WHO WAS THAT GUY?
by ardavenport
- - - Part 2
"How'd it go?" Captain Stanley looked up from the folder on his desk in Station Fifty-One's little office.
For a second, Gage wondered which of the last three runs he was asking about. But, of course, it had to be Harry Munson and Glen Overton, the two firefighters from Station Eighty-Five who had been injured at a warehouse fire. It had been a slow morning with that Turner guy, but that didn't last and they had three back-to-back runs and he had to enter in the log book.
"Oh, Munson's going to be fine, Cap. He'll probably have a scar on his leg."
Stanley nodded, but then frowned. "What about Overton?"
"He's not so good. Doctor Early isn't sure how it's going to turn out."
"He's going to live?"
"Yeah." John nodded. He wasn't at liberty to tell even Captain Stanley how bad it really was. Glen Overton had a broken back. He'd had no feeling in his legs at all. Even if some feeling returned in his legs, there was no way he could go back to being a fireman.
Stanley didn't ask him any more. Gage slid down into the seat at the other desk and reached across it for the log book. He dug out crumpled note pages from his front pocket. The warehouse fire had been the second of the the three that he and Roy were coming back from.
He flattened one note page. Taking his pen out of his shirt pocket, John started writing.
Incident: Man with back injury from fall
Location: Nine-Nine-Oh-Two Cedar Place
Time Out: Eleven-Twenty-Seven
Transported: Rampart . . . .
A very worried young woman answered the doorbell when they arrived. She had short, perky auburn hair and wore a pink flannel bathrobe.
"He's over here; he's over here." She hurried them into the living room. A man in blue coveralls lay on his back on the green-carpeted floor next to an over-turned end table and a broken lamp. They knelt next to him. His name was Juan. He grimaced and moaned while they examined him and took his vital signs. His pulse was rapid, but he did not have any numbness or tingling in his legs. The woman, Mrs. Sorenson, stood over them and rapidly ran through the reasons why the young man who serviced their pool had tripped over one of her son's toys in the house. Roy went out for the back board and John's foot kicked a small model car as he helped slide it under Juan with his partner. It rolled under the coffee table.
"Hey, Rosita. I'll be fine." He was probably about six feet tall, slender and he had black hair and brown eyes like a Latin lover. His smile turned radiant when he looked up at Mrs. Sorenson and she would blush. John and Roy averted their eyes while they impatiently waited for the ambulance.
It didn't take that long to come, but just before the approaching siren stopped, a man with thinning brown hair and wearing a suit and tie came in through the door. He shoved Roy aside and grabbed Juan's hand. Mr. Sorenson had come home from work for lunch.
"Juan! What happened?"
Juan reassured Mr. Sorenson that there had only been a tiny accident and that he would be up again in no time.
"Steven . . . . I-I . . . I didn't know that you and Jaun knew each other." She blushed. Steven had not let go of Juan's hand.
John and Roy averted their eyes. The ambulance attendants came in and lifted Juan onto the gurney. And they averted their eyes as they loaded him into the ambulane while Mr. and Mrs. Sorenson argued about which one of them would ride in with Juan.
. . . . John initialed the entry.
That had been a strange run. The most Roy would say was, 'Interesting couple.' He did not say whether he meant Mr. and Mrs. Sorenson, or either one of them and Juan. John just nodded, agreed and let it go at that. On their way out of Rampart they had seen Mr. and Mrs. Sorenson holding hands and casting worried looks down the hall toward the treatment rooms.
They were both starving and grabbed sandwiches at Rampart's cafeteria because Kelly was making macaroni and cheese at the Station, it would be cold when they got back and Roy had a much better version of it for dinner with his family last night. They got through most of their meal before the next call came through on the Handi-Talkie. John unfolded the next note pages, picked out two and started writing . . . .
Incident: Structure fire, injured firefighters
Location: One-One-Two, Two-hundred and Nineteenth Street
Time Out: Fourteen-Thirteen
Transported: Rampart . . . .
Station Fifty-One had been called in on a second alarm at a warehouse fire. They saw the black smoke over the nearby buildings a quarter mile before they arrived. Engine Fifty-One was already there along with three other engines and Squad Forty-Five with a yellow blanket with the two paramedics treating three victims next to it. The amplified voice of Engine One-Ten's captain called out orders to them as they rolled into the parking lot.
"Squad Fifty-One, go to the back of the building, we have more injuries."
John killed the siren while Roy drove around the perimeter. They saw a truck and another engine there. And a fireman kneeling by two others.
The warehouse was an older building and a beam had suddenly fallen on two men inside manning a hose. One saw it coming just in time to knock the other out of the way and took most of it. His friend dragged him out and then the other firefighters dragged them both out, got their turnouts off and started with as much first aid as they could. A fresh billow of black smoke rose above the buring building in the midday heat as another part of the roof gave out.
"How're you doing?" John put the drug box down next to Glen Overton; male, mid-twenties, a hundrend and sixty-five to a hundred and seventy pounds.
"I'm okay. But you gotta look at Harry." His eyes pleaded, his dark hair wet and sticking to his forehead. "He got burned carrying me out."
"He's going to be okay. My partner's taking care of him; let's just take care of you." His legs were covered with a clean white sheet and another fireman had a steady stream of water pouring over them. Johnny peeked and saw the burns.
"Are you hurt anywhere? Did anything fall on you, Glen?"
He winced. "Yeah, my back. Beam landed right on top of me."
"Your back hurts?"
"Yeah." He moved his hand in a pointing gesture at his lower back. "Right around here."
John took over the irrigation from the fireman and told him to get the backboard from the squad. Roy bent over the BP cuff around Harry Munson's arm; he was about the same size as Glen, but maybe twenty pounds heavier. John took the second stethoscope and BP cuff out of the trauma box and took Glen Overton's vitals. He told Harry to lie quietly, but injured man kept talking about Glen carrying him out of the building. Roy read the vitals to Rampart on the biophone. Glen needed morphine for his burns. Harry didn't. Even after they slid him onto the back board.
The ambulance arrived quickly. The captain from Station Sixty-Five caught their attention as they loaded Glen and Harry; they were his men. John kept his head down while Roy told him that they had to get them to Rampart as quickly as possible. Harry weakly waved a hand with a thumbs up before they closed the doors. Both Roy and John rode with them.
"How're ya doin', Harry?" The morphine was working for Glen. He only had burns over fifteen percent of his legs. He would make it.
"Pretty good after you got me out of there."
"You saved me first, pal."
John kept expecting Harry to figure out that he couldn't move or feel his legs. But he didn't. When they arrived at Rampart, Glen went to Treatment Room Two with Doctor Morton. John went with Harry to Room Four where Doctor Early examined him.
"Can you feel this, Harry?"
"Feel what?"
Doctor Early checked both his legs. There was no reaction, no movement, no feeling. Harry stared up at the ceiling while Doctor Early reassured him that paralysis could often be temporary. They would know more when they got the x-rays. The wounded fireman curtly nodded, his eyes looking everywhere else except back at Early. They left him with the x-ray technician and an orderly.
Roy was already at the base station, filling a small box with supplies. John helped. Dixie was there and she asked how the firemen were doing. Glen Overton would be fine though he would have a few scars. But Harry Munson . . . . they ddin't know. Or didn't want to know. Even if he walked again, his career was over.
"That's rough." Dixie lowered her eyes. John and Roy collected the equipment boxes and left, went down the busy hallway, turned left to the entrance.
Chet had driven the squad in and parked it on the far side of the lot. He was leaning against it, apparently unwilling to wait for them in the hospital. John knew that the first words out of his mouth would be to ask how Overton and Munson were doing.
"Y'know, that could have been us, back there." John stood next to Roy, just outside the entrance.
"Yeah." Roy nodded. "Yeah, I know."
They went together back to the squad. . . .
. . . . Captain Stanley got up from his desk and left. John heard voices just outside the door and Roy came in.
"Stoker's making sloppy joes for dinner. They're almost ready. How's it going here?"
John tapped the end of his green pen on the open log book. "I've still got to do the guy in the park. I've been thinking about that fire." The pen dropped onto the page.
"Yeah." Roy sighed and leaned on the desk. "I know what you mean. The guys have been talking about it in there." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Y'know Glen told me that Harry's father owns a business, furniture or something; he can give him a job after he's out of the hospital. He'll be fine."
"Yeah." John sat back in the chair, looked up at his partner and said what they both knew but couldn't say to the others. "Roy, Harry's never going to walk again."
Roy stared down at the floor. "Yeah. I know." He pressed his lips together. John sat and watched him and finally looked back down at the log book. There wasn't much more to say.
"It coulda' been us." He picked up his pen and turned it around in his fingers.
"Yeah."
Sighing, John hunched forward on his elbows, the pen poised to write the next log entry, but he was having trouble thinking about what came next.
"You need any help with that?"
He looked up again. "No. I've got it."
"Well, okay." Roy edged away, gesturing toward the door. "I'll go help the guys with dinner."
John stared at the brick wall where Roy had just stood. He exhaled and stretched his neck. Smoothing out the last note page on the desk, he started writing.
Incident: Man unconscious
Location: Lobos Park
Time out: Seventeen-Twenty-two
Transported: Rampart . . . .
The squad bounced over the curb as Roy drove directly onto the grass and headed toward the samll crowd of people waving at them. One person lay on the ground.
"It's Pete, he's passed out. He's really red and his skin feels really hot." A perky girl in a white tennis outfit hopped around them as they got out their equipment and rapid-spoke what she knew, her short blonde hair bouncing around her head. "He's been running all day, 'cause Dan and Barry didn't believe him when he said that an Apache warrior could run down a horse by chaing it all day." She kept right behind them as they knelt by her friend. "And he was doing fine and Dorie here said he's been at it on the track all afternoon, but when we got here he didn't look so good and then he just passed out."
A short, black-haired woman, presumably Dorie, wrung her hands, her eyes anxiously darting from them to the victim and back.
John set up the biophone while Roy checked his vital signs. Rapid pulse, shallow breathing, warm, dry skin, pupils dialated. Male, about twenty-five, a hundred and sixty pounds. It was over ninety-five degrees and apparently Pete had not taken a break since morning.
John got only blank stares from the four young people standing around when he asked if any of them had any ice. Roy pointed past them to a group of picnickers under some trees in the park. They had a large cooler. Two of the men ran to ask them for ice while John got the burn pack and O2 from the squad.
The men came back with a cooler full of ice, pie and potato salad, and two more bystanders.
"Is he going to be all right?" The dark-haired girl hugged herself. She wore a short, sleeveless green dress and tennis shoes, perfect for a hot afternoon, but she still looked cold with worry.
Roy answered while John put in the second IV. "We're going to do everything we can for him, Ma'am."
"Next time, old Pete better take a horse instead of trying to run one down."
"Yeah, this Apache warrior is going by ambulance."
John's eyes flicked up toward Dan and Barry and then down to the victim. He had black hair and a tan and could have been either Indian or Mexican. The two men explained to the picnickers that Pete was Indian only on his mother's side. John clenched his teeth. Roy just kept his head down over the biophone and asked the people to stay back.
The rest of Dan and Barry's narrative was drowned out by the ambulance arriving. They quickly loaded Pete into the ambulance. John got in after him and Roy handed him the drug box and biophone before closing the doors.
Pete was still unconscious, but he looked better, though the ice on his chest and legs was already half melted. He checked the IVs and sat back next to Hal, one of the ambulance attendants. He hoped that when Pete woke up in the hospital he had better friends waiting for him than Dan and Barry.
- - - End Part 2