Sudden Response

by R. L. Mathewson

  "Don't worry about it," Joe said, knowing Eric was beyond speaking at the moment. He threw the bag over his shoulder and grabbed Sean's other arm.

  "Time to do the shuffle," Eric said as he avoided her eyes. It was a good thing too because she knew one look from him and the damn would burst open.

  Chapter 8

  "I'm hungry," Eric announced as he plopped down heavily on the couch near Joe, well more like practically fell on her. He threw his arm around her shoulders as he leaned back against the faded material of the overstuffed couch. "Go cook for me."

  She snorted. "I'm not your bitch."

  Eric sighed heavily as he leaned into her even more. "It's really not healthy to live in denial."

  "Uh huh," Joe said absently as she flicked through the channels of the station's large flat screen television. It figured the one time the station was empty and she had control of the remote there would be nothing on.

  "Why are you not seeing to my needs?" Eric demanded as he stole the remote from her.

  Normally she would steal it back on principal, but right now she really didn't care. They'd already been held over on their shift by four hours to cover two downed trucks. Also, thanks to three bang outs, people calling in sick, they'd been going all day and hadn't had a chance to grab food. In fact, they'd just got back to the station a half hour ago. After cleaning out the truck and replacing supplies she crashed on the couch, counting down the minutes until she could go home, order a pizza, shower, get her laundry done and hopefully crash early for the night, knowing she would be back here bright and early tomorrow morning.

  Just as she was picturing her big comfortable bed and imagining how good that first moment when her head touched the pillow would feel the station phone rang, shattering her little fantasy.

  Eric groaned as he got to his feet and made his way, unhappily, to the phone on the old rickety desk everyone was supposed to use to write up their reports, but didn't. With a resigned sigh he picked up the phone and leaned against the desk.

  "Hello," he said as dread filled Joe.

  Dispatch wouldn't screw them over again, would they? When she saw Eric's jaw clench she knew her answer. Yes, yes they would.

  Eric rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to reason with dispatch. "We were supposed to be off four hours ago.....Yeah, I know you guys are short staffed, but we've been going all day." He stood up and began pacing around the area as far as the long tangled chord would allow. "We don't mind doing emergencies, but-" Whatever dispatch said had him closing his eyes and dropping his head back. "They called 911 because he refused to take his pills?" he asked in disbelief.

  With a lovely mixture of softly spoken swears, Joe stood up and made her way back to their freshly stocked and cleaned ambulance, knowing there was absolutely no way they could refuse this call since it came in as an emergency and they were still on duty. Well, they technically could, but she actually wanted to keep her job.

  Even though it was her turn to drive she climbed into the passenger seat and pulled out an emergency run sheet. Not even thirty seconds later Eric yanked the driver's side door open, jumped in and slammed the door shut, rocking the ambulance violently.

  "This fucking sucks," he said as he maneuvered the ambulance out of the parking bay. "Next time they ask us to come in and cover their asses we're saying no," he snapped as he flipped on the emergency lights with a little more force than necessary.

  She gave a noncommittal "uh huh" as she started to fill in the paperwork with their information, knowing that by the next time dispatch asked them to fill in they'd be over this bullshit call.

  *********

  Eric sighed dramatically as he tossed the soft restraints out the back of the ambulance onto the stretcher. "Fine, if you insist," he said, sounding put out.

  Joe quickly looked over the restraints as she frowned. "If I insist about what?"

  He jumped out the back of the ambulance and closed the doors as Joe took the front position on the stretcher. "On making me spaghetti for dinner," he said innocently, hoping she'd just give in and do it. He was a starving man after all.

  Joe snorted as she guided them to the front door of Nicholson House, the shit hole residential program that decided to call 911 because one of its residents decided to refuse his meds tonight. This was a purely bullshit call.

  Over the years they'd seen their share of fucked up nursing homes that hadn't known when one of their residents had been dead for two days, bed sores that turned into five inch craters on patients' backs and legs, patients left tied to chairs in the middle of a hall for days with huge puddles of piss and shit around their feet, but residential programs in his mind were the absolute winners in the incompetency category.

  Most residential programs were run by bleeding hearts, at least in his opinion. They were more concerned about the patient's "feelings" then they were about their staff's safety and well-being. Dangerous work conditions, flax rules, and piss poor treatment caused high turnovers in most of the residential programs he'd come across. It was just common sense that if you always took the patient's side on everything without question and fucked over your employee for doing his job that you're going to piss off a lot of good employees and be left with the ones who could care less, and more often than not didn't bother to do their jobs.

  Nicholson House in his opinion was a prime example of a fucked up residential program. Twelve years ago when they started out as EMT's, Nicholson House had been ruled with an iron fist. The seasoned staff was well trained and took no bullshit from the patients. They did their jobs without fear and were fair with the patients. Every shift was run smoothly. They knew where the patients were, what they were doing, and if a patient stepped out of line there wasn't any hesitation to bring them back into the program.

  Now.......

  Now whenever they got a call for Nicholson House they usually found the staff smoking outside by their cars, watching television, or drinking coffee in the kitchen while bitching about their jobs. The patients? Well, in his mind a residential program that catered to violent mentally unstable patients might want to know where their patients were. Call him crazy, but if he worked eight hours in a two level home with sixteen dangerous individuals, some of whom really did listen to the voices in their heads, he'd make it a point to know exactly where they were and what they were doing and damn well make sure all the sharp objects in the house were locked up.

  He bit back a choice word or two as they pulled the stretcher up the cracked walkway of the dimly lit yard and past a group of five employees smoking. One of the employees acknowledged them with a small wave, but other than that they were pretty much ignored.

  "Hold on," Eric said as Joe raised her hand to knock on the door. "I have a feeling about something," he said, stepping past her and opening the unlocked door. He shoved the stretcher to the side of the walkway, not wanting to leave it unsupervised in the house or scare the hell out of the residents with it. The sight of their stretcher had set off more than one fight in programs like this in the past. Since mental patients, the ones known to be difficult, were usually the last to find out they were being transferred to another psychiatric facility they usually got a little paranoid when they saw EMT's and a stretcher suddenly appear. Since he liked to avoid helping restrain a patient that wasn't even his, he'd leave the stretcher outside until they needed it.

  They walked into the large house and shut the door behind them. Joe gestured to a sign above the alarm that read, "Door must remain locked and armed. No excuses!"

  "Nice," he grunted as they walked past a large living room with three patients playing a video game.

  A young guy the size of a linebacker suddenly stood up, glaring at them. "You fucking better hope you're not here for me!" He took a menacing step towards Joe.

  "Take another step towards my partner and I will be," Eric promised as he smoothly slid in front of Joe who muttered an exasperated, "puhlease" probably at his protective posturing since she rarely took threats from pa
tients seriously, no matter their size, which really pissed him off most of the time. Kind of like now.

  The man hesitated, shifting nervously. Not that Eric blamed him. He'd hate having no say in his life, never mind being the last one to find out a major life decision had been made for him without his input. Not that he didn't understand the reasoning behind it.

  As the person who usually had the misfortune of being the bearer of the Section 12, the legal document that pretty much took away all of a person's rights, he knew the reasoning behind not telling the patient the news until the last minute. Some patients did not take it well, he sure as hell wouldn't, and they went through several predictable stages, denial, acceptance, outrage, and violence. Then again a large percentage of the patients accepted their fate without striking the messenger. He knew it wasn't always easy to tell how a person would react to a Section 12 and for shit pay he'd probably pass the buck off onto someone else, too. Then again he wasn't a pussy and didn't believe in bullshitting people.

  "Oh thank god you're here!" a man with a serious lisp announced a little too dramatically for Eric's comfort. With a bad feeling Eric turned to see the new comer and had to bite back a curse or two as the guy pressed his hand to his heart. The guy was at least four inches shorter than Joe and was basically skin and bone. Eric quickly glanced at the guy who could easily pass as a linebacker for the Raiders and back to the guy who was being paid to keep him in line.

  Yeah, right.........

  Whatever happened to hiring the right person for the job? Eric wondered. This twig of a guy might be the nicest guy on earth, but he had no business working in this particular residential program. Granted he'd known some really small guys that could kick ass when it came down to it, but judging by the way this man kept sending the patients nervous glances and shifting away from them, Eric really doubted that was the case with this guy.

  "Are they here for me, Donny?" the linebacker demanded.

  The twig named Donny noticeably swallowed and stepped back as he tried to wave it off. "No, they're not here for you, John."

  The linebacker glared at Donny for another moment before nodding firmly and returning to his game. No doubt if the man was lying John would break him in two.

  "What's going on today?" Joe asked Donny.

  Donny bit his lip nervously. "We're having problems getting one of our patients to take his medication tonight," he admitted.

  Eric shared a look with Joe as he ran a frustrated hand through his short hair. "Has the patient attacked anyone? Threatened to hurt himself or been requested by his doctor to be removed from the property?" he asked, trying to keep the frustration he was feeling out of his tone. There had better be a damn good reason for them being held over.

  A damn good one.

  Donny sighed dramatically. "We're hoping your presence will scare him into taking his pills."

  Even though Joe was a good two feet away from him now he felt her go absolutely still the same time he did.

  "You called 911 to scare a resident?" Joe choked out in disbelief.

  "The pills are important," Donny said, frowning as if this should be obvious. "If he doesn't take his pills he becomes violent and then we have to call you. So we're just saving you the trouble now."

  Eric felt like pointing out that they did not have to call 911 if a patient became violent. It was his job to keep the patient under control, not theirs.

  "Where is he now?" Joe asked, sounding as impatient as he felt.

  Donny gestured lazily towards the stairs that led to the second floor. "Oh, he's asleep."

  "You called 911 for a patient who's fast asleep? A patient that posed no threat to anyone at the moment because he refused his pills?" Eric snapped.

  Donny shifted nervously as he took a step away from them as if they were crazy.

  "Sir, do you realize that when you call 911 for a nonemergency that you're taking away resources that might be needed elsewhere?" Joe demanded in an all business-like tone. Eric wouldn't have bothered with the niceties. He would have just called the guy a fucking moron and accepted the write up.

  "It is an emergency," Donny muttered pathetically.

  "Actually, we're not sure whether he took his pills or not," a woman said.

  Joe and Eric looked past Donny to find a rather rotund middle aged woman walking towards them with a thick black binder and several prescription bottles.

  Donny huffed at the woman. "I know he didn't take his pills tonight."

  The woman held up the binder. "Tom marked the sheet that he gave the pills tonight."

  "He did not, because he left five hours before the pills were due so he obviously messed up," Donny snapped at the woman whose face was turning bright red with embarrassment.

  "The pill count doesn't add up either," the woman mumbled.

  Donny rolled his eyes. "You're new here. You still don't know how this works."

  The woman looked like she was about to cry and really if they didn't get the hell out of here soon so he could go home he would, too. "Do you mind if I look?" he asked the woman with patience he wasn't feeling.

  She nodded as she handed him the binder with her thumb bookmarking a section. "That's for Adam. He's supposed to take three pills, three times a day, but when I counted the pills there are ten too many in each bottle. I don't think he's been taking them."

  "Let me see those," Donny snapped, grabbing the bottles and quickly counting the contents of the first bottle. After the first count he counted again and his face went pale. "This can't be right."

  Great, so they had no fucking clue when the guy took his pills last.

  "Police," a familiar voice announced with a loud knock at the door. A few seconds later Tyler, a cop they'd run into from time to time stepped into the house.

  "Hey, Tyler," Joe said with a warm smile.

  "Hi, Joe."

  Call him crazy, but Eric really didn't think the smile and look Tyler was giving Joe was something a happily engaged man should be doing. It was certainly doing a great job of pissing him off though. He was already pissed about this bullshit call and having a cop devour Joe with his eyes was not helping.

  "They want us to play the boogie man and scare a patient into taking his meds," Eric said brusquely, drawing Tyler's attention back to him.

  Tyler frowned. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

  "Nope," Joe said, making the word pop.

  "He's, um, he's very dangerous without his meds," Donny stammered defensively.

  "Considering no one seems to know the last time he took his pills maybe you should have called his doctor instead of 911," Eric pointed out.

  Donny opened his mouth probably to argue, but then sighed and nodded his head. "You're right. I'm really sorry about this, but could you please give us a hand since you are here?" he asked, sounding close to crying. When Eric and Joe shared a look with Tyler, Donny quickly added. "Adam's upstairs right now if you want to talk to him."

  Joe opened her mouth to say something only to be cut off by the linebacker now gawking at them. "You're here for Adam?" he asked in disbelief. "Good luck with that. That guy's a crazy son of a bitch!" The rest of the patients quickly nodded their agreement.

  Oh, that couldn't be good, Eric thought dryly. When all the psychiatric patients could agree on what patient should scare you shitless it was never a good sign.

  Apparently Joe agreed if the glare she sent him was any indication. "You are so buying me dinner tonight. Don't even think about arguing," she said in the same tone she used one week every month when she couldn't get enough chocolate and everything he did seemed to piss her right the hell off. Was it the twenty-third already, he idly wondered. Nah, he still had another two weeks before he had to wear a cup.

  "Fine, but I hope you like ordering your meal through a clown's mouth," he snapped back.

  Shaking her head in disgust, Joe gestured for Donny to show them to the patient. After a pregnant pause the man reluctantly started up the stairs, followed by Joe and him at eye level
with her perfectly rounded ass. Hey, if he was stuck doing a bullshit call he was going to enjoy the perks.

  "You're buying me a steak dinner," Joe hissed softly to him so she wouldn't startle their soon-to-be unhappy patient.

  He snorted. "The only steak dinner you'll get out of me tonight is a burnt hamburger patty covered in canned gravy."

  "You cheap bastard!" she hissed, making him grin. That is until the bastard trailing after them that he'd forgotten all about opened his big mouth.

  "I'd be more than happy to make this call up to you, Joe, with a steak dinner," Tyler announced eagerly.

  Without pausing Joe looked back at Tyler and gave him the sweetest smile. "Aw, you're so sweet, Tyler," she whispered as she turned to watch where she was going, but not before she stuck her tongue out at him.

  Eric glared over his shoulder at the other man. "You betraying bastard!" he whispered, more like hissed.

  Tyler grinned triumphantly as he mouthed, "I know."