"Come in, Seven, Zero, Five!"
"Here Seven, Zero, Five. Over." Judy answered while she and her partner were already heading towards the ambulance station's garage.
"We got an emergency call from twenty-three Fleetwood Drive. Apartment building; seventh floor. Caller is male. Species stated as rodent: Ondatra zibethicus. Distressed. Saying he is haunted by ghosts. Cut on the left front paw. Over."
"Understood. Seven, Zero, Five heading out. Over."
They were already on the road when the call had ended.
Putting the radio away, Judy looked over at her partner, who was steering the vehicle through the sparse morning traffic. "What do you think we will have to deal with?"
Without taking his eyes off the road, the tod answered. "As I see it there are three possibilities, not regarding the chance that we will meet Casper today." The last part earned him an eye-roll from the bunny.
"Number one would be a prank call. Those idiots never die out. Number two would be that we are dealing with a mentally ill mammal which has a psychotic episode. And last but not least, option number three: drugs."
At that, the bunny flinched, causing Nick to smirk at her reaction. "What? Are you thinking about the rhino from last month?"
The doe shuddered in her seat upon being reminded of that incident. "Please don't bring that one up again."
"Why not?" the fox asked, a smirk firmly placed on his muzzle, "I thought it was awesome to see my beautiful mate's strong legs in action." Judy was huffing in annoyance, but unable to hide her blush. "You can see my legs in action when I'm going to kick your fluffy butt."
Hearing the threat, the tod chuckled. "Come on, Cotton Swab. You know you love me... and my fluffy butt." He wriggled his eyebrows for emphasis. Something the bunny only saw from the side since the fox was still facing forward, his eyes never leaving the road.
Arms crossed in front of her chest, she shot a short sideways glance at him before muttering, "You really are one lucky fox."
"Yes, I am."
Nick's answer, free of any kind of snark and delivered with an honest smile, made the doe's blush deepen and she was unable to stop the wide, happy grin that lit up her face.
A few minutes later, they had reached their destination. A slightly dilapidated-looking, dirty gray building in a neighborhood that wasn't as bad as Happytown, but reminded Nick too much of it for comfort. Alhough Happytown was the only district they were told never to enter without a ZPD escort, he wasn't feeling very safe here, either.
"At least the size is right this time. A muskrat is far more likely to live here than a rhino." A smirk crossed his muzzle while he looked back at his partner. Though it fell off of his face rather quickly when he caught the glare directed at him by his mate.
Clearing his throat, he adjusted the first responder bag on his left shoulder and hurried towards the entrance door to the apartment complex. Like the rest of the building, it had seen better days, the wood brittle and the once brown color faded and coming off here and there.
When up close, Nick found that the door hadn't snapped shut. When putting some pressure on it, he also realized why. The frame was distorted and made it impossible to close the door. And almost impossible to open it as well, it seemed. Only when Judy stepped up beside the fox and gave the wood a kick for good measure did it finally sprung open. The doe entered first, a smug smile on her face.
"I could have done that as well," a pouting Nick followed suit.
"Sure." The bunny's grin widened a little more.
Just before they entered the staircase, she leaped into the air with a surprised 'eep!'
Turning around, Judy scowled at the tod behind her. "Did you just pinch my tail?"
Nick tilted his head sideways, one ear standing up and the other one halfway down, giving him a quizzical look.
"I have no idea what you are talking about, Carrots," he stated while passing her by.
Tugging softly on one of her long ears, he added, "Must have been the ghost."
The doe swatted his paw away and briefly considered to give her fox some retaliation. But she decided against it.
For now. They still had a distressed mammal to tend to, after all.
At the time the two paramedics reached the seventh floor - mumbling curses about non-functional elevators - they were slightly out of breath and glad that they worked out regularly in the ambulance station's gym.
The inside of the building was a mirror of its exterior. The worn-out wooden floor spoke of generations of mammals wearing it down, while the wallpaper - at least the part of it that wasn't torn up, conquered by mold or covered in stains of unknown origin - showed a color that might have used to be something close to a royal blue. Three to four decades ago.
Looking down the length of the hallway, there was no rodent to be found. The floor was L-shaped, though, and when Judy and Nick rounded the corner, they found the sunken down muskrat on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chin, arms slung around his knees and slowly rocking back and forth.
Judy was the first to approach the distressed prey, knowing that it was best not to confront them with a predator right away since some would panic in situations that were already putting them under a lot of mental stress.
"Sir?" Judy addressed the rodent, slowly getting closer. His focus shifted towards her, even if the doe wasn't sure he was actually aware of her presence.
"You have been calling about a ghost haunting you and a cut on your forepaw, right?" The bunny was now kneeling beside her patient, her sensitive ears picking up the muskrat's heartbeat, his heart rate clearly above the two hundred forty beats per minute which were typical for his species.
The mammal didn't answer right away but slowly lifted his left front paw, looking at the cut that was crossing his palm. He looked back at Judy and slowly nodded. The matted fur around his eyes indicated that he had cried before Nick and Judy had arrived and now another tear was starting to well up. The rodent wiped it away, his movement almost lethargic.
"I see," the doe answered in a smooth voice. "Could you tell me what exactly happened while my partner here is treating your wound?"
While Judy had been talking, Nick had stepped up beside her, still keeping some distance. But the muskrat just nodded again, apparently not caring about the predator at all.
Kneeling down on the rodent's other side, the reynard set down the bag and took the muskrat's paw.
"Clean cut. Not very deep, but will need some stitches. Don't worry, Sir, it will probably not even leave a scar. But I'll need to disinfect the wound before bandaging it, and that will sting."
Nick was pretty much convinced that the other mammal wasn't able to follow what he told him, but he had to make sure and explain what he was about to do. Clarifying what you were about to do to an injured mammal often helped them to calm down and not start panicking when you begin the treatment and pull all kinds of equipment from your paramedic kit. It was one of the first things he had learned.
But the muskrat wasn't even looking at him, barely giving him a nod. He was still roughly focused on Judy.
After some more seconds had ticked by without the rodent saying a word, Judy asked again. "Sir, can you tell me what had happened before you called for us?"
He slowly turned his head to look back over his shoulder at the door to what the doe assumed was his apartment. His tongue slipped out between his lips in a faint show of nervousness before he started talking, his voice raspy and his words coming slowly and a little slurred.
"There was... this ghost. Just. Just a vague shadow. Barely visible. Approaching and backing away. Sometimes touching me. Whispering. Scared me at first. But not much." His ear flicked once upon remembering his encounter.
"Then he threw something around. Mug. Plate. Bowl. I don't know. Hit me. Hurt my paw."
He looked down at his now bandaged front paw, his expression showing mild surprise. Slowly his eyes wandered upwards until he found the fox's. He nodded once and mumbled a weak "Thank you," before looking back down at his appendage that was now covered in white gauze.
Judy shot her partner a questioning look, the fox understanding the meaning of it immediately.
He addressed the muskrat one more time. "Sir? We would bring you to a hospital now. There they can stitch up your paw and make sure you are not injured apart from that."
The rodent looked slowly back and forth between the two paramedics, seemingly struggling with what he had been told.
"Of course," Judy added like it was on second thought, "if it would make you feel better, we could take a look inside your apartment first to make sure the ghost is gone."
For once, the muskrat seemed to grasp the meaning of what he was told without thinking about it and nodded his agreement to the fox and rabbit. Fishing his keys out of the pockets of his pants, he held them out to a surprised Nick.
The reynard unlocked the door and entered, leaving his partner with their patient.
One of the bunny's large, sensitive ears was facing the apartment, keeping track of the fox while the other one was still directed at the muskrat, keeping track of his breathing and heart rate.
The floor of the small studio apartment was littered with clothes and crumbled, empty wrappings of different snacks mixed in between.
Taking a look around, the tod couldn't help but state in a low voice, "It looks just as bad from the inside as it looks from the outside," knowing that Judy would be able to pick it up, considering her superior hearing.
''Even worse than the shoebox you had lived in before, just a little bigger," Nick added with a weak smirk the doe couldn't see, betraying the fact that even he didn't think it was that funny. More like sad.
In front of the apartment, Judy was rolling her eyes.
It wasn't that bad.
She was silently willing the fox to get on with it.
Inside, Nick had turned towards the rather small and equally dirty kitchenette. Looking into the sink, he spotted a mountain of uncleaned dishes, many of them still showing remains of half-eaten meals that were about to come back to life. On the floor in front of the sink, though, were shards of a shattered plate. Blood was visible on the sharp edge of one of the bigger pieces, and crimson specks had left a trail from there over to the entrance door.
"So he actually cut himself on a broken plate. At least now we know what had caused the injury."
Alright, that's something. Come on now, foxy, what has your nose picked up?
As if on cue, the bunny heard sniffing noises from the inside, followed by a sigh.
"I thought so. Just the same as the faint scents on him. I can pick up traces of at least two different substances here, I'm sure he took. One smells somewhat like burned sugar, so it's probably crack, and the other scent is an acetic vinegar smell, so I assume he took heroin as well."
Outside, the doe briefly closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.
So we have to monitor his cardiac activity. Hopefully, he doesn't get a heart attack. I don't want to give him any kind of medication without knowing what else is already in his system. These hallucinations about a ghost are most likely not the product of one of those two, after all.
"Alright," she heard footsteps approaching the door, "let's get him out of here and into the ambulance."
Once Nick had left the apartment and told their patient that it looked like whatever haunted him was gone, the rodent seemed to relax a little.
They were able to slowly lead him out of the building and into the vehicle without any trouble, Judy keeping one ear pointed at him at all times.
While she stayed with the muskrat in the back of the ambulance, connecting him to a heart rate monitor and taking a blood sample for the hospital's laboratory, Nick had forwarded the status of their patient to dispatch and was now en route.
Their destination was a hospital that he knew had a good program for drug rehabilitation. No one could force the muskrat to do so, but he would at least have a chance there. Many mammals didn't take the opportunity, but both paramedics hoped that this one would.
It was just before 9 am when they finally arrived back at the ambulance station and both - fox and rabbit - were relieved to clock out. After taking a quick shower, they left and headed for their own car.
"Man, I'm sure glad it actually was a muskrat this time instead of-OUCH!" Rubbing his shoulder, Nick gave his mate a look that was equally amused and incredulous. "How did I deserve that treatment, Cotton Swab?"
The doe gave him a withering look. "Don't act all innocent. You were about to mention that rhino again. And don't you dare deny it!" She added, seeing how the reynard was about to open his muzzle to object.
"Alright, alright. I was about to mention it, and I promise I won't do it again if it's that much of a sore spot for you," he pledged, holding up two digits of one paw, the other paw covering his heart.
"More of a nightmare than a sore spot." The doe grumbled, shuddering again at the memory.
A couple of weeks ago, they had moved out after an emergency call came in, stating that the caller - a female lagomorph - was complaining about a sudden feeling of faintness, sounding highly distressed.
Upon arrival at the given address, though, what they had found wasn't the home of a small mammal, but an apartment complex meant for bigger ones like elephants. Or rhinos.
When they had found the right apartment - the door only ajar - they had carefully entered, announcing their presence so as not to surprise the tenant. In the kitchen they had found a female rhino, sitting slumped over at a table and trembling in every limb.
When Judy addressed her, asking if she had called 911, the pachyderm suddenly jumped up, flipping the table over in the process and wrecking havoc in the kitchen before charging at the two paramedics.
Nick and Judy had retreated into the hallway and made a run for the entrance, but a short corridor for a rhino was still a long distance for a bunny and fox.
If it hadn't been for the doe's quick-thinking and fast reflexes, they would have probably been flattened by the crazed mammal behind them.
Using her strong legs, Judy had taken advantage of the somewhat confined space of the hallway. Jumping from wall to wall she had been able to confuse the rhino until she got an opening, and kicked her in the head.
The kick itself hadn't done any damage, but with the momentum Judy had been able to change the course of the pachyderm, causing her to crash head-first in and through the opposite wall.
The large mammal had been stuck long enough for them to call in the ZPD.
When a blood sample of the pachyderm had been analyzed shortly after, the results had shown a mind-boggling mix of different drugs in her system.
Judy - who had fallen behind a little while remembering that dreadful encounter - hurried to catch up to Nick.
Stretching, the reynard let loose a long yawn, his tongue sticking out and curling at the tip. "I can't put into words how much I'm looking forward to getting home and catch up on some much-needed sleep."
"Mhm," the doe nodded in agreement, closing the distance between them what caused her fox to put an arm around her, "that really sounds fantastic. I can't wait to crawl into our cozy bed. Away from prying eyes."
She looked upwards at her mate, giving him an equally meaningful and seductive look.
Nick, whose ears were standing rigidly by now, could feel his heart rate double at the suggestive remark.
"That sounds quite nice, Fluffbutt. Even if I think that sleep should be our top priority for now." The smile he was wearing was alternating between tiredness and excitement, making it even more evident how exhausted he felt at this point.
The rabbit was not giving in.
"Oh no, mister," she stated with an impish grin. "You are not getting out of this. If I remember correctly, you were quite eager to fondle my poor little tail earlier. And now," Nick let loose a surprised yip when a small, velvety paw caressed his tail dangerously close to its base, "You'll have to take responsibility for it! And for bringing up you-know-what, you owe me some kind of distraction."
"Yes Ma'am." The fox chuckled and pressed a kiss on his mate's lips.
"Needy bunny."
"Gullible fox."
After a moment, Judy added in a more sober voice, "You are right, though, we should try to get a good dose of sleep before our next shift. Ever since predators have started to go savage, we are short on personnel, and those twelve-hour shifts are already grueling enough as it is."