A/N- My first Community Fic, set at the end of season 3. I welcome any feedback and I hope you enjoy.
Cautionary: I claim no ownership towards Community or any of the characters, they do not belong to me only the idea for this story does..
In the flickering light one of the rundown sheds on the edge of the Greendale campus, the seven friends looked apprehensively at each other before turning back to look at the vehicles parked inside.
There were three ramshackle vehicles parked within, looking somewhat a cross between a van and a small truck. They were filthy from years of neglect, spider webs hung heavily from the wing mirrors and the dust was piled thick on the bonnets. The grass green overalls they wore finally seemed appropriate in honour of the hard work that was obviously going to be needed to clean up the three trucks.
Unperturbed by the dilapidated state of their ride and oblivious of whatever nature had invaded the shed, Troy and Abed rushed forward to claim one as their own. The others watched on in mild disbelief at the pair's enthusiasm; it took both of them pulling together to finally wrench open the driver's door.
"This is so awesome!" Troy exclaimed, vocalising the exact opposite of what most of the group was feeling.
Typical too cool, ex-lawyer Jeff Winger rolled his eyes at his young friend's misplaced enthusiasm. The sleeves were rolled up to his bicep on his jumpsuit and he wore the front unzipped in a nonchalant fashion. The flash of white that was his singlet, cut through the gap in the hardy green garment. The letters G.A.S. were embroided on the chest of the uniform.
In the cab of their vehicle, Abed at least shared his best friend's eagerness. His intelligent eyes surveyed the small panel of dials, buttons and switches that was positioned between the driver and passengers dashboard space.
"Our very own Rig." He announced in an awed whisper at the wonderful gift they had acquired. References to famous movie or tv moments seemed to fly from his brain in the enormity of their discovery.
"Do you think the lights and siren still work?" His passenger asked hopefully, reaching for a lone dial and twisting.
Outside the vehicle, their five remaining friends startled at the sudden, horrible noise that issued from the scruffy vehicle. It was a terrible, slow, screeching yowl that seemed to trigger some underling impulse in the human to want to run and hide from the sound. Annie and Shirley immediately clapped their hands over their ears, in an attempt to block out the noise. Both Jeff and Britta seemed to fighting the urge to flee.
Pierce didn't seem quite as bothered by the noise, probably because he was a good deal deafer.
Britta thought it sounded a lot like the sound her cat had made when it got stuck in the bathtub at home. Poor dear, he only has three legs, she reflected in pity, associating the noise with a wounded animals sad attempt to escape.
Troy and Abed on the other hand were delighted by the sound. To them it was a melody of excitement and wonder.
"Cool. Cool, cool, cool." Abed stated in his happy monotone, placing his stamp of approval on the whole idea with his special handshake with Troy.
Yelling so he could be heard over the racket, Jeff leaned forward to ask Annie a question. Her pretty face was still cradled in her hands, but she dared to incline her head towards him and lifted one hand off her ear for a moment to see what he had to say.
Tearing his eyes from the smooth porcelain skin of her neck, Jeff found his gaze lured to the dusty, flashing, red light-bar on the roof of the boy's ambulance.
"How did we get suckered into doing this again?"
Six weeks earlier.
"Very good Ms Eddison, some nice bandaging there." The first aid instructor complemented the brunette dryly and she started to unravel the crepe bandage off Jeff's arm.
It had been perfectly applied and very neatly tied down; Annie crooked a little smile at the praise and satisfaction of another passing mark.
"Let's see you have a try Mr. Winger." The bored looking instructor suggested, his interest obviously not with the class. Proof of this was in the form of Abed, who was using all the spare bandages to turn Troy into a mummy.
Jeff sighed heavily and put down his phone; ready to put in the minimum effort to achieve a pass. Sitting in his chair at the study table, he looked up and spotted Britta and Shirley practicing on a cocky looking Pierce. Shirley was carefully arranging his arm into a sling while Britta was creating a bandage for his head that was looking more and more like just a white bandanna with every passing second.
"Help Jeff, I'm bleeding!" Annie prompted him, with a light swat to the arm.
Giving a token glance up at his assessor, Jeff casually reached a hand into the first aid kit they were given between a pair and pulled out a large pad of gauze and the roll of wide, white medical tape.
Shooting a lazy Winger grin at his attractive partner, he firmly pressed the open bandage on top of her thigh, just short of the hem of her skirt. Annie gave a little gasp as his unexpected pressure, but did not protest. With a careful squeeze still on her leg, Jeff pulled up the edge of the tape with his teeth and drew out an extended strip. He pressed the start of his tape down on the gauze and deftly ducked the roll under and around her bare leg several times, drawing the strip of fabric tight over the bandage. Finally he ripped the end of the tape with his teeth, leaning in close to his bandage to do so and patted down the tail of the sticky strip.
He sat back in his chair to find Annie starring at him with an unreadable expression.
She was in mixed feelings about his performance. Part of her was still shocked by the echo of his touch on her tender skin, the remanent of the feeling lingering in the firm constraint of his makeshift bandage. Another aspect of her was disappointed and angry at his lazy piece of patchwork, she had expected more from him. Wanted more from him.
Sure, a first aid course at Greendale was an easy way to pick up a couple of credits; she had still expected him to take things a little more seriously.
The instructor looked at his tape work and shrugged.
"Good, it works." He dismissed absently, scribbling on Jeff's assessment form and handing it back to him.
Jeff's carefree grin grew a half centimetre and he reached back for his phone.
Annie finally snapped, her anger winning through at receiving the same grade as him.
"Good? But Professor Garner, he didn't even bandage his dressing!" Annie cried in outrage, remembering her masterpiece of bandaging.
Troy and Abed ceased in their mummy making antics to watch the drama unfold.
The assessor was a worn out looking, middle aged guy with long grimy, dark hair, but he seemed to transform into something a lot more frightening, as he turned back to face the criticism of his marking.
His tone was brisk and irritated, as he if was insulted by her comment.
"Is the dressing tight Ms Eddison?" He asked her sharply, all trace of boredom gone.
Annie was taken back by the sudden question, but felt obliged to answer honestly with quick nod of her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jeff look up from his phone and take notice as his grade was discussed. Irritatingly enough, she noticed he still seemed confident and aloof in his position.
"Well pressure is what stops bleeding isn't it?" Professor Garner reminded her simply.
The simplicity of his answer held her speechless.
"It doesn't always have to be all tidy and pretty," He informed her, his eyes seemed to become distant and glazed as he finished.
"Medicine in the real world isn't tidy or pretty…"
And with that he left the young idealistic girl to think and went to check on the group that wasn't dressed like the Egyptian dead.
"Wow, where does the Dean find these guys?" Jeff commented cynically, with a shake of his head, his gelled up hair remained decidedly roguish despite the movement.
Annie turned back to face her partner, her anger dulled at his obvious mutual dismissal of the lecturers competence. Ultimately, she knew he didn't care because he had gotten his grade in the end, but she was reassured to think that he wasn't above saying things to make her feel better, in his own twisted fashion.
"Tape? Really Jeff?" She accused him, with a disappointed edge to her voice, as she leaned forward to take off his bandage. If she had really had been bleeding, would he have used tape?
"Have you seen this tape?" Jeff defended, brandishing what was left of the roll. "It is ridiculously strong, you could do so much stuff with some decent tape like this."
Peering over Annie's lowered shoulder he noticed that Troy and Abed were now stacking chairs and desks to make a pyramid. Heavy quantities of the same tape held it together at crucial junctions.
"Well maybe not that kind of stuff," he amended quickly, as she turned in time to see the precarious structure lean dangerously to one side and begin to come apart.
"Someone might need some real first aid in a minute." Britta commented drolly, coming to join them at the table, followed by Shirley and Pierce.
Pierce unwittingly still wore Britta's excuse for a head bandage.
"I think the course was niiicccee." Shirley decided in her honey sweet voice, "You never know when you may have to be good Samaritans and help someone who is hurt."
"Bah, it was a waste of time, I knew all of this anyway!" Pierce claimed loudly, to the exasperation of Britta. Jeff grinned to himself, knowing Pierce it wasn't the first time he had mentioned this fact.
Troy and Abed finally came back to join their study group, the pair were still largely clad in the white crepe bandages and had never looked happier.
"I don't know if I told you Jeff, but I was made an honorary chief of an ambulance station this one time." Pierce rambled on, ignoring the lack of interest from all parties at the table.
"Were you disappointed to find out it was nothing like being an Indian chief?" Jeff retorted sarcastically.
"Well I did assume there would be some headdress of some kind." The older man admitted.
"You can be Chief without a headdress?" Troy picked up, his eyes widening in realisation
"I also thought there would be more casino gambling." The moist towelette heir added in displeasure after a moment of thought.
Ignoring the blatant racism of their friend, the group's attention was drawn back to Annie as she struggled to remove the last of the tape.
"And here I thought you shaved not waxed." Jeff commented with his typical smart-arse grin, when she squeaked from the pain of yanking off the adhesive strip.
"You're the one who used so much of the blimming stuff." She replied frostily, massaging her reddened thigh.
"You don't have to shave your legs to meet the image of female beauty created by men and the teen magazines, Annie." Britta interjected shrilly, to various moans and groans from the group.
The last thing in the world we want is Annie listening to Britta and going Au Natural, Jeff thought in horror. The other males in the room were thinking something similar, except for Abed who was contemplating the implications of Britta's outburst.
"So that is why you are almost always wearing jeans and trousers." Abed revealed somewhat cryptically.
"Huh?" Troy and Pierce asked together in confusion.
"Britta doesn't shave her legs regularly." Abed concluded simply.
Troy looked a bit taken back and the woman in question rushed to explain.
"I do too! Occasionally." She protested with a pout before her voice trailed off, "It looks funny wearing a dress with hairy legs."
The study group broke into laughter at her hypocrisy, but was interrupted by a high pitched, siren coming their way.
"Deano deano deano deano deano deano deano." Dean Pelton shrieked madly in imitation of a siren, proudly managing to incorporate his position into the noise.
He minced into the study room in a pair of very tight green overalls, with medical patches on the front and a badge with the letters BLS stamped on the shoulder.
He came to a stop uncomfortably close to Jeff and addressed the disinterested group.
"We have an emergency!" He declared excitedly in his nasally voice, "After the deansasterous semester last year with the crazy Ben Chang, Greendale is critical!"
His voice seemed to catch and lose a lot of the enthusiasm he previously held.
"Seriously, enrolment is at an all time low and so are our finances, Greendale is on the brink of dying here."
Noone looked at the least suprised by this revelation.
Remembering why he had come in to interrupt the friends he suddenly perked up.
"Which is why, when an opportunity came to revive our community college, I couldn't refuse." He continued.
"Well that certainly sounds like Greendale; willing to try anything to make money or enrolments." Jeff commented derisively.
"Thank you Jeffery." The dean tittered, misinterpreting his words and shooting out a hand to caress Jeff's shoulder. The ex-lawyer shuddered at the unzipped front of the bald man's overly tight uniform; it betrayed the unfortunate fact that the weirdo wasn't wearing anything under the overalls.
"Seriously, does nobody remember the blood drive?" Jeff pressed the group, pushing away the Deans groping hand.
There was a collective muttering from the group at the memory of donating blood for their school.
Troy folded his arms triumphantly,
"I told you blood is supposed to stay in the body." He reminded them cheerfully, his religion not allowing him to receive or donate blood.
"And we now know that there are limits to how much we can legally take from our students." The dean admitted.
"Unless you are Britta, who just passes out and needs all hers put back in." Pierce chuckled.
The group once more had a laugh at the blonde's expense before Dean Pelton cut through them.
"We can go back to laughing at Britta later, don't you want to hear my amazing solution?" he asked the group.
A heavy silence hung in the air, as noone answered and instead shot candid looks at Jeff, who just shrugged and reached for his phone.
Annie finally broke, making an offended 'Ohhh' noise at her friend's indiscretion and looked up at the Dean with her sweet smile on.
"Of course we do Dean." She answered him kindly, sending a pointed glare at their leader, who threw his hands up in exasperation.
"Thank you Annie," The Dean beamed, "Well the local council was trying to cut costs and asked whether we would be willing to restart the Greendale volunteer Ambulance Service. They were willing to fund a training program and some start up costs, as well as paying Greendale handsomely for providing the public service."
He announced with obvious glee, not disheartened at all by his less then enthusiastic response from the leader of the group.
"So it was cheaper to try and get us to do it rather then paid professionals?" Jeff concluded.
Troy and Abed however, looked at each other, excited at the prospect and nodded their heads frantically in agreement. Shirley and Annie were discussing the idea, both fired up by the chance to do some good in the world. Britta eagerly started flicking through the syllabus the Dean had passed her, to see if there was much training around homeopathic medicine.
Even Pierce seemed to be amiable to the announcement of this new course and he raised his hand in question at the Dean.
"Does this station have a Chief yet?"
The group all seemed to look at Jeff, awaiting his reaction to the new course.
His expression was serious as he looked from one friend to the next.
"Do you really think Greendale is the right place to be trying to teach people how to save lives? We seem to have at least one death in the hallways each semester and our Professor's track records seem to speak for themselves." He responded cynically
There were murmurs of agreement from the others as they were unable to deny the truth of the statement. One person remained resolute on the idea and she shot a pleading doe-eyed look at Jeff.
"Did I mention it is worth a good ten credits and is largely practical based?" The Dean chimed in, trying to win over his favourite. He knew if he caved in Jeff, the others would certainly follow.
Winger sighed at the girl with the soft eyes, he could deny nothing of. He was sure that he would regret this.
"What sort of training do we need to do?" He finally relented.