Rare (10 page)

The only puzzling slant was the bizarre shade of purple he seemed to be painting the kitchen. Had I agreed to that? I honestly had no idea.

An hour later, I walked into the firehouse feeling good. With a full belly and whole day of sleep behind me, I didn’t have much to complain about. Shame it didn’t last. I’d barely made it through the door when I was given the good news: Mick had taken extended leave, and for the foreseeable future my partner would be some dumbass newbie.

Fucking brilliant.

Fast forward a few days and I was officially in hell. Tim—though I’d called him Jim for the first few days—was a nice enough kid, but his incessant questions and fuckups drove me crazy. I tried my best not to be an asshole. It wasn’t like I’d never been in his shoes, after all. For a long time,
I’d
been the student, the rookie with a fraction of Mick’s experience. I’d driven him half-mad with my bonehead questions and naïve enthusiasm. Over the years, he’d ground me down to become as cynical as him, but after a week mentoring a rookie of my own, I was beginning to understand him a bit better.

It was exhausting. I’d learned long ago that it didn’t matter how many bits of paper you had to your name, nothing beat experience. Mick didn’t care if I had ten degrees to his none, for the first year we worked together nothing I did went unchecked by him: no IVs, not even a simple set of vitals. I did everything I could to follow his lead with Tim, but,
man
—being so patient took it out of me. At the end of each shift, I progressively became more pissed at Mick for ditching me, and more worn out than I’d been since Ash had his breakdown.

On the flip side, I managed to forge a close relationship with the ugliest couch in the world. I couldn’t count the number of times Ash found me passed out on it and sent me to bed. The upside of that was if I protested and tried to stay awake, he fucked me until I was too blissed out to care. At least until I had to get up and do it all over again. The situation was a stark reminder that something had to change, but with Mick gone and Tim to mentor, I had no time left in my day to do anything about it.

A week or so later, Sunday morning dawned cold and dreary. Tim met me at the ambulance with a large black coffee. I took it gratefully, making up my mind to go easy on him for the day. The dude was a good kid. Unfortunately, though, an easy day was wishful thinking. We were called out before we’d even buckled our seat belts, and it was the start of a brutal shift. The calls kept rolling in, and before I knew it, we were on our third run of the day.

That particular call put me in a foul mood. After being molested by the drunkest, smelliest old woman I’d ever had the displeasure of dealing with, I opted to supervise Tim from a safe distance. He was doe-eyed and patient enough to hide his disgust, even when she shoved her breasts in his face. The poor kid was going to learn the hard way.

We took a brief lunch break—ten minutes by the lake to catch up on the mountain of paperwork we’d accrued. I’d just completed the run sheet for the vicious old woman when the radio called for us again. I listened to the dispatcher, my pen frozen on the page. Within moments, I knew the call was more serious than any of the asinine crap we’d tackled so far that day, and indeed anything we’d tackled since Tim had started.

Tension rose in me as the details of the job filtered through the radio. A young child had been burned by a gas fire. The severity of the injury was unknown, and the lack of information made me nervous. Mick didn’t like jobs with kids involved, but he sure as hell knew what he was doing. The horrified look in Tim’s eyes told me he didn’t have a clue, and
that
scared me.

I tossed my paperwork onto the dashboard, hit the siren, and put the ambulance in gear. It took most of my concentration to watch the busy city traffic, but with a practiced eye on the road, I ran through the procedure for dealing with burned infants. Tim listened carefully, taking notes in his little book that annoyed the hell out of me, but the call wasn’t far from the lake, and we were there before I’d had time to explain anything of any substance.

A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of a converted condo building. A doorman was waiting for us. We followed him into the elevator and up to the third floor, but the moment we stepped onto the third floor we needed no further direction. The bloodcurdling screams of the injured child echoed down the corridor and rattled my already stretched nerves. Without Mick to back me up, it took more effort than usual not to turn tail and run.

We found the injured kid in the kitchen amongst a chaotic scene of kids, balloons, and cake; all signs of a children’s party gone tragically wrong. I moved to clear the living room of unnecessary bodies. With that done, I was left with the screaming young girl and her hysterical parents. I assessed them and decided her calmer father was the parent I needed to help me. The child was in agony and scared to death. It was my job to treat her; I needed someone else to play nice. Harsh? Maybe, but Mick had taught me well. There was little point in me telling the kid I wasn’t going to hurt her and then sticking her with a needle.

It was a tough call, one Tim would probably remember forever. Me? Well. Some shifts were full of blood and guts, but it had been a few days since I’d seen something gory, and the injury on the young girl’s leg was all kinds of gruesome. She’d strayed too close to the gas fire and her skirt had caught alight. She had a severe burn on her leg, and her father had burns on his hands from dousing the flames on her body.

I examined the girl with practiced detachment. In my peripheral vision I saw Tim blanch, but he did well and held his nerve. With the child so distressed, it took a while to transport her. The hospital was waiting for us when we pulled up in the ambulance bay, but one look at the team they’d assembled told me they were far from ready. We had a severely injured child and an additional patient
—
a single nurse wasn’t going to cut it.

“What the hell?”

Mary, a nurse I knew well, shrugged. “Boys, you’re going to have to stick around and help us out for a few minutes. The pediatric team is coming, but we’re totally swamped. Think you can lower yourselves to a little nursing care?”

Her question was rhetorical. We were staying. End of story. Not that I minded. Despite my attempts to remain detached, the little girl had a death grip on my hand, and there was no chance of me walking out on her until someone from the hospital could take my place.

It didn’t take long. The hospital was one of the better ones in the city, and the understaffing was quickly resolved. With the girl in safe hands, we stepped back, but we lingered for a while. It was good for Tim to see what happened on the other side. He’d seen the agony, terror, and trauma at the beginning, but now as he watched the hospital team swing into action, he could see that the very shocked little girl really was going to be okay. Our job was all about balance. We’d lost a few earlier on in the week, but we’d had success stories too. It was a shame Mick wasn’t around to see it. He’d feel better, I was sure of it. I did.

A little while later, I came out of the hospital breakroom and walked right into the little girl’s father. He offered me a wan smile. “I thought you’d gone.”

“Nearly.” I waved my cup of stolen coffee. “I was heading out. Did you get your hands fixed up?”

The father proffered his plastic-wrapped hands. “It’s funny, actually, I can barely feel them.”

I looked them over, checking his dressings out of habit. “That won’t last. You’ll feel them soon enough.”

“Oh, I know, but I don’t care at the moment. I feel completely detached from reality. I don’t know how you do what you do every day.”

I snorted softly. Most days, I didn’t know either.

The father shot me a knowing look. “Another day at work, eh? Well, whatever it means to you, you’re very good at it. You must have a way with children.”

“Not really. I’m better with the crazy people.”

“Yes, I can imagine that.” The father sighed. “What a day,” he said. “Thank you, Pete. I don’t think either of us will ever forget you.”

“Just doing my job, sir.” I shook his least damaged hand, but though I didn’t doubt his sentiment, the sad thing was I’d probably have forgotten both him and his daughter by the end of the week. The radio chattering on my shoulder would see to that.

I made my way outside, looking for Tim, but as I made a loop of the hospital grounds, it was Mick who played on my mind. I needed to call him. He’d been a rock for me when I’d had problems of my own. He’d carried me for months, and made it look easy. Maybe if my drama at home hadn’t made life so hard for both of us, he wouldn’t be so burned out. I looked for my cell phone and came up blank. When I thought about it, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it.

I headed back to the bus. On the way, I found Tim on a bench by the hospital memorial garden, staring, perplexed, at the stack of forms we had to complete. Most medics I knew would push their paperwork onto their rookies, but Mick had never done that to me, reasoning that sooner or later, I’d make a mess of it and he’d have to sort it out anyway. Underneath it all, though, he’d done me a favor, and I had to pay it forward.

“Come on,” I said. “We’ll park up at the lake again, and I’ll show you how to write it up.”

We made our way back to the ambulance, but the radio called for us again the moment my butt touched my seat. I grabbed the receiver with a heavy sigh, handed it over to Tim, and listened while he accepted a 911 call to a suspected heart attack. He confirmed our response and handed me back the receiver with eager eyes.

“Can I drive?”

I moved over and let him have his way. If the kid wanted to drive, I was more than happy to let him. It wouldn’t be long before his enthusiasm died; I needed to take advantage of it while I could. I settled back in my seat, prepared to watch the city fly by. It wasn’t the same as Mick driving
—
it wasn’t like I could close my eyes and catch a few z’s
—
but it gave me a much needed moment to get myself together. I watched Tim weave through the city traffic for a few minutes, but once I was satisfied he wouldn’t kill anyone, I sat up and resumed the search for my cell phone.

It eluded me for a while, but in the end, the vibration of an incoming call led me to where it was buried in the footwell of the passenger seat. Relieved, I grabbed it, accepting the call without stopping to see who it was. We were only a few minutes away from a job. I didn’t have a lot of time.

“Yeah?”

“Pete? It’s Joe. Dude, you need to come home.”

J
OE
’
S
PANICKED
voice cut through my consciousness like an ax. In the warmth of the hospital, I’d taken my uniform jacket off. I froze in the motion of pulling it back on. “What? Why? What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know, man. Something’s not right. We were…. Ash… gone….”

The ambulance zoomed through a tunnel and his voice died away. When we emerged, he was gone. The call had disconnected. I jabbed Ash’s number, but nothing happened. Either his cell phone service had failed too, or mine hadn’t recovered from its trip underground. I tried to call Joe back, but when my service came back, it rang and rang before his voice mail cut in. Frustrated, I kicked the dashboard. Why the fuck was he saying shit like that and not answering his phone?

“Fuck!”

Tim shot me a startled look. “Everything okay?”

“Just drive,” I snapped.

Tim refocused on the road, though his wide eyes told me he was concerned for my mental health.

It took ten minutes to drive across town to the 911 call. In that time, I tried over and over to get through to Ash and Joe, but each time I got nothing. Ash’s phone was a dead end, and Joe’s eventually started going straight to voice mail. Bad memories had me scared to death, but before I knew it, we’d pulled up at the call and I had to shake myself free of anything that wasn’t my job. A man was flatlining on the floor of a hardware store; whatever was going on at home would have to wait.

We did a scoop and run. Tim drove while I stayed in the back and fought with the dude’s failing heart. It was over an hour before I could reach for my phone again, and by that time, our shift was over. I grabbed Tim as soon as I was able and hustled him out of the hospital. “Listen, I wouldn’t usually do this, but I have to get home. Will you be okay taking the ambulance back and cleaning up on your own?”

“Sure.” Tim took the box of fresh supplies from me. “Is everything okay? What should I say if someone asks where you are?”

I backed away from him, preparing to run home in my uniform. “The truth. Tell them I had to leave. Don’t get yourself in trouble trying to cover for me. I’ll sort it out tomorrow.”

I left him standing in the ambulance bay with his mouth open.

The L station was a short run from the hospital, but home was an hour away. Before I went underground, I tried Ash’s cell one more time. Nothing. The line was dead. The journey home was unbearably slow. It took me back to another time Joe had called me home. Then, Ash had been in respiratory distress, drowning under the weight of severe pneumonia. He’d recovered, but his lungs had been irrevocably damaged. What if he’d relapsed? I hadn’t seen him awake for a few days, but it was my secret habit to listen to him breathe. I’d have noticed if he was wheezing, I was sure of it, but as the train pulled into the stop closest to home, I wasn’t sure of anything.

I jumped off the train and pushed past commuters heading home in the early evening gloom; then I ran all the way back to the big old house. I tore up the stairs and threw open the door. It took all of ten seconds for me to search the apartment. There was nobody there—Ash, Joe, no one. I stood stock-still in the center of the living room, breathing hard. The apartment was empty, but that didn’t mean anything. Joe’s place was a short L ride from here, and Danni’s was just a few blocks away.