JOKESTER

~)51(~

Mike and Marko were snickering softly from the sofa while the television played an old black and white sit-com. Hank grumpily rattled his newspaper as he turned the page. Roy opened the oven to check on the warming sandwiches, and was almost certain that he heard a very odd noise. But as he straightened to listen he didn't hear anything else and wasn't sure if he'd heard the noise of passing traffic, or a man scream. "What was that?"

Mike and Marko stopped their muffled giggling, while Hank crumpled the paper down to look at his senior medic. "What was what?"

Roy was about to tell them all to never mind, but Chet's voice cried out from the bay...

.

"I NEED HELP YOU GUYS!" Chet was holding open the locker room door, shouting as loud as he could, not daring to go too far from the terrified and trapped paramedic. "HURRY JOHN'S IN BIG..."

His last word was cut off by Johnny's horrific screaming, and the shower door banged and shook as if a rabid mountain lion were trying to get through it. The paramedic's vocalized fear was making Chet's hair stand on end. He rushed back to Johnny to attempt to make him calm down. He worried his friend would break the glass door and kill himself trying to get through it. He was trying to climb up and over the door, but he didn't have enough of a grip and fell with a wet sound to the tiled floor. "HELP ME! GEMME OUT! GEMME OUT! PLEASE GET ME OUTTA HERE!" he gasped, and sobbed, as he beat on the door with both fists.

"John, calm down! Calm down!" His own heart was racing with fright. Johnny's terror was rubbing off on him and he couldn't think. Chet worried that the medic had gone completely insane.

The guys all charged into the room, and Chet didn't need to say anything. Johnny's raging fear drew Roy to peer over the shower door at the sight of his bloodied and very hysterical partner. He tried to pull open the door, but found it wouldn't open. "JOHNNY UNLOCK THE DOOR!"

"I'll call it in!" Mike ran back out.

Johnny's only response was to throw himself at the door again, and the hinge popped, and a tile flew off the wall. The only reason he did not try again was because the snake slithered toward him. Johnny scrambled away, screaming. "GEMME OUT! PLEASE LEMME OUT! CHET HELP ME!"

"John? Johnny?" Roy tried reason. "Unlock the..."

"You're not gonna get through to him." Hank grabbed at the top of the door and pulled hard. Roy added his own strength, and they shook it and rattled the frame.

The serpent darted away from Johnny, and coiled itself protectively, flicking its tongue as it slithered about hunting for an escape. It was obviously no less frightened than its fellow prisoner. Johnny didn't look away from the snake, and appeared to be ready to make another assault upon the door as soon as he had a clear path.

"GAGE STOP!" Hank ordered. "Just take it easy! Get away from the door all right, Johnny! Get away from the door!"

Johnny didn't take his eyes off the snake. But he seemed to hear his captain's voice at least. He backed into a corner as far from the snake as he could get and pulled himself into a crouch. His head stayed up, wide-open eyes stared hard at the slithering creature. Johnny was ready to bolt away should the snake come toward him.

"Why won't this open?" Hank shouted out, irritated as he gave the door a violent yank that only made the door groan. "That little latch is nothing!"

Johnny stared at the snake as if mesmerized. Each time he inhaled his body jerked, and he made a high-pitched sound in his throat every so often. The men all peered over the door to see this, and knew they'd get nothing out of him now.

Marko took a closer look at the seam of the door, and touched a shiny globule that looked like an oversized water droplet. "Ah...it's glue!" Marko pulled his finger away with a bit less skin. "Someone glued it shut!"

There was a resounding pause. Johnny's gaspy panicked breathing, and the hiss of running water were like a deafening cacophony to Chet's ears, but worse were the stares filled with accusation and anger. Roy stared at Chet, shock reflected in his blue eyes. He took an angry step toward him...

Hank slapped Roy's arm to get his attention. "Let's get him outta there! NOW! Lopez, get some pry bars! Kelly O2 canister! You know the drill!" Once the guys jogged out, Hank leaned out the bay to yell, "Mike we need an ambulance!"

.

Within Rampart Emergency, Nurse Gage spotted the flash of the light signaling that a squad was calling in. After having answered so many calls since she'd started work, she felt like an old pro now. With no more thought than answering a phone, she pressed the button on the radio and clicked on the recorder. "Rampart Emergency, go ahead,"

The voice that responded was Captain Stanley, "Rampart, we have a code I here at the station, paramedic is trapped in a shower stall with a snake and he's having a severe phobic fear reaction."

Nakee's blood ran cold. There was only a fifty-fifty chance that the paramedic Captain Stanley was referring to was Johnny. She forced herself to stay calm and use her brain and not let her fears take over and distract her from what she had to do. She made notes on a paper even as she looked around the halls hoping to spot Dixie or one of the doctors. Or any other nurse qualified to take over. If it was Johnny she did not want to have to take the call. "51 do you know if he was bitten?"

"We don't know if he was bitten, but he is bleeding. He is a victim of a practical joke gone very bad, so we doubt it's a venomous snake, but we will transport the snake with him. Rampart Standby."

"Standing by 51." Nakee's voice was a bit high, but under control. He teeth were clenching together with anger. Who would throw a live snake at a man in a shower? She dug her notebook out of her pocket, flipped to a page and then picked up a phone. Once she got a response, she requested, "Page any doctor to the Base station." she hung up, and then chewed her lip and waited.

.

Hank worried now about Nakee. He knew that was Johnny's sister on the radio, and had no doubt that she was suspecting Johnny. What a thing to have to deal with on her first day on the job, he thought.

"Johnny?" Roy called into the shower, and explained what was going to happen. But his partner was not listening to him at all. He was staring as if mesmerized at the snake that had coiled itself into the opposite corner. Johnny was non-responsive. He looked back at the other guys, worry in his eyes. "You ready Mike?"

"Ready." Mike had a firm hold of a fire extinguisher, open and ready to blast the snake.

"Go!" Roy held onto the door and Chet and Marko shoved pry bars into the very narrow space between the upper and lower hinges. While Roy yanked and pulled on the door, the other two wrenched the pry bars. The door groaned and cracked angrily as it was forced to open. Tiles popped and bolts popped and complained as they were bent. The door finally gave with a final violent "CRUNCH!" Marko and Chet dropped their pry bars noisily and now used their hands to help Roy force the door further open. The glued side of the door was taking tile off the wall rather than give way. "That's some strong glue." Marko strained. He and the others backed up to give Mike some space with his O2 canister.

Mike was not especially happy about going into the shower to disable the snake, but it was Johnny that made him wary of going in. "Wish that snake would come out here so I could..."

As if on cue, the snake slithered out, and attempted to flee. Mike was ready, and showered it with a cold blast of O2 from the extinguisher. The creature writhed and flopped but then went still. Chet threw a blanket over it and pulled it out of the way, and Marko sweep the sharp bits of broken tile and glass away with his foot.

"Johnny you hear me?" Roy stepped into the shower, "Johnny?" he shut off the water and looked directly at his friend. He was streaked with blood, naked, cornered, shaking, gasping and his eyes were darting all over. It was a clear-cut case of hysterical panic. Roy approached him very slowly, one small step at a time, speaking gently, motioning at the rest of the guys to keep out and quiet. He stopped when he was within arm's reach of his partner. "Johnny you hear me?" Roy was well aware that in such a state of high strung fear, no matter how well they knew each other, right now Johnny was as dangerous as a wild animal, and his phobia induced condition and adrenaline would give him unnatural strength. Not only was he dangerous to Roy, but to the other guys, and to himself as well. If he made the wrong move, there was no telling what his partner could do. Until the fear reaction had run its course, and the lights within his brain resumed function, he might know nothing more than the primeval instinct to either fight or run. And since he was now cornered by a larger person, his instinct would tell him to fight. Roy squatted down very slowly in front of him and called, "Johnny...?" he made no move to touch him. "Johnny you hear me?"

His partner drew in a shuddering gasp and made eye contact with him, and there was a spark of recognition within the glassy-eyed confusion.

Roy took that to mean his brain was beginning to turn back on. "Just gonna check your pulse, all right?" He reached out very slowly to touch his partner's right wrist.

Just as he'd expected, Johnny startled and yelped at the touch and tried to back up. Roy had expected this response. "Easy!" he coaxed. "Take it easy!" The guys outside the shower shuffled nervously, ready to grab a hold of Johnny should he make a mad dash to escape. Roy remained outwardly calm and watched with relief as Johnny looked all around the shower. "Where? Where'd it go? Where's the snake?" His voice held a hiccupping quality.

"It's gone." That was all he needed to know. "It's gone, Johnny. It's all right now. It's gone."

"Gone?" Johnny was still looking around. His voice came out high, like a child's, "You sure?"

Roy clutched his wrist gently and counted his racing pulse. "The snake is gone. Calm down, now. You gotta slow down your breathing."

"It bit me!" Johnny's eyes sparked fresh terror and he looked to Roy, expression begging for help. "It bit me!" He lifted his left arm up. "It bit me!"

.

"Chet," Hank asked gently without looking at the other. "What kind of a snake is it?"

"I don't know." Chet's tone was dull and lifeless and something about his tone made Hank turn a curious eye on the lineman.

Roy's soothing tones came from out of the shower, over shadowed by Johnny's voice repeating that he'd been bitten.

Mike very carefully unwrapped the snake from the blanket, poked it a couple times. Once satisfied that it was probably dead, he picked it up and forced its mouth open. "Cap, it doesn't have any fangs. Just lots of little teeth. I think it's a constrictor. Roy I don't think it's a poison snake!"

"How sure are you?" Hank questioned as he reached for the bio-phone.

"Not really sure at all, Cap." Mike admitted as he rewrapped the snake.

Hank reported the information to Rampart anyway.

.

"It bit me!" Johnny gasped.

"Sh! It's okay. You're all right!"

"It bit me!"

"Johnny stop!"

"IT BIT ME!"

"Stop, its all right!" He grabbed his partner's shoulders and gave him a slight shake. "Stop!"

Johnny stared at him. Roy turned Johnny's arm over and spotted a very bloody wound on his inner arm just below his elbow. The snake had not left a simple pair of puncture marks on his arm, but a nasty oval bloodied wound. Roy guessed that maybe the snake had been clamped on his arm and Johnny had torn it off of himself, and some of his skin had been torn away along with the snake. But he was more interested in finding discoloration or extreme swelling. "Johnny do your fingers hurt or do you feel any numbness or..."

"It bit me!" Johnny panted. He was caught in a loop of thoughts and unable to think beyond having been bitten. "It bit me!"

"It's all right. Stop!" Roy very gently touched a spot on Johnny's arm close to the bloody wound. There was no reaction to pain, no contortion or stiffness in his fingers, and the small amount of swelling he noted around the wound was normal for a non-poisonous wound of that size. "It's okay," he soothed his partner. "It looks all right. Just take it easy. You're all right."

Johnny seemed to take in these words slowly and he blinked and let his head go back to rest in the corner. He shut his eyes and began to consciously calm himself down as he exhaled slowly.

"You hurt anywhere else?"

Johnny was shaking badly. "I wanna get outta here!"

Roy saw that his partner's terror was ebbing, but something else was taking over that he liked to think of as Post Trauma Jitters. "Easy. Calm down, all right?" He jotted down some notes onto a paper that he handed back to Marko. "Lemme have the BP cuff and my stethoscope."

.

"Rampart, Squad 51," Hank's voice came through the radio to Nakee. She responded, "Go ahead 51."

"Rampart victims vitals are as follows. Pulse is up over 150, respirations are about 30 and erratic. He's talking, but he is incoherent. He has a snake bite on his upper left forearm." Nakee wrote all of this down quickly with a shaking hand. "The bite is showing no signs of discoloration, severe pain, or..."

Nakee heard the Captain's voice drowned out by a sudden scream of fright that sent chills up and down her spine. Now she knew, it was Johnny. The channel closed leaving silence.

"51, what's happening?" Nakee asked firmly. "51 report!"

No response. The pencil in Nakee's hand snapped in two, and the noise made her jump in fright.

.

"It's just a stethoscope Johnny! STOP IT" Roy had wedged his terrified partner against the wall with his full weight to stop him leaping up and running. "Its not gonna hurt you!"

Johnny's struggles stopped but his chest heaved and his speech came in a frenzied and barely comprehensible tumble. "I wanna get outta here! Lemme out!"

"All right! I'll get you outta here." Roy backed his weight off his friend. "Just take it easy." He looked back to Marko. "Hand me a blanket."

Marko unwrapped an emergency blanket for him, and very slowly handed it over.

.

Nurse Gage spotted the head nurse coming around the corner with very fast steps and almost cried out her relief. "Dixie!" She called, and whatever was in her voice and her expression made the head nurse pick up her pace a bit more. Nakee wrote down the last she'd heard from 51 and as soon as the blonde nurse was within hearing distance, she rambled. "Dixie, I'm sorry! Please take over! I'm sorry!" She left the notepad and the now broken pencil in Dixie's care and turned on her heal to escape.

She wanted to run away, but knew Dixie did not allow people to run. It was all she could do to force herself not to run at full speed down the hall, but she did walk as fast as her legs would take her, into the coffee room. As soon as she was behind the door, she sank into the nearest seat and bent over and whimpered and shook like a lamb. But now, it seemed so ironic; she had the luxury now to release her emotions and cry, but could not. Nothing would come. There was no flood of emotion, and she could not even make herself laugh at the irony.

More To Come...