CHAPTER ONE: The Dispatch
Benjamin Dean McElroy sat in the cafeteria at the back of the station silently, taking occasional drinks of black coffee from a warm, half-filled coffee mug. It had been a Father's Day gift presented by his ten-year-old daughter for Father's Day. It was ceramic, colored white with a somewhat personalized message, and steamed soothingly. Written on top of a faint EMS emblem, the message read, "Thank you for saving my life, Daddy" - A rather touching sentiment, and even more affectionate when one considered the fact that Ben, like half the people at the station, was a licensed paramedic and literally had saved his daughter's life. She had been competing in her school's fall swimming tournament, but Benjamin hadn't been able to come because of his work. Wouldn't you know it - that was the day little Alyssa decided to get a cramp. Her legs froze and her arms wouldn't move, and she sank like a rock.
There is nothing worse than having to answer a call for your own kid.
Thankfully, she had survived, none the worse for wear. That day she learned the dangers of eating ice cream before going for a swim, and, while aquaphobia had yet to rear its ugly head, Alyssa had never again even dreamed of eating or drinking anything cold on the same day that she was going swimming, and vice versa.
Therefore the message on the cup meant something special to Ben, so he drank his coffee out of it whenever he could.
The middle-aged man took another sip and with it came a sigh of both relaxation and ennui. He'd been at the station since midnight, had run a check on the ambulance (It wasn't really necessary; Becky, the resident newbie, usually checked the truck effeciently, but it didn't hurt to go over it himself, just to make sure), and done a spot-check on all of his crew so he knew where they were (Both Liu and Becky were sleeping like rocks in the back room), and yet still there was nothing to do. He'd finished all of his patient care reports on time, so he didn't even have any of those to do. And here it was, three o'clock in the morning already.
A really good paramedic would say that a day with no calls was a good day. Ben was not a really good paramedic. He was just a paramedic, and inaction was almost worse than a bad day (on which the station would get a new dispatch every five minutes). He caught himself contemplating the idea of praying for something to do, then caught himself just in time; considering what he did for a living, that wasn't a very wise thing to consider.
Just then the intercom toned into life and Ben's heart skipped a beat. Had it worked anyway? He then chuckled quietly as his own foolishness and listened.
"Trauma emergency, repeat, trauma emergency."
Jumping to his feet and abandoning the coffee, Benjamin hurried over to the intercom and pushed down the big baige buttom. "Truck Three, McElroy, go."
"Pedestrian-em-vee collision, Treeden Way, possible trauma."
"Give me five minutes to wake the crew and we'll be out there."
"Five minutes, okay."
"Over."
Even as he hurried back to the back room to rouse his two EMTs, Benjamin started preparing himself mentally for the call. Trauma - that meant a lot of blood, internal and external. They'd need gauzes and antibiotics. Already in the truck. Good. Collision - that meant two, possibly three patients, depending on how badly the car and the pedestrian were damaged. The car could have swerved and hit something after the first collision. That meant possible firefighters. He'd check with dispatch.
"Hey, hey, wake up," he said, reaching the first of two aging recliners and shaking it to wake the sleeping girl. "Becky, c'mon, we got a call."
Next came Liu, who was stretched out comfortably on the little sofa - how she could be thirty-two years old and still so damn short, Ben would never guess. "Hey, sunshine," he said, shaking her and flipping a hand at her proud black ponytail, "Lu-lu, we got a call. It's trauma."
The tiny Vietnamese woman was up in a flash - she'd been in the business herself for five or so years, so she knew exactly what the appropriate response was to any kind of call: Get your ass up! Becky was still new to the whole thing, only having been employed for three months, so Sonni Liu went over and dragged the younger girl bodily to her feet. Soon, they were all up and ready for the call. Liu took the wheel as Becky hopped into the back of the truck with Ben, who started running her down a quick review of all th things she needed to remember for the call. Just because she had passed the final did not mean that she had everything memorized like old-timers like Ben did. Okay, so maybe not memorized, but definitely down-path. As they were enroute Liu continued to ask the dispatch questions about the scene and sent the answers back to keep Benjamin busy. Between all three trains of communication, things in the back of the truck became quite lively as the team prepped for the call in their own fashion. Here's an example of what it sounded like.
"Okay, Becky, so what is the average blood pressure for an adult?"
"Ninety to one-forty systolic."
"And the pulse?"
"Sixty to a hundred."
"Per seconds?"
"Per minute."
"Good girl. Now -"
"Ben, Ben, it's a pedi." Liu used the slang term for a child patient, and Ben could have sworn his pulse was definitely not average after that.
"A pedi? Shit," Ben replied, picking up the radio, "Do you have anything on the degree of trauma?"
"Yeah, looks like it's a couple of breaks and a possible skull fracture."
"Okay, I got it." Ben placed down the radio and turned again to Becky. "Where are the splints?"
"In the cupboard over there," the girl pointed. Ben nodded; he had expected her to know, but he just wanted to keep her on her toes until she could do so herself on a dime.
"What splint would you use for a broken arm?"
"Ladder splint," Becky replied, "Because it's stiff and bendable."
"Good girl," Ben told her again, "Now tell me about skull fractures. How do you find one?"
"You feel -"
"Ben, the patient's completely out. He's not responding to pain or sound at all. He's also got some growing contusions on his ankle." Liu interrupted again.
Ben automatically switched leads. "Okay, what about the caller?"
"He was driving the vehicle. He's pretty freaked out and has his little girl with him."
"How little?"
There was a pause, and then Liu responded, "Seems she's twelve."
"Okay." Ben marked that down on a paper notepad he kept in his pocket and shut it again. He turned back to Becky, opened his mouth to ask her another question, and then -
"She seems fine, it's just the driver's apparently a little panicky."
Ben shut his eyes, took a breath, and then picked up the radio yet again and replied, "Got the message." After hanging up, he showed a self-mocking, weary glance to Becky, who giggled quietly before moving to get out a couple of ladder splints.
... And so on. They arrived at the scene about fifteen minutes after leaving the station, and after letting dispatch know they were there, Liu hopped out of the drivers seat and came around to meet Becky and Ben, who had just dismounted from the back. About a quarter mile down the road was a 24-hour store, and Benjamin made a mental note to stop by there sometime when he was off-duty to check their prices.
The anxious driver of the motor vehicle came to meet them, his eyes wide and worried. "The kid's over there," he said, addressing Benjamin as if he was the Second Messiah, "Oh, G-d, I hope he's okay."
Liu, the one with an associate's in Psychology, immediately took control over the frantic civilian. "We're here now, sir. Just relax. Could you tell me your name, please? I'm Sonni Liu."
"C-carl Maxon..."
As they talked, Ben looked in the direction the man had pointed. Lying in a heap in front of a beautifully-waxed maroon Ford 150, the patient did indeed look to be absolutely unresponsive. Mysteriously enough, a number of tastefully-selected dark chocolate bars were scattered beside the body, as if the patient had dropped them just as the truck hit him. A little golden-haired preteen stood over him, rapidly glancing from the similar-sized figure on the ground to her shiny, pink-cased cell phone, with which she was texting rapidly, presumably to her friends about the crazy kid her father just killed or something like that.
With Becky following him like a puppy dog carrying the equipment case, Ben approached the patient and frowned slightly before putting on his 'You know better' face. "Miss, I'm gonna have to ask you to move away now," he told the girl, "Can you go over by your father for a while?"
"Yeah, okay," the girl murmured and walked off without even glancing up from the glowing screen of her phone. Benjamin resisted the impulse to shake his head and sigh disapprovingly before bending down to perform a full-body scan on the injured child in front of him. Kids these days...
The patient's hair was matted and tangled, with fresh blood intermingled with blood that had been drying for as long as fifteen or so minutes. There were also tears and blood stains in his clothing, which looked like they were poorly-preserved artifacts left over from Colonial-period America or something. After checking the kid's spine for step-downs or abnormal curves, Ben told Becky to kneel down by the patient's feet. Coordinating his movements with Becky's, Ben held the child's neck steady as they rolled him over onto his back in one, smooth motion.
Becky was the first to get a good look at the patient's face, and it took Ben a moment to grasp what had made her blink in a mild mental offset. It was hard to tell while he was looking at the patient upside down, but after a few seconds it was visible, even by the light of the buzzing, patchy yellow streetlights: this was no kid.