LEAP BEFORE YOU LOOK
by ardavenport
- - - Part 1
Johnny finished tying the safety line and tugged hard, testing it.
"Okay!"
The victim, his name was Glen, moaned in pain.
"All right, Glen, we'll be right with you."
He only moaned and nodded back to Roy. Both paramedics edged closer to him at opposite ends on the narrow length of the unfinished floor he had landed on. He had fallen only two floors from a girder two stories above. And miraculously not gone down the other six stories to the street below. He said he hurt his back and the foreman of the construction site had called them.
"All right, you're doing real good." Johnny slowly knelt at his feet.
"Oooooh, if this is good, I'd hate to see what terrible feels like. Ooooooooh."
Johnny and Roy smiled. If he could still keep some humor, he was a lot less likely to panic. Roy looked back behind him and Chet Kelly passed him the back board. Glen moaned, but stayed still.
Roy hefted the back board, ready to pass over one end to his partner so they could slide it under Glen.
Johnny froze.
He blinked. Then slowly looked down to the pavement, in the shadow of the buildings across the street.
"Johnny?" Roy didn't know what was going on. Was something wrong with the safety line? Johnny looked . . . . . scared?
He visibly swallowed.
"Oh, boy."
...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\
"What?"
John Gage stared at the preposterous little man named 'Al', standing before him.
"What are you talking about?" Switching bodies? The future? Time travel?
"Look." Al spread his hands, a cigar clamped between two fingers of his left. "I've told you everything I can. What you need to do now, is help your partner."
Mouth gaping, he stared back. Was this really the future? And did people really dress like that in the future?
He had been with Roy, rescuing a man who had fallen at a construction site. Now he was . . . . here. Where ever that was. A sterile blue room with one door with no handle through which this man had appeared wearing a green plaid jacket, powder blue shirt, metallic gold tie and maroon pinstripe pants. Not even the most derranged disco addict would wear anything like that.
And the worst part . . . . . he wasn't himself. Literally. When he looked into the mirrored surface of the table in the middle of the otherwise empty blue room, he saw someone else's face with lighter brown hair, a sqaure jaw and dimpled chin. Someone else's reflection; a man with brown hair and broad shoulders wearing a tight white spacesuit looking thing. He touched the face; it did not feel like this other person; he still felt like he was in his own body. But everyone else saw him as this 'Sam' person. And anyone who saw 'Sam' back in his own time and place, would just see John Gage. At least, that was what Al said.
"Why do I need to help you? This is crazy!"
It was totally crazy.
Al had told him everything about him. His name, his parents names, his brothers and sister, where he grew up, how long he'd been a fireman, how long he had been a paramedic and partner with Roy.
And Al had told him what was going to happen at a fire that night.
"Of course it's crazy." Al jabbed an accusing finger at him. "But crazy or not, you've got to tell me everything you know, or you and your partner are going to die in a fire tonight."
...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\
"Johnny, is something bothering you?"
No response; he just kept looking out at the parking area at Rampart's emergency entrance.
"Johnny?"
"Hunh?"
Hand on the key in the ignition switch of the squad, Roy looked at his partner.
"Is something bothering you? I mean, you were kind of distracted this morning. And that last rescue . . . . I was just wondering if somethng was bothering you. If you wanted to talk about."
"Ooh, nooo, nooo, I mean, it's nothing. And y'know, I guess you never really get used to climbing up to those high places."
"Well, me and normal people, maybe. But I haven't seen anyone accusing you of being normal lately."
The joke seemed to go nowhere. Johnny just gave him such a nervous smile that Roy knew that something HAD to be bothering him.
"It's not girl trouble again, is it?" Roy really doubted it was that – he thought he knew all of Johnny's dumped-by-his-girlfriend moods – but it was a place to start.
"Oh, no, no, no, not really. I mean, it's . . . I, I really don't want to talk about it right now." He gestured, weakly smiled and he looked . . . nervous. In a way that Roy had never seen before.
There had to be something really serious bothering him.
"You're sure?"
"Yeah, really. I, I just can't talk about it right now."
"Well, okay." Roy shrugged and turned the ignition key. A man was entitled to his privacy and he had plenty bothering him with his mother-in-law visiting his family that week. "But you'll let me know if you change you mind?"
"Yeah –"
Beeep! Beeep! Beeep!
Johnny jumped back in his seat, away from the radio.
**Squad Fifty-One, are you available?**
...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\
"Roooooyyyy!"
Johnny pounded on the mirror table, now displaying a scene next to a backyard pool. Dressed only in swimming trunks, the victim lay on green grass next to a stone patio, oxygen mask on his face. Roy held the biophone receiver; he couldn't hear his partner – his REAL partner – yelling at him from a stark blue room in the future.
"Don't diagnose anything, Sam!" Al fearfully looked up from some hand-held, cheesy plastic toy that blinked and made noises like a cartoon.
Apparently invisible to Roy and the worried family standing around in swimsuits and bathrobes, Al crouched next to Sam, coaching him on what to say.
"The whole paramedic program is new. They haven't worked out any modern protocols yet. You can't give someone an aspirin without calling the hospital for a doctor's permission first."
Roy lowered the reciever. "How do you know that?"
"Uuum, just a guess." Sam lowered his head over the victim's arm.
Grabbing his hair, Johnny grit his teeth. Sam was giving this poor guy an IV!
Johnny had refused to cooperate with Al. His whole story was crazy. They would die in a fire? They were found near the body of a victim who was never identified? How could Al possibly know that? How could anybody know things like that?
So, Al had told him to just watch and see for himself. Whenever Al was with Sam, the man who was replacing him, he could watch what was happening 'in the past' on the mirror table, like a horizontal TV set. But bigger and with a better picture than he had seen.
Was Sam really a doctor like Al said? Is that how he thought that their drowning victim also had cholecystitis? But even if he was a doctor, doctor's could still screw up. And Sam was wearing his clothes, his face, and everyone thought that Sam was him.
Sam finished and taped the IV down. Nothing happened. Roy only glanced at it before looking up at the ambulance crew, coming throught he gate.
"Rooooooyyyyyy!"
...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\ ...oo\\oo\\oo\\
His partner had been distracted and moody all morning. Roy had ignored it. Then he had asked about it. Johnny didn't want to talk about it. But now this . . . .
Dr. Joe Early, Nurse Dixie McCall and Roy DeSoto watched Johnny go back down the hall of Rampart's Emergency Department. Nurse Adell Thornburgh just shurgged her slender shoulders and moved on. She had stopped by to tell Johnny that she wasn't working on Saturday after all.
He had nodded nervously and told her that was nice. Then he excused himself to go back to wait in the squad.
Johnny? Pass up a chance at a date with a pretty nurse?
Eyes wide, Dixie looked at the two men. "What's gotten into him?"
Early pursed his lips. "Looks like he's kind of gone off his feed. What's eating, Johnny?"
Roy shook his head. "I don't know." He picked up the re-stocked drug box. "But I'm going to find out.
- - - End Part 1