"No, Roy. I do not wanna talk about it!" Johnny called over his shoulder as he stormed into the kitchen and over to the coffee pot.

Chet looked up from the table where he was reading the newspaper. "Don't want to talk about what?"

"Nothin', Chet," Johnny said as he poured himself a cup coffee. "Mind your own business."

"Hey, I'm not the one who came yellin', all mad."

"I'm not yellin' and I'm not mad. Tell 'em, Roy."

Roy was just walking into the kitchen and over to the coffee himself. "Well, actually Johnny, you were kind of yelling at me."

Johnny gave his best friend a dirty look. "Oh, thanks a lot, Pally. Whose side are you on anyway?"

Sticking his hand out so Johnny could hand him a cup, Roy exclaimed, "I'm not on anybody's side. I'm on your side. I don't know whose side I'm on." As he filled his cup with coffee he muttered to himself, "I didn't even know there were sides."

The dark haired paramedic crossed to the table and sat down, saying "Well, that's just great."

Chet's interest was piqued. "C'mon, Roy. What does Gage not wanna talk about?"

Roy glanced over at Johnny's sullen face as he sat down next to him at the table. "He doesn't want to talk about calling his parents and arranging a visit home," Roy answered Chet. He figured that telling the truth was the quickest way to get Chet off of Johnny's back.

Looking at his pigeon with incredulity, Chet asked, "Why not, Gage? I thought you liked your folks?"

"I do, Chet. That's not why…look, just mind your own business."

"Babe, you came in here yellin' at Roy." John started to open his mouth to protest. This prompted Chet to cut him off before he started. "Yeah, yeah. I know. You weren't yelling." He got up and walked around the table to sit down next to Johnny and face him across the corner of the table. "Look. Just tell us what the problem is with visiting your folks that makes even calling them so hard and maybe we can help you figure a way to get past it."

Johnny glared at Chet from over his coffee cup. "Chet…" he started, warningly.

Marco interrupted. "No, John. I think Chet's right. If you can't turn to your friends with this kind of a problem, then what's the point of having friends?"

"That's right," "We're here for ya," and "We wanna help," came at Johnny from all quarters of the dayroom, even from the Cap who'd just walked in on the tail end of things.

"John," Cap said, capturing Johnny's attention, "are the problems you have with your parents so huge that you can't even call them?"

"No, Cap. The problem isn't with…aww, hell…" Johnny floundered. He ran a hand over his face and stared at the table top for a breath. Looking up, he made eye contact with each of his shift mates in turn. He saw no mocking in any of them, even Chet. Only care and concern. "It isn't my parents. My family is great. It's the rest of everybody. The kids I went to school with. Their families."

Still not seeing the issue, Chet asked the question on all the guy's minds, "What's with the rest of everybody?"

Taking a deep breath, knowing that he was about to let his shift mates – his friends – in on one of the most painful parts of his past, more painful even than the anthropologists that came to the rez when he was a kid, Johnny stared at the middle of the table and said, "They hated me."

"Hated you? How can anyone hate you?" Chet chuckled, "Unless they're a chick you're trying to ask out on a date…then…"

"Chet, be serious," Marco admonished as Johnny flashed Chet an annoyed snarl.

Johnny looked reluctant to continue. He started to think that they were just going to laugh at him. Dopy Gage blowing everything all out of proportion again.

Then Mike spoke up in his quiet way, "Why'd they hate you, Johnny?"

"Because I'm half white."

There was silence for a moment. Cap asked, "Everybody?"

"Yeah. Pretty much."

Chet was still confused. "Your own people?"

"That's just it." Johnny shot to his feet in frustration. "They didn't see it that way. They're…" and the tones sounded, cutting off any explanation that Johnny may have voiced.

SQUAD 51…WOMAN DOWN…6758 PICKFORD AVE…SIX SEVEN FIVE EIGHT PICKFRD AVENUE…CROSS STREET MARIGOLD…TIME OUT 13:24

The squad rolled out on a left turn, heading toward Pickford Ave and the woman down. Roy looked over at his partner. Johnny was just shoving the call slip into the clip on the visor. He looked OK, so Roy shoved his concern aside to be picked up later when they returned to the station.

"Hey, Roy. If you hang a left up here at that light, then cut back on 230th," Johnny directed, "we can avoid the construction going on at this end of Pickford."

Roy shot a knitted brow over at John as he signaled for the turn. He wondered how in the world the man could know something like that.

Johnny caught the look and replied, "I was down that way after the last shift and they had signs up."

Nodding his head up in acknowledgment, Roy made the turn.

A few minutes later they arrived at a three building apartment complex. Out on the sidewalk, they could see a middle aged women lying on her back. Next to her knelt another woman of a similar age. She was holding her friend's hand, petting the back of it. The friend seemed annoyed.

"Lilly, I'm fine. Will you stop that?" Johnny and Roy heard the woman on the ground say as they approached. She tried to pull her hand out of Lilly's grasp, but it was being held too tightly.

"Hi, there," Roy said as he dropped down beside the downed woman. "My name's Roy DeSoto, this is my partner John Gage. We're with the L.A. County Fire Department. What seems to be the trouble?"

The woman on the ground opened her mouth to speak, but Lilly jumped in first. "Oh! You should have seen it! We were just taking our afternoon walk, like we always do. One minute Dottie was walking next to me, the next she was on the ground. I don't know what happened, but she screamed in pain and rolled over onto her back."

Dottie finally broke in, "I didn't scream. I yelped. I stepped on a rock and my foot went out from under me. I knew I wouldn't get my arms up in time to stop my face from hitting the sidewalk, so I twisted myself and landed on my shoulder instead." She looked up at Roy to make sure he was listening to her and not to Lilly.

Roy looked at the shoulder that Dottie had nodded to. He lightly ran his fingers over her whole shoulder and upper arm, letting his experience and training tell him that the bone was, indeed, broken. As he touched her, she winced and clenched her teeth against a cry of pain. Roy felt bad. "I'm sorry," he apologized.

"It's OK. Broken bones hurt. Isn't my first."

On Dottie's other side, Johnny had pried Lilly's hand off of his patient and set about getting her pulse and blood pressure. When he laid his hand on her abdomen to get a respiration count, Dottie looked pointedly at him and said sharply, "Excuse me?"

Johnny smiled and blushed a little. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm just getting a count of how fast you're breathing."

Before John could look down at his watch, Dottie came back with, "Well, if you keep your hand there for too long, I'll be breathing a lot faster." She smiled as she watched John blush a little deeper. "And it's Dottie to both of you," she added.

Roy smiled at her and proceeded to set up the Biophone. "Rampart, this is Squad 51. How do you read?"

Dr. Bracket's voice came through almost immediately. "This is Rampart. We read you loud and clear, 51."

"Rampart," Roy began, "we have a female, about 60 years of age…"

"74"

"Excuse me?" Roy looked down at Dottie in confusion, still holding the Biophone receiver to his ear.

Dottie clarified, "I'm 74, not 60."

Lilly chimed in, "Yeah. I'm 62. Can't you tell the difference?" Lilly grinned at the old joke. The two ladies looked exactly the same age. Johnny snorted a laugh at their obvious enjoyment with his and Roy's misassumption as he pulled the sling and bandages from the trauma box, anticipating the need to immobilize Dottie's shoulder.

It was Roy's turn to blush. "Sorry. Correction, Rampart. We have a female, age 74 with an apparent break to her upper arm just below the shoulder joint." He went on to relay the blood pressure, heart rate and respiration rate that John had written down for him.

As Johnny began gathering the IV kit to administer the D5W that Bracket requested in response to Roy's transmission, he asked Dottie, "Did you hit your head?"

Before Dottie had a chance to answer, Lilly interjected, "Oy! She's been telling everybody for years that she hasn't hit her head, but nobody believes her!" The fit of giggles that followed was only made worse by the look of confusion on Johnny's face.

"He means just now when I fell," Dottie sighed. Then to Johnny, "No. I did not hit my head. I was careful to keep my head up as I landed."

"Rampart," Roy turned his attention back to the Biophone, "patient is experiencing some pain. She states that she has not hit her head in the fall. Request something for the pain."

"10-4, 51," came Bracket's response, "administer 5mg MS IV, immobilize the arm and shoulder and transport as soon as possible."

"10-4."

As the two paramedics carried out Rampart's instructions, Johnny turned to Lilly and said, "We're taking your friend to Rampart General, if you want to meet us there. Or you can ride in the front of the ambulance."

"Oh," Lilly responded, "she's not my friend. She's my sister."

Roy looked up. "Your sister?" Both men looked from one lady to the other. Dottie had straight, light brown hair that was just barely frosted with natural grey and silver that fell to just below her shoulders. Her skin was pale beige and her eyes blue. Lilly had dark brown, very curly, short hair and deep coffee colored skin and brown eyes. The two looked nothing like sisters.

As she was being lifted up onto the waiting gurney for the ambulance that had just arrived, Dottie clarified, "We're half-sisters. My father died when I was 7 and my mother remarried. Our mother, and my father, is Jewish. Lilly's father is black. They had to move all the way out here from Brooklyn so they could get married and not harassed."

"I wasn't born when that happened," Lilly stuck in with a laugh.

Johnny looked at the two of them and smiled. He suddenly felt not so alone.

In the ambulance, Johnny took a chance and asked a personal question. "Dottie? Have you and your sister ever gone back to your family in Brooklyn?"

Dottie took a good look at the handsome paramedic for the first time. Outside of the good looks that Dottie's inner 20 year old was swooning over, she now saw that he had that same look about him that her sister had, only different. Yes, she had a feeling she knew why he was asking. "Oh, yes," she assured him. "More so after our parents died than while they were still alive. My mother and I went back once for her father's funeral, and we visited my step-father's family once for Christmas. Neither time went very well. But our cousins and their children are much more accepting and loving. We've been back to visit both sides as much as we can, now."

Johnny smiled at her and thought of his own family that he's been missing more and more recently. Dottie saw the brief, faraway look in his eye and added, laying her hand on the man's arm, "Even the few family members and neighbors that still like to voice prejudice and bigotry aren't enough to keep us away. We haven't moved back because L.A. is home, but even if only a few cousins love you and accept you regardless of one of your parents not being the same race or religion as them, then it's worth going home to visit."

Johnny found Roy chatting with Dixie at the nurse's station when he left Dottie with Dr. Bracket in the treatment room.

"Well, I hope I look that good when I'm 74," Dixie was saying.

Johnny reached for the cup of coffee Roy was handing him. "You? I hope Ilook that good! Man, she doesn't look any older than her sister."

"How old's her sister?" Dixie asked.

At that moment the sister in question showed up at the desk. "Oh, good! It's you boys," she exclaimed. "What'd you do with my sister?"

The three at the desk laughed. Dixie slipped off her stool, "Now, are you talking about that wonderful Dottie that just came in with a broken arm?" Lilly nodded. "She's right over here. I'll take you to talk to her doctor while she's getting x-rays." Dixie took Lilly's are and began to lead her away.

Roy nudged Johnny's arm with his elbow. "C'mon, Junior, let's get back to the barn."

Knitting his brow and looking into his barely touched coffee cup, Johnny took one last, long sip of the caffeine laden brew and set the cup down for Dixie to find when she got back and jogged off after his partner.

As they drove back to the station, Johnny turned to Roy with a thoughtful look on his face. "Y'know, Roy, those two got me thinkin'. Y'know, I got a lot in common with them."

Roy glanced over at his partner, then turned his attention back to the road. "You mean the half-sister thing?"

"Well, yeah. But more than that. Me 'n Lilly. We've got the half-sibling, half-white thing in common." Johnny waited a beat to see if Roy had a reaction. When he didn't, Johnny plowed on. "Dottie told me how they go back home to visit family all the time, even though there are still people who disapprove of Lilly and her father. Well, Roy, if they can do that, at their age," he splayed his hand out on his chest to make the point, "then I oughtta be able to go home, too. Right? I can call home and arrange a visit. I mean, right? Yeah!" John sat back with renewed determination about a reunion with his family.

Roy mulled over what the younger man had just said. He saw that all the talking and reassuring that he had done didn't seem to make an impression on Johnny. But two strangers made all the difference in his attitude towards calling home. Sometimes, he just didn't understand how Johnny's head worked. He ventured a tentative question, "So, you're going to call your folks?"

Johnny grinned a big, beautiful (and rarely seen), genuine smile. "Yup," he said with conviction, "as soon as I get home after shift tomorrow."

As Roy backed the squad into the station he asked what he figured Johnny was probably going to see as a dumb question, "Why not now?"

Johnny jumped out of the squad before Roy put it in park. He swung the door shut and leaned over the warm hood as he answered. "Because, Roy," he said quietly enough to get Roy to lean in over the hood from his side of the squad and focus on what Johnny was saying, "this is too important a phone call. I don't want to have to hang up on them if we get toned out, y'know? It's been too long since I talked to them. They deserve my uninterrupted attention. I can't do that here."

Roy was impressed. It wasn't like Johnny to put off something that he was newly excited about. "I think that's a real good idea, Junior. A real good idea."

As the two paramedics straightened up to walk away from the squad, Chet strode by on his way to the dayroom, catching the last thing Roy had said. "What's a good idea?" he pried, "Johnny taking remedial driving lessons?"

"No," Roy spoke up over Johnny's sneer and quiet 'oh, ha ha' sent in Chet's direction. "He's going to call his family when he gets home tomorrow."

Shooting an aggravated look at the back of Roy's head as they followed Chet into the dayroom, Johnny scowled, "Thanks, Roy. You sure know how to keep a guy's confidence."

Roy rolled his eyes and sat down at the kitchen table, pulling a piece of newspaper over to read. Johnny stopped at the back counter to pour himself and Roy a cup of coffee.

"Confidence about what?" Mike asked.

Johnny puffed up a bit. "Oh, nothin'," he replied, sliding Roy's cup in front of his right hand and taking the seat next to his partner, "just that I'm going to call my parents tomorrow when I get home."

Cap perked up from his seat on the couch where he was scratching Henry's ear. "Oh, yeah? That's great! What changed since our last talk?" he asked honestly.

Johnny opened his mouth, but Roy spoke up for him, "He was inspired by the ladies on our last run."

Again, Johnny knitted his brow and threw Roy a look that said "will ya stop talkin' for me". When Roy looked back at him, Johnny opened his eyes wider at Roy to put an exclamation mark on the mental rebuke that Roy had picked up on. Roy shrugged his shoulders slightly, letting Johnny know that he got the message and should please go on with the story himself.

Johnny then launched into the story of Dottie and Lilly, in three part harmony, with all the bells and whistles, as only Johnny can. But the result was that the guys now understood Johnny's new outlook on his situation and that he really was going to call his parents when he got home.

TBC