Nadine crunched down hard on her grape flavored, chewable vitamin c tablet as she picked up her keys and walked out the front door. Joshi would be there for sure tonight. It was probably a bit pathetic how she'd secretly try to work the same shifts and take the same lunch breaks. Joshi was far too involved with his almost complete collection of Sandman graphic novels to even notice Nadine's infatuation, but she was happy to hang out with him just as well. It was the only time she didn't want to kill herself while stocking cans in the pet food aisle at the local Dominion grocery store. God what a shit job. The highlight of Nadine's day was when Joshi would steal boxes of tiny pizza bagels from the frozen foods aisle while singing "Party, Pizza Partay!" She was convinced he was on some sort of hallucenogenic drugs.

The clouds loomed heavy in the pewter-grey sky, half covering the moon and it looked as though the whole damn thing would fall at any moment. She rolled up one pant leg and hopped onto her ten speed bike for the 2-mile ride to work. It was pretty much like sailing, she always thought. The way the crisp winds moved through her straight dark hair, whooshing sounds passing her ears with every push on the pedals. There was stillness to it, like the hush that comes over a theatre audience when the curtains are pulled. Her mother once told her that her father didn't die, that he went to live in the moon and if you were quiet enough, you might be able to catch a glimpse of him up there, alone in the moon.

There was an alarming screech of tires and she looked up startled. Her fingers locked up around the handlebars as she froze, breathless as the truck hit her from the side. She felt the impact and then another as she bounced off the pavement. The distant sounds of screams from passersby. Something stinging like an asphalt burn and then stillness. Black.

Suddenly her vision was blurred but she could make out the shapes of faces looking down at her. "Can you hear me sweetie?" He looked like a paramedic, he had one of those blue uniforms on but Nadine was too disoriented to comprehend what was actually happening.

The black came again. Stillness, like nothing and everything and then sounds. She could feel something soft around her neck. The paramedics had tied her to a backboard, loaded her onto a gurney and into an ambulance. X-rays were needed to determine whether there was any spinal injury. Nadine could not move. There was a buzz of noise surrounding her. One of the police officers who'd arrived at the scene first, counted all the money in Nadine's backpack and decided they should tie it to her leg somehow. A week's worth of pay she was supposed to deposit into the bank for rent.

The doors of the ambulance closed, shutting out the noise of the street with it. She could hear the hum of the vehicle as it moved and the cool, hard plastic of the oxygen mask on her face. The paramedic was moving around her, switching from one side of her to the other. The sound of her belt being unbuckled and her shirt being pulled and undone. His face appeared above hers. Contorted with a shadowy kind of smirk as he leaned in and licked the side of her face. Nadine cringed, she wanted to cry but there weren't any tears, just the sweat that dripped from the paramedic's chin as his hands groped at her breasts like an eager gin-soaked highschool kid in the backseat of a car.

The ocean was quiet and black. "What do you wanna call her Nadine?" Her father tousled her hair as he gestured toward his new sailboat. "Why don't we call her Nadine?"

"No Daddy, no...I wanna call her Lucy, Sailing Lucy Daddy!" She clapped her hands and jumped up and down. "Daddy where are you going?" The whine in her voice compounded by her tears. The sailboat was moving further into the distance as it sunk deeper into the ocean. "Dad, take me with you!" She watched as he smiled and waved goodbye, the ocean swallowing the small boat until there was only the tip of the sail left in view. "Daddy," The sail disappeared into the water. "I'm coming, I can come with you now and you won't be alone in the moon!"

The paramedic was on top of her, and then inside her, though Nadine couldn't feel a thing below her waist. He seemed clumsy, oafish even as he tried to balance himself above the gurney to fuck the immobilized woman. It didn't seem to matter at all that there was blood everywhere from a gushing head wound, making her hair stick to her face in a metallic-smelling dried brown mess. Packages of gauze, tourniquets, bags and valves fell from their compartments and landed on top of them. The paramedic grunted and shifted his weight, knocking the oxygen mask from her face.

"Nadine honey come on now." Her father was excited as he gestured for her to join him in the boat.

"You waited for me!" She was crying now, the relief was overwhelming as she darted into a run. "Okay, I'm here, wait up, wait up!"

The paramedic buckled his pants and then did the same for Nadine, tucking in her shirt in an attempt to put her clothing back on exactly the way it was before he'd taken it off. He knew he'd never be found out. They'd never do a rape kit on a woman who just got hit by a truck. She'll never wake up to tell anyone either he thought, a self-satisfied smile crossed his lips. He opened up the backpack tied to Nadine's leg and found her wallet. He couldn't be more thrilled to find the three-hundred dollars in the bill-fold, tucked neatly behind an old photo of a man on a sailboat.

Nadine sat on her father's lap; the crisp wind moving through their hair and nothing but steel blue sky ahead of them. They watched as the towering mountains passed their line of sight and listened carefully to the waves licking the sides of the small fibreglass boat. "Don't worry Nadine, Mom'll be here soon."