The ambulance

An ambulance pulls up outside and I think, “Oh no! Who now?” I get up and peer through the window. Two of the paramedics that climb out, slinging bags of serious looking equipment over their shoulders, are women. One is quite chubby but I like women in uniform. I have to remind myself that someone is ill and that getting an erection right now is not appropriate, that one of my neighbours is ill.

I am friends with my neighbours and a sense of dread drenches me as I run through, in my mind, who it might be, what might be wrong. There are police out there too now, and I watch as they walk up my path. “Wrong house!” I shout through the window, worried now that whoever it is that needs help is not getting it. Mrs May next door, is ninety-something. We chat often and I bring her her morning paper. She reads The Mail and I joke with her about how she must be some kind of right-winger. “I like the crossword.” she tells me. We must have had that conversation 1,000 times. At least. I well up at the thought that something bad might have happened to her. The cops and medics are ringing my doorbell. “Wrong house.” I shout again, but they don’t hear me because of the thick glass we have, to shield us from the passing planes overhead as they approach Heathrow.

I go to answer the door, to explain, but it is too late, they have kicked in the front door. I turn to watch them kick my flat door in too and stare, horror struck, at my own lifeless corpse on the couch, wrists, gaping, red, open grins, a huge pool of congealing blood making sticky, ugly sounds against the feet of the paramedics as they approach my dead body.