Judy sat in the passenger seat, grasping her cell phone with desperate force.
Since they had left the ambulance station, she had tried to call both her parents multiple times, and with every time they hadn't picked up the doe's fear increased.
When Judy hung up for what felt like the millionth time, Nick shot her a questioning look, but she just shook her head in reply.
Not wanting to chance an accident but unable to watch his mate suffer like this, the tod let his tail find its way into her lap, trying to comfort her at least a little. Judy accepted the gesture gratefully and started petting the soft appendage to soothe her nerves.
"If you have to freak out, you should do so now. When we arrive at the train station, you have to function, no matter if the victim is a stranger or your mom."
Taking another glance at the bunny next to him, Nick caught her small nod, hoping that she would be able to pull through.
"Listen, Judy! We both know what we do. We have dealt with some dire situations since we have started working together and have seen some grim stuff, and we still pulled through every time without losing anyone. And today is not going to be different, no matter what!"
Another small nod from the lagomorph was the only reaction he got, before Judy hid her face in his tail, silently weeping into the fox's fur.
Watching her in this state was painful to Nick, making him feel like he couldn't do anything to help her.
When Judy had calmed down a little, she sat up a little straighter, wiping away a couple of leftover tears from her cheeks. "Thank you, Nick. You are right, it will be fine."
Understandably, the bunny still looked stressed, and Nick wasn't any different in that regard. But he knew that they wouldn't be of help to anybody if they ended up crash victims, so he forced himself to treat this as a regular emergency call and not to drive like a madmammal.
They had reached their destination in less than ten minutes, but it had felt like hours to them.
When the impressive building of the Savannah Central Train Station finally came into view, Judy felt her heart rate spike, and her sensitive ears picked up a similar reaction from her mate.
As soon as Nick stopped the vehicle right in front of the building's large main entrance, the doe jumped out of her seat, the reynard hot on her heels, both hurrying to fetch the first responder bag and stretcher from the ambulance before entering the station.
Rushing to the first level, they were met by a crowd of onlookers and a couple of ZPD Officers, keeping them in check. One of the officers - a tigress - waved the two paramedics through.
In the middle of the cleared out area, a female, gray-furred bunny was lying on the ground, stains of blood covering part of her clothes and creating small puddles of crimson red beneath her.
Next to her kneeled a brown buck, pressing what looked like a large handkerchief on a long gash in her arm.
When he looked up and spotted the two approaching mammals, a look of surprise and dread came to his face. "Judy!"
That was all it took for Nick to understand that their fears had come true.
In that instant, he was sure his mate would freeze on the spot, unable to act. But even before this thought had time to really settle in, Judy had already moved to the older doe's side with Nick right behind her.
Afterward, the reynard would feel unbelievably proud and impressed by his mate's actions, and by the way she had controlled her emotions right then and there. But for the time being, he was focused on the unconscious mammal in front of him.
While Judy tended to the nasty wound on her mom's arm, she simultaneously put her superior hearing to use and checked her vitals.
"Breathing is shallow. But no signs of obstruction of the respiratory tract or liquid in the lungs. Lowered heart rate at one hundred beats per minute."
In the meantime, Nick had scanned the older doe's breath for any blood scent that could hint at injuries of the respiratory system Judy might have missed but found nothing. He had also checked her for fresher scents of blood. The visible injuries were almost entirely small cuts, scratches and bite wounds that had stopped bleeding by the time they had arrived.
The only fresh blood that hadn't coagulated by then came from the wound on her arm that Judy had already disinfected and bandaged along with somewhere around her mother's head.
After pointing that out to her, Judy carefully lifted the older doe's head, giving her partner easier access to examine and treat the injury.
While doing so, Judy addressed her dad: "What caused these wounds?"
Stu, who had gone silent as soon as his daughter had begun assessing the situation, started to answer but was interrupted.
One of the bystanders - a black pantheress - looked like she had been crying.
"It was m-my fault!" she stated in a somewhat shaky voice. "When that lemming ha-had gone savage and a-attacked her, I-I was too shocked to r-react right away." Her words were interrupted by small hiccups, showing how shaken the female was. "B-but when he bit her arm... I-I just wanted to help. I-I didn't know tearing him off would cause s-such a wound!"
The feline looked like she was about to start crying again and only calmed down a little when someone who Judy assumed was her mate pulled her into an embrace and whispered some soothing words to her.
Looking over her shoulder, Judy asked her dad: "A lemming did this?"
The buck nodded in reply. "Yeah. The panther over there," he hinted in the direction of the couple, not making it clear if he meant the female or male feline, "bumped into him, almost stepping on the little guy. He climbed up on one of those big plant pots, looking like he was ready to give them a piece of his mind when he suddenly went crazy. Started growling and snarling. I would have never thought I could be so scared by a small rodent like him but that... ." The brown rabbit just shook his head, not knowing how to finish his sentence.
Judy nodded, acknowledging what she had heard while still focusing on her task.
Nick had carefully checked the unconscious Hopps matriarch in the meantime for any other wounds and injuries after treating the laceration at the back of her head that had caused the blood scent he had detected. It was probably the reason for the older lagomorph's unconscious state, and he made a mental note to include a suspected concussion to their list.
The two paramedics placed Bonnie on the gurney and hurried towards the ambulance - Stu hard on their heels - with Nick relaying the information about their patient to dispatch.
While he got back into the driver's cab, his lagomorph counterpart got into the back, monitoring her mom's condition with her dad at her side, the buck wringing his cap in his paws nervously.
Nick got the information of which hospital had been informed of their arrival, already preparing for the treatment of the lagomorph, and headed in the specified direction.
Meanwhile, Judy had connected the older doe to a heart monitor. "When was the last time mom donated blood?"
She knew that her mom was doing this on a more or less regular basis.
If we have a chance to get ahold of an autologous blood bottle of her I want to know as soon as possible.
Startled out of his thoughts the buck almost jumped into the air before answering. "She had gone to her usual blood collection center about three days ago, I think."
Judy turned towards the window that connected the two parts of the vehicle with each other. "Have you heard, Nick?"
"Sure, Carrots. I'll relay the Information to dispatch. Is there more than one Blood Bank in Bunnyburrow?"
The doe shook her head before realizing Nick couldn't see it. "No, just the one 'Bunnyburrow Blood Bank.'"
She hoped her mom's blood was still there.
More than that, she hoped it wouldn't be needed, but better safe than sorry.
It was already difficult enough to get matching blood bags considering the fact it had to come from the same species, but since Bonnie had a rare blood type on top of it, Judy didn't want to take any chances.
Now, all she could do was watch over her mom while the minutes it took to reach the hospital felt like they stretched into hours.
When the doors to the operating room closed, leaving the three mammals outside, Stu first attempted to just follow his wife inside but was held back by Judy.
"Let the surgeon do his work, dad. We should head to the waiting area until someone has news for us."
Reluctantly, the Hopps patriarch complied.
As soon as they sat down, though, it seemed that all energy and resolve was finally leaving the doe. Her tears started flowing, and she was shaking with silent sobs. Before Stu could even react, Nick had already pulled his mate into a tight embrace, his tail curling around her protectively and one of his large paws repeatedly running down both of her ears in a comforting manner.
Judy clung to her fox, her face hidden against his chest, tears darkening the fabric of his uniform, while the vulpine whispered reassuring words to her.
"It's going to be alright, Sweetheart. You have seen it yourself. Your mom's wounds were mostly superficial. We were fast to arrive at the scene and treated her as best as we could, and the Savannah Central Hospital is the best in Zootopia. She'll be fine." He emphasized the last three words, hoping to reassure the upset bunny.
It worked somewhat, helping the doe to calm down a little. At least enough so that she stopped clutching at the front of his uniform and her tears dried up.
Judy wasn't the only one. To his own surprise, Stu felt himself calm down as well, partly assured by the fox's words but also because his daughter apparently believed in them.
While watching the exchange between them, the buck came to the sudden realization that there was more going on between the fox and bunny than Judy had let on when she had told him and Bonnie about this partner of hers.
His suspicion hardened when Nick - for the moment solely focused on his mate and forgetting about the presence of the buck - pressed a kiss to Judy's crown, directly between her ears which weren't as droopy as before.
When the doe finally drew away from the reynard a little, Stu decided this wasn't the right time to inquire about the nature of their relationship.
Searching for a topic to distract them, he asked the first thing that came to mind.
"So, you must be Mister Wilde, the partner my daughter had told me so much about."
Startled by the sudden question, Judy flinched a little. The insides of her ears turned red when she remembered that her father was still there, right next to them, and she scooted away from Nick. Just a little. Though it didn't go unnoticed by the buck that she was still holding one of the fox's paws.
Acting like he was unaware of all this, Nick just put on a friendly smile. "That's right, Sir. But please, call me Nick. Mister Wilde was my father," he added one of the most generic phrases he could think of.
"Alright, Nicholas. In that case, just call me Stu." Nick counted this as a small success, even if he had to suppress a sigh at the use of his full name.
"So, our Jude the Dude had told us you had been working as a paramedic even before the start of the Mammal Inclusion Initiative."
The tod looked at the gray bunny sitting right next to him and could almost hear her groaning inwardly, realizing that she would be hearing that nickname a lot in the future.
"Well, 'Jude the Dude' told you the truth. It was my luck that I knew someone working in dispatch who was also friends with the Chief of our Ambulance Station. He arranged it so that the three of us were visiting a sports bar. Watching a game, having a few beers and talking about anything and everything, just three guys on a boys night out. Though at one point the boss mammal had had a cup too much, and we made a bet. If I were able to do decent work on regular shifts with a team of mid-sized mammals for one month, he would make sure that I get hired at his station." The fox chuckled at the memory of his boss making a bet like this, so sure he would win it.
"What can I say. A word and a blow. I have been working there ever since then. Though it had been complicated in the beginning, with most of the equipment meant to be handled by mammals bigger than me and I couldn't drive any of the vehicles before the MII came around." He slightly winced while remembering the struggles he had back then as well. "But I was working the job of my dreams."
The brown rabbit scratched his head at that. "How did that even work?"
Nick gave him a quizzical look, prompting the buck to clarify what he meant. "How could paramedics larger than you two treat smaller mammals like us? And why wouldn't anybody hire small mammals for this job in the first place even after you went through all that training to get licensed?" He added on second thought.
Judy - who had followed the two males' conversation with a feeling of relief that they were getting along well - spoke up for the first time in a while. "Well, to answer your first question: very, very carefully. And I only mean this half in jest." She added when her fox chuckled at this statement.
"The smallest paramedic up until then was a ram, and when treating someone like a bunny, a ferret or anything else around our size, they had to work with utter caution so as not to injure their patients more instead of helping them. About the why..." She glanced at her partner.
"Prejudices," Nick just said. "It's the same with the ZPD or the Firefighters. Small mammals are pictured as being less competent, weaker, more easily scared and over-challenged by demanding work like ours or in danger of just being stepped on in the middle of a chaotic situation. The citizens of Little Rodentia can probably count themselves lucky they have an Ambulance Service of their own. I don't want to imagine myself trying to put up an IV for a shrew." He shook himself theatrically at the thought, drawing a small laugh from the doe this time.
By then, Stu had decided he liked the somewhat goofy tod. It also hadn't escaped his attention that his daughter had scooted a little closer to the fox again and he found himself thinking that if she was happy, it might be okay...