Who Owns Your Heart?

by Quinten Dol

part 1

Raju spots a small crowd spilling into the road. Some of the people are waving, and he guides the van towards them. Beside him, Oda sucks in a deep breath and primes her body against the passenger door.

“Okay,” she sighs. “Here we go: number one.” She has already disappeared into the street before the wheels come to a complete stop, but Raju knows what she means.

“Most people pass time by counting hours,” she’d said on their first shift together, two long weeks ago. “In this job, you count bodies.”

Raju flips off the siren, smashes the parking brake and retrieves the gurney. “Maybe stay here for now,” he says to Sahagur, who is sitting in his usual corner of the van. “I’ll yell if we need you.” The yellow whites of Sahagur’s luminous eyes blink out briefly behind his painted lids, and then he nods.

Seconds later, Raju is wheeling the gurney into the crowd, steadying his breathing and absorbing the scene. A mangled bicycle lies in the road, front wheel suspended in the air, spinning slow revolutions. An enormous pickup truck protrudes across the bike lane at a perpendicular angle, fresh scratches on the chrome fender catching deep, blood-red colors that the just-set sun is throwing up from beyond the end of this long, busy road. And there is the patient, a bundle piled against the truck’s front wheel.

Oda has already checked the patient’s vitals. “This is Shenelope,” the elder paramedic says, loud enough that Shenelope will hear, as she clicks her flashlight off and drops it into a pocket. “She’s doing well, all things considered. Eyes tracking, alert and breathing.”

Raju releases a half-degree of tension from his muscles. One of the things he has learned about Oda is that she will never say a patient is okay unless she really believes it. They count down from three together, then shift Shenelope to the gurney.

“Hi. Shenelope, is it?” Raju says as he pushes her toward the van. “Where were you headed tonight?”

The patient has deep brown eyes that rove from streetlight to streetlight until they rest on Raju’s face. “My girlfriend’s place,” she breathes. “She scored some fresh cacao and a few iguanas at the market. We’d invited some friends...” She tries to sit up, and Raju presses his gloved fingers gently against her shoulders, holding her against the tray.

“Easy, easy. That sounds delicious. Just remain still for now; it looks like you’ve broken your leg and perhaps a few ribs.”

“She’s... she’s gonna...” Shenelope’s eyes roll back in her head. Several of the monitors attached to her body sound alarms.

“What the... no, no, no.” Raju exclaims.

“Help me get her in, then drive,” Oda grunts. “I got this.”

They load her into the van. Raju jumps behind the steering wheel, fires up the siren and steps on the accelerator.

“Dispatch, this is Unit 217,” he says to the radio, one hand on the wheel and the other thumbing through Shenelope’s wallet for her ID. “The patient is Shenelope Xochitl, female, 26, O-positive. Broken leg, possible rib fractures, was initially conscious and responding but —”

“Commencing compressions,” Oda grunts from the back. Raju’s stomach tightens around his spine.

“We’ll be coming in hot, Dispatch. Over.” He hears the punching-bag blows of Oda working Shenelope’s chest. “Internal bleeding?”

“Ten, eleven — yeah, gotta be — thirteen, fourteen, damn! Intubating.”

Raju floors it, coasts into an intersection as the light turns red, guides the ambulance through the slowing traffic, leans on the horn. He can now smell Oda’s sweat above the van’s usual mix of medical sterility and Sahagur’s earthy musk. He floors the accelerator again as they leave the intersection. The municipal temple looms up out of the twilight, fires glimmering at its peak, with a low complex of hospital buildings in the foreground.

Raju glances into the rearview mirror. Oda has intubated Shenelope, and the mobile ventilator sighs and rasps in time with the rise and fall of her chest. And there, still perched in his seat in the far corner of the van, is the lithe blue form of Sahagur. His ceremonial body paint shines under the harsh fluorescents. He holds his right hand out of sight behind his bare blue leg. His obsidian blade is missing from the leather holster that hangs from his shoulder strap.

Raju’s teeth grind the fleshy inner walls of his cheeks. “Five minutes out. How’re we looking?”

“She’s not responding,” Oda says, voice rattling. “Come on, honey. Come on, darlin’. We’re so close to the hospital. Just a few more minutes...”

The machines around her speak of a still heart, deflated lungs, silent neurons, blood pooling in Shenelope’s arteries. For thirty seconds, nobody speaks. The machines drone, the engine groans beneath Raju’s feet, the sirens wail overhead, the van shudders around them.

“Oda?” It’s Sahagur’s voice: deep, warm, the ancient authority of a baritone.

Raju’s stomach turns. “Na, come on, boss,” he says, swerving the van into the oncoming lane. “We’re so close. At least keep it up until we hand her off.”

In the rearview mirror, he watches Oda sit back and close her eyes. “There are no bosses in the van, rookie,” she says. She pulls off her gloves and flings them vaguely towards the waste bin strapped into the rear corner, beside Sahagur’s seat. One slaps uselessly against the paint and old blood matted in his chest hair. “Not even him.”

Raju keeps half an eye on the mirror, which is vibrating as the van thunders through the clearing streets. He watches Sahagur bow, clasping his hands in front of him and bringing the shining black blade into view. Oda is glaring at the roof.

“The ones who you really want to make it,” she sighs, “they never do.”

Sahagur stands, resting a blue hand on Oda’s shoulder until she flinches it off. “She is young,” he says. “Our descendants will cherish her sacrifice.”

* * *

Body number two is inside an apartment that stinks worse than Sahagur, even after his pervasive musk has received a fresh infusion from Shenelope Xochitl. The place is covered in a thick layer of dust, with track marks through the hallway, and the air holds the smell of an animal who has been caged indoors for too long.

“Mr Nezahual?” Raju ventures into the still apartment, following a pale white glow towards the bathroom. “Paramedics are here.” They haven’t discussed it — they never would — but Raju is taking the lead on this one. Oda needs a break. Sahagur creeps in behind them, tagging along to lend some authority to their presence within the dark, forbidding edifice of this apartment complex.

Pyotr Nezahual is wedged between the toilet and the bathroom wall. Clear, bubbly vomit is dribbling down his chin and pooling on the floor, but he is conscious.

“Check his arm,” Oda murmurs, and Raju sees the pale color, the unnatural bend.

“You might have broken your arm, Mr Nezahual,” Raju announces. “Can you grab my shoulder with your good hand, please? Let’s get you away from the toilet, that’s it. Let’s just try to avoid... ah.”

Nezahual sits directly in the puddle of vomit. He moans. Raju notices that his shoulder, where the patient grabbed him, now carries a ghostly white handprint. He brushes it reflexively with his gloved hands, lifting fragments of dead skin from the fabric of his uniform into the air, a cloud around his face. He holds his breath and tries to wave it away.

“Sorry,” Nezahual sighs. “I’ve got really... really bad eczema.”

Raju bites down his wince. “That’s okay, no worries. Let me take a quick look at you.”

The patient is a short, portly man with a long list of visible, apparently genetic conditions. One of his legs is clearly longer than the other. The whites of his eyes are deep red, which may be explained by the empty bottle of sleeping pills on the bathroom floor, but those eyes are also extremely close together. The eczema is worse than Raju has ever seen in any textbook.

“Mr Nezahual. Pyotr,” Raju says, softening his voice as Oda does with similar cases, “did you try to kill yourself?”

Nezahual nods, staring at the floor. “Sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize. Did you take anything besides the sleeping pills?”

“No.” Nezahual thinks for a moment, then says, “Am I in trouble?”

“Not at all. You’ve just had a fall off the toilet here and broken your wrist. We’re going to take you to the hospital, okay? Do you think you can walk?”

Nezahual grunts. With Raju and Oda each holding an upper arm, he shuffles down the hallway. Sahagur steps into the kitchen to make way. “Sorry,” Nezahual says again as they pass.

Sahagur bows. “Not at all, son.”

“You better sit up front with me,” Oda mutters to the priest as she helps Raju load the patient into the van. Sahagur hesitates, then gives a slow, deferential nod.

“Mr Nezahual, I have to ask you a question,” Raju says as the van gets moving. “It’s a bit delicate, but it’s to help the doctors give you the care you need.”

Nezahual shrugs.

“Can I ask why you attempted suicide this evening?”

“Sure,” Nezahual says, and Raju is caught off-guard by the way the patient is holding eye contact. He hates to admit it, but looking at those red, too-close-together eyes is hurting his own, as if he’s been playing at crossing them for too long. “Today I found out that my parents are siblings. Brother and sister.” Nezahual lifts his good arm. His skin is flaking, already gathering in drifts in the corners of the van. “It finally explains all my health issues. There’s no cure for any of this; it’s just who I am.”

There’s a moment of quiet, just the engine rumbling beneath their feet, the faint rocking and rattling of gear in the cabinets around them. Raju knows that he’s supposed to say something here, but he leaves the silence open, partly because he doesn’t know what to say and, partly, he realizes, because he wishes someone else would speak first.

“Geez,” he says at length, with feeling, “man, I’m so sorry.” In his mind’s eye, he watches the words leave his mouth and begin a long descent into the yawning abyss that is Pyotr Nezahual. His eyes water as he attempts to hold the man’s gaze. “I mean...” He trails off.

Nezahual looks away.

Silence again, until Sahagur speaks: “Fair enough.”

“Sahagur,” Oda says, shock in her voice.

“Fair enough,” Sahagur repeats in a new, defensive tone. He turns in his seat to face the patient. “Pyotr, it sounds like you’ve had a truly horrible day. Fair enough.”

“Don’t listen to him, Mr Nezahual,” Oda says to the rearview mirror. “Priests like our Sahagur here can get a little carried away when they sniff out a fresh new heart that will—” she raises her voice over Sahagur’s protests — “help him hit some quarterly goal they’ve set down at the temple.”

“Blasphemy,” Sahagur intones. “Every heart buys us time. Without them, the Fifth Sun—”

“We swore an oath,” Oda says, “and you’re not supposed to speak to a patient unless spoken to first. I’m writing you up, priest.”

“He spoke to me in the hallway,” Sahagur says, hands up.

“Guys, please,” Raju yells, then turns to Nezahual. “Ignore them.” In the front seat, Sahagur and Oda are hissing mutual accusations of unprofessionalism. “I’m sorry you had such a rough day. We’re taking you to the hospital; they’ll have resources for you.” And then he quotes his training manual, to approving nods from Oda: “’You own your heart, nobody else.’”

* * *

“Let this be an easy one,” Oda breathes as they approach the home, a one-bedroom cottage on what was probably once a quiet road, but has now become a throbbing arterial as the city has swelled around it. “Those first two calls were pretty gnarly.”

Raju is relieved to hear Oda say so. Two weeks into this job and he’s still figuring out what “normal” means in this part of the city. He hopes tonight isn’t it.

The patient is Bakob Delamare, 87, and he’s having a heart attack.

“You were quick,” a man cries from the front door as they troop up the stairs from the street. Raju assumes he’s the patient’s son, the one who called them in. “Dad was spotting bad omens all day and, you know, old fools and their superstitions.” The man spits the word “superstitions” at Sahagur with a vehemence that Raju recognizes from his own parents; it’s an expression common to long-repressed, life-revering secularists who tend to end up in the medical field, The man at the door then leads them inside. “He’s right in here.”

Bakob is an old, frail man, writhing and gasping in his bed beneath a jaguar-print blanket, and surrounded by more family — a daughter and two more sons, all in their late 50s and early 60s.

As soon as Raju and Oda enter the room, Bakob goes still, and his children start yelling: “Please, please,” they wail. Sahagur lurks in the corner.

The paramedics move old Delamare to the floor and Raju begins chest compressions. As he works, Oda addresses the children. “Does your father have a health directive?”

“A what?”

“Does he want to be resuscitated? Please, this is very important. We can bring him back; that is possible. Or...” There’s a shifting in the room. “Or he can slip away right now. He won’t feel a thing.”

The children are shocked into silence, but Raju is extremely aware of the jaguar imagery pervading the room. The blanket is just for starters; there are also photographs, statues, portraits of old warriors, as well as a large canvas depicting Tezcatlipoca, recognizable even to secular folk as the one-legged jaguar god who sacrificed his foot to Cipactli, the primordial crocodile.

Oda is looking around pointedly at this preponderance of evidence. Sahagur is positively vibrating. The daughter is opening her mouth when the eldest son speaks over her.

“Ma’am, please,” Raju says, his eyes darting to Sahagur. Looking up from his chest compressions, Raju sees real fear in the man’s face.

The son implores him: “Do everything you can to save our father’s life.”

Behind him, the sister’s expression collapses into mute distress. Oda waits, but the woman doesn’t speak.

“Okay,” Oda sighs. “We’ll do our best.”

Raju knows Oda well enough to understand what this means: Fine, we’ll bring him back.

But Delamare is very old and very frail, and chest compressions are very rough. It also feels like he’s got some kind of bolt in his chest, the result of some prior procedure which is now punching up through the skin with each compression.

Suddenly, there is blood under Raju’s gloved hands, and it turns out that the bolt has torn through Delamare’s fragile skin and nicked Raju’s hand, so now their blood is mixing together. This is what the paramedics call “gnarly.”

Proceed to part 2...