Chapter 7

After what felt like an incredibly short twenty four hours off, the men from Station 51's "A" shift reported back to duty. Roy, changing into his uniform in the locker room, half listened to the conversations ebbing around him but didn't participate. Even when the words Johnny, priest, and possession appeared in the same sentence, he kept his back half turned. He finished lacing up his black boots and gently closed his locker door, wondering how the day was going to unfold. Judging by the animated words that were jumping about, the events that had occurred last shift were still the main topic of conversation, at least between the two linemen that were arguing behind him.

He sighed, and headed for the kitchen/day room, their home away from home. He had yet to see the topic of his fellow firemen's conversation. He had noticed Gage's motorcycle backed into the corner of the parking lot when he had pulled in, however; he knew he was present and lurking somewhere about the station. Probably sucking down some coffee, which was really what DeSoto needed right now. Only one day off this peculiar rotation, because of something going on with B shift, and he had spent half that time sleeping. It hadn't allowed for nearly enough time to do the necessary chores he had needed to attend to, let alone the thousand extra things he had really wanted to accomplish.

Strolling into the day room, he noted Johnny's lanky form sprawled out on the couch, a coffee cup in one hand and a section of the newspaper draped across his stretched out legs. He waved a hand in his direction but continued on to the hopefully full coffee pot sitting on the stove. Charlie Wilson stepped aside with a knowing grin and watched as the paramedic hefted the pot, felt the weight of the liquid sloshing inside, and let out a relieved sigh.

"No coffee made this morning at home, Roy?" He queried, grin still in place as he moved even further away to allow the paramedic access to the drainer behind his back.

"Nope, there was no time for us to make it or drink it. Wife was on the way out the door with the kids before I even made it to the kitchen, and I was running late as it was." Shaking his head, he thought about the kiss he had almost missed with his harried spouse; she had doubled back and he had bumped into her at the front door on his way to catch her. They had been able to accomplish a fast but satisfying brush of lips and a slower, heartfelt hug.

He blew on his coffee and swallowed before answering the quizzical, eyebrow raised question on Charlie's face. "Hot water heater went right in the middle of my shower; I had to call the landlord and get that arranged before I left."

"You still renting that craftsman style house?"

"That's the one. Jo and I both love the style of the house and the neighborhood, but we're starting to outgrow it with the kids getting bigger. I grew up in a house with only one bathroom, but I'm definitely seeing the advantages to having at least two…."

"My wife wouldn't even look at anything with just one when we were shopping around; I'm glad she stuck to her guns on that one!" Wilson agreed cheerfully as he stretched around and placed his cup in the sink. "See you in a few days, fellas, gotta go catch some sleep as I'm cooking tonight at the restaurant."

"Hey, why don't you bring some leftovers over here when you get done? I think it's Mike's turn to cook, and judging from the weird stuff in the bag of groceries he lugged in with him, I don't think it's gonna be fried chicken!" Chet declared, stopping the exiting fireman with a hand on his arm. Charlie shook his head and laughed, shrugging good naturedly away from the detaining hold.

"Don't think that's how it works, Chester. I'm a chef at La Pavilion, not the fry cook at the Squawky Chicken joint." He left the room, still laughing. Chet flung up his hands in disgust and checked out the room, zeroing in on Gage, who still had his head down perusing the paper.

"Gage," he barked out, striding purposefully in the paramedic's direction.

Johnny didn't acknowledge his vocal utterance, or look up as Chet halted in front of his feet, which were still stretched out and now crossed at the ankles. Kelly circled around the obstruction and dropped down on the couch. "Look John, Marco and I have been discussing your, uh, little problem, and we think we know how to fix it."

"And what little problem would that be, Chet?" Johnny answered slowly, raising his head from the paper, crossing his arms, and staring defiantly at the other man. Roy, who had moved over to the brown pull out wall partition that they never used, winced as the full coffee cup John held tilted precariously in his index finger grip.

Kelly, who had slid even closer so that his leg was an inch away from John's, earnestly waved a hand in excitement. He didn't notice the mug or was too focused on his information to realize that the hot liquid was mere moments away from scalding him.

"Watch the coffee…" Roy interrupted; he stopped his warning with a sigh of relief as Johnny nonchalantly hooked another finger around the tipping vessel and tucked it against his side, arms still stubbornly crossed. John glanced at him and then focused back on the still gesticulating Kelly.

"See, Gage, Marco knows this," his sentence was cut off by Lopez, who delivered a harsh "Chet!" from the doorway, before fully entering the room and striding angrily to the group of men.

"You were supposed to wait for me, so that we could talk to John together! This is a joint effort, remember? It involves some delicate explaining." He crossed his arms and glared pointedly at the other lineman, tapping his foot. He moved a hand to touch the small gold cross that hung around his neck and Roy pondered the addition of the necklace. He was pretty sure that telling piece of jewelry hadn't been there last shift.

Johnny sighed in exasperation and unfolded his own arms. He clambered off the black couch, ignoring the paper that slipped from his lap to the floor, and brushed past Marco. He stopped suddenly, spun around, and pointed a finger at Chet. "You two just….ah, forget it, just forget it!"

He whipped back around, ignoring the sloshing coffee and marched to the sink, muttering under his breath. After dumping the contents of the green and white cup, he set it down carefully and remained with his back to the avidly watching men. He took several deep breaths, trying to compose himself before he turned around to face them, feeling their eyes on his back. He wasn't being overly suspicious; he just knew instinctively that they were staring at him and probably twirling their fingers, crazy, crazy, and crazy, in tight circles by the sides of their heads.

He spun around, huffing out a deep whoosh of air. "Look, I appreciate your concern, or your infatuation with this stuff, or whatever it is, but I don't need you calling me fifteen times on my day off! And Marco, siccing your sister on me when I wouldn't talk to you anymore, that was just low, man, just low!"

He paused in his increasingly loud rant and looked over at Roy, who had moved to the table and was watching and listening with an interested but neutral expression. "Roy, do you know what I had to do to put a stop to their calls? I had to take the phone off the hook!"

Johnny slapped a hand down on the counter and raised his eyebrows at his partner, who was trying to decipher the meaning of the words directed at him.

"You were expecting a call….oh, that's right! Jeanette!*" Roy finally deduced, after a bit of floundering about with his mental guesses.

"Yeah, Jeanette, sweet beautiful Jeanette, she was gonna call me when she finished her OT shift at Rampart, but no, oh no! These two boneheads here had to hound me all day, couldn't get any decent sleep, and then they distracted me enough to forget about her calling me!" Gage groaned in disbelief and dropped into the nearest chair, propping his head up with a hand and closing his eyes.

Chet and Marco shifted uneasily and shot looks of guilt between them as they simultaneously came to the conclusion that they must have indeed bothered John so much that he'd forgotten about the pretty nurse he was trying to make plans with. But on the up side, they really had been concerned with their friend and all the strange things that had happened mere hours ago. They had only been trying to help.

It was Marco who stepped forward and accepted the blame. "I'm sorry, Johnny, we were just worried about you. Look, we'll talk to you later about this, ok? I think we all need some coffee right now to start the shift off right…."

He nudged Chet, who cast him a dubious look and then nodded. "Yeah, right, we'll wait a bit before, uh, telling you what we came up with." He glanced slyly at Lopez but even the close proximity of his friend couldn't stop him from delivering a parting shot.

"Exorcism, I will say it involves exorcism."

Chet danced sideways but didn't miss the deadly accurate cuff to his shoulder, delivered by his tight lipped colleague. They stared at each other, missing John's now wide opened eyes and his perplexed expression. He lifted his head wearily from his hand, looked at the two rigid appearing linemen, and then directed his confusion at Roy.

"Exorcism? What the heck is that?"

Roy opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it once more to try and explain their colleagues' plan. "They, uh, want to get rid of the evil spirit that's inhabiting you, or following you around, or whatever she is doing…."

Bewilderment quickly turned to annoyance and Johnny turned his attention back to Marco and Chet, who had somehow come to a wordless truce. They had relaxed their poses and were now attentive. Finally, though, Gage's features softened and he sighed and dropped his belligerent scowl. "Okay, I understand that you meant well, just don't do it again, okay? And forget about the exorcism thing entirely as there's no one in here but me!"

Johnny thumped his chest for emphasis with his hand and folded his arms on the table, dropping his head down. He wasn't about to admit to them that he had almost welcomed the concerned interruptions yesterday, or that he had spent the little time he had slept wrapped up in a sleeping bag on the floor next to his couch. He had come to the brilliant conclusion when he had gotten home that he wasn't going to sleep on anything higher than a foot off the floor; he had not wanted to end up flat on his back like he had in the station or something worse. So of course he hadn't been able to sleep much at all, between the well-meaning phone calls and the growing anxiety of waiting for something to actually happen.

And as for the mountainous pile of laundry growing in his bedroom, he hadn't even attempted that terrifying task. The thought of taking the steps to the laundry room, accessible right now only by an outside staircase, had been daunting. So call him a chicken or paranoid, but he wasn't taking any chances. He would rather deal with a stinky, moldy heap of clothes then risk a downward plunge on cement stairs. Lugging the stuff to a laundromat was really beginning to sound like a great idea.

Plus there was the little matter of the hand on his shoulder while he had been descending those stairs on that last run. He had been flipping and flopping that very puzzling occurrence in his tired brain nonstop. Had that hand been friendly or there to cause him harm? Considering all the mischief that the supposed spirit, ghost, or whatever it was had been causing, he figured it was pretty good odds that it was the latter. Unless there were two entities involved? Casper the friendly ghost and Alice the unhappy and vengeful sister maybe? The questions were really piling up….

"Oh sheesh," he muttered into his arm, and then hoped that no one had heard that exclamation. That was really what he needed, two oddball creatures following him around. Then again, maybe Casper was there to keep Alice in line? Where had good old Casper been when he had been sliding into that stupid food elevator?

He was still picking splinters out of his belly from that little "shove Johnny down the hole" stunt. When Roy had ripped his t-shirt trying to stop his headfirst plunge, the soft material had also come untucked from his turnouts and did an excellent job of riding up as he was pulled backwards. Now the skin from the bottom of his ribs to his waistband was ripped up pretty good thanks to the rough edge of the shaft; the metal finishing off the edge had been conveniently missing from that one side. The only thing he could be thankful for was the fact that Roy had not seen the nasty damage and he had been able to go home and treat it himself. He could honestly say that the advantages of being a paramedic far outweighed not being one, well, most of the time anyways. He was just going to have to be careful with his movements for the next couple of days because the patch of skin was pretty much raw and extremely tender.

Mike, who had been hovering in the doorway for most of the strange conversation, nonchalantly ambled in with hands tucked into his front pockets and dropped his simple comment into the now quiet room. "Maybe it's a poltergeist."

The brief moment of tranquility was immediately shattered as both Chet and Marco loudly disputed this announcement; Roy noticed that Mike didn't contribute any more information but simply leaned against the wall and watched and listened, an inscrutable expression on his face. Amazing how that guy could drop such a well-timed and strategically placed bomb as that and then just stand back and watch the fallout. He was most assuredly the master of timing.

Roy tuned out the verbal altercation. Sliding into a chair and watching John over the rim of his cup, he wondered if the past shift's happenings were beginning to sink in. He had noted when he had been able to see his face that Johnny looked tired and his skin color was sallow. His irritation with the two well-meaning linemen was par for the course, especially with the often abrasive and taunting Kelly, but forgetting about a girl he had been trying to hook up with for almost a month was definitely not normal. He really had meant to call his friend to see how he was doing on their day off, but had been caught up in his own problems. Plus if Gage had the phone off the hook, he wouldn't have been able to reach him anyway; he waived away the tiny pang of guilt, justifying it with that simple fact.

Captain Stanley strode into the room, oblivious to or purposely ignoring the tense undercurrent wiggling throughout the room. The arguing voices immediately quieted and then ceased all together as he poured some more coffee into the cup he was carrying and swept his glance over his men. Chet and Marco were hovering uncertainly by the couch, Mike was leaning with arms crossed against the wall, and the two paramedics were seated at the table; Roy was staring steadfastly at Johnny, who had his head down and face completely shielded by his arms.

"Something going on that I should know about?" He asked, watching for reactions from all five men. It took only a second for the three standing men to look at him and about five seconds for DeSoto to tear his attention away from his partner; by his calculations it took Gage almost a full thirty seconds before his words penetrated his fog and he jerked his head up from its buried position. He didn't miss the looks flashing around as each man seemed to be seeking reassurance from each other before they answered the innocent question.

"Uh, no sir, we're just waiting for roll call," Chet replied, reaching a finger up to nervously stroke the end of his moustache. Marco nodded in agreement, sidling closer to the door.

Stanley raised his bushy eyebrows at the evasive, hair touching answer and Marco's stealthy, sideway slide towards freedom. "Then I suggest that you all head out to the bay, as roll officially starts in exactly one minute."

He tapped the face of his watch to make his point, but chairs were already scraping back and bodies hurtling through the door even before he made the gesture. He waited for a moment before leisurely following the thumping footsteps; the slam of the storage door signaled that the last man had grabbed his dress hat.

Roll call was completed without any fuss, except for the childish bumping of shoulders that seemed to be unavoidable between Kelly, Lopez, and Gage. Stoker and DeSoto stood on opposite ends of the line, standing stiffly apart but both betraying their amusement by their smiles. Hank just shook his head and finished the announcements, wondering what mischief was brewing between those three.

After the hats were placed back on the shelf, the men leisurely dispersed to begin their assignments. Roy followed John to the side of the squad, assisting him with pulling down their boxes and the bio-phone. They worked in easy silence, checking the supplies and completing their morning call with Rampart to verify the calibration check. Roy snapped the latches closed on the trauma box and looked over at his partner, who seemed to have frozen in place, the black phone still in his hand.

"You okay?" He queried, rising to his feet and sliding the box onto the shelf.

Johnny startled, then firmly put the phone down and finished closing up the orange box. "Huh? Oh, yeah, just fine, just fine..."

He stretched stiffly to his feet and handed off the box; Roy took it, slotted it in place, and closed the doors to the compartment. He tagged after Gage into the dorm, and watched a moment as he dumped his armload of clean linens onto the first bed and began making it up.

"You need something?" The younger man asked, holding the pillow under his chin and pulling on the case.

"No, just kinda curious how your day off was as to, well, you know, anything strange happening?"

Johnny firmly shook the pillow down the last inch and tossed it on the bed. He locked eyes for a moment with Roy before grabbing a sheet, spinning away, and shaking it out over the next bed. "Nothing weird happened, if that's what you mean."

"Right, well that's good, very good. I guess I'd better get to what I need to do then," DeSoto responded with a smile, lingering for a moment longer to see if the younger man was going to elaborate a bit more. When it became clear that he was being studiously ignored, Roy headed for the latrines, wondering if Johnny had been telling the whole story or was purposely leaving something out.

The strident call of the station's tones sounded, interrupting his musings. He couldn't help his groan of dismay as he whirled around and headed for the bay. Judging by the expressions on the faces of the linemen and the engineer as they passed him on their way to the engine, they had all heard their destination very clearly.

Johnny snatched the slip from his fingers and read it before writing on it and slapping it into place under the visor. He shifted nervously in his seat, his hands pulling on his already tightened chin strap before dropping to his knees and drumming a rapid beat. He glanced over as Roy eased out of the station.

"That was Gantry's Mortuary, right?"

"Afraid so," Roy concurred, as they turned right and led the way down the street.

"Well, what could go wrong there? I'm sure it's just a false alarm, or their pilot light went off on the uh, furnace, or something like that, right?" The white knuckled grip that John now had on the edge of the beige seat told a different story; his words implied that he didn't want to believe the worst about the unknown rescue they were heading towards. The clutching fingers revealed his thoughts, however, that there would be absolutely nothing normal, or perhaps even worldly about whatever they were blindly traipsing into.

"Uh huh," was all Roy could think of to say, as even his mind was leaping about and ploughing through possible scenarios that even the nervous medic on the seat next to him couldn't possibly think of. He tried to tamp down his imagination as they jolted to an abrupt stop in front of the older building and climbed out; the engine rolled to a smoother halt behind them. The sight of an older man, garbed in a black suit, trotting down the sidewalk towards them told him that whatever misgivings or weird thoughts they had about this call were soon to be answered…

~TBC~

A/N *Jeanette appears in the episode "Honest" written by Daryl Henry and aired on December 15, 1972.