Extreme Medical Services Box Set Vol 1 - 3

by Jamie Davis

  “I was just hanging out with my buds here on the lawn. Then this wild dog came out of the woods across the road and just attacked me. Then it took off and ran back into the woods. It was weird.”

  “You weren’t just minding your business,” an angry voice came from across the yard. Dean looked up and saw a group of girls huddled around another figure on the grass there. Was there another patient?

  “Brynne,” he called to his partner walking over from the ambulance with some more gear. He pointed to the other group he hadn’t seen at first. “There’s another victim.”

  “She’s not a victim,” the boy in front of him said with a laugh. “That’s just Leeann. She is just upset because we were talking to her. She doesn’t like it when we talk to her.”

  Dean finished assessing the bite. It was serious but isolated to the forearm. The absorbent trauma pad he had applied was impregnated with a rapid clotting formula, and the bleeding stopped almost instantly. He wrapped the pad in place with a roll of gauze.

  “Stay here while I go check on the girl,” Dean said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Don’t worry about her,” the boy who was bitten said.

  “Yeah, she’s just strange. You know, weird, and begging for attention like she always does,” said one of his friends standing around in the group.

  “Well, I need to check on her. You’re fine for now. Sit still. I’ll be back in a minute.” Dean got up and started across the yard to where Brynne was kneeling next to a girl of thirteen or fourteen, seated on the ground sobbing with a few other girls sitting next to her. They had their arms around her. Brynne was talking to her, asking questions.

  “What happened, sweetie? Are you hurt?” Brynne asked. She held the back of her hand out in front of the girl’s face, and Dean realized she was revealing the normally invisible tattoo that only creatures with exceptional vision in the ultraviolet spectrum could see. He had an ink stamp of the same emblem that he applied regularly to do the same thing. The girls all stopped their talking for a moment staring at the back of Brynne’s hand and then up at her face. They looked over to Dean as he approached, and he held his right hand up to his chest, exposing the back of his hand to them as well.

  One of the older girls leaned in and whispered, “Bobby and his friends are always giving Leeann a hard time when she walks home from her babysitting job up the street. This time, they got in her way and wouldn’t let her walk by on the sidewalk. She was crying, and when one of the boys, Jeremy, grabbed for her arm, she screamed. That was when the …” She paused and looked around to make sure no one else was nearby but their group. “… That was when the wolf came out of the woods and bit Jeremy. He bit him until he let go of her,” she whispered.

  “And all of you are her …?” Brynne asked looking around at the group of girls.

  “We’re her half-sisters,” the oldest girl said. “We’re the Dryads of these woods. Her father and our mother live in a home in back of the lane across the street.”

  “Do you know the lycan who attacked the boy?” Dean asked quietly.

  “He lives in a shack back in the woods,” another of the sisters said. “Mom and Dad say he’s just a hermit, and he has never bothered anyone before.”

  “And I’ll make sure that he doesn’t do something like this again,” a voice suddenly said behind Dean. He spun around in alarm. The paramedic swore because he had just looked behind him, and no one had been there. Now he saw a tall man with broad shoulders, his scowling, bearded face lit by the porch lights of the house nearby. The girls saw him and all bowed briefly with a nod of their heads.

  “Rudy,” Brynne said. “Did you hear?”

  “Yes, Brynne,” the tall man said. Dean realized this must be Rudy, the werewolf and second in charge of the Elk City Unusuals. “I know the man they speak of. He is a gentle one, and I cannot believe he would have taken any action unless the girl was in some sort of danger. But he cannot go around biting anyone. Especially not right now. Have you administered wolfsbane to the boy?”

  “Not yet,” Dean said. “I wanted to get the full story first.”

  Rudy growled. “Please make sure you do so. I do not want such impulsive and rude scum like that boy in my pack.”

  “I’ll get to it right away,” Dean said. “Brynne, can you give me an idea of the dose? It’s not exactly in the protocols.”

  “I’ll come with you and help you out,” his partner said, rising from where she knelt among the group of girls. “Leeann, I will be right back. You stay here with your friends.”

  The two paramedics went back to the ambulance and opened the contingency kit. It was a black Pelican case stored in its compartment with various antidotes and protections from Unusuals for the paramedics and their patients. Dean knew that he had received a series of vaccinations when he started the academy that covered the various blood borne pathogens he was likely to encounter on his job. That included protections against vampire and werewolf bites. Of course, they didn’t call the vaccine that. It had been hidden in the fine print of his vaccine series as “other vaccines as determined by the Elk City Fire Department.” Brynne pointed to a vial nestled in one of the foam cutouts in the container. Dean looked at it and saw it was Wolfsbane Extract for IV/IM use.

  “Start an IV so it’ll get into his system faster,” Brynne instructed. “That will be quicker than a shot in the arm. The dose is five milligrams. That is just five milliliters since the concentration is fifty milligrams in fifty milliliters.”

  “I don’t like that kid,” Dean said. “He doesn’t think he did anything wrong when he accosted that girl with his friends.”

  “We don’t get paid to like them, Dean,” Brynne admonished him. “We just get paid to treat them.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Dean replied. “I hope he’s afraid of needles, though.”

  Dean took the vial from the case and closed the contingency kit. He walked back over to the where the boy, Bobby, and his friends sat or stood on the lawn. Brynne headed back over to the girls. Rudy was nowhere in sight.

  “Bobby,” Dean said as he walked up to the group of boys. “I’m going to have to give you some fluids and some medicine to help with your injury. Your friends can stay with you for now, but I need them to back up a bit.”

  The teenagers stepped away from Dean’s path as he approached and knelt down in the grass next to his bags and his patient. He opened up a bag of IV fluid, inserted the IV tubing and primed the fluid down to the end of the tube. Then he got out his supplies and handed his small pocket flashlight to one of the boy’s friends.

  “Hold that and shine it on his arm while I do this,” Dean said. The other boy nodded as he took the light from the paramedic. He turned back to Bobby. “Don’t move.”

  “Okay, Bobby,” Dean said. “You’re going to feel a pinch.” He picked up the IV needle and inserted it into a vein in his uninjured arm. He attached the tubing and made sure the fluid flowed freely before he drew up the wolfsbane extract in a syringe and administered five milliliters of the preventative medicine into the IV tubing, flushing it through with the fluid from the bag above it.

  “What’s that?” Bobby asked in a smart-assed tone. “You have to tell me what you’re doing. You can’t just give me medicine without telling me what it is!”

  Dean was liking this kid less and less. “You got bit by a wild animal. You could get very sick from that bite, so I’m giving you something to combat the germs you might have gotten from the bite. They’ll probably give you more at the hospital when you get there.”

  “So it’s some sort of antibiotic?” One of the boys asked.

  “Yep,” Dean said. “Something like that.” It wasn’t technically a lie even though the preventative treatment was more like a vaccine from a plant extract than a traditional antibiotic. He cleaned up his mess, so he didn’t leave trash from his EMS kit on the lawn and repacked his bags. He looked over at his patient.

  “Do you think you can walk to the ambulance?” Dean asked.


  “The damned dog bit my arm, not my legs,” the boy snapped at him.

  “Okay, then,” Dean said evenly, not reacting to the kid’s temper. “Let’s walk over there and we’ll get you situated in the ambulance. We need to take you to the hospital and get that arm looked at. At the very least, you’re going to need some stitches.” He stood and waited for Bobby to stand, too. Then the two of them walked to the waiting ambulance. Dean watched the boy carefully, not wanting him to fall if he suddenly started to faint from loss of blood or the adrenaline draining from his system as the night’s events calmed down. Brynne came over and grabbed the gear bags from Dean as he climbed up behind his patient. She closed the door behind him.

  Once inside, Dean had Bobby sit on the stretcher, and he buckled him in place using the stretcher straps. He hung the IV back from one of the fold-down ceiling hooks. Then he sat down in the chair at the head of the stretcher and picked up the iPad mounted there to enter information into his patient report. It would automatically send the information to the computer system for the department, and he’d be able to finish it back at the station.

  He heard Brynne climb in up front and then felt the ambulance start to move on the way to the hospital. He hooked up the blood pressure cuff to his patient’s good arm and pressed the button on the monitor to automatically take the vital signs from that device. As it pumped up, he briefly counted the boy’s respirations and noted that value. Bobby was lucky that it was just his arm that was injured. The doctors would probably be able to stitch things together again and with some physical therapy, he’d be back to being his normal jerky self in no time. It was a shame there was no cure for that.

  Dean thought about Rudy and his response to the situation. If the Unusuals were starting to be proactive with any perceived attacks on their kind, it could turn into a bloodbath, especially if the vampires and werewolves decided to start taking direct action. The werewolves were rumored to be more hot-headed, but the vampires were the true apex predators in the Unusual population. If they started trying to hunt down members of The Cause to take retribution, it could be bad. The police and City Hall would not be able to ignore such attacks on humans.

  Maybe that was what The Cause was trying to get to happen, he thought, some sort of race war. If the human government had to take some sort of action, it would drive the Unusuals underground or risk exposing them all to the human community. They’d be forced to move away or be discovered living among the general population. Dean pondered this all the way to the hospital, interspersed with answering the questions from his patient about where they were and how close they were to the hospital. Brynne would have some things to say when he told her about his thoughts on the escalating situation. She could warn James, if he hadn’t thought of it already.

  He felt the ambulance turn up and onto the ramp for the hospital. He disconnected Bobby from the equipment and patient monitor while Brynne backed them in and was ready to help the boy up and walk him into the hospital. Dean wondered if there would be more werewolf bites to be dealt with in the near future as they walked the boy inside to get his arm tended to.

  Chapter 42

  When Dean and Brynne returned to the station from dropping Bobby off at the hospital that night, they were greeted by James and Rudy in the parking lot. The two Unusual leaders were leaning against James’ silver Lexus parked between Brynne’s Nissan hatchback and Dean’s pickup. Brynne backed the ambulance into the ambulance bay with Dean’s assistance and then she went to let the two men into the squad room, leaving Dean to restock the gear. He didn’t have much to grab since the supplies he used were relatively easy to carry. He strolled into the squad room to hear James talking to Brynne and Rudy.

  “… I know there needs to be some restraint, but we can’t go around completely defenseless either,” the vampire leader said.

  “James,” Brynne explained. “This incident tonight had nothing to do with The Cause and their vendetta against you all. This was just some teenage boys acting like jerks. It was wrong and definitely assault, mind you, but it wasn’t a terrorist incident.” They all nodded to Dean when he entered the room from the ambulance bay and kept talking.

  Brynne looked at Rudy. “Did you find the lycan responsible for the bite?”

  “I did,” the werewolf leader said. “It was Old Ebner Cutress. He’s mostly harmless and keeps to himself. He doesn’t even come to pack meetings anymore. I or one of my other pack-mates check in on him once a week or so to see if he needs help or anything. I honestly didn’t think he could change anymore. It takes a lot of strength and older lycans can die trying to change once they reach a certain age and frailty.”

  Dean was surprised to hear that particular piece of information. He guessed it made sense, given the few painful transformations he had witnessed.

  Rudy continued. “I talked with Eb about what happened. He said he’s been out for several nights and witnessed the girl coming home past the boy’s house. The boy usually just talks trash to her about his manhood, but tonight he had some friends with him, and it apparently made him braver. When the boy grabbed the girl and she screamed, Eb said he just got mad at them. He knows he shouldn’t have shifted like that. And he should not have attacked the kid, but he didn’t do any lasting harm and the boy let go, which is all he wanted him to do.”

  “You told him that he can’t ever do that again, right?” James said to his lieutenant.

  “I did, but not before he said the same thing to me,” Rudy said.

  “Wait a minute,” Dean said. “This guy attacks a boy, nearly bites his arm off, potentially infecting him with Lycanthropism and all that’s going to happen is the werewolf gets a slap on the paw?”

  “Dean,” Brynne said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “This is being dealt with through the proper channels.”

  “The Pack will pay the boy’s medical expenses, anonymously of course,” Rudy said. “You were able to administer the wolfsbane extract in time to keep the transformation virus in check, and continued infusions at the hospital will complete the cure. The old man was defending a girl being attacked and maybe eventually raped. He used an appropriate level of force, a single bite that succeeded in freeing the girl, and then he left. It was he who called 911 and alerted authorities that it was a Station U call.”

  “Based on all of that, Dean,” James said. “We, Rudy and I, believe that it was justified to defend the girl.”

  Dean just looked at the two Unusuals standing there. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, and sure, the boy was a colossal dick, but that didn’t excuse what happened. Or did it? He wasn’t sure. He was again tied up by his intense dislike of James. Rudy, he hardly knew, and he seemed an alright sort of guy, aside from willingly taking orders from James. Was he taking his dislike of James out on this situation?

  “Dean,” Brynne said. “What if the old guy had come out and told the boys to let go of the girl and hit Bobby on the arm with a baseball bat, breaking his arm in the process but getting him to let go?”

  “I suppose that might be better,” Dean murmured.

  Rudy spoke up. “Dean, I’ve known Old Ebner all my life. He’s never bitten any human, ever, to my knowledge. He was extremely upset that he had to do so this evening. He said the boys ridicule him and make fun of him all the time. He knew that if he came out in human form that they wouldn’t listen to him. This was the only way he could think of to protect the girl and get her to safety. I trust him. You and I don’t know each other very well, but I tell you and give you my word, it was a measured, calculated intervention to protect that girl, nothing more.”

  “And he’s never bitten anyone before?” Dean asked. Rudy nodded. A thought occurred to him and he blurted it out before he could stop himself. “How do you all reproduce if you don’t keep biting new people every few years?”

  Rudy laughed out loud, his baritone voice filling the squad room. “How do you think? We have babies like everyone else.”

  “But …” Dean
started, shocked by the werewolf’s response.

  “The virus inhabits our cells and gives us the ability to change,” Rudy said. “It passes from mother to child but doesn’t manifest until near the end of adolescence. We usually homeschool our teenagers for that reason. If you think average teens are bad, lycan teens are outright dangerous. Sometimes, a person is infected by a bite from one of us who is unable to control themselves, or has gone rogue for one reason or another. In those instances, if we can’t get to them with wolfsbane extract in time, we shepherd them through the transformation and bring them into the pack.”

  Dean thought for a moment, and another thought came to him. “So it can also be sexually transmitted? Like other blood borne pathogens? How do you protect humans from that?”

  “We take giving someone our disease very seriously, Dean,” Rudy said. “We either date amongst our pack or nearby packs, or we take precautions. There are a few lycan/human marriages out there. Most are pretty successful, but the human spouse is vaccinated against Lycanthropy just like you and Brynne are.”

  “Wow, I guess you do learn something new every day,” Dean said, taking in all he had learned. “Of course, on this job that is an understatement.”

  “Dean,” Brynne said. “The bottom line is the boy’s going to be okay. The investigation is proceeding and the girl is going to be alright, too.”

  “I talked with the police chief myself,” James interjected. “He agrees with the self-defense argument. He also has sent a police unit to interview the girl and the other boys who were there. I don’t think she or her parents want any trouble in the neighborhood, which is why they will not press charges. But the detective is also going to have a talk with the boy’s parents and impress upon them that his assault on the girl could be sent to the district attorney for review based on the initial statements from Bobby, his friends, and the girl. Hopefully, the harassment ended tonight.”