving that tour on Saturday, and you’ll hate yourself from here to eternity if you don’t get it right. You know it, and I know it.”
“Right,” I say, oddly buoyed again. I feel like I’m a boxer on the ropes, getting shouted out by my cornerman while he slathers Vaseline all over my fresh cuts.
“So you’ve had a lousy morning, and you need some sleep and a night off thinking about everything that’s horrible.” She stops, and one building ahead I see the sign for Legal Aid. She turns to me, putting her sunglasses up again and looking me straight in the eye. “So go home, get some sleep, and come back here at four to pick me up, because”—she breaks off and gives a dramatic sniffle—“because I’m not doing this walk again. And we’re going to go get sandwiches or burritos or a pizza and some beer, and then we’re going to do this ‘doors of the world’ puzzle I have, which will be nearly impossible even if we’re sober. And then tomorrow morning, you and me, we’re driving to Stanton Valley a day early, and we’re going to do the presentation there. We’re going to walk the tour, figure out the story. Okay?”
I don’t miss that she’s said we’re, and I know she doesn’t miss the smile that’s tugging at the corner of my mouth, a smile that would’ve felt impossible a few hours ago. Even now I shouldn’t want to smile, thinking of taking that walk, figuring out the presentation, smoothing out the rough edges that are all over it right now, despite the work I’ve been doing. “All right,” I say.
“Fine,” she answers, and it’s a little funny, how clipped she’s said it, like she’s won an argument we weren’t even having. “I’m going now.” She turns to walk away, but stops and rushes back, shoving her bag at me before she leans down and starts undoing the laces of her boots. “Holy shit, I almost went in there in these boots!” she says, more to herself than to me, and I smile, watching her balance on one foot while she tugs a heel out of the bag. When she’s done, she grabs her bag back and gives me the boots. “Don’t lose these,” she says, as if I’m planning to just casually drop one between here and my car. Her cheeks are even pinker now, the cold plus bending over, and probably the lecture she just gave me.
And I think, despite what she said before, she might be a little nervous about going in there, about this leap she’s still taking.
“Zo,” I call to her, when she’s started to walk away again. I must look like an idiot, standing here holding a woman’s hiking boots in the middle of the sidewalk, but I find I don’t really care. When she turns around I tell her, “It does feel like that for me, a lot of the time. To solve someone’s problem. I don’t think that’s anything to feel bad about at all.”
When she smiles at me, I hold those damned boots a little tighter, and then turn to make the long walk back to her building, already counting the hours until 4:00 p.m.