Spoilers: None in this first chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own Emergency. I'm just borrowing the guys for a bit. I'll return them eventually. :)

A/N: A big thank-you to my fabulous beta, LaramieLady51, AKA Darth Mom, who is the best beta in this galaxy or any other. Her medical knowledge was an incredible help with this fic, and it wouldn't be the same without her. Any errors are mine alone.

Warning: I describe some fairly serious traumatic injuries in this fic. I tried my best not to be particularly graphic, but if you're sensitive to this sort of subject matter, please read with care. Thank you.

As always, I also thank my Lord Jesus Christ for his incredible mercy and grace and his many blessings. I would be utterly lost without him.

The Last Man Standing

Chapter 1

Fireman Paramedic Roy DeSoto found himself lying on his back in the dirt, staring up into the night sky.

He hadn't been looking at the sky just a minute ago. He couldn't actually remember what he'd been doing, but he was sure that it hadn't included any stargazing. Not that you could really stargaze much in LA anyway, though, right now, they were far enough outside of the city limits that a few bright stars could be seen peeking through the haze.

Roy blinked, his sluggish brain struggling to put the fragmented pieces of memory back into a cohesive whole, and he turned his head, catching sight of the engine a few feet away. The hose bed loomed above him, a single, nozzle-less hose trailing limply to the ground, the end just out of his reach.

A run…they'd been on a run.

The first call they'd gotten had been for a woman down, but it had turned out to be a false alarm. The woman in question had actually been face-down on the floor, trying to get to a battery that had rolled under the couch - a battery from her hearing aid. The call had come from a neighbor who'd dropped by to check on her. The neighbor had been able to see the elderly woman's position from the front window, and jumped to some understandable conclusions when she hadn't reacted to any of his shouts or knocks.

After assuring the embarrassed woman that they were just glad she was alright, both the squad and the engine had started back to the station, hoping to finish the dinner that had been interrupted when the call had come through.

They hadn't made it far, though, because they'd gotten another call just a few minutes later, this time for a structure fire. It was farther out than most of their calls usually were, but the woman's house had been on the edge of their district anyway, and they happened to be the closest units available for a response.

The property was an old, single-story farmhouse that had long-since been abandoned. A passerby had seen the flames and found a phone to call it in, but by the time Station 51 arrived on the scene, the porch had already been fully involved, the aged, weathered wood quick to ignite. Cap had immediately ordered two lines, Chet and Marco on one and he and Johnny on the other.

Roy blinked again, his head giving a dull throb. He brought up a hand to rub at his forehead, but his questing fingers found his helmet instead. His helmet. He was wearing his helmet…of course he was. He remembered shrugging into his turnout, and Johnny had been just a few seconds behind him, so he'd run to the back of the engine to pull down their hose, and then…

An explosion. There'd been an explosion.

Roy's eyes widened and he struggled to sit up. The muscles in his back throbbed, and his stomach made sure that he knew how it felt about the change in position, but he fought the pain and nausea back down and kept going, pushing himself to his feet. He almost lost his balance and then straightened up slowly, cold horror curling in his gut and skirting down his spine as he took in the sight in front of him.

The house - what was left of it - was completely engulfed now, the explosion having fanned the flames, and in the light of the fire, Roy could make out five, prone forms.

None of them were moving.

The nausea came back, even stronger this time, but without any conscious thought, Roy found himself stumbling towards the front of the engine. He pulled off the gloves he wore and opened the driver's side door, struggling up onto the running board and reaching for the microphone in the cab.

"LA." His voice cracked so badly that he had to repeat, and even then it was so hoarse that he barely recognized it as his own. "LA, Station 51. There's been an explosion at our location. Code I times six. I am the only one currently ambulatory. We need immediate assistance. Request at least one additional engine, two squads, and three ambulances."

Roy swallowed hard as the cool, ever-professional tones of Sam Lanier's voice carried over the radio. They had never been more welcome. "10-4, 51."

There was a pause, and Roy knew the dispatcher was probably busy relaying the news up the chain of command. In reality, the wait was probably less than half a minute, but it felt like an eternity.

"51, Battalion requests that you keep them apprised of any developments. Also, be advised, units en-route to your location have an ETA of approximately fifteen minutes."

Fifteen minutes. So much could happen in fifteen minutes. Lives could be lost in less than that. Maybe they had been already.

Roy's fingers tightened on the microphone hard enough that he felt the case creak from the pressure. "10-4, LA."

His hand was trembling a little as he replaced the mic in the cab, and he curled his fingers into fist, unsure if the shaking was a reaction to the sheer enormity of what had happened, or if it had something to do with the pounding in his head.

He didn't have time for either. Steeling himself, Roy lowered his body out of the cab, careful to avoid the broken glass littering the seat from the shattered windows. He stumbled back down the length of the engine, pausing at the gauges to shut off the water that was still flowing through the charged line that Marco and Chet had been using. Then he turned and started for the squad, locking his knees and managing something like an unsteady jog until he reached the rear compartments. He pulled out the trauma box and Biophone, the muscles in his back shrieking anew at the additional weight he was asking them to carry.

He ignored that the way he was ignoring everything else, and managed another unsteady jog over to the closest victim. The victim. It was probably better to think of them that way, better to distance himself and pretend that this was just like any other rescue. It wasn't, though, and seeing the stenciled "STOKER" on the tan coat made his nausea return full-force. Mike had obviously been hit by the blast from behind because he was lying face-down, both arms stretched out above his head and bent at the elbow. The back of his coat was stained through with red in more than a few places, and dark pieces of some sort of shrapnel - wood or metal, maybe - were sticking out of the wounds, casting strange shadows in the firelight. How deep had that shrapnel gone? If any of it had reached Mike's vital organs…

Training took over once more, and Roy found himself reaching for the engineer's neck, searching for a pulse. He breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the steady thumping against his fingers.

"Mike?" he tried. Then more loudly, "Mike?"

Nothing.

"Mike!" With the engineer in the wrong position to try a sternal rub, Roy pinched Mike's earlobe instead. "Mike, can you hear me?"

There was still no response, not even to the pain.

Worried, Roy searched for Mike's pulse once more. The constant rhythm was just as reassuring as it had been the first time. 97 was fast, but considering blood loss Roy could see, he wasn't surprised that his pulse was elevated, and it wasn't yet in the danger zone. Unfortunately, given the way Mike was lying on the ground, Roy didn't think that his stethoscope would be able to pick up enough breath sounds to be useful, so he bent down by Mike's nose and mouth instead, listening to his breathing that way. He didn't hear any gasping or wheezing, and a quick count told Roy that his respirations were sitting at about 20. That was a slower than Roy would have expected, but that might have been due, again, to Mike's position on his stomach.

Roy didn't want to chance moving him at all, though, not even to remove the helmet Mike still wore. It was too risky with the shrapnel in his back. That meant the turnout would have to stay on for now too, and knowing that he would never be able to get a blood pressure through the coat, Roy reached for the scissors in his belt kit and started cutting the sleeve on the arm he was closest to, slicing it apart from wrist to shoulder, grimacing as the blades chewed through the thick material. When he had Mike's arm free, he reached for the BP cuff and carefully wrapped it around the engineer's bicep.

His own heart was pounding as he pumped up the cuff, and it didn't slow until he was sure that the numbers he'd gotten matched the relatively positive data he had on Mike's pulse and respirations: 112/73. He wasn't in good shape by any means, and his condition would undoubtedly deteriorate the longer he had to wait for treatment, but for now, and he was fairly stable.

He could wait a few minutes for more in-depth care…but maybe some of the others couldn't.

Maybe Johnny couldn't.

Roy's stomach lurched yet again. These men were all his friends, some of the best he'd ever had, and the thought of losing any of them filled him with dread. But, he couldn't deny that there was part of him that was Johnny's partner first and foremost, and it was screaming at him to look at the younger man next. He wouldn't, though, because Cap was closer, and Roy knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if he'd been conscious to do it, Johnny would have told him to check on the Cap first.

Grabbing a pad of paper and an extra pen from the Biophone, Roy scribbled down Mike's numbers, packed some gauze around the worst of the wounds on the engineer's back, then closed up the Biophone's case along with the trauma box and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

He didn't have to go far - Cap was just a few feet away.

He was lying face-up, and his helmet must have been knocked off by the blast, because it was nowhere to be seen. Like Stoker, he had been wounded by the shrapnel the explosion had created. A long piece of wood, almost resembling a stake, had been driven through his right shoulder, and another, smaller piece was imbedded in his left thigh. Shallow cuts peppered most of his face and neck.

Nothing seemed to have hit him near any of his vital organs, and Roy might have called him lucky except that he could see a small pool of blood already seeping out from behind the Captain's shoulder. A quick glance at his thigh showed that the material of his pants leg was already soaked through as well. He was definitely bleeding more heavily than Mike had been, and Roy knew that Cap would go downhill fast if he didn't get a handle on it.

Reaching for the trauma box again, Roy grabbed the gauze, bandages, and Kerlix, tearing open the packaging and tossing it aside. He worked on the shoulder first. He was careful to keep the wood firmly in place while still packing as much gauze around it as he could. Then, he gently rolled Cap to the left so that the injury was a few inches off the ground and started winding some bandages and Kerlix around the back of the shoulder and over the top of the packed wound. He made the bandages as tight as he could without cutting off blood flow to the arm. The leg was next. It was easier to wrap, though Roy was dismayed to see a few spots of red showing through the white material as soon as he was done.

"Cap? Cap, can you hear me? Hank? Come on, Hank, open your eyes."

Given that Cap hadn't responded to anything he'd done so far, Roy wasn't really expecting an answer, but it was still a disappointment when there wasn't one. He tried a sternal rub for good measure, but when the result was the same, he pressed bloodied fingers to Cap's throat and counted the beats. He grimaced at what he found.

Cap's pulse was fast, 116, and a quick check of his respirations showed that they were fast as well, at 32. After cutting through the sleeve of his turnout on his uninjured arm, Roy found that his systolic and diastolic pressures told the same unhappy story at 106/68, though they hadn't reached a critical level yet, and for the moment, he was as stable as Roy could make him. Knowing that he had no choice, Roy wrote down Cap's numbers, made a brief though fruitless search for the handy talkie Cap had been holding, then packed up again and staggered away.

He still had three other victims to triage.

Chet and Marco had already been manning a hose, and they were the farthest from where Roy had started out by the engine. But Johnny…Johnny was the closest to him now. He must have just come around the squad and been making a bee-line for Cap when the explosion happened.

Taking a few quick steps, Roy dropped to his knees beside his partner.

His first impression was red. Too much red.

His vision wavered for a moment, and Roy blinked, forcing himself to focus. Like Cap, cuts were peppered over John's face and neck, but his helmet was still in place, for all the good it had done - something had struck his left temple, and a long trail of blood marked a path from his hairline to his jaw. There were a number of other cuts scattered over his torso as well, and even if the wounds were relatively small, whatever had hit him had been sharp enough to slice right through his turnout. Some of the wounds, however, Roy didn't have to wonder about what had hit him because the fragments of wood and metal were still embedded.

Roy swallowed hard and continued his examination.

He froze, his gaze halting on the right side of Johnny's torso, just below his rib cage. A large, jagged piece of metal protruded from his partner's abdomen, jutting a couple inches into the air. The question was, just how deep did it go?

Roy swallowed again, feeling like all the moisture in his mouth had fled, but his hands were already moving, reaching for Johnny's throat to check his pulse. For one terrifying moment, he didn't feel anything at all. But then…there it was. Weak, fast, and thready, but there.

The sense of relief was so strong that Roy's vision wavered a second time. Shaking himself, Roy gently removed Johnny's helmet, careful to support his neck with one hand, and then he dragged the trauma box a little closer and opened it, pulling out the bandages, gauze, and Kerlix again. There wasn't a lot - he wasn't going to run out while working on Johnny, but he hoped that no one else was bleeding this badly because there wouldn't be much left. A single squad just wasn't equipped to handle this much trauma alone.

He started packing gauze around the large metal shard, walking that delicate balance between too much pressure and not enough.

"Johnny?" he tried, his voice thick. "Johnny, can you hear me?"

Nothing.

Not wanting to touch his partner's bloodied chest, Roy gave his earlobe a small pinch. There was no reaction to that either.

Roy drew a shaky breath and kept working, but when he heard a groan, his eyes darted Johnny's face. A small part of him hoped that his partner was waking up, while the rest of him prayed that he wasn't - an injury like his would be agony.

The groan came again, but Johnny's features remained slack, and Roy finally realized that the sound was coming from somewhere behind him. He turned, glancing quickly at Mike and Cap, but they seemed to be as still as ever, so he looked the other way, finding Chet and Marco. The blazing fire behind them cast their silhouettes in sharp relief, and it was easy to see that one of them was moving now, though he couldn't tell who it was.

His question was answered when the figure struggled into a sitting position, and on the helmetless head, he could make out curly hair.

"Chet?" Roy called.

There was silence for a moment.

"R-Roy? What…?" Chet stopped again, realization coloring his voice. "The house blew."

"Yeah. Help's on the way, but it will be a few minutes yet."

Just how long, Roy couldn't say. Maybe it was better that he didn't know.

Chet pushed himself up a little more and looked around, obviously catching sight of the others, and though it was hard to be sure, Roy thought he saw him pale.

"How bad?" he asked softly.

Roy knew what Chet was really asking.

"Mike's not great, but he seems stable. Cap is worse off…he's lost a lot of blood. Johnny too…he's pretty cut up, and he's got a serious abdominal wound." He forced himself to say that last part matter-of-factly and turned back to Johnny, continuing to pack the wound as he talked. "I haven't had a chance to look at you or Marco. Can you give me a rundown?"

Chet clearly wasn't tracking very well. "Huh?"

"Chet, I need to know how you're doing. Where are you hurt?"

"Oh. I…"

There was another pause, and Roy assumed he was doing a mental self-assessment.

"Um…my head…my head hurts real bad. Cuts…bleeding some. My ribs…my ribs hurt too, and…I…ahh! Something's wrong with my right ankle."

"Your ribs," Roy repeated. "Any trouble breathing?"

"No…not really, 'long as I don't breathe too deep. I, uh…I don't think there's anything that can't wait."

"You're sure? Because if you're not, I need to know."

"Yeah," Chet murmured, then more firmly, "yeah, I'm sure. I'll…I'll look at Marco."

"Okay. Let me know what you find."

Roy picked up a roll of bandages, trying to decide how to wrap them around his partner without jostling the wound. Judging by its position and all the blood, Roy guessed that the metal piece had probably hit his liver, and he didn't want to risk making things any worse than they already were.

"Hey, Roy?" Chet called. "Marco's got a broken nose, I think…his face and mouth are all bloody. Got some pretty bad cuts…and, aw, man… There's something big stuck in 'im, right in his hip."

"Which hip?" Roy demanded, starting to unwind the length of bandages in his hand.

"Um…left, I think…yeah, left."

"Is it bleeding badly?"

"Some, yeah, but…not too bad."

Roy still didn't like the sound of that - if that piece of shrapnel had actually hit Marco a little bit above his hip, it might have nicked his bowel.

"Is his abdomen rigid around the wound?"

"N-no."

"How about his pulse and respirations?"

"They're okay. A little fast, but pretty strong."

Roy considered the bandage for a moment longer, then cut off a strip and started making it an extra layer of packing around gauze he'd already used on Johnny. Hopefully, that would guarantee that the piece of metal didn't shift at all.

"Chet," he said at the same time, "see if you can wake Marco up. Just be careful - don't shake him."

"Okay," Chet agreed. "Marco! Hey, Marco, c'mon pal, up an' at 'em. Marco!" The lineman sighed. "Roy, man, he's out."

Roy thought a moment, glancing again at his depleted supplies. He had Johnny's wound packed as well as he could, and the other cuts would need more thorough care than Roy could give him right now…what remained of the gauze, bandages, and Kerlix was pretty useless to him. But, maybe it could do Marco some good.

"Chet, Marco's hip could probably use a dressing. I've got what you'll need here, but do you think you can come get it? I can't leave Johnny right now. I still need to get his BP and check his vitals."

There was a longer pause and then, "Um, yeah…yeah, think so. Be there…in a minute."

Chet gave a grunt of effort that turned into a low, pained groan. He wobbled but stayed on his feet, his right arm quickly wrapping around his torso to brace his ribs. His first, halting step resulted in a sharp hiss, but he kept going.

Roy started cutting the sleeve of Johnny's turnout like he'd done with the others, but he divided his attention between Johnny and Chet as much as he could, trying to make sure that the Irishman really was up to the task he'd been assigned. Thankfully, he seemed to be. He was walking like an arthritic old man with a bad limp, but he was conscious and moving under his own power, and it was still a welcome sight.

He stopped as soon as he was within a few feet of Johnny, and he was close enough now that, this time, Roy saw him go stark white under the blood smeared across his face.

"He…he gonna be okay?"

His eyes were locked on Johnny's abdomen.

As a paramedic, Roy had been trained to keep victims as calm as possible, to always offer reassurance and remain as positive as he could. But even if Chet wasn't a paramedic himself, he'd seen enough as a fireman to know that any assurance Roy offered now would be empty…words he'd said only because that's what he was supposed to do.

He said them anyway.

"He'll be fine." Roy paused in his work on the sleeve long enough to pick up the supplies he'd promised and held them out to the lineman. "Here. This is all that's left until backup arrives."

Chet accepted the supplies with the hand that wasn't currently occupied bracing his ribs, and giving Johnny one last, long look, he turned around unsteadily and started the slow, painful trip back to Marco's side.

Roy had just gotten Johnny's arm free of the sleeve when the sounds of retching reached his ears. He immediately turned around to see that Chet was on the ground by Marco, braced on all fours, losing what little of the dinner he'd managed to get down before they'd been sent out.

"Chet?! Chet!"

Roy berated himself silently. He never should have asked Chet to move. He knew better. He started to push himself to his feet, wanting to check on the lineman, but Chet stopped him by raising a hand. He coughed once, twice, then struggled back up into a sitting position, holding his ribs once again and stretching his injured ankle out in front of him.

"I'm…okay," he insisted roughly. "Just…just a little sick. Had my…bell rung…pretty good, I guess. You stay…you stay with Johnny."

Roy would have felt better if Chet's voice hadn't sounded like he'd fought a five alarm fire without the benefit of an air mask, but the lineman was already reaching for the packaged supplies he must have dropped. Roy watched him for a moment, and when he was satisfied that Chet really was alright for now, he turned back to Johnny, reaching for the BP cuff and wrapping it around his partner's arm.

Johnny's numbers weren't quite as bad as he'd feared, but if Cap had been on the brink of going downhill when Roy had reached him, then Johnny had already started the trip down that same, slippery slope.

Pulse: 128, respirations: 34, BP: 94/59.

Roy wrote those numbers down with a hand that had suddenly developed another tremor. He ignored it, gritting his teeth and reaching for the clasps on his turnout, flicking them open and starting to tug off the coat. He'd been expecting the pain in his back, but it was his left arm that screamed the loudest this time, and he winced, stopping mid-motion to look at his bicep. There was a cut, almost three inches long, just above his elbow. The movement must have opened it again, because fresh rivulets of blood were making their way across his skin. He'd probably need stitches later, but there was nothing he could do about it now, so he kept going, pulling the coat off completely. He rolled it into a bundle, then very carefully lifted Johnny's legs, propping them up with the improvised cushion. Hopefully, that would help slow down the shock.

"Chet," Roy called, "how's Marco?"

"He's still out. Got the…got the bandages on him, though. Pulse…still okay. Breathing too."

Roy frowned. Chet sounded a little better than he had a few minutes ago, but not by much, and he couldn't help wondering if he was right about how Marco was doing. If the lineman was as dazed as he seemed, he could have easily missed something.

Roy glanced back at his partner.

He was hesitant to leave. Johnny's condition could change in an instant, and Roy needed to call Rampart soon and get permission to start an IV. There just hadn't been any time before now…just like there hadn't been any time to give LA the updates they'd wanted, not when every second counted because he'd had so many people to treat, and he'd had no way of knowing who was critical and who wasn't. Triage first. Prioritize. That's what he'd been trained to do in a casualty-heavy situation. Then again, there wasn't really any sort of training that could have prepared him for something like this.

He was still torn between checking on Marco and Chet or using the Biophone to contact Rampart, when the wail of sirens in the distance could finally be heard above the crackling flames still devouring the farmhouse.

Roy let his eyes close for a second in relief, then forced them open and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, deciding to look at Marco and Chet after all, now that backup was nearby. His vision grayed out for a moment, and he blinked hard, waiting until the world rematerialized to start making his way over to the injured linemen.

"Roy," Chet complained when he saw him, "thought I…told ya…to stay…with Johnny."

Roy almost shook his head in answer, but remembering what had happened when he stood up a minute ago, he figured that it was better if he didn't. "Help'll be here soon," he offered instead, kneeling down slowly, carefully. "I just want to make sure you two are okay."

It said a lot about how Chet was feeling that he didn't even try to argue.

Roy realized belatedly that he'd left the trauma box and Biophone next to Johnny, but thankfully, it didn't seem like he would need them. Marco looked terrible - his helmet was missing, and his face was covered in blood that ran down his neck and soaked into the collar of his turnout - but his pulse and respirations were almost the same as what Mike's had been, though Marco's breathing was a little faster. Chet seemed to have been right about where Marco had been hit by the shrapnel too. The metal shard - surrounded by gauze, thanks to Chet - appeared to have struck his hip and not his belly. Hopefully, that meant he didn't have any organ damage.

Chet…well, Chet looked almost as rough as Marco did. He had a long, thin gash across his forehead, a split lower lip, and a welt on his right cheek that promised to turn into a spectacular bruise in the near future. Chet's vitals, unsurprisingly, were a little bit better than Marco's, though a quick check of his pupils made it clear just why he sounded so disoriented.

Roy breathed another sigh of relief, scribbled down some quick notes about both linemen's numbers, then stood once more.

The world wavered again for a second, but it steadied just in time for him to make out the red lights of a squad heading up the worn dirt road.

Moments later, Squad 16 was pulling up in front of the burning farmhouse.

Bob Bellingham hopped out of the passenger side as soon as the vehicle came to a stop, and Craig Brice wasn't far behind him. This, Roy reflected blearily, might just be the happiest he'd ever been to see "The Walking Rulebook."

It was Bellingham that Roy met halfway across the clearing. Roy was still clutching the pad of paper he'd used to record everyone's vitals, so he shoved it at the other paramedic without any fanfare and started rattling off what he knew.

"Everyone but Chet has been unconscious since the explosion. Mike was stable when I checked him, but he's got a lot of shrapnel in his back, and I'm not sure how deep it goes. Cap's lost a lot of blood…he's got a piece of shrapnel through his right shoulder and another piece in his left thigh."

"Okay," Bob nodded, "we'll-"

"Johnny has a piece of metal in the right upper quadrant. He's lost a lot of blood too. I packed the wound and elevated his feet. Marco has a shard of something in his hip-"

"Alright, Roy-"

"-and a probable broken nose, but his pulse and breathing weren't too bad. Chet woke up a few minutes ago, complaining of pain in his ribs and right ankle, and-"

"Roy!"

Roy blinked.

"Take it easy for a minute, okay? You can tell us more as soon as you sit down."

Roy wanted to say that he was fine and he didn't need to sit down, yet as Bob started gently but firmly guiding him over to Squad 16's running board, his muscles just didn't seem to have enough strength to resist.

He found himself sitting without really remembering when he'd done it, and he watched as other squads and ambulances pulled up to the scene.

Bellingham jogged over to the new arrivals with Roy's notes in his hand, and though Roy was too far away to hear what was said, he saw grim, understanding nods from the other men before they gathered their equipment and spread out to start treating the injured.

Brice was already working on Cap, and Greg from 18s had started on Mike, while his partner, Tony, was bent over Marco, palpating his abdomen. Todd from 86s was crouching next to Chet, asking him questions, and Charlie Dwyer, who normally worked the C-Shift at 51s, must have been doing overtime because he was the one leaning over Johnny now, getting a new set of vitals.

Bellingham reappeared at Roy's side, a stethoscope looped around his neck. He had obviously seen where Roy's gaze had stopped because he offered him a sympathetic smile.

"Johnny's in good hands, Roy. They all are. Anything else we need to know?"

Roy opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again.

Was there something else? Suddenly, he wasn't sure.

His gaze drifted over to the ruined farmhouse, and he saw that Engine 127 was there now, along with Truck 16, finally knocking the fire down. When had they arrived? And was that a chief's car?

Roy saw Bob frown.

"Tell ya what," the other paramedic began, "don't worry about it right now. Let's talk about you. How are you feeling?"

Roy blinked again. He hadn't really given much thought to himself. There just hadn't been time, but there was time now. The others…somebody else was taking care of them.

"I'm…uh… I have a cut on my arm, and uh…my back hurts some."

"Your back? Okay. What about your head? Did you hit it at all? Did you lose consciousness?"

"I…"

He had, hadn't he? He must have…he'd woken up looking at those stars…

"Yeah…yeah, think so…"

Bob said something else after that, but Roy didn't hear it, the pounding in his head suddenly surging to the forefront. The world grayed out again, like it had before, but instead of fading, the gray deepened into an inky black, and Roy felt himself falling, toppling forward off the running board.

Strong hands caught him just in time, and the last thing Roy was aware of was someone supporting his neck.

Then, for a while at least, there was nothing at all.

TBC

A/N: This fic is already complete, so the next part should be up in a few days. :)

Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think!

Take care and God bless!

Ani-maniac494 :)