Wednesday, 5:40pm. We get another call for an ambulance. A middle-aged woman is having a heart attack. We get calls like this everyday, I mean, it’s our job to save people from dying. But nothing has been the same since the sentence “the ducks are coming” was said for the first but not last time. It’s the only thing people have said before dying for the past two months, and no one knows what it means. It’s like a shadow that’s following you: you can act like it doesn’t exist, but you can still feel its presence.

When we get to the place where the woman is, she’s almost dead. We get her into the ambulance, we try to revive her and make sure she doesn’t die in the way to the hospital.

But we all knew it was too late right from the start, and I know we were all thinking the same: “Please don’t say ‘the ducks are coming’, please don’t say ‘the ducks are coming’, please don’t say ‘the ducks are coming’”.

And she didn’t say it.

Right before her heartbeat stopped, the woman said: “The ducks are already here”.

Suddenly, the ambulance ran over a duck and crashed.