JOHN GAGE'S GREATEST HITS
by ardavenport
- - - Part 1
The door clicked open. A soft sound, but John instantly woke from his doze.
Light intruded on the darkened room. Unmoving, he opened his eyes. There was motion, a dark figure coming in from the light outside. A flash of light on a white lab coat. Quiet footsteps on the carpeted floor.
He was in Rampart.
John tensed. What happened?
The desk light flicked on. Papers riffled. John turned his head. Roy was asleep under a hospital blanket on the cot next to him.
Oh.
John closed his eyes.
He was in Rampart. But he was not IN Rampart.
What a day.
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The alarm toned for Station Fifty-One just after 0400. A fire at the junkyard. But the report of a man injured did not prove true. It had been a cold night and the transients who had set the fire for warmth had fled. If any had been injured, they had not stayed to get help.
It wasn't a big fire, but there was a lot of trash and tires and plastic and things that could smolder for a long time and it kept Station Fifty-One and Station Eighty-Five busy overhauling the mess for a couple of hours before the Captains were satisfied it was out. They left with someone from headquarters talking to the irate owner of the junkyard about fire codes. It was past sunrise by the time the engine and squad got back to Station Fifty-One.
There was no point in going back to bed; it was past morning call. So, Captain Stanley started a pot of coffee while his unshaven men slouched in the chairs around the kitchen table. They were all still in their boots, canvas pants, suspenders and white undershirts. Johnny talked about going out to get donuts before B-shift came in. But Roy did not want to get up and if they were to make a donut run they would have to go together in the squad in case they got another call before the end of their shift.
Rrrrrrrrr-rrrrrruuuurrrrrrrrr!
The weariness drained from everyone's expression. The empty coffee cups on the counter rattled.
RRRRRRRrrrrrUUUuurrruuuu-RRRrrruuuUUUURRRR-RrrrrrrrrUUUUurrrrrRRRRR! !
Stanley pushed his chair back so fast it tipped over backwards behind him. "Everyone down!"
RRRRRR-RRrrrrrrrrUUUUUURRRRR! ! !
They all dove under the table. The room trembled around them.
-Rrrrr-! !
On hands and knees among the table legs, they all looked upward as if the bottom of the tabletop had a clue about what would happen next.
Rrrrrrrr-rrruuuuurrrrr-rrrrr-rrrruuurrrrRRR-Rrrrrruuurrrr!
"Well, that wasn't so bad." Kelly started to back out.
"Wait!" The Captain's order stopped him.
-RRRRRUUUUUURRRRRRRR-RUUUURRR! ! ! ! !
They all ducked their heads down. Dishes crashed and shattered on the floor that rolled under them. Everything around them shifted.
RRRRRRR-RRRUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRUURRR-RRRRRUUUURRRRRR! ! ! ! ! !
The table bounced, the two halves separating. Roy, Marco and Mike grabbed table legs that struggled to get away from them.
RRRRRRrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuRRRR-RRRrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuurrrr-rrrrr-rrrruuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrr! !
The room stabilized, the floor becoming solid again.
Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrruuuuurrr-rrrrrrrrrruuuuurrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
Silence.
The firemen watched Stanley who listened carefully, eyes upward.
"Okay."
They all backed out from under the table.
The overhead lights had gone off, but the room's wide windows let everyone clearly see the damage. The cupboards had popped open and broken dishes and glasses littered the counter, floor and sink. Everything else in the room was a askew, the sofa no longer against the wall, the bulletin boards crooked, papers and wreckage on the floor. The TV set half-perched on the shelf by the far wall. But otherwise, the station looked intact. Kelly clicked the light switch and stated the obvious.
"Power's out, Cap."
Stanley clapped his hands together. "Right. I'll call headquarters and find out what's going on. Kelly, you and Lopez crank the bay doors open, front and back. Stoker, check the outside of the building, and look for smoke from any of the buildings around here, especially that refinery across the street. Gage, get on the biophone to Rampart. DeSoto, call your wife, then join Mike outside."
Marco paused on his way out with Chet. "Uh, Cap?"
"Married men first. You can all call your families after we secure the station. Now move!"
They ran.
As Johnny opened the squad compartment, he wondered if the phones were working. But he could hear Stanley's voice in his office, so at least that line was live. He hefted the biophone case onto the hood of the squad. They had charged it the night before and hadn't needed it for their last run, so the battery was good. He attached the aerial.
"Rampart this is Squad Fifty-One, how do you read?"
Head bent over the reciever, he waited.
"Rampart this is Squad Fifty-One, how do you read?"
A male voice answered. "Fifty-One, this is Rampart."
"Rampart, we've had an earthquake here at the station. What is your status?"
"Same here. We're still assessing our situation, but we don't seem to have any significant structural damage. I think you should count on a lot of radio traffic for the next few days."
"Ten-Four, Rampart. Station Fifty-One out."
Light spilled into the apparatus bay as the metal garage doors jerkily rose, the chains pulled by Chet and Marco. Johnny stowed the biophone and went to Stanley's office to report. The Captain agreed that things would be busy.
"Headquarters wasn't hit too bad. We're supposed to sit tight here until they call." They left the office and went to help Chet and Marco with the rear doors. Marco asked Stanley how his wife was. She was fine, the house was fine, except for no power and a shattered cabinet of figurines and china.
Roy and Mike jogged around the rear corner from the driveway.
"Station looks good, Cap." Mike pointed toward the front. "Don't see any smoke either."
Stanley nodded. "How's your family, Roy?"
"The earthquake got'em out of bed; the kids are crying, but it didn't look like there was much broken. And they still have power."
Chet lifted his hands. "Like I said, guess it wasn't still bad."
"Power's still out. Headquarters wants us on standby until they call on the office line. Everyone inside and call your families while you can."
Marco and Chet raced to the phone with the others following.
Johnny let Mike go before him since his aunt lived north of the county and very likely hadn't been affected by the earthquake. Everyone else was out of state; she would call them for him. While Marco spoke rapid-fire Spanish on the phone, he went to get a broom and trash can to start on the wreckage in the kitchen. How bad had the earthquake been? It had been scary enough, but Station Fifty-One was relatively new and built with earthquakes in mind. There were a lot of old brick buildings in their area. The big metal trash can banged on the floor and he put the broom aside to pick out a few unbroken coffee cups from the mess.
"John!" Mike held up the receiver. He put the cups aside and handed off the broom to Chet. But after he dialed the phone kept ringing with no answer. Looking at his watch, Johnny knew his aunt wouldn't be out of bed this early yet.
"Heads up!" Stanley came into the dayroom. "We've got a collapsed building at a construction site on Fremont. Let's go!"
Johnny reluctantly hung up and ran for the squad.
In the driver's seat, Roy handed him a piece of paper with the address on it. Less than a mile from the station. Roy started the engine and the squad moved out into the morning light, siren blaring, Mike driving the engine right behind.
When they drove up, Johnny saw that it wasn't exactly a construction site. It was a destruction site for a wooden two-story building that was being torn down. A man in a yellow hard hat ran out to meet them.
"One of my men's trapped in the basement! We just started work when it happened!"
Captain Stanley climbed down from the cab of the engine. "What happened to him?"
"He fell right through the floor when the earthquake hit."
"Is he conscious? Can he talk?" In turnout coat and helmet, Johnny came up to them with Roy.
The square-jawed man in the hard hat turned to him. "Yeah. But he says he's hurt and he can't move. There's only a few of us here to salvage the woodwork from this place before they tear it down next week." He jabbed a thumb at two other men in jeans, jackets and hard hats. "And two of them have already left to go check on their families."
Roy frowned. "Could be a back injury."
Stanley agreed. "Yeah. Can you show us where it is?"
The foreman, his name was Floyd Hartman, took them inside. It was stripped down to wood frame, old-fashioned plaster walls and naked wiring. The building seemed to have been a nightclub or bar with a large open area. They cautiously approached the ragged edge of the hole by a wall. The remaining floorboards creaked under their boots.
Hartman called out. "Sid! I got the Fire Department to help get you out!"
Johnny called out. "Sid! Sid, how bad are you hurt? Can you move at all?"
The voice from below sounded strong but strained. "I can move. But I fell on something. I'm pinned down here. I won't be able to get up on my own."
They couldn't safely get close enough to the edge for even Hartman's flashlight beam to see down into the darkness to Sid. Stanley squinted around at the darkened space, light glaring in from a few small windows empty of glass. "Are there any stairs down there?"
"We already took'em down; we were finished down there. But there's a trap door and a ladder. This place used to have a speakeasy down there during prohibition. But part of a wall fell in and the three of us couldn't move it."
Stanley called out that help was coming.
Hard hat pointed down as he picked his way past broken boards and a sawhorse to a rear corridor, Hartman complained as much to himself as to them. "I can't blame Stan and Greg for wanting to go help their families first. But I wonder if they would have run off so fast if it was anyone but Sid down there. As long as any man shows up on time and does a hard day's work, he's just as much a part of my crew as the next guy. I don't care how long a man's hair is."
Johnny ignored the odd glare that Hartman gave him. They could climb down the ladder and this end of the building felt a lot more stable, but they didn't get very far before Hartman's flashlight showed them the collapsed wall.
Looking up, Stanley sized up the obstruction. "Okay, this looks like our best bet. This isn't a load bearing wall so we should be able to cut through it." They went back up to get the equipment, K-12 saw, pry bars, axes. Hartman and his men helped clear the wreckage as they cut through it. Under any other conditions Captain Stanley would never have permitted civilians in such a dangerous area, but the rules were different for an earthquake. They couldn't expect help from another engine. Mike Stoker had been monitoring the radio. All shifts were being called in; there was more damage south of them, a couple of older collapsed buildings, gas fires, road damage and traffic accidents.
There was a large dusty open space beyond the collapsed wall.
Hartman called out first. "Sid!"
"Here!" The voice came from behind a barrier of fallen timbers, wall fragments and boards. They attacked that.
Johnny pried away a last board that finally let them see the victim in the light from the hole above. He had fallen on his back on a raised platform.
"Sid, are you still with us?"
"I am here."
His voice was remarkably strong considering his condition. A bloody rod protruded from one thigh.
The others helped clear a path before Stanley ordered the others out.
"All right I don't want any more people down here that don't have to be in case of aftershocks!" They reluctantly left, Hartman voicing his support for his injured workman while Roy and Johnny climbed to him.
"How're you doing?" Roy put down the drug box and the flashlight. Light came in from above through the open hole. Johnny opened the trauma box. They didn't think they would get any reception on the biophone below ground, so Captain Stanley stood by with it up above.
"I don't think I'm bleeding too badly. I don't think I would have survived this long if I were." Sid did not move at all when he spoke. His dark blue eyes were steady, surprisingly calm and they responded normally to Roy's penlight. He had a large and slightly crooked nose, but it was obviously an old injury.
He gasped when Roy tried to slide the BP cuff around his upper arm. Roy immediately stopped.
"I am impaled. There are nails under me."
Both paramedics carefully surveyed the victim with their flashlights.
"Can you tell us where?" Johnny winced at the half a foot of rod sticking up from Sid's leg, a dark circle of blood on the jeans around the base. There wasn't nearly as much blood as there could have been, but Johnny couldn't be sure how much was under him. It didn't look like much.
"My left hand. My right wrist, my arms, my right shoulder, I think, one by my neck. My right hip, though I don't think it went in very far. I will choose to ignore the symbolism of their placement." He licked his lips, his voice more strained. He spoke with a mild, educated English accent.
Roy didn't say anything to that and Johnny stayed tight-lipped. Sid had landed with his arms spread out from him, now impaled in several places including wrists and hands. Sid also had a trimmed beard and long straight, slightly graying brown hair spread out around his head.
They couldn't just pull him off the nails because of the risk of causing more damage and he would still be pinned by the rod. They called up for Chet to come down with the bolt cutters and a stokes.
"We're going to have someone down here right away to get you out of this. Did you hit your head at all?"
"No."
"How's your back? Did you hurt your back? Can you move your feet?" Johnny kept his eyes on Sid's work boots. Both of them shifted a little bit.
"I can move them, but it hurts much less if I stay still." The injured man swallowed, eyes upward toward the hole he had fallen through. "In my leg. Surprising how much the rest of your body moves when you move just one little part of it." He swallowed again, breathing a little faster. "I don't feel any pain in my back. I don't think I'm injured there."
"Okay." Afraid to cause him more pain, Roy tried to touch him as little as possible as he used the flashlight to help him find all the places with nails under him.
Sid kept absolutely still, only his eyes turned toward Roy. There were no nails in his upper right arm.
"Now I'm going to have to take your blood pressure. It's probably going to hurt a bit." Roy could not think of any method that would not hurt. "So, I just want you to relax and keep as still as you can."
Sid closed his eyes.
"Hey, Sid, Sid?" Roy touched his face.
"Sid?" Johnny leaned toward him, too.
Sid's eyes snapped open, his expression surprised.
"You told me to relax." His eyes flicked from one to the other of them, his head still perfectly still.
Roy drew back a little. "Well, um, yeah. That's good. But keep your eyes open so we know you're okay."
"Aaah." He blinked and licked his lips. "I will relax with my eyes open then."
Roy nodded at Johnny, who shrugged. He took a pair of scissors from his belt pouch and cut away the khaki work shirt from the arm and carefully slid the BP cuff around it.
"Hey!"
Johnny turned to see Chet Kelly coming in turnout coat and helmet with the bolt cutters. His eyes widened when he saw the rod sticking up out of Sid's leg, but he did not hesitate. He crouched down next to Johnny and set the stokes down beside them.
"Where do you need these?" He held up the bolt cutters.
"Hang on a minute. Cap! Have you got Rampart!" Johnny called upward.
"Yeah! I got Rampart! But they're jammed! They need you to make it quick!"
"We've got a male victim! Approximately forty-five years old!" Roy shouted up the vital signs and description of the injuries. They could just hear Stanley's voice relaying the facts to Rampart.
"Alright, when you get him free, they want you to start an IV, D5W with five milligrams MS and transport as soon as possible!"
"Ten-four! Do we have an ETA for the ambulance?"
"Negative!"
Roy looked down at his partner, his victim. They could get him out, but they only had temporary help for him, not the medical attention he needed.
"Okay. Chet go over there." Johnny pointed and Chet moved, half crouching, behind Sid's left arm; there wasn't enough room to stand. "He's got nails under him. Roy and I are going to hold him and you're going to slide the bolt cutters in and cut them off."
"Okay." Chet nodded.
Roy almost rested his hand on Sid's shoulder and then thought better of it. "I'm sorry. We can't give you anything for the pain. We need to get you out of here first."
"I can wait." Sid spoke in a loud whisper, still keeping completely still.
"All right." Johnny took his gloves off and, as carefully as he could, lifted Sid's bloody left hand just enough so Chet could slide the cutters in and pull the handles in just so they rested on either side of the nail. Chet pushed the handles in.
Clik!
Roy saw Sid gasp and blink; his fingers twitched, but otherwise he didn't move. Chet and Johnny moved on to the next one under his forearm.
Clik!
Sid's chest rose and fell. A film of dust drifted down through the light from above.
Clik! Clik!
"You're doing real good, Sid. You're doing real good." Johnny's fingers found the nail under his shoulder and Chet moved the cutters in.
Clik!
"I guess three years in a Tibetan monastery has paid off after all." Sid took a deep breath. He was pale and sweating. Roy lined up the next nail on Sid's arm, just below the elbow and Chet leaned forward with the cutters.
Rrrrrrr-rrrrrrrruurrruurrrrruurrrrr-rrrrruurrrrrrr!
Dust cascaded down from above.
"Aftershock!" Roy shouted and threw himself over Sid's chest.
RRRrrrrrrrr-rrruuuuuurrr-rrrrr-rrrruuurrrrRRR-Rrrrrruurrrrrrr!
Johnny threw himself over his wounded leg while Chet huddled over Sid's head.
RRRRRRrrruuUURRRR-RRRrrrrrrruuurRRR-RRRrrr-rrruuurrrrrrRRRRrr! !
Timbers cracked and fell to the shuddering ground. Men's voices shouted from above.
RRFFrrrrrrrr-rrruuuurrr-rrrrr-rrrruurrrr-rrrruurrrrrrr!
rrrrrrrruuurrrrrr-rrr-rrrrrrr-rrrrrr-rrrrruurrrr-rrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrrr.
rrrrrrrrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrrrrr-rrrrr-rrrrrr.
Johnny cautiously peeked up from under the rim of his fire helmet.
"Roy!"
A wooden beam had fallen over his shoulders. Johnny climbed over Sid's legs. Chet was already grabbing the other end. They lifted it and threw it away. It didn't feel too heavy.
"Roy?"
He looked up from under his helmet and sat up on his own.
"I'm okay. It wasn't bad." He looked like he didn't know what to do with his hands.
"Come on." Johnny grabbed his turnout coat, forcing Roy to look at him. "Roy, come on. Let me check you out."
Panting, Roy sat still for him. Behind him, Chet bent over Sid.
"Hey, pal, are you okay?"
"Yes. Thank-you." Chet kept him talking while Johnny looked for damage.
"Okay, did it just get you on your shoulders? Did it hit your helmet at all? Any nails?" Johnny couldn't see any obvious damage and Roy didn't have any trouble holding his arms out, but he was sure there was a bruise there.
"We gotta get out of here." Roy let his arms down, his blue eyes full of worry.
Johnny agreed. "You're telling me." He got up and moved around Roy.
"Hey! You guys still down there?" Captain Stanley called from above. Johnny answered.
"Yeah!" He coughed, blinked in the thin haze of dust still in the air.
"Well, get out of there! This building isn't looking too good!"
"We've almost got him ready to move! We'll need a rope to get him up on the stokes!"
Chet already had the bolt cutters ready for the last two nails in Sid's arm.
Clik! Clik!
Chet and Johnny repositioned themselves to get the last nail under Sid's body. Then finally the rod while Roy unwrapped the blanket and spread it out in the stokes.
Clak!
"Okay, one more." Johnny held onto the protruding rod and Chet clipped it off.
Clak!
"Okay." Johnny moved to lift Sid's legs. Roy reached across the stokes under his middle.
Chet carefully put his arms under his shoulders. He was taller than he looked, head to foot filling the length of the stokes. They wrapped the yellow plastic over him. Roy tightened the straps.
"We're almost there. You're going to be fine."
Sid's eyes, clear and steady, looked back at Roy. "I know."
That subtle smile transfixed Roy for a second, a strange shared confidence between rescuer and victim that, yes, they would both be fine. Then Johnny spoke, the moment passing.
"Roy, get the equipment."
Johnny took the head, Chet the feet. Roy led with the trauma and drug boxes. They picked their way over new debris, but none of it blocked their way as they climbed back through the hole in the collapsed wall.
"Over here!" Marco's head appeared through the opening. The rope was already hanging down for them. They secured it to the stokes and Lopez, Stoker and the Captain pulled him up. Johnny waited for Roy and Chet to climb up first. Roy didn't seem to have any trouble on the ladder.
Finally they were all up and running out of the building, Johnny and Chet carrying the medical boxes. With his boss, Hartman, standing by and promising to visit him in the hospital, they treated Sid on the sidewalk, covered his wounds, started the IV. Sid started looking better almost immediately. In fact, he smiled, his face dirty, dust lightened his hair and beard. Johnny knelt by him.
"Are you okay?"
"A smoggy Los Angeles sky looks very good right now. Don't you think?"
"Yeah." Johnny squinted up at the cloudless blue sky, the sun. "It sure does."
"Have we got an ETA on the ambulance, Cap?" Roy squinted up at Stanley who shook his head.
"There aren't any ambulances available. We're going to have to take him in on the engine."
Johnny stood. "Cap?"
"We're going to drop you off with him. You're going to be on standby at Rampart until further notice. Resupply the squad when we get there, then we're going to take it back to the station with us and meed B-shift there."
Roy finished taping a last Kurlex pad over Sid's wrist. "How bad is it?"
"There are some collapsed buildings. Six dead so far. Otherwise. . . . well, it could have been a lot worse. Got him ready to go?'
They nodded. They all helped lift the stokes up onto the bed of hoses on the engine. Roy and Johnny rode there with Sid. Lopez took the squad in.
With the sirens blaring, sitting high on the back of the engine, they looked at the passing streets as they rode in. There weren't many cars out, but some. No people. Traffic lights were out in places. But the buildings and most things looked terribly ordinary. Whatever might have collapsed was somewhere else.
The engine turned onto the familiar street to Rampart General Hospital, the tall building rising higher as they approached. But when Mike got the big fire engine to the underpass of the building that led to the emergency entrance a sheriff's deputy waved them to the side. He met them as they unloaded Sid; Johnny climbed down carefully, holding the IV bag up.
"You've got to carry him over there." The deputy pointed to the underpass. "They're taking them in the parking lot."
"All right, everyone move it." Following their captain's instructions, they jogged through the underpass, Gage, Stoker, Kelly and Lopez carrying the stokes, Stanley and DeSoto following. People in white uniforms grouped around the injured along the perimeter of the parking lot. Two of them ran up to them. Dr. Morton and a nurse.
"All right, what you have you got?"
Johnny gave him a quick run-down. He certainly thought that Sid deserved to go to the head of the triage line, but that depended on what other injuries had come in already. It was Morton's call. And the no-nonsense doctor could be an unforgiving judge. The watchful nurse wrote notes in a chart behind him.
Silently watching, Sid actually looked a little bemused as Morton shined his pen light into his eyes, pulled out the blanket, looked at the impaled leg.
"All right, get him inside. He's going to have to go to surgery." He scrawled his signature on the chart and dumped it on Sid's middle.
Johnny heard the inevitable complaints called out by someone as they went in. "Hey, I was here first! Why's he going in . . . ?"
Dixie McCall directed traffic at the intersection of hallways just inside the entrance. Even at it's worst, they had never seen Rampart so busy. Gurneys and patients in the hallway, all the chairs in the waiting area full, people standing at the desk. Nurses, orderlies, doctors, an army in white in the halls, tackling the crisis one patient at a time. Johnny looked for an empty gurney so the could send Chet and Marco back to the engine, but there were none. Roy hurried down the hall with the drug and trauma boxes to restock them.
Snatching the chart Stanley handed her, Dixie frowned over it.
"All right, Kel can take him; he should be almost done with what he's got now. He's going to need x-rays first. We've got it set up in Two." She wrote down instructions on the chart. "Tell Harry, you can go ahead of a couple broken arms. Can you stay with him?"
Johnny opened his mouth, but Captain Stanley answered first. "Gage and DeSoto are assigned to Rampart for now. The other shift is taking the squad."
"Good." She pointed at Johnny. "You guys are working for me now. Get him into Two." She handed the chart back. "And get him to fill out the personal information on this while you're at it."
After Johnny pointed where it was, Captain Stanley led the way through the crowded hall. As soon as an orderly pushed out a wheelchair and a woman with a splinted leg they went in. They unloaded Sid from the stokes onto the exam table while Harry, the x-ray technician, read Dixie's instructions on the chart.
"They're gonna take good care you, Sid. It's been a real honor meeting you, pal." Chet looked like he wanted to shake Sid's hand, but that was impossible. Sid gave him a smile.
"I am honored to have been rescued by you, all of you."
"Just doing our job." Captain Stanley herded his men out.
A nurse's aide came in to pick up the plates from the last patient and Harry handed Johnny the chart back and started writing something down for her to take to the lab. Johnny looked down at the patient form on the metal clipboard in his hand.
He reached inside his turnout coat for the pen from his shirt pocket and remembered that he just had his t-shirt on. He looked around, but the only pen he saw was the one Harry was using.
Sid cleared his throat. "Aaah, my right front pocket."
"Hmm?" Oh." Johnny unbuttoned the pocket. His fingers found two pens inside; he took one, a plain black Bic. "Thanks." He looked at the first line. "Uh, Sid, is it Sidney?"
"No." He sighed. "It's actually Sedgwick. Sedgwick Ingrahm Dalrymple. It is a family name. But I prefer 'Sid'.
Johnny had to ask him how to spell it.
- - - End Part 1