NIGHT RIDE Revision Options

[Psyche]

Night Ride

The ambulance slices thin night air through inconsequential streets. I sit in the back, beside the frail man. Oddly, I get the feeling that I’m in a camper: there’s the burner, bottled water in a corner, emergency kit, seats for kids.

We pitch and bounce over cobblestones in peripheral avenues. I worry about the frail man: internal ruptures, bleeding, that sort of thing… maybe something inside him will snap. His head rolls sideways and he drops a thin leg over the edge of the stretcher. Bending forward, I lift it back, but the medic says: "It’s OK, let him be, he’s well strapped in." I glance at him doubtfully. The medic languidly places a cushion to protect his head.

Street lamps peer at me through small ambulance windows, playing with shifting shadows in the hushed interior. Now and then a lone policeman on a corner lifts an arm in respectful salute. I spot silhouettes of drunken men stumbling out of late night bars. A few valiant prostitutes cluster nearby. The ambulance’s harsh beams focus briefly on their wary, scarlet lips. I wonder about them, their lives, their kids maybe, their men, different things… A startled night bird swoops up from a pile of rubbish, carrying nameless refuse in its beak. I shudder at the coarse scene. Other worlds, no less real than my own relatively sheltered one, pass in procession before my eyes.

I’d imagined the siren would have wailed constantly, but no, we make our soundless way through night time echoes, stopping at all the streetlights. Not an urgent case, I suppose, calculating in my mind the frail man’s earlier convulsions, the galloping fever, and his heart condition.

He still has a high fever. Back home, we’d been putting loads of iced-cubed towels under his armpits and on his groin, following instructions over the phone. Now he looks at me through the eyes of a scared child. I smile at him and hold his hand. He doesn’t appear to know me, but he grasps my hand weakly, unmoving, calmer now.

One more bend in the road and we’re in the Emergency Unit. The stretcher slides out neatly. Cool morning wind doesn’t care about the frail man wrapped in a light coverlet. Medics give orders, personnel in green move fast; things are under control, it seems. He’s hurried through a door that snaps at me: Restricted Area!

I wait on a hard black plastic chair. My mind wanders. For some reason, I remember the frail man waving his hand at me in greeting, as I used to descend the stairway from night university. He was straight and strong then, handsome. His smile was contagious, bursting with energy. We’d rush off to a nearby stand-up grill to eat good Argentine steaks, washed down with glasses of Mendocino wine. Then we’d stroll out to walk around the city streets for a while, before heading home.

Now I sit on the unfriendly chair and wonder how long they’ll keep the frail man in the Unit. Nearly five hours stagger by; my head nods regularly.

The hostile door swings open. A doctor tells me that I can take him home now. “Just keep putting ice-cubed towels on him, if the fever returns”, he says authoritatively. I dare to ask what treatment they’d given him. “Oh, nothing special”, remarks the doctor, “mainly we used ice”. “Oh…” I say dimly.

The ambulance drives us home; the frail man smiles faintly, perhaps remembering his welcome, secure bed. The return trip is slow, weaving through early morning, impatient traffic. The driver uses the siren intermittently.

I’m too tired to reflect on anything now, nor even to glance out the windows.

By Psyche

Sylvia Maclagan, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007.
All rights reserved as an unpublished work.

[Guest_Don_*]

Dear Psyche,

Enjoyed the read and scanned following threads. My comment upon subtle sirens is that inside a thick walled box of an emergency vehicle the sounds are muted for the comfort of the the patients. I imagine, being inside, the sirens were considerably attenuated. Your images throughout are classic. Yes, the leg dangling off the cot is unimportant, the caretaker assures; but the pillow is fluffed to show you that she really cares. The show does go on, no?

I am certain the heroin's mindset pressed the siren far into perceptive background.

Don

[Psyche]

Hi Don!
Thank you for scanning the threads as well as reading the story. Your insight into the mindset of the story-teller may be right, I wouldn't know. There's a black humor joke in my city that when the siren blasts extremely loudly (for the passers by), it's because the ambulance is carrying a hot pizza for some bigwig in a hospital... not ill, natch, probably the administrator.

Evidently, 'subtle sirens' don't go down well with the readers, so I'll study that bit and see what I can come up with. Perhaps I should make it clearer that it's from the interior of the ambulance that these sensations are felt.

Still haven't done any revising! Now I have to go for a check-up myself.... Wish me luck!
Cheers, Syl ***

Dear Psyche,

Enjoyed the read and scanned following threads. My comment upon subtle sirens is that inside a thick walled box of an emergency vehicle the sounds are muted for the comfort of the the patients. I imagine, being inside, the sirens were considerably attenuated. Your images throughout are classic. Yes, the leg dangling off the cot is unimportant, the caretaker assures; but the pillow is fluffed to show you that she really cares. The show does go on, no?

I am certain the heroin's mindset pressed the siren far into perceptive background.

Don