Set around Shadowboxing. Peter, Hesam, Emma.
Outset: I never got a satisfying answer why Hesam stopped being resentful at Peter for degrading him to chauffeur. Add the fact that I always wanted to explore Peter's motives to turn away from his maniac redemption rampage, AND that I always wanted to know how a girl in a tiara and a pink tutu ended up unconscious in a hospital storage room.
Well, scratch that last bit. But Megan appears. Ish. :D
Warning: An enormous amount of medical stuff. I've been doing my homework, folks. Please let me know if this is too much. :D I can't promise you I'll stop if it is, however.
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Partners and Chauffeurs
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"Dispatch, this is Oh-five-nine; we're clear."
"Five-nine, section two. Report to Officer O'Keefe. On a one." The dispatcher's voice was clipped, precise. There was no room for banter today. Or for mistakes.
"O'Keefe, section two, on a one," Hesam repeated. "We're on our way. – Again," he added with a glance at Peter, who was still strapping in as Hesam pulled out of the ambulance bay, on their way back to the crash site for the fifth time that day.
Since the extent of the disaster was still not fully known and people were still being extracted from the wrecks of two collided trains, NYPD dispatch had transferred control of the rescue operations to a task force on scene, which oversaw the rescue works and assigned ambulances where they were needed most. Peter hit the lights and sirens as they pulled out into the street.
They had done these past four calls in less than two hours. Hesam, who had more routine with the paperwork than Peter did, had just made quick notes on the run forms while Peter had sat down to catch his breath. Together, they had restocked and cleaned the back of the ambulance, and they'd been out again minutes later.
"You sure you're OK?" Hesam asked Peter with another look at him.
"Yeah," Peter said, vaguely gesturing ahead as if to direct his partner's attention away from him and back to the road. "Just tired. I'm fine."
Earlier that morning, Peter had been nothing but elated. Over the past months, he'd tried to be a better paramedic using super strength, then super speed; now, his newly acquired healing ability enabled him to save lives, heal injuries, take away pain much less conspicuously. He could use just enough of it to make a patient pull through, to make sure they weren't permanently disabled, to make them better.
Then it had failed him for the first time. And after healing their last patient's broken spine, and the man's burns in the hospital, he had nearly blacked out. Clearly, it hadn't been designed for permanent use.
They arrived on scene again thirteen minutes later, and were sent by an overtaxed-looking officer O'Keefe to one of the derailed subway cars, where the fire department had very recently succeeded in extracting several more people from the wreckage. Peter's heart sank as he saw several motionless forms covered completely by blankets. Police and fire fighters were everywhere, between them EMTs of services from all over New York City, and several people who had made it from the wreck on their own with light or no injuries. Some of them were looking for friends and family. Peter saw a young woman with a cut on her forehead staggering around, herding a couple of fancifully dressed up kids, frantically looking around and shouting for someone named Megan.
The FDNY officer showed them to a boy of fifteen or sixteen lying on a backboard on the ground. Two FDNY EMTs were sitting next to him, ventilating him with an ambu-bag. Peter could see some injuries to his legs, none of them serious enough to be truly dangerous; this suggested internal, probably spinal, injuries.
When they reached the group, Hesam had already pulled the laryngoscope from the airway kit he was carrying, and Peter hurriedly set down the long board to help. The boy's face was slightly bluish.
"Couldn't find a pulse," one of the EMTs told Hesam as she moved aside, and the paramedic sat down by the boy's head to intubate. Peter couldn't feel a pulse either as he laid his hand against the patient's throat. He watched Hesam sinking the laryngoscope into the boy's mouth to move the tongue aside and get the tube in between his vocal chords into the trachea.
"You're in," he told Hesam at once when he felt the tube pass under his fingers. He looked around for the second EMT, the one with the ambu-bag, and saw that the man had already disconnected the mask from it and was holding the bag out to Peter. He nodded his thanks, and connected the end of the endotracheal tube to the ambu-bag.
"Bag him," Hesam told him, and listened for the lung sounds as Peter gave the ambu-bag a squeeze, pumping air into the patient's lungs. Peter saw both sides of the chest rise, confirming that the tube was in the right place.
Hesam looked at Peter. "We'll bag and drag. He needs a surgeon at once."
Bagging and dragging referred to putting a patient on oxygen and then getting him to the hospital as quickly as possible (as opposed to "stay and play", where you stabilized a patient on scene), although the term had at first alienated Peter somewhat, reminding him of Primatech nomenclature. He nodded, handed the bag back to the male EMT, and made sure the patient was strapped securely to the backboard, immobilizing his spine to prevent further injury. As Peter taped the boy's forehead into place, he took a moment to lay his hand against the patient's cheek, closed his eyes, and concentrated.
There was a moment of vertigo as he swayed, catching himself just in time before he fell across the patient, and Peter knew without looking that it hadn't worked. It had been the same on their last call. The more he used it, the more uncertain this ability got.
He saw the female EMT give him a concerned look, but neither her partner nor Hesam seemed to have noticed. He drew a shaky hand across his face, and gave her a quick nod to indicate he was all right.
"We'll take him out," he heard Hesam tell the other two EMTs, and got to his feet to take the top end.
At least, that was the plan.
As Peter rose, suddenly everything went black, and he found himself crouching on the ground again, silvery little dots filling his field of vision, slowly receding to its edges. The female EMT had moved in quickly and gripped his arm to steady him. She was a sturdy little woman with a blond ponytail and a freckled face, who seemed a lot stronger than he had given her credit for.
"Easy," she said, giving him a searching look. "You OK?"
"Long day," Peter managed by way of explanation. "And too little breakfast." He wanted nothing more than to stand up quickly and get to the truck with Hesam and their patient, to try again and heal the boy en route to the hospital – the same way he had done with the last – but he didn't trust himself to stand just yet. He was glad that he hadn't even managed to lift the board, or else he might have dropped their patient.
Hesam got around the board and crouched down in front of Peter. "Are you sure you should be out here?" he asked, concerned. "I thought you didn't look too good while we brought the last one in."
"Positive," Peter said. "Gimme ten seconds, OK?"
"I'll take the board," the other EMT now offered, and Hesam nodded his consent. Together, the two men lifted the board and quickly carried it back to where the ambulance was parked.
The woman had stayed with Peter, and held him back when he made to get up immediately after the other two had left. "That wasn't ten seconds," she told him with a slight smile.
He half-heartedly returned the smile, counted to five, and then got up with the EMT's help. The silvery dots were back, but they stayed at the edge of his field of vision, receding fast. "I'm OK," he told her as he started after Hesam. "I'm just tired."
He managed not to stagger on his way to the truck, which was quite a feat on the uneven ground. The EMT was a few steps behind him, not trying to support him, but not letting him go alone either. He still felt rather shaky and sweaty, and supposed he looked the part.
With the other EMT's help, Hesam had secured the board on the stretcher and put the patient on the monitor by the time Peter arrived. He took one look at Peter and seemed to contemplate their options.
"Can I help?" the woman asked, from behind Peter.
"Yeah," Hesam said without hesitation. "You can get in front and drive."
"Sure," she said.
Peter realised there was no way for him to turn things around, but he gave it a try. "I can handle this," he told Hesam. "Let me stay in back."
Hesam looked at him under raised eyebrows. "Believe me, Peter, you can't," he said. "And believe it or not, I am perfectly qualified to handle this." The edge in his voice was subtle, but eloquent enough to convey what he didn't say – more qualified than you are.
Peter bit back everything else he could have said, and just nodded.
"You want me in the back with you?" he asked.
"I can handle this. Just look at you. I don't even think you could get in an IV in that state." Hesam's voice was back to normal, matter-of-fact, and Peter had to concede that he was probably right. "But yeah, get in back."
He helped Hesam to put their patient on the oxygen outlet so they wouldn't need anyone bagging, but let Hesam do the IV. The woman – who had introduced herself as Ginny – climbed in the driver's seat, and Peter, still slightly wobbly, sat down on the bench opposite the stretcher. Ginny started the engine and patched to the hospital, to tell them they were coming, and tell dispatch they'd cleared the scene.
After just two minutes, their patient went into v-fib, the uncoordinated contractions of the heart that often preceded a cardiac arrest.
"Peter," Hesam said, already reaching for the defibrillator pads. "I need you to get to the biotech case, and pull up a milligram of epi." He set the pads to the boy's chest. "Get clear."
He'd started at 200 Joules; the kid jerked, but the rhythm didn't change.
Peter pulled up the epinephrine, knowing that this might be his last chance to somehow try and heal the boy, but there was no way for him to touch him now.
Hesam waited for a couple of seconds, watching the squiggly line on the monitor, and then, with a look at Peter, shocked the patient at 300 Joules.
The pattern on the monitor levelled out to a flat line.
"Epi," Hesam told Peter, his voice tight, but Peter was already pushing the drug through the IV.
Nothing changed.
Peter tore his eyes away from the monitor and told Ginny through the hatch, "Patch to Mercy Heights to tell them we're coming in with a working code." He looked back at the pale boy, whose skin was turning slightly blue, while Hesam started CPR. Peter remembered what Noah had told him – that Jeremy's ability stopped at bringing someone back from the dead. What was the ability's definition of dead? Was it a flat line on a monitor? Was it six inches of flat line on the strip? How far had he been gone when Jeremy had healed a hole in his chest? He definitely couldn't remember.
"Atropine?" he asked Hesam after two minutes had passed.
Hesam gave a jerky nod and hung the paddles back against their attachments at the monitor, to have his hands free for CPR. In asystole, it was no use shocking the patient; an inactive heart didn't respond to electricity. The only thing that might restart it now was the drugs.
Peter got out the atropine, but just then, Ginny turned a tight corner, and the ambulance gave a lurch. Peter managed to catch himself against the cabinet behind the stretcher, but dropped the vial.
"Sorry!" Ginny called back.
The vial was rolling across the floor, and as Hesam bent to pick it up, Peter took what he knew to be his last chance. He closed his hand around the boy's wrist, and willed the heart to resume beating, the injuries to heal.
The ambulance gave another lurch, and Peter was thrown back again, reeling from another moment of light-headedness. The boy was unchanged, asystole on the monitor. Peter didn't know why the ability hadn't worked – because he'd been interrupted by the ambulance jumping, because he'd overused the gift, because he hadn't known where exactly the boy was injured so he couldn't picture him healing, or because the boy was already dead – it hardly mattered.
Hesam straightened, uncapped the ampoule, and pushed the atropine through, while nodding at Peter to continue CPR.
They arrived at the hospital two minutes later, still doing CPR although nothing had changed on the monitor. Hesam gave the report to the triage nurse, and Peter staggered alongside the stretcher into the crowded trauma room. It was so crowded that they even forgot to send him out.
The doctors worked the boy for another twenty minutes before they finally called him.
Numbly, Peter turned to go, nearly running into Hesam who, too, had stood near the trauma room doors.
"We did all we could," Hesam said quietly.
You did, Peter thought bitterly. I didn't.
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(to be concluded)