Chapter 10.
"No, you're not."
"Yes, Gage, I am. It's simply not prudent to—"
"You're not driving the squad, Brice! You're a sub, and plus, I'm senior, so I get to say who—"
"You never drive the squad to incidents, Gage. If you drive to an incident, you'll get out, and you'll be on the wrong side, and you won't know where you're going or what you're doing. You'll go to the wrong compartment, and get the wrong equipment, and it'll be a disaster."
"No, it won't. You'll see."
"I know what I'll see. I'll see you nearly get the door ripped off the squad because you won't remember to check for traffic. I'll see you go around to the front of the squad instead of the back. You simply haven't proven in the past that you're adaptable in the slightest, Gage. It'll be a disaster."
"Not adaptable? Not adap—" Johnny ran his hands through his hair, and took a deep breath. And another one. "All right, Brice. Let's do this. I'll drive, and if any of those things happens—any one of 'em—you call me on it, and then you can drive."
"Excellent plan."
"Fine."
"Fine."
"Not adaptable," muttered Johnny, stomping off to the kitchen. "Hmph. We'll see who's not adaptable."
~!~!~!~
BWAAAM, BWWWOOOOM BWAAAH!
"Squad 51, man unconscious, 1589 Highland Road, 1-5-8-9 Highland Road, cross street Abelson. Time out: 1318."
Johnny leapt up from the kitchen table, where he had been reading the morning paper, and dashed to the squad. Straight to the passenger's side. Brice was right behind him as Johnny opened the door, got in, and slid all the way across the seat to the driver's side.
He started the engine, and pulled out of the bay.
"That wasn't on your list," Johnny said loudly. "Doesn't count."
"Fine," said Brice.
They drove on in silence—except for the wail of the siren and the occasional screech of tires as Johnny took a corner faster than Roy would have.
"This is it," said Brice, needlessly pointing out the woman waving them down in the middle of the block. Johnny pulled over just past the house's driveway, leaving the back bumper of the squad to point the way for the ambulance. He carefully checked for traffic before opening the door, then purposefully headed to the rear compartment to grab their first-in equipment, as Brice spoke to the woman who flagged them down.
"Oh, please, come quickly! It's my husband—I think it's his heart!" the woman begged, leading them into the house.
"Ma'am, how old is your husband?" asked Brice, as Johnny began the initial assessment of the patient.
"Fifty three," she answered. "And he's had one heart attack already."
"Any medications, or other health conditions?" Brice asked.
"He has some pills he takes, for blood pressure, but that's all."
"Could you please get them for us?"
"Oh, of course," the woman replied, as she dashed off to retrieve the medication.
Johnny was connecting EKG electrodes, in anticipation of Rampart's request to send them a strip. Brice was on the biophone, talking to Rampart, when the woman returned with the bottle. Before Brice had a chance to take the bottle, Johnny shouted out, "Lost his pulse! Starting CPR!"
Brice relayed this information to Rampart as he finished connecting the EKG leads to the electrodes Johnny had placed.
"V-fib," Brice announced, as he saw the irregular bumpy line fluttering on the scope. Brice had the defibrillator paddles gelled and charged.
"Clear!" shouted Brice.
Johnny raised his hands above his shoulders, as Brice applied the paddles to try to shock the man's heart back into a normal rhythm. Johnny continued with the CPR, letting up for a second to get a new reading on the EKG.
"No conversion. Hit him again," Johnny said. Brice did.
Unexpectedly, miracle of miracles, the amorphous wavy line was gone, and the familiar, comforting spikes of a normal sinus rhythm appeared. It was slow—too slow—but it was there. Johnny sat back on his heels for a moment—even just a few minutes of CPR was draining—and then quickly pitched in to help Brice with administering the drugs ordered by Rampart.
"What just happened? What happened?" The man's wife was standing there, clutching the bottle of pills, begging for an explanation.
"Ma'am, his heart stopped beating in the regular way, and the only way that works to change that is with an electrical shock. I know it looks terrible, but he didn't feel a thing," Johnny explained as Brice wrapped the patient up for transport. "We're gonna take him in to Rampart, and the doctors there will be able to tell you more about his condition." He always like to get that in before the family started asking questions he couldn't answer—prognosis was not in his scope of practice, and he didn't want it to be. The woman just nodded, and left the room silently.
Brice looked over at Johnny. "I'll ride in with him, if you want to keep driving."
"Huh?" Johnny looked up in confusion. He and Roy never even needed to check in with each other about who was doing what—they both always just seemed to know. "Sure," he agreed. He packed up the various pieces of equipment, and picked up the medical litter from the living room floor. He took two trips to carry the equipment back to the squad. On his last trip out of the now-empty house, he took a moment to flip the thumb latch on the inside of the front door, rather than leaving it completely unlocked as he left.
Johnny drove the squad to Rampart, pondering his and Brice's first call as a team.
It wasn't bad.
In fact, they'd done a damned good job; they'd worked smoothly together. Not DeSoto-and-Gage smoothly—hell, they were regularly accused of telepathy after their years of working together—but smoothly enough.
Yep, it was a mighty fine save, Johnny thought. And I already miss Roy an awful lot.
~!~!~!~
Johnny backed the squad into one of the parking slots at Rampart's emergency entrance, next to the Mayfair ambulance that he assumed to be the one that carried Brice and their patient to the hospital. He went through the automatic double doors, and straight to the nurses' station.
"Hey, Dix," he said absently. "Seen Brice?"
"Oh, are you with him today?" Dixie asked.
Johnny looked up sharply, brows furrowed. "No, he's with me. Temporarily. Just some extra shifts for him. Till Roy is back on the job."
"I see," Dixie said, the corner of her lip twitching. "And yes, I have seen him. He was just here, getting some supplies—maybe he's in the lounge getting some coffee?"
"Oh," said Johnny, glowering.
"Roy always waits for you before he gets coffee, right?"
"Yeah," Johnny said darkly.
"Oh, speaking of Roy—he's going to be working here for the next few weeks."
Johnny looked up, the furrows replaced by a raised eyebrow. "No kidding? What on? Who with?"
"Oh, I think he'll want to tell you all about it. He actually asked me to send you to his office next time you came by on a run, if you had time."
Now both eyebrows were raised. "His office? This oughta be good," Johnny said. "I better call in available and tell Brice where I'm goin'." He reached for the radio, and then looked up at Dixie. "Uh, Dix, where am I goin'?"
Dixie smiled. "221-B, take a right out of the elevator, and go to the end of the hallway."
"Thanks," Johnny said, waving the radio at her. "Callin' in, then talkin' to Brice, then goin' on up."
~!~!~!~
Roy looked up from his pad of paper when he heard a tentative tap on the door. "Come in," he said.
"Well, hey, partner! Lookit you, big man with his own office at Rampart!"
"Yeah, well, they had to do something with me for the next few weeks."
Johnny looked at the sparse office—desk, phone, chair, not much else.
"So, uh, what are they doing with you?"
Roy handed him a sheet of paper. The first thing he'd done was to write himself his job description, at least how he saw it. He hadn't had a chance to run it past Brackett yet, but he would.
Johnny perched on the corner of the desk to read Roy's neat script. "No shit!" he said. "That's a great idea!" He looked down at the paper again. "A really great idea."
"Brackett sent a letter to Chief Houts requesting a senior paramedic be assigned to him for six weeks, to start working on making some policy changes," Roy said.
"Huh. That was good timing," Johnny said, "for you to get this gig."
"I don't think that's exactly it."
"Whaddaya mean?"
"Let's put it this way: the letter was dated the fifth."
Johnny counted backwards in his head. "Wow, the same day you, uh, busted your hand, right?"
Roy nodded. "From what I've pieced together, Dixie may have had something to do with the letter to Houts. And, get this—Brackett actually apologized to me."
Johnny whistled. "Now that I wouldn't have minded seeing."
"Yeah, well. I guess he's pretty shook up too—a whole bunch of people came down on him about the other day."
"Huh," said Johnny. He handed the paper back to Roy. "So, what're you gonna tackle first?"
Roy sighed. "To be honest, it's such a huge thing, I don't even know where to start. But I broke it down into three parts, really."
"Uh-huh?" Johnny encouraged. He stood up from his perch on the edge of the desk and paced the room as Roy talked.
"First, talk to a bunch of other paramedics, from all over the state, see what kinds of things they think need to get changed. Second, talk to Brackett and his counterparts in other counties and see what they think. See if we can get to some common ground. Finally, figure out who the people are in Sacramento that we need to be in on this."
"It's a big job," Johnny said. "But it's gotta get done, and I think it can get done. I mean, there's new procedures we're allowed to do all the time, and every time they add something new to our scope of practice, it must have to get approved by the legislature, right? Probably worth finding out how that happens. 'Cause it seems like your stuff is gonna have to happen through the same channels."
Roy nodded. "Top of my list. For instance, when was it—last year? When we could start doing needle decompressions for pneumothorax. That was a big thing, and it's not like Brackett just suddenly said, 'Okay, boys, I'm gonna show you this new thing you can do now.' Someone determined the need, got it added to the scope of practice, and determined what the training should be."
"And when they were first working on passing the law to legalize the paramedic program, wasn't there some assemblyman, or senator, or something, that was on Brackett's case to go to Sacramento to testify in favor of the program? Remember, back when Brackett wasn't gonna, then he did?" Johnny added, in the inarticulate-yet-perfectly-clear way that was unique to him.
"Yeah, of course I remember. I had to look him up—State Assemblyman Michael Wolski. He's a state senator now, and still serves on the Department of Health subcommittee regarding the program. I'm gonna put a call in to his office first thing this afternoon."
Johnny was out of questions for Roy, but didn't really want to go find Brice.
"So, who's my sub today?" Roy asked.
Johnny rolled his eyes. "Walkin' rulebook, Roy. Thinks I don't know how to drive. Just 'cause you hafta drive all the time on calls doesn't mean I can't when I have a sub, right?"
"Sure. Just don't tell him why I always drive, all right?"
"Course not! What kinda traitor do ya think I am, anyhow?" Johnny looked offended. "Besides, he just thinks it's 'cause you pull rank, or 'cause you're scared of my driving."
"You're a perfectly fine driver. I just don't want to throw up in the squad—you know that." Roy paused. "You're the only one at 51s who knows that. And let's keep it that way, all right?"
"Honest, Roy! I told ya! Sheesh!"
BEEP BEEP BEEP!
"Squad 51, stand by for response."
"Well, shit. Back to the rulebook. See ya, Roy."
Roy watched as Johnny skidded out of the room.
He went back to the list of questions he was writing, and pretended to himself that he was jealous not to be going along with the squad.
TBC