Disclaimer: I don't own the listener or its characters.
A/N I don't speak English as my first language so if there are any mistakes in the text I'd very much appreciate if you'd point them out to me :). This is my first Listener fic and I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
"EMS are on the way."
"I shot him. I killed him."
"Toby, you did what you had to do. Toby? Toby!Come on, stay with me. Toby!"
"Ha! I have to say I kind of missed this." Oz smiles as he looks at his partner. Well, not really his partner, he's only substituting for her usual ambulance buddy since a flu has been getting a hold of his colleagues. The poor lady whose shift he'd taken over tried to get into the ambulance coughing her lungs out and burning up since the usual team was so thinned out there wasn't really anyone available apart from her. Well, Oz wasn't about to let that happen so he graciously offered to take her shift so she could sick it out for a bit. It didn't take much convincing.
"I can imagine!" His partner, Erin, answered while keeping her eyes on the road. "Being in charge's all good and well but there's nothing really like being on the road in the thick of things, I say."
Oz looked out at the lit up buildings all around him. It was dark and the streets looked pretty calm this particular night.
"Well, there are some advantages to being a paramedic supervisor too, I have to admit." Oz said taking his eyes off of his surroundings to look at her again. "The pay check's certainly nice. But yeah. Nothing quite like being on the road." He said a little reminiscent. He was just about to start up a nostalgic story about pizza and a flat tire when they got a call from dispatch.
"University three seven respond."
"This is University three seven, go ahead." Oz answered, radio at his mouth while Erin turned to look at him.
"A code five eight point two on Crestbury Road seventy-six, third floor. Two gunshot victims. One male with gunshot wound to the chest, one male with gunshot wound to the arm, possibly in shock."
"Alright, we're on it." Oz responded before ending the call while Erin put on the lights and sirens and made her way to the building and vics, speeding past the other cars on the road this late hour. Oz grinned. "Oh, I've definitely missed this."
When the ambulance arrived at the building the place appeared completely empty. There weren't any cops on the scene yet and everything was dark.
"Nice driving!" Oz complimented Erin as they rushed to get their equipment out of the ambulance and to the man needing it.
"Thanks." Erin grinned. Both fell silent rushing up the stairs, bags in hand. There were no lights on anywhere and there wasn't any sign of life to be seen. Oz was panting by the time they reached the third floor. The other paramedic looked like she was about to comment on it but seemed to think better of it when she spotted the guys they'd come in to help. Two unconscious, maybe dead men and one-
"Sergeant McCluskey?" Left his mouth before he could help himself. He was quickly distracted though when he realised who the man lying face down with blood pouring out of his arm was.
"No." The other victim completely forgotten, he checked his best friend over for other injuries. "Oh my God, Toby. No. This can't be happening." He muttered silently. When realizing Toby was okay apart from the thankfully non-lethal wound to his left arm he proceeded to quickly rip off his friend's jacket and apply a pressure bandage to stem the blood flow and save the bloody idiot from bleeding out. After that he put on an oxygen mask around his friends face. The guy's breathing was dangerously shallow.
After deciding he'd done everything he could Oz turned to look at Sergeant McCluskey who had bloody hands, the same colour as the floor beneath Toby. The same colour as Toby's hands too. It stood out brightly against the blue shades surrounding them.
"What happened?" He'd meant to ask it angrily but it came out more pleading, his voice shaking. It looked like Erin was done checking over the other victim and was walking down the stairs, presumably to go get the stretcher. He vaguely remembered her saying something to him about it but couldn't really find it in himself to care. More people were arriving, too.
McCluskey looked at him with wide eyes, her previously tense posture now slumped down against the wall. She was saved from answering him when a cop intervened and asked for a status update from the agent. Oz turned to his friend again when more people started swarming the room.
It probably wasn't that long before Erin turned up with the stretcher but to Oz it felt like an eternity. He'd always known this was going to happen one day, he'd freaking known it. And now he was sitting here, with Toby's unconscious body by his side, oxygen mask over his best friend's face, bloody bandage on his arm, covering a bullet still lodged in the muscle. Oz's body was completely frigid, just waiting for something to go wrong even though his mind told him Toby's injuries weren't that serious.
Oz didn't like this. He didn't like this at all. He was never really happy with Toby working for the IIB. At first he was horribly worried something bad would happen to his friend. A job as a paramedic isn't entirely riskless, but it weren't paramedics who constantly got blown up, shot, kidnapped, tortured or murdered in other horrible ways in all the movies and crime shows. Still, most of the time nothing happened whenever Toby was called in to help the force that couldn't solve its own problems and he started relaxing about the entire situation a bit more. But with Toby looking exhausted all the time and his worsening headaches it was hard to just let his friend do what he wanted.
When his friend got put on the special team it was on one hand a relief. At least Toby didn't look like he could drop dead any second anymore, but he did spend a lot more time in life-endangering situations. Toby's assurance that he was only a "special consultant" and no real agent or whatever the hell that meant didn't reassure him in the slightest. His friend had always had the habit of playing down whatever bad things happened to him or the risks he was in while totally overreacting when those things happened to others. Oz had always feared that his overgrown hero-complex would land the guy in trouble, and it indeed had several times. He even managed to drag Oz with him sometimes. But never had anything like this happened. It had never come that far. Not until now.
When Erin tapped him on the shoulder and signalled to the stretcher she had brought with him he dutifully lifted up his friend and carried him down the stairs. He was mostly minding his footwork when a soft moan coming from the stretcher he was carrying distracted him.
"Toby! Never do that to me again!" he cried out when noticing his friend was awake. The guy didn't answer apart from crunching his eyes shut in pain. The bullet still lodged in his arm, probably pressing against a thousand sensitive nerves had to hurt like hell. "Don't worry buddy, you're going to be okay. We're going to take good care of you okay?" Oz assured him while putting him in the ambulance.
"Two mill of morphine should help dull the pain." Erin suggested. Oz nodded his agreement.
"Yeah, good idea. We're going to get you so high, you won't feel a thing, okay?" he informed his friend while Erin was putting in the syringe. Not taking his eyes off Toby for one moment during the procedure he didn't miss how Toby's eyes opened, grew wide and unfocused when the morphine was ejected into his blood flow.
He grinned slightly before he realized he had no idea what de drug would do to Toby's telepathy. A slight panic attack distracted him until he realised Erin was talking to him and had put one hand on his arm.
"Oz, maybe it would be wise if you drove. Let me look after Toby." She suggested softly.
"What, no!" Oz protested. He was about to protest more until he realized his voice broke on those two short words and his hands were shaking. Erin just nodded and started attending to Toby while muttering small assurances to Oz's friend. Toby was her former colleague too, he realized with a jolt. The guy was well-liked throughout the team, never finding it hard to make friends. He must've been her mate too, his thoughts trailed off while climbing into the front seat.
"Okay Toby, just you wait. We're getting you home safe and sound bud." He muttered before starting up the engine and driving off towards the hospital. He had missed driving the ambulance. But he'd never wanted to do it with Toby strapped down in the back instead of next to him.