In Too Deep: Station Seventeen Book 3

by Kimberly Kincaid

  “Okay, here we go,” Parker said, pulling to a full stop in front of a trendy-looking café with an overhead sign that read BREWED AWAKENING in big, bright red letters. “Nineteen-twelve Maplewood Avenue.”

  Per protocol, Quinn confirmed the address with a fast but careful glance at the dashboard screen. “Copy that,” she said, her heartbeat accelerating in an ingrained physical response her body knew all too well as she reached for the two-way radio that linked them to dispatch. “Ambulance Twenty-Two to dispatch. We are on-scene at nineteen-twelve Maplewood Avenue. Over.”

  “Dispatch to Ambulance Twenty-Two, copy your location. Over.”

  Snuffing out the very last of the well-hello-there tingle that had accompanied her illicit thoughts of Slater, Quinn got out of the rig and locked all of her attention on the scene. Coffee shop, busy part of the city, a hundred and fuckteen degrees outside…God, this could be anything.

  Engine Seventeen rumbled up behind them, the heavy thump of four sets of boots sounding off against the pavement just as she popped the handle on the ambo’s side storage door.

  “Hey, you guys,” Quinn said over her shoulder, grabbing her first-in bag and tugging a pair of blue nitrile gloves from the side pocket, snapping them quickly into place. “Sorry for cutting your drills short.”

  Any time engine wasn’t already on a call, dispatch tended to send them to accompany her and Parker on reports of a person down, just in case they needed help getting past a sticky obstacle in order to reach a victim. Falling out on this one must have given them a hell of a run for their money, considering they’d been harness-deep in rope drills when the all-call had gone off.

  Funny, Shae—who just so happened to be not only Quinn’s station-mate, but one of her closest friends—just grinned and shook her head as she stepped up next to Quinn on the pavement. “Ah, Slater’s got to learn rescue skills on the fly, and it gave the rest of us some good practice at making fast work of things.”

  Quinn shut the compartment door just in time to see Slater and Kellan arrive behind Shae, the latter sporting a small, freshly formed bruise just below his right eye.

  “Mmm. Some of us got more practice than others.” Despite the sarcasm in his tone, Kellan smiled and fell into step with the rest of them as they hustled toward the back of the ambo for the gurney. “Speaking of which, if you need backup on this one, I’ve got dibs. McCullough owes me for the shiner.”

  Quinn couldn’t help but go brows-up. “Do I even want to know?” she asked Gamble, who stood sentry at the ambulance’s open rear doors while Parker unlocked the gurney with a loud clack.

  “Do you even have to ask?” Gamble capped the question with a shake of his dark head, and even Shae lifted her hands in concession as they got the gurney to ground level and cut a brisk path over the city sidewalk leading up to the coffee shop.

  “Probably not,” she said.

  Parker let out a short-lived laugh as he moved past one of the glass double doors leading inside, guiding the foot of the gurney while Quinn maneuvered over the threshold from the other end. “Okay, then. If we need an assist, Kellan it is.”

  Taking a few seconds to allow her eyes to make the adjustment from the bright sunlight outside to the much more dimly lit interior of the coffee shop, Quinn scanned the cozy L-shaped space. “Did someone call for an ambulance?”

  “Yes! Over here!” called out a worried brunette wearing thickly rimmed glasses that matched her cherry-red apron. “Please, hurry.”

  Quinn’s breath kicked slightly faster through her lungs, and yeah, the woman didn’t have to tell them twice.

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Parker asked the brunette while Quinn sighted in on the lifeless figure slumped over the floorboards alongside the bakery display case. Female, late twenties-early thirties. Unconscious. No visible signs of trauma. Go. Go.

  She knelt down before she was even aware of the command from her neurons to move, pressing her index and middle fingers over the woman’s neck with one hand while using the other to stabilize her spine. Relief splashed through Quinn’s veins at the thump of the woman’s heartbeat, strong and slow against her fingers.

  “I’ve got a pulse.” At least that was a win. The rest of this situation? Not so much.

  “She was waiting in line.” The woman in the apron, whose name tag read “Annie”, stared down at them, her eyes as round as a pair of dinner plates behind her glasses. “She was standing right there when all of a sudden she…I don’t know. Just kind of collapsed. One of the other customers caught her on the way down”—Annie pointed to a man kneeling on the floor by the woman’s side, across from Quinn—“but she was out cold, and she’s been really out of it since then. I called nine-one-one right away.”

  “So she didn’t hit her head when she fell? You’re sure?” Parker asked, and the man nodded, moving back to give them room to work.

  “I’m sure. I was next to her in line when she passed out. She went down like a sack of potatoes. One minute, she was standing there, the next…” He trailed off, gesturing to the floor. “I did manage to get ahold of her and slide her to the floor, though.”

  Another win, although Quinn did a quick check for a head injury the guy might have missed, just in case. Good Samaritans might have kind intentions, but what they usually didn’t have were medical degrees. “No sign of head or spinal trauma,” she confirmed.

  “Okay, let’s get her on her back for an RTA,” Parker said. “On my count. One, two, three.”

  Working in a rhythm she knew as well as her own signature, they rolled the woman to her back on the floorboards. Later, Quinn would probably have bruises on her knees, she knew. But right now? She didn’t even feel the slightest bite of the hardwood on her skin. Her brain caught clips and snippets from her peripheral vision as she prepped for the rapid trauma assessment. The dozen or so onlookers Shae and Gamble had corralled by the tables in the back of the shop. Kellan standing by the gurney, his sharp stare on both the situation and the scene. Slater, who was watching with enough quiet intensity to sink a battleship. Quinn had been trained to always be aware of her surroundings in case they became dangerous. But right now, in this moment, the only thing she really saw was her patient.

  “Ma’am?” She curled her fingers into a loose fist, placing her knuckles over the center of the woman’s now-loosened blouse for a nice firm sternal rub. The woman stirred, but barely. Shit. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  “Heart rate is sixty-two, pulse ox is ninety-nine percent,” Parker said, and damn, he’d been fast with those leads. The portable monitor beside him flashed as the numbers registered, the woman’s vitals beginning to scroll over the screen.

  “Okay, sweetheart. Let’s figure you out.” Quinn’s brain spun through the most likely suspects. Airway was clear, heart rate was normal, albeit on the low side. The woman had gone lights out with no warning…

  Of course. “Diabetic shock,” Quinn said, just a nanosecond before Parker did. Reaching for her first-in bag, Quinn liberated the glucose test kit from the pocket where she always kept it, the sharp, familiar tang of alcohol pinching at her nose as she swiped a pad over the woman’s middle finger and completed the test.

  “Whoa. Blood sugar is thirty-four.” No wonder this lady was so unresponsive. Anything under seventy was considered low. Thirty-four was in the freaking basement. But at least subterranean blood sugar levels were a relatively easy fix.

  “Starting an IV,” Parker said, although his hands were already halfway through the process. He’d always been a wizard with starting a line. He hadn’t earned the nickname Ace for nothing. “Pushing half an amp of D50 and running normal saline, wide open.”

  Quinn eagle-eyed the woman’s vitals for another minute before placing another sternal rub over the center of her chest, right between the leads. “Ma’am? Can you hear me?”

  The woman’s eyes fluttered, and Quinn exhaled a little easier. Right up until she swatted at Quinn’s hands, anyway.

  “Okay, it’s
okay.” She dropped her voice to its most soothing setting, trying to reassure the woman. Judging by her dazed/panicked expression, Quinn was doing a piss-poor job.

  She tried again. “Ma’am, my name is Quinn and I’m a paramedic. Can you tell me—”

  The woman lifted her lids again in a series of heavy blinks. She took another swat—this one with a little more oomph—at Quinn’s hands, the sloppy movements tangling her IV tube.

  Quinn’s pulse jerked in a reminder that her adrenal gland was fully functional. Coming around from diabetic shock was a slow road, and waking up to a gaggle of first responders all up in your personal bubble had to be a little frightening. But keeping this woman calm was key if they wanted to keep helping her, so Quinn mentally crossed her fingers and hoped the third time would be the proverbial charm.

  “Ma’am, please. I need you to—”

  The woman’s hand shot out, connecting with Quinn’s upper arm in a solid, ow-worthy thump. Her heart slapped faster in her chest, and even though the response was pure physiology, it threatened to upend the composure she needed in order to do her job.

  Nope. Not today.

  “Okay. Take it easy.” Quinn gripped the woman’s forearm in an effort to steady her. If that IV blew, she wouldn’t get the fluids she needed, and they’d have no way of getting more meds on board if her blood sugar took another belly flop. The woman struggled against Quinn’s hold, her free hand flailing in a series of wild, broken motions that meant nothing good for where they were headed.

  “Copeland.”

  Quinn locked eyes with Parker, a nonverbal conversation moving between them in less time than it took to sneeze. Parker passed the IV bag to Kellan, who had been standing behind him, ready to assist as promised, and circled his fingers carefully but firmly around either one of the patient’s forearms.

  “Ma’am, I know this is scary, but we want to help you. We’re going to give you something to calm you down so we can treat you and make you feel better, okay? Quinn, draw up two milligrams of Ativan.”

  “Wait. She doesn’t need Ativan. Stop.”

  Quinn was so stunned to hear Slater’s words that she actually hesitated with one hand on the vial.

  Parker shook his head, adamant. “No. I get that you’re fresh out of EMT training, Slater, but this isn’t my first rodeo. We need to skip the pleasantries before this woman yanks out her IV or becomes more upset. Or worse.” He turned back to the woman, his tone unyielding but not unkind. “Ma’am, please. You need to stop fighting us, okay? We don’t want to have to restrain you.”

  But rather than standing down, Slater stepped closer, until he was less than an inch away from Parker at the woman’s side. “If you restrain her, she’ll only fight harder. And she doesn’t need the Ativan to calm down.”

  Parker’s brows winged up in shock, and didn’t that just make him and Quinn a pair of freaking bookends.

  “Slater,” she started, but his determined, ice-blue stare made the rest of her words crash to a halt in her throat.

  “Your patient isn’t trying to fight you, Quinn. She’s trying to talk to you.”

  3

  “Your patient is deaf. She’s trying to sign,” Luke said quietly, moving past a drop-jawed Quinn and—shit, yeah, Parker and Kellan, too. But since Parker putting restraints on his patient would be akin to slapping duct tape over her mouth and Luke had been the only person to recognize that little fact, he didn’t have a choice. Ignoring the lead-lined weight of their stares, he knelt down beside the woman, positioning himself directly in her line of sight and began to sign.

  “My name is Luke,” he said, accompanying the ASL with actual out-loud words, partly because he didn’t know if the woman could read lips (or might be too groggy to the job even if she could), and partly because he didn’t want to have to waste time translating for Parker and Quinn any more than he’d already have to. This woman needed treatment, and fast. “I’m a firefighter and an EMT. I need you to be calm so my friends can help you. Okay?”

  The woman stilled, her eyes widening with recognition and relief, and she gave up a loose nod.

  “Can you tell me your name?” Luke asked. Parker released his grasp on the woman’s forearms, albeit a little hesitantly, and she signed in a weak reply.

  Elena. I feel tired. And scared.

  His chest tightened beneath his RFD T-shirt. “It’s nice to meet you, Elena. I know you feel tired and scared, but we’re here to help you. Can you tell me if anything hurts?”

  Nothing hurts. But I’m diabetic. I missed breakfast. Elena lowered her arms to her sides as if the conversation had been a four-minute mile, and Christ, with a blood sugar of thirty-four and a history of diabetes, no wonder the poor woman was wiped out.

  “No reported pain.” Although the words were for Quinn and Parker’s benefit, Luke made sure Elena could still see him as he spoke. She was the biggest part of the equation, and excluding her just because she was deaf wasn’t on his great big plan of let’s do that. “Patient is diabetic and didn’t eat breakfast.”

  Quinn got over her shock first. “Okay,” she said, glancing at the monitor. “Her vitals are strong, and that D50 is obviously starting to kick in. Why don’t we get her on the gurney so she’ll be more comfortable? We can continue to monitor her blood sugar levels out at the ambo to make sure they’re coming up.”

  After a heartbeat’s worth of a hitch, Parker nodded. “Copy that. Sounds good.”

  Kellan grabbed the gurney from the spot where Parker and Quinn had parked the thing a few feet away, and Luke relayed the plan of action to Elena. He helped Parker get her situated on the white-sheeted mattress, staying close by in case he needed to translate further, and also a little selfishly to watch the treatment protocol as they relo’d from the coffee shop to the back of the ambulance.

  “I’ll call this in and get the paperwork started since she’s stable. You two good to continue treatment back here?” Parker split his gaze between Luke and Quinn, and whoa, cue up the surprise.

  “Sure,” Luke said, the words tagging along with Quinn’s nod. “I’m happy to stick around and help if you need a translator.”

  “Good deal. And by the way?” Parker paused, brows up. “Nice catch, rookie.”

  Oh, the fucking irony. But of course Luke had recognized Elena’s efforts to sign, just as he’d been able to fluently communicate with her.

  After all, his sister had been deaf for a decade, and he’d been raising her for just as long. Shame on him if he hadn’t recognized it, or intervened on Elena’s behalf. Even if he had just tipped his personal-life hand to Parker and Quinn and everyone on engine.

  No, check that. He might as well have flung every last one of his cards face-up on the fucking table.

  Luke’s smile was about as comfortable as a sandpaper strait jacket, but he forked it over just the same as Parker swiveled on his boots to head for the front of the rig. “Thanks.”

  Dodging Quinn’s unnervingly pretty, unnervingly laser-like dark blue gaze, Luke settled against the bench seat running the length of the left side of the ambulance. Between the dextrose and the fluids free-flowing through her IV, Elena perked up exponentially after only a few short minutes, her dark brown stare growing more focused and her sign language more fluid than it had been back in the coffee shop.

  Now that she was stable, Luke asked and signed, “Would you prefer signing or lip-reading?”

  She smiled, albeit weakly. I can read lips, but don’t mind you signing. Your ASL is quite good.

  Sure. To this day, Hayley wasn’t shy about correcting even the subtle nuances when he got sloppy.

  Luke’s gut gave up a hard slap shot. “Thank you. How are you feeling?”

  Silly, Elena signed. I know better than to skip breakfast. I won’t have to go to the hospital or anything, will I?

  “Don’t feel silly,” Luke replied, continuing to both speak and sign. “It’s our job to help, and believe me, we’ve seen far sillier. As for whether or not you need to go to
Remington Memorial…”

  He let the statement dangle, turning toward the spot where Quinn sat across from him. Her stare flicked from the exchange—which she’d been watching with far too much curiosity for him not to have to do damage control on the whole why-yes-I-am-fluent-in-ASL topic later—to the portable monitor now tucked safely beside Elena on the gurney.

  “Her vitals are normal, and she’s pretty alert. We’ll have to check her blood sugar again in about five minutes.” Quinn left zero wiggle room in either her tone or her expression. “But if she’s up to the nineties, I think she can opt out of a trip to Remington Mem. As long as she eats. And Parker agrees,” she added.

  “Seems fair.”

  Luke relayed the message. He shifted over the bench with the intention of going to scrounge up some orange juice and maybe a granola bar from the coffee shop to get Elena’s levels closer to normal, but she reached out, grabbing his hand for a second before launching into some rapid-fire sign language.

  “What?” Quinn’s spine snapped to attention. “What’s she saying? Is she in pain?”

  “You can ask her yourself if you’d like,” Luke said, taking care to keep his tone free of judgment. He spent so much time around Hayley that he sometimes forgot most of the world wasn’t well-versed in deaf culture. “I don’t mind translating her answers, but Elena can understand you just as long as you’re face-to-face with her when you speak. And no. She’s not in pain. She actually wanted me to tell you she’s sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Quinn’s brows furrowed before flying sky-high in obvious surprise. “What on earth for?”

  But before Luke could answer, Quinn gave up a tiny head shake and turned toward Elena to repeat the question. She didn’t crank up her volume or slow her words to toddler speed like most people who spoke to someone who was deaf, and hell if that didn’t send a feeling Luke didn’t want to contemplate directly through his chest.

  Elena looked at him for only a second, then turned her gaze on Quinn as she signed her reply.