Xavier sticks his head out the window that connects the cab to their rolling ER. “Going to the Lagunatic Asylum?”
“No, the canyon is so fucked up, I figure UCI is faster.”
Xavier nods.
“How are they?”
“The guy’s dead. He was dots, I imagine. The woman’s still going, but she’s lost a lot of blood and her heart’s hurting. I got her patched and plugged in and she’s drinking plasma, but her pulse be weak still. She could use a proper heart machine.” Xavier’s black face is shiny with sweat, he’s looking uptrack anxiously, he wants them to go faster. Abe guns it, they rocket around the last curve onto the Laguna Freeway link between 405 and 5, left on 405 onramp and up the San Diego Freeway, not ontrack but on the shoulder beside it, flying past the tracked cars on their left, pushing 100, 105, quickly to the University Drive offramp and onto the meandering boulevard, here’s where the driving gets tricky, don’t want to pull a Fred Spaulding here, Fred who put a rescue truck into an overpass pylon and killed everyone aboard except the crash victim in back, who died two days later in the hospital.
Headlights, taillights, don’t you dare make that left turn in front of me there isn’t time screech, he puts the siren on full volume and the howl fills everything, throat sinuses cranium, they reach the campus and go down to California Avenue, hang a mean left and fire up the hill to the ER driveway and up to the ambulance doors. By the time he’s out and to the back of the truck Xavier and an ER nurse are rolling the woman through swinging doors and inside.
Abe sits on the loading dock, quivering a bit. A couple more ER nurses come out and he gets up, helps them get the dead driver onto a gurney. Inside. Back onto the rubber edge of the loading dock.
Xavier comes back out, sits heavily beside him. “They’re working on it.” All those years of medic work, the two tours in Indonesia and all, and still Xavier gets into it, every run. He lights a cigarette, hands trembling, takes a deep drag. Abe watches, feeling that he is just as bad as Xavier, though he tries not to care at all. Don’t get into a savior complex! as the unit counselor would say. He looks at his watch: 7:30. Two hours since they got the call. Hard to believe; it feels longer, shorter—like six hours have banged by in fifteen minutes. That’s rescue work for you. “Hey, we were off half an hour ago,” he remembers. “Our shift is over.”
“Good.”
Time passes.
A doctor bumps out the swinging doors. “Bad luck this time, boys,” he says cheerily. “Both dead on arrival, I’m afraid.” Briefly he puts his hands on their shoulders, goes back inside.
For a while they just sit there.
“Shit,” says Xavier, flicking his cigarette into the darkness. In the dim light Abe can just see the look on his face.
“Hey, X, we did what we could.”
“The woman was not DOA! They let her go inside!”
“Next time, X. Next time.”
Xavier shakes his head, stands up. “We’re off, hey?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s get out of here then.”
Silently they roll. Abe puts them back on track, enters the program that will take the truck to MacArthur and the Del Mar Freeway, then up the Newport to Dyer. Everything seems empty, quiet. They track into the Fire and Rescue station, park the truck among a few dozen others, go inside, file reports, clock out, walk to their own cars in the employee lot. Abe approaches his car feeling the familiar drained emptiness. Every time he reaches for his own keys in this lot it’s the same. “Catch you later, X,” he calls at the dark figure across the lot.
“Doubtless. When we on again?”
“Saturday.”
“See you then.”
Xavier backs out, off to the depths of lower Santa Ana, and some life Abe can barely imagine: X has a wife, four kids, ten thousand in-laws and dependents… a life out of his grandfather’s generation, as full of melodrama as any video soap. And X, supporting the whole show, is right on the edge. He’s going to crack soon, Abe thinks. After all these years.
He gets back onto the Newport Freeway, great aorta of all the OC lives. River of red fireflies, bearing him on. He punches the program for South Coast Plaza south, sits back. Clicks in a CD, need something loud, fast, aggressive… Three Spoons and a Stupid Fork, yeah, powering out their classic album Get the Fuck Off My Beach.
Abe sings along at the top of his lungs, tracks into SCP, finds parking almost directly below Sandy’s place, takes the elevator up, pops on in. Blast of light, loud music, it’s the Tustin Tragedy on the CD here, singing “Happy Days” in Indonesian gamelan style, punctuated by machine-gun fire. The rhythms perk Abe up immediately, and Erica gives him a peck on the cheek. “Tashi was looking for you.” Good. Sandy barges around a corner, “Abraham, you look wilted, you just got off work, right?” The Sandy grin, an eyedropper appears in his fingers and it’s head back, lids pulled open, drip drip drip. Abe offers it back to Sandy; “Polish it, there’s more.” Drip, drip, drip, his spinal cord is suddenly snapping off big bursts of excess electricity and he wanders into the next room, they’re dancing there and he feels great shocks of energy coursing up his spine and out his fingertips, he dances hard, leaping for the ceiling, shaking it all out, now that feels good. He tilts his head back, “Yow! Yow! Yoweeee!” Coyote time at Sandy’s place, traditional high point of the parties, everyone just hauls back and lets loose, they must be audible all the way to Huntington Beach. Great.
Feeling much better, he goes out onto the balcony. Still no sight of Tash, though the balcony’s his spot; Tash never goes indoors when he can help it. Even lives on a roof, in a tent. Abe loves it; Tash, his closest friend, is like a cold salt splash of the Pacific.
Instead he encounters Jim. Jim’s a good friend too, no doubt about it. But sometimes… Jim’s so earnest, so unworldly; Abe has to be in the right mood to really enjoy Jim’s intense meaningfulness. Or whatever it is. Not now. “Hey there, bro,” Abe says, “Howzit.” Pretty lidded, he is.
“Good. Hey, you worked today, huh? How’d it go?”
Ah, Jimbo. Just what he doesn’t want to talk about. “Fine.” Jim cares, and that’s nice, but Abe wants some distraction, here, preferably Tash, or one of his young women friends… a little chat and he’s off.
Still no Tash on the balcony. To his surprise, he runs into Lillian Keilbacher instead. “Hello, Lillian! I didn’t know you knew Sandy!”
“I didn’t, till tonight.” She looks thrilled to have been introduced, which is funny since Sandy knows everyone.
Lillian is maybe eighteen, a fresh-faced cute kid, blond and suntanned, a lively innocent interest in things.… Her mother and Jim’s mother and Abe’s mother are stalwarts of the tiny church they all attended as kids; the mothers are still into it, Abe and Jim have fallen away like the rest of civilization, Lillian… perhaps in that transition zone, who knows. Shit, Abe thinks guiltily, she shouldn’t be at a party like this! But that almost makes him laugh. Who is he, anyway? He realizes he’s holding the eyedropper sort of hidden, and thinks he’s probably insulting her by being condescending to her youth. Besides, they lid out in second grade these days. He offers it to her. “No thanks,” she says, “it just makes me dizzy.”