Part Three – A Bad Run
Evvy slammed her car door and speed-walked to the station's entrance, hitching her duffel bag higher on her shoulder. She flung the door open and was headed toward the locker room when Cap's voice rang out sternly behind her.
"And what kind of time do you call this, young lady?"
She froze in her tracks and turned, straightening to attention. "Uh, am I–I'm not late, am I? I'm not, am I late?" Her eyes darted between her watch and the wall clock as she stuttered, both of which testified to the fact that she still had ten minutes before shift started.
"Well, you're not your usual early, are you," Cap asked, "so, . . ." He could only hold the serious face for a few seconds, then his grin emerged. "Relax, Evvy, you're fine." There was a chorus of laughter from the three men on the other side of the doorway, but it took a moment for Evvy to let out her breath. Good thing Roy wasn't there with his BP cuff; he'd be calling Rampart right now. She turned back toward the locker room and almost ran into that very paramedic. He smirked in her direction and said softly, "One-seventy over a hundred, I'd say."
She hung her head and didn't reply, not sure what to do with a regular, run-of-the-mill firehouse prank.
Cap was right, though. She was normally thirty minutes early for her shift–not because she had any pre-shift checklists like John and Roy, or Stoker did, but because, in her late father's words, "Fifteen minutes early is on time, on time is late, and late is fired." Unlike the men, she donned her uniform at home (except for her badge), covering her light blue button-down shirt with the navy cotton jacket zipped up to her neck to forestall any unwanted conversation, comments, or ridicule if she stopped off somewhere to buy a donut or the morning's paper. Better to have people think she was a postal worker or a meter maid than to step into an argument about whether she could or could not be a fireman.
Cruising into the locker room, she peeled today's insulting name tag sticker off of her locker door, dumped her duffel, and grabbed a glass jar from the bag. This battle usually took fifteen minutes; she had five. She skidded up to the mirror and began trying to subdue her wily, wiry hair. John was washing his hands at the sink. As he dried them on a towel, he leaned back against the counter, watching her silently. She dipped out a serious handful of white cream–hair sprays and gels were a no-no, as they contained alcohol, a bad idea for a firefighter–and slathered it on her hair to loosen and flatten the curls. It smelled like coconut. Then she wrestled every wayward strand into her customary low curly-puff with her left hand and tried to capture the mass in the elastic band spanning her right. The elastic broke, and flew sideways, missing John's shoulder by inches. "Dammit," she muttered, and pulled out her spare. There was a lot of twisting, grimacing, and mostly inaudible cursing as she eased the elastic on. She applied more cream to the edges of her hair, followed by about six tiny flat barrettes strategically placed and camouflaged, and eyed herself critically to make sure her helmet would be stable and straight when she needed it.
Washing the residue off her hands, she met John's eyes in the mirror. Without a word, he used his right hand to vigorously muss his own floppy dark brown hair, still damp from his morning shower, and then flicked his head once. Every hair–every single damn one–relocated itself into exactly the same place it had started from. He grinned at her, not the sideways one he used on patients to keep them calm, but the full, toothy, face-lighting one that said that he knew exactly why she hadn't had time to put herself completely together that morning.
She narrowed her eyes at him and said, "I . . . hate you." Snatching the jar, she threw it forcefully into her locker and stalked out. John did laugh then. Girls had it so hard sometimes.
The air of studied nonchalance in the kitchen when she walked in told her that she would be the topic of the morning. Honestly, for a bunch of grown men who were so ridiculously brave, professional, and focused whenever they were on a run, they gossiped like sixth-grade girls in study hall the rest of the time. She moseyed over and poured herself the day's cup of coffee.
"Soooo," Chet began innocently, and Evvy thought, Okay, here we go, "whadja do on your days off, Evvy?"
I could lie, Evvy considered, but then mentally slapped herself. She was an adult with nothing to hide. "I had a date, Chet," she said bluntly. "Two, actually. Same guy."
"Made it past dessert, then. That's a good sign," Roy observed.
"So when are you bringing him by?" Marco asked, laying the City section of the paper down on the table.
"What?"
"Well, we gotta meet him, check him out, you know," he added. "Make sure he's an upstanding citizen." She shot him a look that said, Et tu, Marco? Man, even the quiet ones were going in on her today.
"Yeah, and once we check him out, he's gotta pass the Lopez Family Test. Mama Lopez is a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing out personality flaws in prospective girlfriends–I mean, dates." John said.
"'Course, Johnny's never had to bring any of his girlfriends to Mama Lopez for inspection, since he never gets a second date," Chet needled.
"Hey," John protested.
"Serial dater," Stoker put in, always willing to stealthily stir the pot.
Evvy put her face in her hands. "Oh, my Great-Aunt Fanny," she muttered.
"You know," said John in his I've-got-a-brilliant-idea voice, "we could get Vince to run the guy's tags, find out all about him–"
The room's opinion of that idea was split equally between positive and negative, but Evvy was blessedly spared having to be the tie-breaker when the tones sounded. As she headed for the Engine, she felt just a little bit ashamed at how grateful she was for the poor soul who, according to Dispatch, had apparently gotten stuck in his hot tub, first thing in the morning.
"Hey, Roy," Cap said later that shift, "got a minute?"
The answer to that question was always "yes," so Roy paused while the rest of the men left the room after dinner. For once, they'd all been able to make it through their chili and cornbread without a call-out. It was looking to be a good night. "Sure, Cap."
Cap slid his hands into his pockets. "Honest opinion. How do you think Wayfair is doing?"
Roy considered. Evvy had completed two of the three Squad-shadowing shifts they had planned. While it was clear she didn't particularly enjoy paramedicine, she was good company and provided a necessary and capable extra set of hands. "She learns fast, takes direction well. She's got that same kind of, uh, fearlessness that Johnny has, only with more impulse control. Stronger than she looks, pulls her weight on the line. She seems a lot more comfortable just hanging out with the guys than when she started. Still kind of reserved, though. Hard to know what's going on inside her head. She doesn't ask a lot of questions or share too much."
"Think she's ready to pick up some overtime, work some other shifts and stations?"
Roy hesitated, his mouth turning down at the corners. "Well, Cap," he answered slowly, "I'm not sure that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
Where was a call-out when you needed one? "Uh, Evvy gets along well enough with us, but I'm not . . . I don't . . ." He really wanted out of this conversation. At Cap's impatient look, he went on reluctantly. "Her unofficial nickname outside of A Shift is 'Bunny.'"
"'Bunny'? As in the Easter Bunny?" From Cap's tone, it was clear he was trying and failing to make the connection.
Roy looked down. "No. As in 'Playboy Jungle Bunny.' It's a combination of—"
"I get it," Cap interrupted, raising a hand. The two men were silent for a moment. Then Cap asked quietly, "They call her that to her face?"
"Not to her face," Roy admitted, "but not exactly behind her back."
Cap pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers and sighed. "How are we ever supposed to make any progress when . . ." He bit back the rest. "Keep an eye on her, Roy. And if anyone pulls anything like that on her in the field, I want to hear about it immediately. This crap stops now."
"Mmm," Roy murmured, sounding unconvinced.
The tones sounded. "Squad 51, woman unconscious. Seven seventy-one Maple Street, 7-7-1 Maple Street, cross street, Juniper. Time out, nineteen fourteen."
By the time Dispatch was finished announcing the time, Cap was at the desk, jotting down the information. "Squad 51, KMG-365."
Evvy slid in between Roy and John, securing her helmet. The sun was starting to set, and John squinted at the map in the fading light.
A nervous-looking woman flagged the Squad down outside a tall two story house. John grabbed the trauma box, Roy picked up the drug box, and Evvy followed with the biophone. The woman was agitated, and it took her several tries and a couple of deep inhales with Roy to get a sentence out intact. "I live next door. Mary and I were going to take her kids to go get ice cream sundaes. I came by about twenty minutes ago and rang the doorbell but there wasn't any answer. I figured she was having a hard time getting the kids ready. But, you know, it's starting to get dark, and, look," she gestured at the house, "there's no lights on, not even in the kids' rooms. So I walked around the side and looked in the window. That's when I saw—at least I think I saw—she was lying on the floor in the living room. I rushed back to my house and called you."
Roy said, "Show us," and followed the woman down the driveway at the side of the house. Through the almost-closed Venetian blinds, they could see the bottom of a shoe, peeking out from behind a chair. They jogged back around to the front of the house, and John sent Evvy for the prybar.
Once the door was opened, the three firefighters strode in, taking a sharp right turn into the dim living room. The neighbor found the wall switch for the overhead chandelier. A woman lay face down on a red rug. John crouched down and opened the orange biophone box, while Roy and Evvy gently rolled the woman over onto her back. Evvy's sharp inhale caught John's attention before he could even start the call to Rampart.
Evvy tamped down the scream that was building in her chest. The woman's eyes were wide open, staring vacantly into eternity. Her throat had been slit–no, sawed–from ear to ear, to the point of near decapitation. The rug they knelt on had been beige, but was now soaked and stiff with drying blood. There were several additional stab wounds all over the woman's torso. The scream that Evvy was controlling ripped out of the neighbor's mouth as she stood in the doorway to the room. "Oh, my God, Mary!" she shrieked. And then, in a panic, she looked back to the hallway. "Where are the children?"
"Ma'am," John said urgently, "How many children are there?"
The neighbor blinked. "Two, no three." She seemed to be slipping into shock.
John took her by the shoulders. "I need you to go next door, call the emergency line again, and tell them we need the police here right away, and two ambulances." She stood frozen. "Ma'am!" She blinked and nodded. "Right away!" She fled.
Roy crossed the room. "Evvy," he said evenly. "We need to see if there are any more victims. Johnny, you take this floor, Evvy and I will look upstairs. Be careful," he emphasized to both of them.
He didn't even make it to the third step before he heard John call out. "Roy, we got another victim. I'm in the kitchen." Roy dashed back into the living room, eyes sliding over the gory figure, and grabbed the biophone, drug box, and trauma kit all at once. Skidding into the kitchen, he saw John bending over a teenage boy, who was covered in blood and unmoving. "He's alive," John said, "just barely." His hands were pressing down on the boy's abdomen, and blood seeped up between his fingers.
"Rampart, this is Squad 51," Roy said, already searching around in the trauma kit for pressure bandages.
"Go ahead, 51," Brackett's voice came across the line.
"We have two stabbing victims. Victim one has injuries incompatible with life. Victim two is male, approximately fourteen years old. He has several wounds to the abdomen, shoulder, and also lacerations on his hands. Appears to have lost approximately one thousand cc's of blood. Stand by for vital signs." John focused on stemming the bleeding, so Roy placed the receiver on his shoulder to free his hands to maneuver the BP cuff and stethoscope. "Rampart, vitals are: pulse is sluggish and weak. Respirations, eight. BP is ninety over sixty."
Evvy tuned out the activity below and began a room to room, as she would do if the house were on fire. She found a bedroom of an older male child, judging from the Jane-Fonda-as-Barbarella poster pinned to the wall. There was nobody in the closet, or under the bed, no signs of struggle. She closed the door behind her and moved on to the next room. Here was a small child's bedroom with–she clicked on the wall switch–a small bed and a crib.
The top of the child's blond head was barely visible under the blood-soaked covers of the bed. "Roy?!" Evvy yelled, her voice sailing upward from its normal octave in that one word. "We have another victim, Roy!" She pulled the blanket off and laid the child on the floor as Roy's boots pounded up the stairs. The child was not breathing, so she puffed a few rescue breaths and then started rhythmic respirations.
Roy dropped to his knees across from her. He had brought the ambu-bag; John's victim needed the O2 canister. In the distance, Evvy could hear the wail of approaching sirens. She pointed to the crib with a blood-stained hand. "Roy, there's a baby somewhere."
"Go," he said.
She opened the closet door and then searched under the bed and dresser. There was no sign. She ran to the upstairs bathroom. There were smears of blood on the sink, but the room was empty. "Where are you, little one?" she asked under her breath. Nothing in the hall. Almost panicked, she opened the door to the master bedroom. It was undisturbed, the bed neatly made. She could hear the officers entering the house downstairs as she checked the closet, and under the double bed. Standing in the middle of the room, she made a 360 degree turn, looking for anything amiss. Nothing. Except the slightly skewed decorative pillow on top of the cedar chest at the foot of the bed.
She approached the chest slowly, her heart hammering. It was as if her hand wanted to move, but everything was in slow motion. She raised the lid of the chest and peered inside, holding her breath.
There was a folded blanket just below the lip of the chest. It moved. She reached in and pulled it back, and saw a tiny face with blue eyes wide and staring back at her. A pacifier was stuffed in the baby's mouth, and as she breathed, "Hey, there," to the child of no more than two, she was met with the stutter-hiccup that presaged a full blown cry, and the astringent smell of a sodden diaper. She reached in and scooped out the baby, who wrapped her arms around Evvy's neck and held on for dear life. Evvy wanted to race downstairs, but took a moment to run her hands down the little body, checking for injuries. She found none.
Downstairs, more officers and Sheriff's deputies were pouring through the front door. Roy had moved the younger victim downstairs, and was still working the ambu-bag. The older boy seemed to be breathing on his own under the mask, an IV in both arms. A deputy stepped up to take the baby, but the little girl grasped Evvy's neck tighter and screamed louder. It took two officers to pry the baby off of her. The child was hysterical, shrieking and kicking at the new arms that held her.
You still have a job to do, Evvy's brain reminded her, and she dropped to Roy's side. He relinquished the ambu-bag while he and the ambulance attendants moved the younger victim, also a girl, to the stretcher. "Go help Johnny," Roy said, gesturing with his chin.
John's victim was still unconscious, but she could see the slight rise and fall of his chest under his bloody bandages. John handed her the IV bag, which she now knew to hold up high. They moved him to the second stretcher, and she tucked the IV bag under the patient's shoulder. The pressure of his body would keep the liquid flowing until he was situated in the ambulance and the bag could be hung from the hook. Roy climbed into the ambulance after the two stretchers were loaded in. Evvy didn't know how the two paramedics decided who would ride in with the patients and who would pack up and bring the Squad, but there was no discussion about it. Maybe because John's patient was stabilized and Roy's was not? She filed that away to ask later. John slammed the doors and tapped twice, the signal for "Go." Then he turned to gather up the trauma box–the biophone and drug box went with Roy–as well as the assorted trash.
Usually the Squad would be streaking along behind the ambulance on its way to Rampart. "Police'll want to talk to us before we head out," John said, and Evvy recognized the strain of keeping his voice level and dispassionate. She picked up the last discarded bits of plastic bag and needle caps.
The Sheriff's deputy kept them out of the living room, where the dead woman was now covered with a police-provided white sheet. It was a crime scene. Evvy had to keep snapping her drifting attention back to the deputy's questions. Yes, the door was locked when they arrived. No, neither of the victims said anything during the time they were being treated. No, they didn't see anything that might have been the weapon used. Evvy described exactly which rooms she had entered, what items she had touched, and where she had discovered the baby. The deputy speculated that the teenager had likely hidden her there, saving her life.
Finally, the deputy finished his questions, although he warned them that they would be contacted in the next day or so for a more formal statement. Evvy just wanted to get out of this house.
She slid into the Squad. John paused and looked at her before turning the key. "You okay?"
Evvy nodded once. That woman's head was sawed nearly off, she thought.
John started the truck and pulled off, heading for Rampart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Evvy wind down the passenger window and turn her face toward the breeze. Then she looked at her hands, still sticky-tacky with blood. She rubbed her fingers together as if trying to wipe them off, with increasing force. It was taking a bit longer than he'd expected, but it was coming. Evvy began to breathe faster, each inhale and exhale marked with a hitch. Ten more seconds, and she was hyperventilating, rubbing her hands together madly, like Lady Macbeth.
John put on his right blinker and pulled into the vacant parking lot of a church. He put the Squad in park and killed the lights and engine. Evvy leaned forward as far as she could go and began taking in huge, sobbing gulps, hyperventilating and panicked. John scooted a bit closer and rubbed her heaving back, wiping his own eyes with the back of his hand. "It's okay," he soothed over and over in a gentle voice, "you're gon' be okay."
After a few minutes, Evvy's breathing began to slow, and her sobs ebbed. She took a few deep, cleansing, calming breaths and sniffed. Reaching into her trouser pocket, she pulled out an incongruously feminine handkerchief, embroidered with pink and blue flowers, and wiped her eyes and nose. Her breath shuddered occasionally, but she was back under control.
"You a'ight?" John quietly asked again. She nodded. He started the engine, turned on the headlights, and resumed the drive to Rampart.
Roy hadn't emerged from the exam room when the Squad arrived–a bad sign, but Dixie was at the base station desk. She silently took in the two blood-stained firefighters. Her eyes went to John, who looked grim, and then to Evvy, who looked absolutely shell-shocked. She was still rubbing her hands together, as if that would help her rid her skin of the blood. "Dix, would you mind . . .?" John said. He didn't need to elaborate. The nurse gently took Evvy by the arm and led her toward the staff restroom.
The large mirror reflected a hollow-eyed, blood soaked young woman and a seasoned nurse who had navigated the first worst day of many an intern and student nurse. Dix handed her a bar of the soap the staff used – strong enough to remove blood from skin and fingernails – and a surgical scrub brush. She watched as Evvy scrubbed her hands until they were clean and pink with abrasion. The stained blue shirt, sans pins and shield, and the white undershirt were placed in a bag to go through the hospital laundry, and Evvy donned a scrub shirt over her ruined brassiere. "That'll do you until you get back to the station," Dix said, as Evvy zipped up her jacket. The navy cotton did not show the bloodstains.
John and Roy were waiting at the base station when Evvy emerged. They openly assessed her, head to toe, and Evvy tried to radiate professional readiness. Roy raised the HT to his lips. "Squad 51, available." She knew that if they got another call between here and the station, she'd have to stay in the Squad, but they made it back to the "barn" without any further incidents.
Evvy walked straight from the apparatus bay to her locker for spare clothes, and then to the shower. It was past her allotted reserved hour, but she didn't care. John watched her go. Cap came out of the day room and took one look at the bloodstains on his uniform. "Bad run?"
"Yeah. Murder scene. Children involved." John rubbed his eye with his fingertips. "Mom was deceased when we got there, six year old died at Rampart. Teenage boy still critical." Roy looked down at his shoes; John imagined he was thinking of his girl and boy.
"How's she doing?" Cap asked, glancing toward the locker room.
"Taking it hard," John answered. He wouldn't reveal what had happened in the Squad, but Cap had been around long enough that he didn't need to. "It was . . . really bad."
"She ready for me to go talk to her?" Cap knew that the conversation had to happen. She'd need to check in with a Department counselor after a run like this.
John shrugged, his gaze on his shoes. "She needs some space," Roy put in quietly. "We all just . . . need a little space."
"Okay," Cap agreed. "I'll let the guys know."
And that evening, as the crew of 51s turned in for a quiet night, each man found a reason to pass by Evvy's bunk at the far side of the room and lay a comforting hand on her knee or shoulder, an unspoken sign that they understood and had her back.
