The Black Bag

The open rear doors of an ambulance on a rainy autumn evening, seen from close behind, doors and lit interior filling the frame, raindrops on the plain cream doors, inside a cream-painted compartment with a stretcher under a grey wool blanket, empty, strapped beside it a slim plain unmarked oxygen cylinder in dull green, on the blanket a plump egg-shaped bag of matt black rubber thirty centimetres long at its neck a clear amber-tinted plastic valve block with a yellow core and a plain black rubber face mask, the bag lying alone on the blanket, the compartment empty, rain falling past the doors.