Author's note:

I guess I need to rephrase my earlier statement and make sure that no one misunderstands; yes this story is a work of complete fiction. The details given in the Preface chapter really happened and there were a number of auto accidents in the area but none of them to my knowledge ever involved the same circumstances as the one in this story. And once again I want to make it clear to anyone who thinks that my characters are them with different names, they are only partially right at the very most, it is very important that you realize this because every good story has to have a bad guy or two and I'm afraid by some of the reviews and pms that I've received so far, that I may lose some lifelong friends and my own parents may just disown me if this is not made perfectly clear. This is just pretend no real life people and happenings, is that clear?

Chapter five

As the automatic doors to the hospital closed behind the doctor, Julie leaned back watching the herd of health care workers roll their critical patient into the combination delivery/operating room.

Once the hall cleared out, there were a few other hospital workers, about five in number, some young some older, who were looking out the door window trying to decide what to do next.

Julie let out a sigh and leaned against the tailgate of the truck before waving her hand to the women on the other side of the glass.

When one of the nurses stepped forward enough to trip the automatic door into opening Julie spoke up. "We'll need a gurney for the guy in the back here and we'll also need a wheelchair for the driver and if you can't find the proper scenic place to park it, he's going to need an emesis basin."

Julie then shifted her position till she could see her brother's reflection in the side view mirror; she then glanced at Chet's watch as he stood at her side. "I think a session with the dietitian that should have just gotten off shift, may be just what he needs."

With a few giggles from the nurses as a gurney moved through the door to the truck, Chet and John climbed back into the truck bed and made short work of lifting Roy from the seat to the tailgate and then from the tailgate to the gurney. As the gurney was being rolled through the doors and back into the building they all knew without a doubt that they were in for a long wait. This area's only doctor had a life and death situation on his hands and they would just have to wait until he won, or lost, that battle first.

John and Chet helped the nursing staff, several of which John was sure were just teenagers, position Roy on his side because he was still slightly nauseous. Julie saw to it that her brother was rolled in and contact between him and the before mentioned dietitian was happening before requesting the three most comfortable chairs she thought the place had, for herself and the two firemen from out of town.

Julie's brother, who was still quite pale, managed to pull the girl into his lap and with her tenderly caressing his face, the two talked in whispers that no one else could hear.

When the patients were settled and as comfortable as possible, Julie began by using her bandaged hands and her feet together to move one of the wheeled high-backed office chairs into the hall just outside of x-ray.

"Sir," one of the office workers moved up to Roy with a clip board of papers in her hands. "Can I get your information and insurance while we're waiting for the doctor?"

Johnny was confused by the smirking laugh Julie let escape as she sat in the chair she had so deliberately placed. "Here, I can fill out most of that information for you. It was my car he was riding in when he got hurt so you'll need my car insurance information anyway." John sat down next to Roy and proceeded to fill in the forms only needing to ask Roy one or two pieces of information.

When the hospital staff person, Johnny could see no pins of insignia to tell him what her training was, retrieved the information from Johnny, she gave it a quick scan. Johnny was watching her go through the paperwork ready to answer any further questions she might have when he saw her face erupt in a smile.

"Your name is Roy?" the girl exclaimed.

"Yes, Roy DeSoto," Roy answered in total confusion at the look on the girls face. As much as he completely understood what was going on and why it was taking so long for the doctor to get to him, Roy was getting real tired of being held in an uncomfortable position, wearing an uncomfortable KED, braced on his side by pillows and straps. His head ached from what he knew for sure was a concussion and he just wanted to get out of that confining contraption, take some aspirin for his headache and go to sleep somewhere. Let Johnny wake him up every two hours if he needed to just get him out of that head girdle!

"How long have been friends with the Clark family?"

"Huh? Oh, Julie. I just met her when she stopped to help us all out."

As the receptionist walked out of the x-ray room, still smiling and showing the top of Roy's admitting form to everyone at the desk, Julie walked in with a warmed blanket for Roy and told Chet where to find an ice pack for his head while Johnny did most of the work to spread the blanket over Roy. Julie asked how he was feeling and what more she could do to make him comfortable. When she had done all she could, Julie then went to the hospital's radio consol and talked with someone for a while. It was interesting watching Julie struggle with the mike and its buttons with her hands bandaged as they were but after a while she returned to John, Chet, Roy and her brother.

"They think they have the fire contained. There's a natural wash and an old dirt road that slowed it down for them. Now if the wind will cooperate they should have it out by sundown. The county sheriff has finished the investigation at the wreck sight. The tow trucks are bringing the vehicles into town now; I used what influence I had to get your truck taken to the most reputable mechanic in the area. The highway patrolman will be in here to take your statements in a little while."

"Thank you," John was quick to reply and as much as he wanted an explanation for all of the giggles and grins directed at them, he wasn't sure how to ask.

Julie then made the short walk to Roy's side and adjusted his blanket while asking how he was doing. "It shouldn't be long now that the scurry in and out of OR has slowed down. The Life Flight team should be here in about two hours. I'm sure Doc will be out to look at you long before then."

"How's it looking for the guy?" Johnny asked being used to being able to get information about his patients readily.

"All I can tell you for sure is that I can hear the heart monitor and it has a stable rhythm."

Julie then made her way to the chair she had deliberately placed in the hall and sat down. She looked tired and possibly in more pain, yet she didn't complain.

John turned back to trying to entertain his partner knowing that any effort he made to try and move treatment along would only make people angry and frustrated. All three of them kept quiet and tried their best to keep each other calm. The next time John glanced toward Julie she was slumped in her chair with her head leaning over on her left shoulder and her eyes were closed. Moving carefully in an attempt not to wake her, John checked her pulse. Finding it to be within normal parameters John borrowed the blood pressure cuff from the x-ray lab and slowly wrapped it around Julie's upper left arm. He was just removing the stethoscope from his ears after reading a normal blood pressure when he heard the voice of Dr. Frick just around the corner.

"Let's keep him here in the operating room, it's the closest thing we have to an intensive care unit. We've done what we can for him, now it's up to the Life Flight crew and the orthopedic specialist they'll take him to. That jet team should be here in an hour; do we have someone to pick them up at the airport?"

"Well, I thought we could just have the sheriff pick them up but that know it all Clark woman insisted on calling Mitchens and his wife from out on the flat to pick them up using their van and the extra gurney that was donated by the mortuary when they replaced their hearse." A female voice responded to the doctor and John was bristled by the less than impressed tone she had in her voice when referring to Julie.

"That was a good move; Mark Mitchens's van should work as good as the ambulance as far as moving the flight team and their equipment. If they take as long as they usually do to get the patient ready to transport maybe our ambulance will be back in time to take them all back to the airport."

"I want to see the chart and x-rays on the next patient."

"Oh," the woman talking to Dr. Frick, Johnny had decided she was a nurse at this point, slowed her speech but not the sour tone to her voice. "Well, about the x-rays, Ms. Clark put some strange brace on him to hold his head and back straight and we have to have him evaluated by a doctor before it can be removed so that he can be x-rayed."

"Well now if you were as efficient and as well trained as Ms. Clark you would have known that the strange brace you speak of can be x-rayed through without problems and if you were to spend less time trying to make all of our field trained rescue workers look bad and more time doing your job, you'd have a set of x-rays for me to look at by now along with at least three sets of vital signs."

All talk between the doctor and his nurse came to an instant halt and within seconds the doctor, still in his wheelchair and wearing a scrub suit covered in sweat and blood, was seen rolling himself around the corner. As Dr Frick grabbed the patient chart out of the hands of one of the receptionists in the hall the nurse at his side was clearly annoyed and didn't approve of being put in her place.

"Hi, Dr. Frick," Johnny called out getting the man in the chair to look up at him.

"Have we met before?"

"Yes sir, about three years ago at your clinic in Middletown. We brought in two victims of a car accident. One was a boy with a—"

"Lacerated carotid artery," Dr. Frick continued. "Yes, I remember you now. You're those fire medics out of Los Angeles, right? It's been a few years. What brings you back to our little neck of the woods?"

"Don't you mean sage brush," Chet stepped into the conversation having seen very little in the last two days that resembled woods.

By now Johnny and the good doctor were shaking hands and when Chet took his turn he added, "This nut convinced us to come back and give the fishing another try."

"Oh yeah, I hear it's pretty good fishin' at the Res, for the first time in several years." Dr. Frick continued to talk as he turned his attention to the sleeping Julie Clark still in her chair in the hall. "Will someone get a set of vitals on her?" Dr. Frick ordered then turned to the three men, two standing and the third strapped down to a gurney. "Thank you for waiting so patiently, I'm afraid these two hands can only do so much at a time. If you two men could give me a hand we'll see about getting him out of that brace."

"You bet, Doc, and we understand about the wait and all. I did just take Julie's vitals, she's got a pulse of 68 and her blood pressure is 110 over 70 with respirations of 10, I really think that the adrenalin from the accident wore off and the Morphine she told us she'd been given kicked in."

"Thank you," Dr. Frick responded with a terse look at the nurse behind him. "Would someone get her a blanket," Dr. Frick spoke quietly and then took hold of the door frame and pulled himself into the x-ray room. As quickly as he could, he pulled his wheelchair as close as possible to the side of the gurney Roy was resting on and started to evaluate his patient. "How long was he unconscious?"

"About two minutes," Johnny responded, the guilt of being the one who was driving twisting his gut once again. "We had to leave him alone for a few minutes to get the other guy out of his truck before the fire got him."

"I told him to stay at least five times," Chet picked up the story, "but before we had the other guy out of his truck Roy here was out of Johnny's truck. I think once we get him back home we'll have to start obedience training all over again."

"I don't intend to wait till we get back home," Johnny shared a grin with Chet. "I plan to pick up a local paper as soon as we leave here and swat his nose just for general principals."

"I just thought you guys might need my help or something," Roy defended himself.

"Do you remember what happened?" Dr. Frick asked as he ran his hands along Roy's ribs from his chair.

"I remember we were driving along talking about kissing frogs to find out if they're toads, and then the next thing I remember is Chet holding me down and talking absolute nonsense while he was looking at something out the window and I knew he was trying to keep me from finding out how much trouble we were in."

Dr. Frick moved back to examining the lump under the cut on Roy's head, "Can you tell me your name?"

"Roy DeSoto, I'm a fireman paramedic out of Carson, California," Roy responded as he cooperated in allowing the doctor to shine a light in his eyes.

"Roy," Dr. Frick's voice matched the surprise on his face, "Did you say your name is Roy?"

"Yeah," Roy asked in total confusion, calmed only because Johnny and Chet looked confused too.

"He's got a left hand, Doc," was heard from the still mostly unconscious Julie Clark as she rolled her head toward the doctor.

"Well, you're right there, he is wearing a wedding ring, but that doesn't mean he's happily married," Dr Frick commented, acting as if he was totally unaware of the glare Roy was giving him.

"You're barking up the wrong tree, Doc. It don't matter if he's happy or not, in my book he's still off limits. The way I see it, he must not be too unhappy if he's advertizing."

The still confused John and Chet helped the even more confused Roy over to the x-ray table and then stepped out into the hall while the wheelchair bound doctor got the x-rays he needed. Once the first x-ray was taken they were called back in to help Roy reposition before the second x-ray then returned to the hall. Once those x-ray's were taken and Dr. Frick had the chance to look them over good Chet and John were given the okay to remove Roy from the KED device while Dr. Frick checked on his other patient and gathered the supplies he would need to suture the laceration on Roy's head.

While Roy was getting his head sutured, the county sheriff arrived to get statements from both John and Chet. Chet completed his statement first and was standing at Roy's side as a bandage was being applied to Roy's head and a bag of ice on top of that before he left to write the needed orders and see to his other patient's transfer to a larger hospital via Life Flight.

When John returned to Roy's side neither Roy nor Chet missed the pink piece of paper that was being folded and placed in John's shirt pocket. John was in the hall looking for someone to help Roy make a call home to his wife and get some recommendations as to where he and Chet could spend the night when the automatic double doors opened wide again as a black industrial van backed up to the door. The van's doors were opened and out jumped five people, both men and women, wearing dark blue Jumpsuits covered with insignia identifying them as Life Flight.

John knew the best thing he could do was stay out of the way so he returned to Roy and Chet as they were being taken to another room for the time being and together they were able to watch the action through the window. It was almost comical when a large new box type ambulance drove in under lights and sirens to take the place of the black van and the aids were overheard telling each other that the ambulance crew had driven the last hour under lights and sirens to get home in time to escort the Life Flight crew to and from the hospital.

John, Chet and Roy exchanged silent looks as the news was heard and without saying a word they knew each one of them was thinking the ambulance crew was taking risks for no real good reason.

"Guess they didn't know a backup plan had been put into place," John commented quietly.

Roy was settled into a hospital bed with a foam collar around his neck to ease his discomfort and the head of the bed was elevated. It was clear by the collection of stuff around the next bed that he was to have a roommate but the second bed in the room was currently empty. As they waited for someone to fill them in on how long Roy was going to be required to stay and to try to make arrangements for Roy to call home and talk to his wife, John and Chet paced the room and fussed over Roy's covers.

It was while John was handing Roy a glass of water and helping him take a drink that Roy plucked the paper out of his front pocket and managed to hand it to Chet before John could get it back.

"You got a ticket for-" Chet stopped reading out loud and looked back and forth between John and Roy before Roy grabbed the ticket back and held it up where he could read it.

"Failure to maintain proper restraint of passengers," Roy read then slumped in the bed. He was a grown man and should be held responsible for his own choice not to apply a seat belt in the back of Johnny's rover. Like every trained public servant he knew the difference a seat belt can make in an accident and like every paramedic he knew there were times they just didn't wear the things even when they were off duty. He had been replacing the fishing line on one of his reels and Johnny's back seat belts were just a little too confining to give him the movement he needed to get supplies from his tackle box and to the work. "I'll pay this," Roy ended before Johnny snatched his ticket back and they all hung their heads in silence.

Several minutes later the men could hear a noise outside the window. Looking out they could see the ambulance carrying the Life Flight crew and their patient pulling out from the emergency entrance. Everything seemed quiet until they heard a muffled argument in the hall. They weren't able to hear all of the words spoken but it was clear that it was two women and one of them sounded a bit like Julie the other voice they were sure was the nurse the doctor had been arguing with before.

"So why didn't you back me up on my suggestion that he go on life flight with that last patient?"

"I can take care of him, if people like you would just leave him alone."

"Oh really, and when did you become an MD? Last I heard you were just a nurse. If you were interested in anything other than getting into his bed you'd know that what he needs is a specialist and to be away from this place because as long as he's the only doctor around someone is going to need him and he'll feel obligated to help."

"We could handle everything here just fine if it weren't for you. You're the one who's been getting him up time and time again to take care of all of your boyfriends."

"Nurse Brown!" Dr. Frick was heard to command the unspoken silence that he received. "Now, Nurse Brown," Dr. Frick continued in the same stern voice. "Will you please bring me the supplies I need to change the bandages on Miss Clark's arms."

"Oh, but Dr. Frick, you really should be getting back to bed, I can bandage her arms for you," the nurse said, objecting to the orders given to her.

"Judging by the bandage job you did earlier, I think I better do it myself this time." Dr. Frick spoke as if he meant business and after a moment of silence he was seen rolling himself into the hospital room where Roy and his friends were waiting. All three off duty firemen were quick to notice that the once soiled scrubs were now replaced with clean scrubs and Johnny was quick to notice that there was a fresh IV hung with a second bag piggybacked onto it. Even though he had been trained in patient confidentiality Johnny's curiosity got the better of him and he moved just close enough to read what was added to the second IV Bag.

"Hey, Doc," Johnny started with a worried version of his patented crocked smile. "Have you ever heard that a doctor that treats himself has a fool for a patient?"

Author's Note: these next chapters may be sporadic as I am recovering from a total knee operation. For the most part I am doing fine and my doctors assure me that I am recovering nicely but I still need meds for pain on a regular basis and as much as I'd like to think I can write all the time between Physical Therapy sessions, that's not proving to be the case. Thank you for your patience. I do promise I will finish this one and answer the questions that I'm deliberately creating.

Extra kudos to Jurseybelle, my beta, I sent to her something clearly written by someone on drugs and she took the time to make sure the reader doesn't need to be on drugs to understand it.