Divided We Fall
Part I
Captain Henry 'Hank' Stanley loved his job. He also felt a strong sense of responsibility toward the other five men that made up A Shift of Station 51. Sure, there were days where he might gladly throttle one or all of them for being such twits, but they were his twits. His close-knit crew was a well-oiled machine during an emergency, so a few squeaks now and then during their downtime were fine with him. Within reason, of course.
As such, he didn't tend to take a lot of time away from his men and his station, but one thing had made him arrange for an extended vacation. He and his wife were about to celebrate their fifteen wedding anniversary. Fifteen was Ellen's lucky number, so Hank had actually been planning this since their tenth anniversary.
Of course, extended vacation meant that his guys were going to have to deal with a temporary captain. Normally, that wouldn't have given Hank any qualms. More than one captain had said that they envied him his guys. But the replacement captain was going to be a total unknown. He was a seasoned captain though, so everything should be alright. A transplant from the East Coast who hadn't been assigned a permanent station yet, he was floating for now, filling in for injuries, sickness or, as in his case, personal leave. Captain Jackson Poole.
Captain Poole wasn't able to join Shift A until Hank's last day before heading off. Hank greeted him as he came in, taking in the man's rather stiff posture. He chalked that up to the new situation and went to introduce him to the guys.
As they came through the door, Chet was regaling Marco and Mike with some story or other that actually had a smile on the quiet engineer's face. Johnny and Roy were at the table reviewing a new procedure that Dr. Brackett was looking to implement over the next few weeks.
"Guys - come over here for a minute. This is Captain Jackson Poole. He's going to be filling in for me while I'm away. Captain Poole, this is Mike Stoker, our engineer - Marco Lopez and Chester Kelly, our linemen - Roy DeSoto and John Gage, our paramedics."
"Gage and DeSoto. Yeah, I've heard of you two."
Neither man commented, but Roy didn't care for the man's tone. He knew it wasn't just his imagination when Captain Stanley spoke up again.
"These guys are the best paramedic team out there."
"I heard that too."
The clearly unimpressed attitude bothered Hank, but he figured it would just take a few runs with the men and seeing them in action to change his mind. The shift was busy, but not ridiculously so and, at the end of it, Captain Poole just stood and watched as Captain Stanley and his crew said their goodbyes in their usual joshing manner.
It might have been just as well that Hank didn't own a crystal ball. He would have risked his wife's wrath and thrown five years worth of planning out of the window if he'd had any idea of the chaos he was about to unleash on his men.