Violent Exposure (2 page)

‘That resulted in you tearing out her earring?’ Carly said to the man.

‘It got caught.’ He fingered a loose loop of wool on the wrist of his jumper sleeve.

‘And it didn’t tear right out, just pulled it a bit,’ the woman put in.

‘How about I have
a look?’ Aidan said. ‘Is there anywhere with better lighting?’

‘The bathroom,’ the woman said.

Aidan took the first-aid kit and followed her out of the room.

‘Caught on your jumper,’ Carly said to the man.

He smiled sheepishly. ‘Sometimes she gets in this hyped-up state and the only way I can get her to calm down and listen and talk sensibly is to hold her.’

Carly raised her eyebrows.

‘You
hear that type of story a lot, I suppose.’

‘The police hear it even more,’ she said.

‘The police are coming?’

‘You don’t want them here?’
Surprise, surprise.

‘It’s just unnecessary. I feel like all you people have more important things to do. I mean, you can see it was nothing much.’

‘It’s procedure,’ Carly said. ‘So are you hurt?’

He shrugged.

‘Is that a yes or a no?’

The man pulled up
his sleeve to reveal a scratch along the inside of his forearm. ‘Like I said, it’s nothing.’

‘How’d you get scratched like that if your sleeve was down to catch her earring?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I know you don’t believe me –’

‘It doesn’t matter what I believe,’ Carly said. ‘Are you injured anywhere else?’

‘No.’

‘Okay then.’ She took her notebook from her shirt pocket. ‘I’ll
need your name and date of birth.’

‘What for?’

‘We have to document all this, which means I have to write down who I spoke to.’

She was getting fed up, and Aidan and the woman still weren’t back though all he’d had to do was check the wound and clean it. Carly hated working with trainees at times like this when they were out of sight and earshot. Aidan had rocks in his head and she never knew
what odd thing he might do or say.

‘Connor Crawford. Eighth of November, 1970.’

She wrote it down. ‘This is your home address?’

‘Yes.’

‘Health problems? On any medication?’

‘No and no.’

‘Want to go to hospital?’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Procedure,’ Carly said.

‘I’m fine.’

‘Have you had the ambulance or police here before for this sort of thing?’

‘Never.’ Crawford looked past her to the hallway,
in the direction Aidan and the woman had gone.

‘What’s your wife’s name?’

‘Suzanne.’

Carly put away her notebook. ‘Wait here.’

She went into the hall and found the bathroom door open a few centimetres, golden light streaming out into the gloomy corridor. She tapped twice and pushed the door fully open. The woman was perched on the edge of the bath with her head tilted up to the light. Aidan
was standing close – too close – and jerked away when Carly came in. She frowned.
How many times have I told you?

The woman slid her eyes Carly’s way, nonchalant.

Aidan spoke. ‘Uh, as I was saying, Mrs Crawford, I don’t think you need to go to hospital.’

Carly stepped nearer to see. The woman’s earlobe was pink and cleaned of blood. The piercing hole was intact. Carly stared at Aidan, who lowered
his gaze. The woman fingered her ear and watched them.

Carly said, ‘Any other injuries?’

‘No,’ Aidan said.

‘Got all the details?’

‘Sort of.’

Carly pointed to her watch.

‘I know.’

Back in the living room, Carly said to Crawford, ‘Her ear looks fine.’

‘I knew that already.’

There was a knock at the front door and Crawford went to answer then came back with two baby-faced, crew-cut police
officers.

‘You transporting anyone?’ one asked Carly.

She shook her head. ‘Minor injuries only.’

‘It’s really nothing,’ Crawford said.

‘It’s true,’ the wife said, coming back in with Aidan. ‘Hardly a scratch.’

Carly was over it. The cops would sort them out and, so long as they didn’t start up again later and frighten more neighbours, she and Aidan wouldn’t be back.

Outside in the ambulance,
she stowed the gear and got behind the wheel. Aidan clipped in his seatbelt and pulled the case sheet folder onto his knee.

‘So how should I write that up?’ he asked.

Carly restrained her voice. ‘How do you think?’

‘I’d write down the injuries and what we did, and then write that transport wasn’t required.’

‘Good.’ Carly started the engine, then folded her arms.

‘You waiting to see if the
cops come out?’

‘Nope.’ She nodded at the microphone. ‘I’m waiting for you to call Control.’

‘It’d be nice to write this up fully first.’

‘Make notes and finish it later. We already spent longer there than we should have.’

Aidan kept his head bent over the case sheet. ‘She was upset, we were talking.’

‘I bet.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She handed him the mike. ‘You model types are
too sensitive.’

Aidan muttered something and raised the microphone. ‘Thirty-seven is clear. Transport not required.’

‘Thanks, Thirty-seven,’ Control said. ‘Head for Ultimo. I’ll get back to you shortly.’

‘Copy.’ Aidan hooked up the mike and went back to the case sheet.

The cops came out of the house. They waved and smiled and got into their car. Carly waved back, checked for traffic, then
drove off into the deepening twilight.

The night was busy, as all city nightshifts were. In a brief stint on station at 3 am, while Aidan slumped onto the lounge, Carly went to sigh at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot and baggy and she dreaded what she’d look like by the audition at ten, but it couldn’t be helped; she’d already had one warning about her sick leave and nobody
would swap a shift. It was all Aidan’s fault. Everyone else on the station was not-so-secretly pleased he’d been assigned to her and Mick. At least you only have to work with him two shifts a week, being part-time, they’d told her. But even that was frustrating beyond belief because he just didn’t
get
the job. Look at tonight. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d said how important it
was to consider your safety before you neared a scene, or how you had to be mindful of people’s personal space, even how you don’t turn up to work late, for God’s sake! She and Mick and their area superintendent, Ben Holland, had had meeting upon meeting about various ways to teach him, about how he perhaps learned by reading, or maybe by doing, or watching or listening, but they’d tried it all and
he still fucked up. Add to that his cracks about her acting, his constant attention to his hair, and his coffee breath in the close confines of the ambulance cabin in the small hours, and she was sick to death of him.

She came out of the locker room and saw the passenger door of the ambulance wide open and the cabin light on. She glanced into the lounge room at the empty couch. She stood for
a moment then crossed the muster room and eased through the door.

Aidan sat sideways in the ambulance’s passenger seat, his back to her. She peered past him and bristled.

‘What the fuck are you doing in my bag?’

He didn’t even jump, the ice-cold bastard. He pushed her bag away and slid down from the truck. ‘I thought you might’ve brought your anat and phys textbook.’

‘Bullshit.’ Carly’s anger
slithered along her bones and down her arms to curl her fists. ‘Have a bit of decency and tell the truth. Thieving little shit.’

He laughed. ‘You think I’m after your wallet? Haven’t I told you how much I make from modelling?’

‘Lying turd.’

‘I was looking for your textbook.’

‘Get out of my sight.’

He slammed the ambulance door and stamped back into the muster room.

Carly wrenched the door
back open and yanked her bag towards her. The zip was open all the way and her raincoat was half pulled out. She removed and refolded it, then took out her trauma pouch, hard hat, protocol book, a few spare gloves, a half-empty box of mint Tic Tacs and a squashed travel packet of tissues. Nothing was missing. She repacked it, then rezipped the bag and jammed it in behind her seat. Her wallet was
safe in her left shirt pocket, and in her right was her notebook and . . . her progress report on Aidan’s performance.

She shoved the door shut and stormed inside. Aidan lay in the recliner with his eyes closed. ‘You think if you find my report you can alter it? Burn it? Throw it away?’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ He didn’t open his eyes.

‘The facts are stored in my head too,
you know,’ she said.

He turned his face away and settled deeper into the chair.

‘You’ll get away with nothing.’

‘Audition today?’ Aidan said as they headed out of the station into the bright 8 am sunlight at the end of the shift.

She shrugged.

He smiled. ‘How’d the ones last week go?’

She walked away without replying. She hated that he’d guess her lack of response meant she hadn’t landed
any of the jobs. He did endless photo shoots modelling watches and hats and fucking men’s moisturiser while she couldn’t get a spot in a picnicking crowd in a Red Rooster commercial.

‘Enjoy,’ he called out.

On the bus, she got out her phone then put it away. Mick would be sleeping in before his nightshift tonight. She would tell him about Aidan’s shitty prying later. She struggled to stay awake
through the bus’s gentle swaying, then once home she opened a can of Coke, stripped off her uniform, washed her face, strapped on her ice eye-mask and got into the shower. With her head back against the glass and the Coke held clear of the stream, she imagined the sugar and hot water replacing her fatigue with energy. With zip. Verve. Pizzazz. The audition was for roles in a tampon commercial
and no way they’d want somebody looking stuffed.
Hehe.

Once out and dry, she studied her face in the mirror. Lots of green-based make-up and cross your fingers. That was all anybody could do.

*

Mick walked into the station at ten to six that night and went straight for his pigeonhole. One inter-office envelope, all the previous scribbled-out addresses at HQ in Rozelle. This had to be it. He
tore it open.

Dear Officer Schultz, thank you for your letter. Unfortunately
 . . .

He screwed it up and hurled it in the bin.

‘Mick,’ Aidan said from the lounge room over the TV’s blare. ‘Come and see. They just showed you walking out of the court again. What was that like, testifying about what she did?’

Mick stared out the window at the falling darkness and wondered how on earth he would
tell Jo.

‘Now they’re showing Sophie. She’s just walking along like nothing’s wrong. Not trying to run away or hide her face or anything,’ Aidan said.

Maybe he would tell her he’d had no reply. Just hold off until the miscarriage was further behind them.

‘You’d think she’d feel bad.’ Aidan was behind him now.

‘What?’

‘You’d think Sophie would feel bad about what she did.’

Mick pulled himself
together. ‘You think she doesn’t?’

‘It’s the way she walks along, like she’s not ashamed at all. If I was that guy’s family I’d be pissed.’

Mick cut him off. ‘Checked the truck?’

‘I thought we could do it together. I came in early specially.’

‘Just go and do it,’ Mick said. ‘I have to make a call.’

Aidan grabbed the ambulance keys and went into the plant room. Mick got out his mobile and
sat at the desk. Jo wanted to know the second he knew, but as he held the phone in his hands he thought about her pottering around the house, still hopeful, and couldn’t make himself dial.

The phone buzzed in his hands and Carly’s name popped up on the screen.

‘Hey you,’ he said.

‘I saw the envelope from Rozelle,’ she said. ‘They grown a brain?’

‘Nup.’

‘Bastards,’ she said. ‘How’s Jo?’

‘She’s okay.’

‘You haven’t told her.’

‘I just got here,’ he said.

‘Man up,’ Carly said, a smile in her voice.

‘Bugger off.’

‘What reason did they give?’

He got the letter from the bin and uncrumpled it. ‘It would affect staffing arrangements; I’m contracted to part-time for the entire year and I signed the paper knowing that; if they change the system for me they have to do it for everybody.’

‘Blah blah,’ Carly said.

‘More or less.’ Mick saw Aidan looking in the window at him. ‘Hang on,’ he said to Carly. ‘Got a problem?’

‘Kind of,’ Aidan said.

Mick held back a sigh. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

Aidan went back to the ambulance and Mick raised the phone to hear Carly giggling. ‘It’s not funny,’ he said.

‘I know. Listen, last night I caught him going through my bag.’

‘What? Why?’

‘Possibly after my report,’ she said. ‘That or my wallet.’

‘The bloody little shit.’

‘You keep yours in your shirt too, right?’

‘Both of them,’ he said.

The job phone rang.

‘Aw, crap,’ Mick said.

‘Good luck.’

Mick picked up the station phone. ‘The Rocks, Mick Schultz speaking.’

‘Sorry, mate,’ Control said. ‘It’s a woman with a wart on her foot.’

Mick went out to the ambulance and handed
the scrap of paper to Aidan. ‘No way,’ Aidan said.

Mick looked in the brightly lit back of the ambulance. The Oxy-Viva was open, masks spilling out. Aidan made no move to close it and Mick said, ‘Well?’

‘Can’t turn the cylinder on.’

For fuck’s sake.
‘Righty tighty, lefty loosey.’

‘I know. It won’t turn.’

‘Try again.’

Aidan scuffled with the thing. Mick watched in a melancholy mood, thinking
about the struggle of working with someone like him, about the refusal of the service to put him back on full-time, about how much of his life he’d spent in the back of vehicles just like this one. About all the people he’d seen die in there and the smaller number who’d been born. He remembered hearing a story about how souls stayed attached to the place they’d died, and he imagined them stacked
up high inside the ambulance, the ones who couldn’t fit trailing along behind as he drove through the streets. He thought about his and Jo’s miscarried babies, of the latest one who’d made it to sixteen weeks, the longest of them all, and how Jo had said through her tears that it was promising, promising Micko, can’t you see, we just have to keep going, and how the hell he was going to tell her
now that with the service’s knockback they couldn’t afford another round.