Gold by Chris Cleave Page A

silver thermal blanket and shivering in the back of the on-scene ambulance while her friend comforted her.
    When he set out the facts of the incident on the form on his clipboard, and came to the final box headed SUMMARY, he didn’t reckon it was any more complicated than this: that the injured party had continued into the path of oncoming vehicles, while the friend had applied the brakes. This was just how the world was. There were two kinds of people when a light turned red. One kind accelerated, the other kindbraked. It was Eve and Adam, Abel and Cain. There wasn’t any use doing your head in about it. Not on his pay grade, anyway.
    His pen hovered for a few seconds above the box headed OTHER COMMENTS, but no words came. The officer clicked the button that retracted the pen point, shrugged, and winced as cold rain dripped from his uniform cap between his neck and his hi-vis jacket. He wondered what the hell it was in this woman’s life that meant she couldn’t just brake like everyone else.
Interior of Iveco Daily 40C15 first-responder ambulance, unit 72, North West Ambulance Service
     
    Rain streamed down the rear window as the paramedic made Zoe comfortable sitting upright on a stretcher. The stretcher had an information panel indicating that it was rated for patients weighing up to 400 kilos or 880 pounds.
    “It’s the weight of an adult female buffalo,” the paramedic said, inviting the conversation away from the fact that the casualty had willfully ridden into the path of moving traffic.
    Kate smiled and looked to Zoe to respond, but Zoe turned away and frowned at the rain.
    Kate filled the silence. “Do you get many buffalo?”
    “We get ladies who just really like donuts. We actually have a crane to get them on the stretcher. We call it the Krispy Kreme Express.”
    Kate laughed, but Zoe was still zoned out. Kate held on to both of her hands as the paramedic used tweezers to pick grit out of a deep graze on her forearm. Kate wasn’t expecting Zoe to flinch, and she didn’t. If you were very attentive, you could feel the slightest twitch of Zoe’s fingers each time the tweezers connected.
    “Would you look at me?” Kate said softly.
    Zoe looked out the rear window.
    “Look at me!”
    Zoe turned to her, exasperated. The paramedic paused in his work until she was still. When he resumed, the morsels of grit he removed from her arm made little clicking sounds as they fell into a surgical steel dish. The ambulance moved at the speed of the traffic, its sirens off. Twin overhead tubes secreted a bright sickly light.
    Kate said, “Why did you do it?”
    “I wanted to win.”
    “You could have been killed.”
    “I wasn’t thinking.”
    “No. Well. Clearly.”
    Zoe screwed up her face in irritation. “Oh, what are you? My mother?”
    “I’ve known you longer than she did.”
    Zoe was looking out the window again. “Yeah, but if I’d gone under that car, it would’ve made things simpler for you.”
    Kate reached up and turned Zoe’s face back to hers.
    “Look at me. If you’d gone under that car, I’d have died too.”
    The paramedic paused again and the small percussions of falling grit stopped.
    Zoe said, “I don’t see why. You have things to live for. You have everything.”
    “Not everything.”
    Zoe exhaled irritably. “Christ, Kate. It’s a lump of yellow metal on a shiny red string.”
    “Easy to say when you’ve won it.”
    “You think?”
    “You know what?” said Kate. “I don’t even care. So long as we both get to that final in London, and we’re both on that podium, I don’t care which of us wins it.”
    “No, nor do I,” said Zoe. “So long as it’s me.”
    Kate smiled and shook her head. “Honestly, Zo, what are we going to do with you?”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Really, though? I’m worried. You seem a little bit out of control.”
    “The road was wet, Kate. Crashes happen and we bleed. The girls who couldn’t handle the damage dropped out of this game years