Silent Fear (9 page)

‘He didn’t mention a burbling hatchback,’ Anthony said. ‘But he did say that he saw Fowler and his friends tossing a ball around out there when he was heading off in his car.’

‘What time was that?’

‘He thought around eleven thirty, eleven forty.’

Not long before Fowler had been shot.

‘He see anyone or anything?’ Ella asked.

‘Nothing,’ Tom said. ‘He noticed the guys there because it was so hot, then he headed down to the TAB. When he got back an hour and a half later the guys were gone and we were there.’

Ella nodded. The Crime Scene techs were packing up their gear. The smell of river mud filled the air. Detectives were coming back from the other side of the bridge where she guessed they’d been speaking to staff and golfers in the clubhouse and anyone else they could find. It was time they got going to the office, for the briefing. She wiped the back of her neck again, and sighed.

*

Holly looked up from the young man’s motionless face to see the paramedics coming along the platform. She knew Roberto but not his partner, a man of about thirty-three or-four with an angular build and freckled face and arms. He seemed familiar, though she couldn’t remember having worked with him.

‘You did mouth-to-mouth?’ Roberto said. He knelt and took a spare pair of gloves from his pocket and tossed them to her, then set up the Laerdal bag and pressed the mask to the young man’s face with his own gloved hands. ‘Where’s your pocket-mask?’

‘Fell apart.’ Holly pulled on the gloves.

The other man’s badge said his name was Kyle. He put down his gear and shone a penlight torch into the young man’s eyes. ‘Smack.’

‘I’m guessing so.’ She described his slow slide to the ground and her treatment.

The train guard stood listening and the crowd in the shade of the station house watched.

Kyle crouched and opened the drug box. ‘He got a name?’

Holly felt the pockets of the dirty jeans for a wallet or phone. ‘Nothing on him.’

Kyle examined the track-marked areas on the young man’s arms. ‘Hm.’ He prodded the flesh. Something about his action made Holly feel queasy.

‘IM might be the go,’ Roberto said.

Kyle nodded. Holly watched him set up the vial of naloxone. The antidote for a heroin overdose could be given either straight into the veins or into the muscle. Intravenously worked quicker but it could be like a sledgehammer to both the mind and body, making the patient come up fighting and furious and feeling like shit, sometimes to the point of a heart attack. Intramuscular meant a slower, gentler climb out of unconsciousness. Kyle pushed up the baggy T-shirt sleeve and swabbed the outer aspect of the young man’s bicep muscle, then injected the drug.

Holly watched him work and tried to figure it out. She was certain they’d never crewed an ambulance together.
Does he just remind me of someone else? Someone I don’t like?

Roberto squeezed the bag. Kyle attached the monitoring electrodes and printed off a strip of sinus tach. The sun was hot on Holly’s face as she shifted her attention back to the young man, who should’ve been starting to respond. The crowd watched too.

Kyle took his blood pressure. ‘Eighty-five on sixty.’

Low. Really low. Holly looked at the scab on his arm. It was more than a few days old, but that didn’t mean an infection wasn’t still coursing through his system.

Kyle gave him another dose of naloxone, then pressed a gloved finger against the arch of bone over his eye. Nothing. He glanced up, meeting her gaze, and something wormy deep in his eyes made her queasiness worsen.

‘He’s not even taken half a breath,’ Roberto said. ‘He’s either shot up a shitload, or there’s more onboard than just smack.’

Kyle checked his blood pressure again. ‘I’m starting fluids.’ He opened the kit and reached for the giving set and bag of Hartmann’s.

Roberto looked at Holly. ‘Can you take over here while I get the bed?’

‘Sure.’

It was easy work with the bag. She could still taste the patient’s sweat on her lips, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
That’s probably why you feel sick
, she told herself.
Nothing to do with this Kyle at all.

Kyle tightened a tourniquet on the young man’s right arm and ran his fingertips over the track marks. He turned the arm inwards and felt his way down to the wrist and across the back of the hand. ‘Crap.’ He released the tourniquet and put it on the left arm and did the same. ‘Shit.’

The train guard leaned over for a better view. Holly squeezed the bag and watched Kyle go back to the right arm, bending low, palpating the skin, an alcohol swab in his hand and a cannula ready beside him. He chose his spot and swabbed the skin, then held it taut. He uncapped the cannula. The sharp bevelled end glinted in the sunlight, then he pushed it through the skin. Holly watched the plastic chamber at the end, designed to fill with blood when the tip entered a vein so you knew you were in. It remained empty.

Kyle withdrew a little and adjusted his angle, and pressed forward again. Nothing. He palpated above the entry site. ‘Shit. I could’ve sworn it was right there.’ He changed angle once more but the chamber stayed clear. ‘Dammit.’

The monitor’s beeping was slowly rising. Heart rate going up typically meant blood pressure was going down. The need for the line was becoming urgent.

Kyle withdrew the cannula and dumped it in the sharps container. He unclipped the tourniquet and put it on the left arm, pulling it so tight Holly could see the elastic in the weave of the fabric. He stripped the glove off his right hand and felt the spot again with his bare fingertips. Holly saw his chapped red skin, his bony knuckles, his long thin fingers, and the memory rushed back in a flood.

Lie still. Don’t move, no matter what. No, I can still see you breathing. Stop breathing. Pretend to be dead.

Her sweat turned icy.

Kyle picked up the cannula and started the same swabbing, poking, adjusting, repoking routine. Each thrust was a little harsher, and she could see his face turning redder and his grip on the young man’s arm growing tighter.

Pretend to be dead.

She couldn’t breathe. She squeezed the bag and willed him to hit the vein, inject the fluid and the drug, for the young man to get up and abuse them and run away, for the job to be over and them to leave.

The guard leaned closer in. ‘No luck, eh?’

Kyle yanked the cannula from the young man’s arm and shoved it into the sharps container.

Holly squeezed the bag and put her head down.
Don’t let him recognise me.

Roberto arrived with the stretcher. ‘Any good?’

‘He’s got nothing left at all,’ Kyle said.

Roberto nudged Holly. ‘You want a stab?’

Fuck.
‘Maybe you should just load and go.’

‘Won’t take a moment,’ Roberto said. ‘And he needs it.’

She had no reply.

He took the bag from her hands and she shuffled reluctantly to the young man’s side, keeping her face turned away from Kyle and pulling her gloves up a little higher, making absolutely sure the infinity tattoo on the inside of her left wrist was covered.

Roberto said to Kyle, ‘She’s like a metal detector over a vein of gold.’

‘There’s nothing there,’ Kyle said.

‘Watch, grasshopper,’ Roberto said.

Holly clipped on the tourniquet. This was bad. Being the focus of Kyle’s attention was the last thing she wanted. She could feel his hostility now, and knew it would only be worse when she got the line in. But she could hear from the monitor’s beeps that the young man’s heart rate was still rising. He needed the fluid more than ever.

She concentrated on the skin, smoothed her way over the track marks with practised fingers. She felt other aspects of the past wash up behind her, the voices of people she’d known and loved and lost.

There.

It was small and deep, but it was there.

She reached for a swab. The moisture made the skin shine briefly, the sharp smell filling the air and pulling the past a little closer still.

She uncapped a twenty-gauge cannula and slid it gently into the skin. She felt her way through the subcutaneous tissue, her mind on the tip, seeking the change in resistance as she encountered the wall of the vein, praying for the tiny pop that meant she was in.

Got it.

The chamber filled with blood.

‘Sweet,’ Roberto said.

Kyle sniffed. ‘It’s only a twenty. Pretty small for fluid.’

The monitor’s beep began to slow.

‘It’s access,’ Roberto said. ‘And by the sound of that we need it more than ever.’

Her head down, Holly held the plastic cannula in place, then pulled out the metal stylet and put it in the sharps container. She screwed in a cap and taped the whole thing down, then attached the end of the IV line Kyle dangled beside her without looking up at him.

‘How’d you get so good?’ Kyle asked.

‘She used to work in pathology,’ Roberto said. ‘All she did all day was stick needles into veins.’

‘Is that so?’ Kyle said.

‘Yep,’ Holly lied. ‘All day long.’

The young man still wasn’t moving. The monitor’s beep slowed further. She pressed nervous gloved fingers to his wrist. ‘You’d better get going.’ The lower his pulse went, the more likely it was she’d be asked to come along to help.

They rolled him onto the carry sheet, then lifted him onto the stretcher.

Kyle tapped the drip chamber. ‘It’s not flowing right. I think it’s tissued.’

‘It’s fine.’ Roberto felt the patient’s neck. ‘Pulse is still dropping. Get a BP.’

Just go
. Holly edged towards the crowd.

Kyle deflated the cuff. ‘Seventy on sixty.’

‘Let’s move,’ Roberto said. ‘Holly, can you come with us? If he keeps on like this we could be doing CPR shortly.’

She wanted nothing more than to say no, but the train was still empty, and the beep of the monitor continued to fall, and the patient looked so young and vulnerable.

*

Roberto put in an ET tube before they loaded, then called a code three to alert RGH Concord that they were on their way. He drove on lights and sirens. Holly sat in the resus seat at the head of the stretcher and squeezed the bag. The young man’s heart rate had stabilised around fifty beats per minute; still on the slow side, but at least it hadn’t fallen further.

In the seat beside the stretcher Kyle wrote notes on the case sheet, then took another blood pressure. Holly wanted to ask if it’d come up, but kept her mouth shut and her face turned down towards the patient’s. Kyle had given no sign that he’d recognised her and she hoped and prayed it stayed that way.

She tugged the wrists of the gloves up.

‘Glove problem?’ Kyle said.

‘They’re too big, that’s all.’

Roberto braked hard and swerved and said over his shoulder, ‘Sorry.’

‘Stupid to go urgently for a druggie,’ Kyle said, apparently to the case sheet. ‘Save his life today and he’ll be back on the street tomorrow, trying to kill himself again.’

Holly touched her fingertips to the young man’s forehead and said nothing.

‘Used to be that they were mostly in the city or out Cabra way; now they’re fuckin everywhere.’ He leaned forward and ran a strip from the monitor. ‘Friend of mine used to work at Fairfield in the eighties and nineties, in the worst of it. Said they’d be dropping like flies all over the place. Half the time you got there and they were dead. Decent bit of natural selection going on.’ He grinned.

Holly turned to look out the windscreen, the blood pumping in her veins.

‘I mean, think how much all this is costing.’ Kyle gestured at the ambulance walls. ‘Paying us to go out there and scrape his sorry carcass up off the ground, pay for the drugs we used, the petrol, maintenance on the truck, pay for your overtime to help us, not to mention what’ll happen at the hospital. You know how much a ventilated bed in ICU costs per day?’

Holly’s hands were sweaty and her heart thumped hard and high in her chest. She couldn’t stay silent any longer. ‘I’m not claiming for this.’

‘You’re crazy not to,’ he said. ‘Work for nothing? You gave mouth-to-mouth to the prick too. I’d be getting all the blood tests quick smart.’

‘He’s just a kid.’

‘A kid with HIV probably.’

She focused on the patient’s face.
Say nothing more. Let it slide. Be safe.

‘I hope he does have it,’ Kyle said. ‘Useless piece of shit.’

She couldn’t stop herself. ‘You don’t know what problems he’s got. You don’t know anything about him.’

‘Like I’d fuckin want to.’

It was the same brutish attitude she remembered. ‘He’s got an addiction. It’s a health issue. How does that make him the scum of the earth?’

‘It’s illegal, it causes crime, it spreads disease, and he’s costing me and every other taxpayer a shitload. How does that make him anything but?’

‘Oh sure,’ Holly said. ‘Never forget the poor taxpayer.’

‘Bleeding hearts don’t last long in this job,’ he said.

‘Thanks for the tip, but I was in Roberto’s class,’ she said. ‘Nine years and counting. How about you?’

‘Long enough.’ Kyle started to pump up the blood pressure cuff on the young man’s arm.

Roberto turned the siren off and swung into the hospital grounds. In the fresh silence Holly heard the Velcro on the sphygmo cuff crackle.

‘Yeah, pump it high and hurt the guy,’ she said. ‘That’ll show me.’

‘What pathology company did you work for?’ Kyle said.

‘I was based in a hospital.’

‘Right.’

She saw the wormy thing in his gaze again. The young man’s arm was turning purple. The cuff was still up tight, Kyle’s fingers nowhere near the pulse point. She said, ‘You need help finding that BP too?’

He released the pressure and smiled at her, a look that chilled her heart.

*

Holly hung back as Roberto and Kyle wheeled the young man into the Emergency Department, then grabbed her backpack out of the ambulance and hurried out of the ambulance bay. Kyle’s attitude was not uncommon among people she’d met, both in the job and out of it, though it was the first time she’d had it put to her so stridently. The worst thing though was the look in his eyes. She couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d recognised her.