My partner is outside of the ambulance, she is asking the young man who witnessed the shooting and called 9-1-1 a few more questions before we can leave for the hospital. We want to make sure we have a complete version of the facts and a good understanding for our report. Furthermore, this will indicate if we need to involve the police or any other services in our procedures.

The young man who was shot is named Jackson Poole, according to what his friend out there told us and his ID card. His eyes are closed and he is breathing laboriously, lying down on a stretcher next to me. He was actually hit twice. One bullet seriously notched his left shoulder and the second one is lodged in his right hip. Whoever did this has terrible aim... Or was in a phenomenal hurry. Maybe his assaillant was not in a state of clear consciousness... There are many possibilities, that is certain.

I readjust my sky blue medical gloves and reach for the zipper on his backpack, avoiding the blood stains against the damaged dark khaki fabric. I make sure Leah is not heading towards the back of the ambulance and start digging. Let's see if I'm right about you, Mr. Poole...

If he is indeed the younger brother of Jordan Poole, my hunch has a high chance of being proven. Nevertheless, I am still hoping I won't confirm my hypothesis. That would bring me more relief than the alternative.

I swiftly rummage the contents of his bag. At last, I find a large pencil case, the kind that has holes on one side to secure it inside a ring binder. I open it and push the pencils away. There it is. I carefully pick up the crumpled resealable plastic bag. Through the clear material, I can perfectly see that it contains a significant quantity of white powder. And I would be willing to bet it's not flour. I hear Leah stepping back into the driver's seat, on the other side of the partition.

"Alrighty, Tanza, we're going back. Everything okay back there?"

Thankfully, my colleague cannot see beyond the divider.

"Yes, absolutely. I'm ready," I calmly answer.

I hurriedly slip the bag of drugs inside my first responder bag, underneath a stack of two folded blankets. I don't want to apply too much pressure onto the fragile receptacle, if it tears I am screwed.

Luckily, Jackson has not moved in the slightest and has no notion of what I am doing. I mean, we are injecting him with sedatives to reduce his pain and guarantee he will not rebel against our efforts to heal him. I did not give him a lot, though, he was already significantly dazed from blood loss when we arrived. His friend called 9-1-1 at least 10 minutes after the shooting occurred.

I pull a navy pouch out from my bag and grab one of my cards from inside it. I never go anywhere without them. They sort of ressemble business cards, and I had them printed out specially a little while after I began working as an emergency medical technician. On each card I listed the most trustworthy and efficient mental health and financial help services in town, along with homeless shelters, recovery programs and such institutions. I seldom update the information, only if an organisation undergoes major changes or adopts a new address.

Whenever I steal incriminating possessions from a patient, I exchange them with one of my cards. Needless to say, I never do this under the watchful eyes of any witnesses. And since my name is not on the cards, it is an entirely anonymous gesture. Well, as incognito as it can be. The victims must suspect someone from the hospital staff did this when they find a card instead of their valuables, but it would be difficult to trace the theft back to me. No one surveils the footage of the cameras inside our ambulances unless an investigation is launched by law enforcement officials.

I whip my pen out of one of my safety jacket's breast pockets. I press the tip against the blank space I left out on the back of every card and jot down: "I believe in you.". I always dot my statements to express the honesty behind the note. Using a more unrecognizable handwriting would be useless. Whether or not I make the effort of changing each character so it does not look like my natural calligraphy, the cameras above my head are recording my unlawfulness.

The idea of my cards is to aid the citizens of Gotham City in any way possible. I gladly get rid of anything that would still link them to the omnipresent criminal world, while offering them the ressources they need to switch up their lives and head for a better track. The personalized hopeful messages are an addition I thought about later, to encourage them. If one hoodlum turns their life around thanks to my cards, it was worth it.

No one is beyond redemption.

If there is one saying I live my life by, that's it. No one is beyond redemption, and I truly believe it. When I first was hired by the Gotham General Hospital, I did not believe it whole-heartedly. I repeated it, set it on loop inside my brain and applied myself to practice what I preached. I guess, back then, I had to believe it. But after a few years in this line of work, I really do believe it.

~

I shut my front door behind me and lock it. I am thankful that my shift lasted only 20 minutes beyond the 12 hours I was promised. The longest overtime I ever worked led to me spending 26 hours on duty. I yawn freely, shrugging off my paletot. As I am untying the laces of my work boots, I glance sideways at my favorite pair of roller skates. They rest on a small shelf bolted into my living room wall, with their sturdy laces tied into a bow which hangs from a hook for extra support.

I always loved roller skating, no matter how many times I fell and scraped my knees, palms and elbows on the pavement of my childhood driveway. It was kind of a family thing, my siblings all wanted a pair as soon as I started. Except Ingrid, because she never liked it. When we roller skated, my older sister would watch over us and flip through magazines or comic books, comfortably installed on a lounge chair... Bright yellow plastic, the color of cartoon suns, ducks and cheese. The color of my mother's party dress, the only one she owned during the first eight years of my life.

I shove the memory away, sighing, and proceed to put all my work gear in its place. Once that is done, I finally take a well-earned shower. The lukewarm water embraces my skin and I find myself thinking about roller skating again. I am crazy about anything on wheels, but skating was always my passion. It even correlates with the moment I knew I was not meant to fit into the oppressive rules of gender.

I was 12 years old, and it was autumn. There was a skate park a handful of blocks away from my home. I went there every opportunity I got. A group of boys, young teenagers like I was, were there too. I realized they were watching me and talking among themselves, but I kept to myself. I was having way too much fun for them to ruin it. Izan had accompanied me, however he was helping a girl from his class with her bike and was not paying attention to me anymore. I remember one of those boys called out my name.

"Hey, Constanza!"

I braked and hollered back at him, heedlessly. "What?"

"You can't be here! You can't skate!"

I ignored his pestering, so he kept raising his voice at me: "You're not allowed here! This is our skatepark."

One of his friends added:

"You're not even any good at skating!"

"Yeah, you suck!" the little group joined in, insulting me and laughing.

I was always dauntless and strong-minded, though, therefore his ridiculous harassement did not discourage me. I even landed a perfect somersault, before fiercely retorting:

"And why shouldn't I be here?"

The leader of their little gang snorted.

"Because you're a girl. Girls can't skate!"

That right there disturbed me. With a simple sentence, something that thousands of female children had heard during their lives, he managed to puncture my carapace. A thick, unbreakable shell of carelessness that I had spent years polishing and strengthening. That word. Girl. Girl. Slithering out of his mouth, venom. It destroyed all of my juvenile confidence. It annihilated me. Completely and without fault.

I did not assume an agender identity because I wanted to skate, and the opposite makes even less sense. Regardless, from that day forward, my mind was overwhelmed with the same questions, over and over and over and over and over... What does being a girl have to do with roller skating? And over... Why am I a girl? And over... What makes me a girl? And over... What makes anyone a girl? And over... Why is anyone a girl? And over... Why am I a girl? And over... Am I a girl? And over... Until I got an answer.

I am not a girl.

And it tasted like freedom. Carelessness, purity, roller skating and peanut butter chocolate. Raw and true. My truth, for once.

It felt like me.