Perfect Skin (37 page)

I follow her in, watching this. Watching her being angry, and leaving.

Don't leave. Please.

I'm not leaving. Don't say it that way. I'm just going home for tonight. Because right this minute you are shitting me off. Hugely shitting me off. But I will see you tomorrow, idiot. I'm not feeling very well. I'm not up to this conversation. If we've been seeing too much of each other lately, you can have an evening off tonight and pick a different day to tell me. If there's some problem with the running, then
. . . She shakes her head.

No, that's not it. That's not it at all. You've got it totally wrong. I don't want to see a minute less of you.

Really?

Really.

Okay. Okay. But I think I should go home, for today. I can't be careful enough right now. I'm not feeling very well, so I'm going to go. I'm going to go, I'm going to take my tablets, I'm going to watch some TV and go to bed early and I'll see you tomorrow
.

I don't know that you should drive.

Don't tell me that I shouldn't drive
.

I was just . . .

Yeah, I know. And don't ask me to stay, and don't offer me a lift, and for god's sake don't offer me money for a cab or I'll fucking kill you
.

Kill me? Is that just the cab one or all three?

She laughs.
Don't. Don't even try to make a joke out of it. Being your . . . friend is very strange. Sometimes too strange. But I kind of have to be, because you're the only person like me that I know. You get me. People don't get me often. Most of the time, I think I get you. I'm going home now, and let's not make a bigger issue of it than that. I will talk to you tomorrow
.

What about food? You don't have any food. Wait. Wait.

Sit, good girl, sit
.

That was not my dog voice. That was my sincere for-fuck's-sake-you-need-food voice. Give me a break. I'll be one second.

I run to the kitchen and I wonder what the hell I'm going to give her. What kind of food will make her come back tomorrow? Am I that tragic? Giving myself one
second to plunder my kitchen for commitment food? Everything's half-open jars when I look in the fridge, and I yank a bag out of the fruit section at the bottom. It looks like there's a lot in it, but it turns out it's only grapes.

Two kilos of grapes
, she says.
Thanks
.

Look, it could have been a two-kilo chunk of pumpkin. And if you're anything like me the only thing you'd know to do with that is cook it, mash it and serve with a tiny plastic spoon and a lot of aeroplane noises.

I can't imagine what you had in mind with two kilos of grapes
.

They're bite-size. They're totally ready.

It got better towards the end. With or without the aid of my try-hard jokes, it got a little better. But it could only get so good. I blame it on the material. I'm sure I made mashed pumpkin as funny as it can be.

I wish she'd stayed. And I couldn't watch her go. I had to stand where I was and listen to her feet on the steps, her car driving off. Was I supposed to follow? Who knows? With this kind of thing, I always used to pick the wrong option, and I don't suppose that's changing now.

In the middle of the night, I think Ash was right. There's teething going on. Lily sounds restless. Or perhaps it's me not sleeping, and noticing every snuffle on the monitor. I wait, willing the grumbling to settle. It doesn't. She wakes and opens her mouth wide and really lets me hear it.

When I pick her up she's a bundle of tense muscle. I check, and there's a new red bump not far along the gum from tooth one. I give her Panadol and rub on some teething jelly.

Neither of us exactly has our shit together tonight, do we? I say, as we walk up and down the hall.

Soon we're in the car, and I'm saying, You'll like this.
Nice soothing motion, four-speaker sound, as if I'm trying to sell it to her.

See what it looks like out there at night? Look at the streetlights. Look at the trees in the dark. Look at the cows, I add, just for the hell of it. Look at the no traffic. Can you get that kind of thing yet? An absence. Other than the absence of comfort and trust connected with teething. Which, by the way, I do not cause. Like rain. I don't do rain and I don't do teeth. They're both beyond me. Listen to the fire-engine. Do you hear that? Fire-engines, and they're coming closer. Must be something happening this way.

And the fire-engines swoop over the hill behind us and fly past, red light and sound bursting into the car, swamping Lily's brain with stimuli and then vanishing ahead of us and over the next hill.

Wow, they're in a hurry, aren't they? Did you notice the Doppler effect, the subtle change in siren pitch from when they were coming towards us to when they were going away?

From the back she looks at me, quieter now. As if she's just seen the great red flashing teething monsters who hate whining kids, and it's in her best interests to shut up and hope they won't come back.

It's okay. It's nothing to do with us. We haven't done anything wrong. We're just out for a drive and they happened to be passing.

I turn the CD player on.

Why did tonight end the way it did? I'm thinking of Ash again. I can't help it. I don't think I always avoid conflict, or the tough issues. Okay, I'm thinking of Ash, and I'm thinking back on a few therapy sessions. But
what's going on? What was I going to tell her anyway? What's happening with us? All this talk about talking, and we don't talk about that. And I don't raise it in case I'm getting it totally wrong.

We're close to uni now, on the edge of my running-track street circuit. I hope Ash is okay with those kilos of grapes. I turn left. I should have given her bread. I look around, and the Bean is peaceful.

We'll just go by Ash's place, and then get you home to bed, I tell her, in the gap between tracks.

But there's a red light somewhere, flashing. I can see it through the trees and on the front of a cream-coloured block of units at the T-junction ahead. I turn right when I get there, into Ash's street. The red light fills the car again. From up ahead, red light.

Red lights, lots of them. From right where I park in the mornings. From Ash's house. The fire-engines have pulled up outside Ash's house. Through the neighbours' trees I see flames. Ash's kitchen windows with flames spouting out of them, bursting out between the boards of her kitchen wall. The crews are connecting hoses. I can see them, lit by the fire, moving towards the house.

I'm already shouting her name before I get to them. Shouting to let people know there's someone inside. Shouting so that she can answer me back and tell me she's out of there. I'm halfway up the path when I'm grabbed.

Mate, what are doing?

There's someone in there.

No, it's a derelict house. They're going to pull it down
.

Someone's in there. Ash.

What? What ash?

Ash. Ashley. Fuck. She's inside.

I break his grip and run for the door. I hit it hard with my shoulder. Something cracks, but I think it's my shoulder. I hit it again, I kick it. I probably start screaming.

One of the fire crew comes past me with an axe, and another takes me by the arms. It's the guy I pushed aside.

We'll get her
, he says.
If she's in there we'll get her
.

The axe splits the door with one blow, and they heave it open. Hot smoke billows out onto all of us. I break free again and I push inside. I drop to the carpet and I crawl along the corridor. I have no idea where anything is. There's no air, no air here. I'm as low as I can be, but I'm not below the smoke.

They grab me by the legs, and pull me out. I can't fight them this time. I cough till I throw up in the garden. I'm dizzy and on my knees. My back's hot from the fire in the kitchen above, scorching me through my T-shirt.

We've got her
, the guy I've been battling says.
Mate, we've got her. She was round the back
.

Oh, thank god. So she was out?

No. Nearly out. She was on the floor near the back door. But she's out now. And we're giving her oxygen and the ambulance'll be here any second
.

I'm a doctor. Maybe I can help.

You're a doctor?

Yeah. Yes. I'm a fucking doctor. This woman means a lot to me and I'm a doctor, so let me help. Please.

I stand up and the coughing starts again. In the black of the trees, I see sparkles and my knees start to bend.

I'm on the ground again. My hands are on Ash's path, opened wide and holding me up, lit orange from
behind by the flames. Oxygen is fitted to my mouth and there's an arm around my shoulders. An ambulance trolley pushes past through the long grass and up the side of the house. I pull the mask off and start hitting the arm that's holding me.

It's okay. I'm okay. I've got to help.

When we get round there, they're checking pupils. I can see Ash, crumpled on the ground, not conscious and, in the smoky haze, the small, white cone of light dropping down onto her eyes, checking each of them.

I can hear a voice say,
We've got a doctor here
, as I move past, towards her, and one of the ambulance crew turns to me and says,
Smoke inhalation. No apparent burns. She's not conscious. We've got her on oxygen now. Her heart rate's one-fifty, we're just checking her BP.

And the pupils?

Normal. We're about to get her off to the Royal quick smart
.

They lift her onto the trolley and fold one flopped arm back out of the way, leaving her half-open hand next to her face, just the way it was last night. I take it to hold it, but it's limp.

Why not the Wesley? It's closer. I'll sign for it, for the cost.

They're on ICU bypass. Full tonight. Big prang on Milton Road. But don't worry, doc, you haven't seen how we get to the Royal
.

In the light at the back of the ambulance Ash looks grey, streaked with grime on her forehead where she pressed her hands to hold the smoke back.

I start coughing again, and spit some very bad-coloured mucus into the gutter.

And one for you
, the ambulance guy says, and fits an oxygen mask around my head.

I take the stethoscope and I check Ash's chest. There's air everywhere that there should be, as far as I can tell. But the ambulance is moving now, we're on our way, so it's hard to hear. Then the sirens cut in.

I'm Dane
, he shouts over his shoulder as he's sticking on ECG electrodes.
And Julie's the driver
.

I'm Jon. I'm actually a friend of hers. And a doctor. A laser surgeon.

Still, it'd be like riding a bike, this stuff, hey? Hopefully? Shall I get a bag of fluid ready? Are you going to get a line in?

Yeah.

I take a tourniquet and find a vein on Ash's forearm. I rub away at the skin with a swab, cleaning as much of the smudged smoke off as I can, and the vein feels full and plump under my fingers. Almost too good. I've blown veins like this before. But that was years ago, and it was confidence that blew them, inadequate attention to detail.

Streetlights flash by, a car buzzes past going the other way.

I pick the cannula and slip it from its sheath. I palpate the vein again.

We take a corner fast and it throws me down onto one knee. I look out the window. The road will be straight for about ten seconds.

Keep it still, I tell myself. Don't go deep. Nice and steady.

I push the tip forward and the skin dimples, gives. There's a flashback of blood in the cannula. I ease it further in to make certain, unclip the tourniquet.

Here's the line
, Dane says, and hands it to me.
And the next corner
.

I brace myself for the turn and, when we're through it, I connect the drip up. It runs. I loop the line down to her wrist and back, and tape it securely.

She's got quite a tachycardia going
, he says, and points to the ECG.
Or is that just a problem with the trace?

No. Fuck. They're ectopics. They look like ectopics, on top of the tachycardia. The wandering baseline just makes it hard to read.

Problem?

Yeah. Could be.

Then there are more.

Jesus, Ash. Don't do this.

More. A couplet. Another couplet.

Have you got all the gear for cardiac things?

Yeah. But you'll be the one using it. I'm not a paramedic. We're just a regular ambulance, not the cardiac one. We've got gear though. Just tell me what you need
.

Okay.

And her BP's down to eighty systolic. Maybe seventy. What's normal for her?

She's having couplets now, I tell him. You see those ectopics there? Two in a row. Then another two in a row. That's what it looks like. If this gets more unstable we could be in trouble. Have you got any lignocaine, or bretylium?

Yeah, I'm sure we do. Let me get them
.

Thanks.

Another couplet. A run of three in a row. Sailing silent and misshapen from right to left across the monitor, as the siren doubles its frequency and we glide through a red light.

Have you got a defibrillator?

The words even sound as though they're being said by someone in another life, or on TV. I'm out of my depth here. These drug names are just memories for me, and I'm about to go guessing with them. If lignocaine comes in 100 mg ampoules, that'll be my guess. That'll be what she gets. I'm holding her hand as he fetches the drugs. I'm watching the ECG. Watching it tell me heart rates that are swinging round all over the place, all of them too high. We lurch round another corner. I slip, I hit my head, my oxygen mask falls off. We're going through the city now. I can see the lights out the window. One of the defib paddles goes near the sternum. The other I'm not sure. Hopefully it'll say on there. It's been too many years.