by SJ Himes
Gael was already running, boots devouring the frozen pavement as he exited the firehouse and sprinted across the shared parking lot for the EMS garage, mind spinning with active shooter procedures. EMS were to gather outside the perimeter until BPD gave the all clear and the threat was neutralized, no matter how many people may be bleeding out on the ground in front of them. Too many first responders in the past had gotten killed in ambushes when they went in to rescue the injured. Not his first active shooter response, but each one was different, and he was glad he’d checked that all the ambulances were fully stocked before going to see Jim.
He made it to his ambulance just as Michael and Simon jumped in the passenger seats and in the back. There were two other ambulance crews here tonight, and Gael was the first out of the parking spots while the others headed for their units. He paused, making sure everyone was ready. Simon thumped the wall, and Gael led the other two ambulances out of the garage, sirens wailing and the lights burning away the shadows as Gael headed to the scene.
Chapter Two
Screams woke Silas. Harsh cries and the sound of running feet over the pavement met his ears as he groggily sat up, brushing snow off his shoulders. He pried his eyes open, and when his met the vacant stare of a man bleeding from a hole in his forehead laying not a foot away, Silas screamed as well.
Shooting to his feet, Silas swore as people ran by him, loud pops chasing them in his direction. He hugged the wall, and barely avoided being run down by the stampede of humanity.
He stumbled when a man bumped into him, and he almost fell, scrambling to stay on his feet as he moved out onto the side walk. He had just enough time to register the chaos around him, the men and women littering the cold ground, when a vicious punch hit him, high in the chest on the right side. He staggered, left hand slowly rising because his right suddenly forgot how to work, and put his fingers to his torso. He pulled his fingers away, and in the street lamps, saw the blood.
Thick, steaming, running down his hand. His blood. Why was he bleeding?
Silas tried to breathe, to suck in air, to ask for help. His body was so heavy. A shadow moved in front of him, and Silas looked away from his blood to see a figure clothed all in black step up to the sidewalk, lifting a gun. Silas fell backwards, landing hard on his ass and hip. He reached out, struggling to move, crawling back for the dubious shelter of the alley. The shadow followed him, time slowing as he watched his death track him with the barrel of the savage weapon in its hands. He made it to the alley, his whole body feeling like he was stuck in a rapidly closing vise, his heart skipping, his lungs burning. There was no air—he was suffocating in pain.
The shadow aimed at his head, and Silas heard the roar of a discharge even as his vision went black.
…
Gael wiped his forearm across his face, knowing he could be spreading blood, but the sweat was blinding him. His back screamed from bending over on the cold cement, and he was soaking wet. Snow and blood mixed on the street, white sheets covering the fallen. A handful of people were dead, and over twenty injured.
Gael slammed shut the ambulance door, and banged on the steel panel to let the driver know to head to the hospital. He backed out of the way of the ambulance as it wove through the mess of squad cars, abandoned civilian vehicles, and past the barricade at the end of the street that kept the new crews and reporters at bay. Every store and restaurant was lit up from within, many of the stores on the street with damage from the hailstorm of bullets that had ripped apart this relatively peaceful part of Boston.
Gael moved carefully, stepping over a pile of discarded bandages and used gloves, blood everywhere. There was another set of ambulances driving past the barricade, having dropped their patients off at the hospital before coming back to the scene. All of the seriously injured were already evacuated out, and the remaining victims were either waiving a trip to the hospital, or were not injured severely enough to warrant a ride in the first wave of ambulances to make it to the scene after the police took out the shooter.
Gael cast his eyes over the shooter’s body, the only one not covered by a sheet, yellow crime scene evidence tags on the ground around the corpse. The shooter was bound in black head to toe, face covered, and a bullet proof vest across the corpse’s chest, and guns strapped to every part of the armor-clad body. Gael’s heart tripped at the sight. He saw plenty of evil in his job as a paramedic, but this was a whole new monster. He was suddenly no longer freezing his balls off in the heart of Boston, but on a battlefield under the hot desert sun, sand and blood and dust covering everything. He saw a man covered in an explosives vest run towards a checkpoint outside the Green Zone, snipers dropping him before he could get too close, skull exploding in a shower of bone fragments and brain matter.
“Gee? Hey man, you okay?” a voice pulled him from his memories, and Gael blinked, suddenly exhausted. He shook his head, shoving the last of the images of Baghdad from his mind, and he met Michael’s concerned gaze. Simon had gone with the last shooting victim, and they were both remaining on scene until the two new ambulances parked. The All Units respond call had actually, for once, sent them a surplus of crews, and he and Michael had elected to remain behind and help those who couldn’t be fit in the ambulances or who decided not to go to the hospital via ambulance. The city’s new Emergency Response Protocols were for once working as intended, leaving them with more responders than injured.
Must be all the holiday overtime.
“Gee?” Michael asked again, and Gael gave the older man a thin smile, walking past him to the curb where a table held steaming cups of coffee that the café was kind enough to put out. Michael followed on his heels, and Gael did his best to ignore the slim, blond, handsome man as he reached out for a cup of hot chocolate as well. Gael was too keyed up for caffeine. And he was in no mood to talk to his former lover, unless it was about a patient.
Gael ignored Michael, who gave a heavy sigh, and drank his hot chocolate in silence.
He stared at the white cup, its surface fresh and pristine, unlike him. He ignored the blood on his uniform. Thankfully his hands were clean, having almost gone through his whole stash of gloves. He had a couple pairs left, but from the state of things, everyone who needed help was already on their way to the hospital, or past saving, so he shouldn’t need to put them back on again.
Cops and crime scene techs milled about, cameras flashing. Voices called out to each other, words indecipherable. He sipped, the sweet heat pooling on his tongue, and Gael moaned, glad for the sugar and the warmth. His uniform was warm, but he’d been in the snow and wind for a while now, and was beginning to feel it in his bones. He stared ahead at nothing, eyes tired. The alley was dark in front of him, the lights from the street stopping a few feet from the sidewalk’s edge.
“Gee…look, man…we need to talk,” Michael murmured, but Gael wasn’t listening. He let his eyes focus, something nagging at him. Something was out of place…“Ignoring this won’t change what happened…”
“This is not the place to have a discussion about why we broke up, Michael,” Gael growled, keeping his eyes on the alley.
“I know, but this is the first time I’ve had the chance to talk to you…”
What was that…..FUCK.
“Gael! What the hell?!” Michael yelled as Gael tossed down his drink, hot chocolate flying everywhere, and he sprinted around the table for the alley.
He grabbed his small flashlight from his belt, and clicked it on. A shoe peeked out from around the corner of a Dumpster, and Gael shined the light higher, and he reached out, knocking aside some discarded boxes and bags. There was a person buried under the trash. He must have hidden from the gunman before passing out. How the fuck did the police not find him in their sweep? The gunman died not even ten feet away from this man!
At the sight of the blood-covered person in front of him, Gael swore viciously, dropping to the ground, a hand going to the victim’s neck. He waited, holding his breath, until he felt it. A pulse. Faint, b
ut there.
“Michael! Grab my kit! GSW!” he screamed at the other medic who stood at the front of the alley. A pair of uniformed police had followed Michael from the coffee table, and stood gaping. Gael dismissed them, thinking he would talk to Jim after he helped the victim. He should never have been missed in the first place.
Michael swore, and flew to the medical kit a few feet away on the sidewalk. Gael pulled on a pair of gloves, and went to work. Michael was at his side in seconds, both men working in tandem.
“Fuck, how old is this kid?” Michael exclaimed, but Gael had eyes only for the injury.
Single gunshot wound to the upper right torso, no exit wound. They needed to get him flat, and off the boxes, so Michael and Gael each took ahold of the young man’s shoulders and sides, and pulled him from the trash, gently laying him on the pavement. A groan came from the bleeding teenager, and Gael got a glimpse of intense green eyes before they fluttered shut.
“Can you hear me? Can you tell us your name?” Michael asked, even as they got the blood pressure cuff on his arm, and Gael searched for more gunshot wounds. The teen didn’t answer, eyes trying to open, breathing ragged. There was a lot of blood.
Gael grabbed his radio mic on his shoulder, about to call it in, but a shout from the street made him pause. He looked over his shoulder to see Simon had returned with a new ambulance, and was guiding it into position at the mouth of the alley. The backup lights were enough to illuminate the unconscious body laying between him and Michael. Michael pulled out compression bandages and pressed it over the entry wound, which was still seeping blood into the teen’s shirt. For he was a teenager; the ambulance lights were enough to show that this person was young, perhaps even still a kid.
Simon ran over with a neck brace and backboard, and they moved him in tandem, strapping him down. The thump of doors opening and a flood of light greeted them as the remaining medics jumped down, pulling the gurney out with them.
“One, two, three…” and they had him up on the gurney, pulling him to the ambulance. In less than a minute they had him in the back, the doors shutting, Michael and Gael still working over him as Simon went to the front, hoping in the driver’s seat and putting the truck in gear.
Non-rebreather mask in place and oxygen flowing, Gael cut away the teen’s shirt, eyes automatically taking in the days’ old bruising and abrasions. He’d been beaten, and recently. There was a boot mark or two on his ribs, and they were marred by sickly blue and green contusions down both sides. A long road rash ran down his right side to the top of his hip bone, and while Michael held pressure on the wound, Gael gently moved the teen’s hips, looking for anything recent. It was scabbed over and angry looking, but nothing was bleeding. He was severely bruised, but his hips didn’t feel like they were broken.
As the shirt fell away, Michael secured the monitor leads to the pale skin revealed, sticking the pads in place before attaching leads. The monitors flared to life, each vital sign coming in clear as the connections were made.
“Hold on a sec, I’m going to check his legs,” Gael said, eyes still locked on their patient. There was blood everywhere, and Gael needed to see if the young man was bleeding from additional wounds or if it was just leakage from the upper torso injury. Gael used the shears, cutting away the dirty and ragged blue jeans that clung to lean legs, in many places torn and scraped, to match the damaged skin underneath.
A throaty moan came from the slim form, and Gael briefly took his gaze away from battered knees and shins to see twin pools of emerald latch on to him, hypnotic and pure. His hands rested on delicately boned ankles, and beneath his thumbs he felt a jump in the teen’s pulse. A second, no more, before thin lids fell and the teen went under again. Gael tried to breathe, but his lungs were locked, his whole body vibrating. There was no way the young man was real—he looked like an angel. Ethereal, beautiful.
“Gee? Is he bleeding anywhere else?” Michael asked, still attaching leads. The teen was unconscious, growing paler by the second. The only parts of him with any kind of color were where he was bruised and scraped.
“No,” Gael replied, snapping out of it. He must be more tired than he thought. This was his last call of the night—he wouldn’t risk hurting someone by being this inattentive. He needed to get his head back in the game. He was never this distracted on call, and he never noticed a patient’s looks. Until now. “Nothing bleeding. Some more scrapes and bruises, nothing feels broken.”
The ambulance roared through an intersection, thankfully the route still cleared by barricades and police cruisers along the streets to Boston General. Since the Marathon Bombings, Boston PD handled large-scale emergencies with extreme precautions, blocking out civilian traffic along the most efficient routes to the nearest hospital for EMS and other first responders. It may inconvenience the civilian population, but it meant faster care for those injured in events like the shooting, or God forbid, another bombing.
“This is EMS Truck 29… we have a male patient, mid-to-late teens, approximately 145 pounds… single gunshot, upper right torso, no exit wound…” Michael said, speaking over his radio to the receiving nurse at the ER. He watched the monitor and read off the teen’s stats. Surgeons and a trauma team were waiting for them, ready to take their patient the second the truck came to a full stop.
Gael found he had a hand resting on the teen’s wrist, his fingers finding his pulse point of their own accord. He counted the beats automatically, for some reason taking comfort in the weak but steady pulse. Gael could feel the chill on the young man’s skin even through his gloves, and he reached down, pulling a blanket up and over his legs and hips. His angel was cold, and he tucked the blanket in, covering what he could of the teenager without interfering with their equipment. Gael let Michael take lead, since he was in no shape mentally to do more than monitor the teen for any changes in his condition.
“Gee? Hey man, you’re worrying me,” Michael murmured to him over their patient. He could feel Michael’s gaze on him, probably looking as worried as he sounded. Once upon a time he appreciated the way Michael noticed and cared, but now it meant nothing more than casual concern from a coworker.
“Yeah…not doing so well. Long afternoon. I’m done after this. Pulling myself out of the rest of rotation tonight. Protocols have medics coming in to cover us anyway, so I’m going home,” Gael replied, unable to take his eyes off the boy’s face. Holidays meant nothing during city emergencies, and a mass shooting counted. EMS personnel would be called in to relieve those responders involved, least senior to most, and Gael would be off the clock once they handed the poor kid over and he called it in to the garage.
“We’re almost done,” Michael reassured him, and Gael looked up to see the lights of Boston General’s ER doors coming into view. A handful of staff in scrubs waited, ready to take his angel.
“Hang on, angel,” Gael whispered to the pale figure, squeezing his wrist. “They’ll take care of you.”
…
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride back to the garage?” Michael asked him, one hand on his shoulder, rubbing small circles. Gael grimaced and moved away from the touch, and Michael dropped his hand with a small frown that threatened to turn into a full-blown pout.
“I’m fine, Mike,” Gael replied, trying to put more strength in his words than he actually felt.
He was worried; he’d not had a flashback to Iraq in years, and the teenager’s situation left him more concerned than he usually would be for a patient after handing him or her over to the ER staff. Gael looked past Michael’s shoulder in the direction of the surgery suites, the doors behind which the teenager had been taken still and unopened. The hall was quiet, sounds muffled but for the distant wail of sirens coming from outside. Their shift over, the three of them had hung about for the last few hours in the back hallways of the hospital, waiting to hear news about the teen’s condition. Everything felt heavy, oppressive, and Gael internally flagged, though he kept his shoulders back and chin up. Michael woul
d never leave him alone if he saw how messed up he really was.
Gael shot Michael an exasperated glance, and said, “Look, Simon is waiting for you. Go home.”
Gael waved down the hall in the opposite direction of the surgery doors, where Simon was standing, holding Michael’s coat and shuffling on his feet, obviously uncomfortable with his boyfriend hovering over his ex.
“I’m done for the next few days, Mike. I called it in,” Gael said, taking another step back from Michael, out of arm’s reach. “Goodnight, Michael.”
Michael watched him, eyes roving over his face. Gael kept himself shut off, pulling on years of experience to keep his emotions to himself. Michael sighed, shoulders drooping, but he nodded and turned away. With a murmured goodnight of his own, Gael’s ex walked away, and he breathed a sigh of relief when Simon and Michael exited the hospital, heading for the reserved ambulance parking.
Lost in his thoughts, head beginning to pound from the adrenaline crash, Gael was startled out of his daze when a flash of white moved in his periphery. A surgeon, freshly scrubbed from the scent of antiseptic wash and the pressed lines of his coat, waited for him to realize he was there.
“You the medic who brought the teen in?” he asked, sounding as tired as Gael felt.
“Yes,” Gael breathed out, afraid he would be hearing more bad news. The teen had been too long without care after getting shot—he may not have had the strength left to make it. “Is he…?”
“He’s in Recovery right now,” the other man smiled, a small twitch of his lips, his eyes showing a matched relief that Gael was felling to hear the boy was still alive. “He should make a full recovery.”
Gael rubbed his face, and nodded in thanks before turning down the hall.
“Hey, wait!”
Gael stopped, and turned back to the surgeon, confused. The kid was alive. Gael could now go home, relieved that the wounded angel he’d found in the alley was going to make it. Some good would come out of this wrecked holiday.