Y is for Yell

"Hey! Anyone!"

He'd been yelling so much that his throat hurt. Giving up for the moment, Mike sat shivering, half covered in the pile of mud. No, not mud. Glop. At least that's what Kim, Roy's daughter, had called a similar mess when they'd come across it during a picnic that A-Shift had held at the park.

For some reason that day, Kim had decided that she was going to stick to Mike like glue - probably because Johnny had brought a date (that Kim declared to have 'fish lips') and Chet had been on cooking duty at the grill with Marco. Not that Mike had minded. Kim was a great source of blackmail material on Johnny. Not that Mike would ever be likely to use it, but it was still funny and, if Johnny happened to get on his nerves (such as leaving handprints on Big Red when he wasn't watching what he was doing), a tidbit or two dropped in Chet's ear normally did the trick. Even better, he got the paybacks without any future paybacks coming his way. Keeping the prank wars strictly between Johnny and Chet suited Mike just fine.

Kim's definition of glop was stuff that would have been mud if there was more water mixed in. Glop was thick and sticky and slippery. Yes – this stuff was definitely glop. And he was currently having a hard time trying to keep Chet's head free of it. Mike was just grateful that Chet had landed on his back. If the Irishman had landed face first in this mess, there would be a good chance he'd have already been dead because Mike doubted he would have been able to clear the glop off of Chet's face. Of course, if the guys didn't find them soon, it might not make any difference.

This entire run had been bad news from the start. The home owner was doing his own renovation work – none of which seemed to be legal. No signed plans. No construction permits. No building permits. They discovered one of his 'improvements' very quickly. He had apparently been working on installing a sprinkler system, but covered the 'unsightly' holes with blocks of sod until he could get around to completing the project. Marco had stepped on what looked like solid ground, but it had caved beneath his foot and he'd twisted his ankle badly.

Which was how Captain Stanley ended up taking over the engineer functions on Big Red while Mike went in with Chet on the hose to take care of a fire that Mike would have been willing to guess had been started by non-code electrical wiring. The paramedic team was already busy – Roy with Marco and Johnny with the 'do-it-yourself' home owner, who was suffering from some first-degree burns as well as smoke inhalation.

It shouldn't have taken too long to put out the fire. It hadn't spread very far and the weather was cooperating for once. They should have had it under control in just a few more minutes when he'd noticed that Chet had stopped moving. Mike didn't work the hose often enough with Chet for that to mean anything to him, so the hesitation of the man in front of him didn't set off any alarm bells. Not that realizing that something was feeling wrong to Chet would have really helped either of them when the explosion went off somewhere underneath and behind them just a few seconds later. The force had sent them both both flying, tumbling and finally sliding, only to land in this – glop.

Pieces of house had gone everywhere – one piece had struck Chet's helmet hard enough to leave a dent and was the reason for his current state of unconsciousness. There was no doubt in Mike's mind that the helmet had been the only thing between the lineman and death when he considered how much force those helmets could take.

Mike was pretty sure his right leg might be fractured because even attempting to move it sent a bolt of pain into his brain. He didn't dare to try harder to move. If he blacked out, there was no-one else there to keep Chet's head out of the glop. The thought of anyone being lost under that thick mess was horrid - the thought of someone he was close to meeting that fate? No. He had to stay awake and keep Chet above it, so the two of them were stuck until someone came to their rescue.

Of course, there was no way for them to tell from where they were at if there was anyone left unhurt to help them. If the others had been injured by the explosion as well? Mike hadn't heard any promising noises recently.

Chet's shivering was steadily getting worse as was his own. The glop was slowly but surely sucking what little body heat they had remaining out of them. Mike looked around. There was absolutely nothing around them that he could use to make a noise. All he had was his voice. As much as his throat hurt and as dry as his mouth was, Mike knew he was going to have to make the few yells he might have left in him count.

He thought he could hear a call, but it sounded like it was far away from them. He tried to shift his upper body to get a better idea where it was coming from, but his leg shifted as well and the scream rang out as the white-hot pain startled him with its intensity. His shivering intensified and he was starting to lose his hold on both his consciousness and Chet. Then from above came one of the sweetest sounds he could have heard.

"Cap! Johnny! I see them! Over here!"

Roy could see that they were in trouble and didn't hesitate to make his way down into the glop, quickly falling down to his knees to help keep both Mike and Chet's heads out of the muck as Mike lost his fight to stay awake.

Mike had a few brief flashes of consciousness, but the first time he managed to stay awake long enough to figure out where he was, he was in an ambulance with Roy keeping a close watch over both he and Chet.

"Good to see you open your eyes again, Mike. We're just arriving at Rampart."

It took Mike two tries to get out any words and even then, he could barely make himself be heard.

"How's Chet?"

Roy hated not to answer, but just then the doors were opened and they were rushed into ER. Dixie directed them into treatment rooms two and three as she wondered if she could rig a water hose. Both patients were covered with muck up to their necks and, in Chet's case, the back of his head as well. Roy wasn't much cleaner.

Johnny arrived shortly after bringing in Marco for x-rays and Dixie sent the pair of them to treatment room one. Hank was all alone and driving Big Red. He couldn't believe it - half of his crew down over a man who had basically demolished his own home trying to improve it. To top it off, after all that had been done, the man had refused to go to Rampart, saying he'd see his own family doctor. They couldn't force him in, so Johnny just had him sign the forms saying that he realized he was going against advised treatment. Hank was pretty sure that man was going to be having a visit from the building inspectors in the very near future. In fact, he planned to make sure of it.

Dixie found a set of scrubs for Roy to change into and shooed him off to a shower, wishing she could do the same for Mike and Chet.

"What on earth did you men land in?"

"Glop."

Dixie looked down at Mike after he spoke the one hoarse word, then chuckled and gave him a light pat as Dr. Brackett shook his head.

"That does certainly seem to say it all. Well, Dixie, let's see if we can get enough scraped off of him to see what's wrong underneath."

Dixie finally did rig up a hose from the sink - there was just no getting around the fact that this was going to be messy.

When all was said and done, Mike was found not to have a fracture, but a piece of metal from the explosion had imbedded in his leg and was irritating one of the nerves, which was the cause of the burning pain he'd felt. After x-rays, Dr. Brackett judged it would be best to remove the metal surgically to make sure no splinters of metal would be left behind. He was also suffering from slight hypothermia, as was Chet, from the amount of time they had been stuck.

The blow to his helmet had left Chet with a concussion but one look at the remains of the helmet showed how much worse that could have been. Dr. Early had been a bit concerned about the amount of time it took Chet to start responding, but once he was warmed back up, his recovery sped up considerably. He and Mike were going to be kept at least overnight to make sure that there were no delayed problems from the concussive force that they'd been hit with.

Marco turned out to have a sprain and after describing the situation, Dr. Morton noted he was lucky not to have broken anything. When Captain Stanley reported to Chief McConakee, he stood down Engine 51 for the rest of the shift. Roy and Johnny were stood down for an hour to allow them time to eat and for Roy to get into a spare uniform.

Once Chet and Mike were settled into a room together, Hank left to drive Marco home before heading back to the Station - there was going to be a ton of paperwork for this run and he figured it would be best to get on top of it immediately.

When Hank got back to the station, he put in a call to the fire inspectors. A team had already gone out to do a preliminary analysis as Hank had warned them during his initial call that the home owner seemed to be the sort who was likely to try and hide some of the evidence. Mike had been right about a bad electrical wiring job causing the fire. The real damage had been caused by the water heater exploding. To save some money, the man had gotten a defective water heater from a junk yard and 'fixed' it. When Hank thought about the fact that he could have lost two men to that explosion and over someone trying to save a few dollars? He was just glad that he no longer had to deal with the man. He'd have been very tempted to punch him.

Back at Rampart, everyone else had cleared out, leaving the two men to themselves in their room.

"Mike?"

Mike's voice was still pretty raw, but Dixie had given him a dose of a syrup that had eased the pain in his throat.

"Yeah, Chet?"

"Roy told me about you keeping my face above that crap. Thanks."

"You'd have done the same for me."

That brought a smile to Chet's face. There was something about that level of trust between the members of their crew that was different than anything he'd experienced at any station before 51. He never had to wonder if someone had his back - he knew someone had his back.

"Yeah. I would have. But thanks anyway, pal."

After saying that, Chet let his very tender head ease down onto his pillow. Mike followed suit, just as pleased to rest his throat and let silence claim the room. He'd done more than enough yelling for one day.