While she worked, I stacked seasoned firewood in a stone circle, and lit it. It was a smoky fire that I hoped would keep bugs at bay. A grill, similar to the one from my boat, rested atop it, and I would grill fish on it, two bass I’d reeled in from a pond on the property, respectable fish but not record-setters. I’d filleted them with the skins on, and the fillets waited in the fridge. She came out a short time later and asked for water, and I pointed to the ice chest. She reached in and came up with water and Gatorade, chugged down half of each, then trudged back to the barn to get to work.
I looked at her as she walked away, beautiful lines, curves, and stripes. And all mine. Entirely my Laura. She labored while I sat and rested, master of my plantation. The truth was, Laura owned the property. We had decided that until this house was ready to occupy, we weren’t going to list either of our houses, and would have this property deeded in both of our names.
After we ate, we went back to my house and stumbled into bed after a lengthy shower. Sleep was a long time coming for me, despite my fatigue. The future I foresaw with her excited and frightened me, the what-ifs nipping at my mind like a flock of mosquitoes. I gave up on sleep for the time, and went downstairs for a stiff drink, pouring some 120-proof Knob Creek bourbon into a glass with an ice cube. Work on the house would be done in another two or three weeks, and then we would be in official cohabitation. I polished off my whiskey, sighed tiredly, then returned to bed.
We went shopping for furniture the next day, and placed orders for a gorgeous handmade four-poster bed, king-sized, as well as living room furniture. Undecided about the other bedrooms of the house, we decided to leave them bare for the time being. We’d hired an estate sale company to sell off most of the contents of the two houses. My stuff was too beat-up by this point of the game, and even Laura said her own furnishings were too stuffy. Truth was, in some ways her house felt like a hotel or maybe a museum.
She showed up on-time for the shift she was to ride with me on my command, dressed in black slacks and a white shirt, like any other EMT student.
I walked her through the checklist, to ensure we had all we needed, and that everything was in its place. I only had one more 48-hour shift to turn after this one, and then would be at a desk with a supervisor car. Yeah, I’d still show up on scenes to check up on people and be an extra set of hands, but would mostly be a chairborne warrior until my retirement. I yearned for it, in a big way.
Oh, I knew I’d miss the streets, the adrenaline and camaraderie, but I was getting long in the tooth to still be on the streets and was ready to lay it aside. Briggs told me he was going to start grooming me to promote to captain upon his own retirement in three years. He wasn’t fond of the other lieutenants, which I already knew. He wanted me in the big job. Part of it was a written test, but other examinations were oral, therefore a bit more subjective.
With the ambulance checked out, we went inside, where Ann, a new hire who replaced Tom, was hustling through cooking breakfast, nothing fancy, just bacon and eggs with toast. Laura dropped a twenty in the kitty for food and coffee, then we sat and ate. Laura even volunteered to wash the dishes, but we got toned to an MVA.
It was a bad one. Indeed, the cops had already called in Air Care before we arrived. A school bus plowed into a little foreign roller skate of a car. A dozen kids on the bus were banged up and we rolled two more units to the scene. Laura checked the woman in the car, then looked at me and shook her head. I’d have been surprised if the driver of the little car was alive anyway. The driver of the school bus was drawn on his left side, and had two broken legs as well as a bad rap across his forehead, where his head hit the steering wheel. Ann and I got him packaged and intubated for safety’s sake.
“What can I do?” Laura asked.
“Not much,” I said. “He had a bad stroke, it looks like. Out here, all we can do is try to keep his ass alive and hope the hospital does too. If I had to guess, he had a stroke and the bus went out of control. The uninjured kids left the bus out of the back. See what needs the others have. They look like walking wounded, nothing severe.”
“Got it,” Laura said, approaching the kids, many of them crying. Air Care landed on the road and we loaded the bus driver on their stretcher, then they took off. Laura, meanwhile, splinted broken arms on four of the kids, and we packaged three more complaining of neck pain for transport. The backup units arrived, along with another bus.
Laura cleared the remainder for spinal trauma, as a paddy wagon from the PD arrived. The kids boarded the Econoline van and were driven to the hospital while some official from the school showed up to assess things and start calling parents. We took ours to the hospital while Laura looked more and more worried about one of the kids, a little girl with a blown pupil who was starting to posture. Her EKG was decelerating and her blood pressure rising a bit.
I didn’t blame Laura for her worry. She called the hospital and said she had one that needed instant radiology and to prepare for emergency surgery on the kid, who looked to be maybe nine years old, a very pretty black girl at that age where she was getting to be all leg. God, how I hated running hurt kids. Fortunately, the ones badly injured were few and far between.
“How’s Luree?” the other girl asked, an elfin brunette.
“I think she’ll be okay,” I said. “She banged her head harder than you did. What’s your name, sweetie?”
“Kaela Montgomery, Sir,” she said dutifully.
“Well, Kaela, you and Luree are in the best of hands,” I said with a reassuring smile. “I’ve been doing this work since long before you were born, and this lady with me is Dr. Laura. She wanted to see what it’s like out on the street, so she’s with me today. She’s one of the best emergency doctors ever.”
“You’re going to do just super,” Laura said with her own reassuring smile. “When they get you in, they’ll take some x-rays of you, but it’s like just having your picture taken. They’ll look at your head, and your wrist and ankle. You might get casts on the wrist and ankle, but I think once they’re done, that collar can come off your neck.”
She and I exchanged a look and her eyes cut to Luree, who didn’t look good at all. A falling pulse and rising blood pressure, along with the fixed pupil, all screamed rising intracranial pressure and attendant brain damage that might be permanent. I swear, I could smell the frustrations rising with her, knowing exactly what to do but with no ability to do it.
“Where were you going, Kaela?” I asked, keeping the kid distracted.
“A field trip to the museum,” she answered.
“Well, maybe you can go after they finish with you at the hospital,” I told her.
We dropped the kids off at the ER and dodged reporters who were already flocking about like vultures.
“Jesus, I … I guess I understood the frustrations of your job from an intellectual standpoint,” Laura said. “But that was emotional, knowing exactly what needed to be done but unable to do it. Swear to God, I’d be the biggest alcoholic in nine counties if I had to do this for a living.”
“Many’s the morning I came home, had a Bible in one hand and a bottle in the other, hoping one or the other would help make sense of things,” I admitted.
At the station, we restocked and went to the day room to rest while I wrote up reports. We got a sick call in the afternoon, a woman at her office vomiting violently until she fainted, and ran her to the ER. On the way back, Laura checked up on the bus driver and Luree. The driver was on life support but not expected to survive. Luree looked like she’d recover, but would be touch-and-go for a couple or three days. Kaela didn’t have a concussion. She’d sprained a wrist and broke her tibia a few inches above the ankle, but was fine and dandy otherwise. The other walking wounded were patched up and were slowly but surely being discharged to their parents.
It was dead from then until we got toned at midnight to a bar where, surprise, a fight broke out. We arrived to the dimly lit dive to find a woman beaten to a pulp and a man in like condition.
The woman was semiconscious, and the man unconscious. Four cops had arrived, trying to get the story, when Laura hunkered down to see what was going on with the unconscious man. Another man suddenly grabbed a pool stick and hit Laura in the head, snarling, “let that asshole stay fucking dead!”
On autopilot, I swung my flashlight at his head, and flattened him. Two cops tackled the assailant and hurriedly cuffed him while I bent down to Laura, scared to death.
“I’m … I’m okay,” she said.
Fortunately, the thin end of the stick hit her and shattered. I checked her out like I’d check out any other patient, and agreed she was okay, but would be rocking one hell of a bruise and probably a prize-winning headache. It was a shame the cops were there, which meant I couldn’t finish the job of killing that lowlife asshole.
Laura checked out the unconscious man and pronounced him dead. His face was beaten and bloodied so badly that he was unrecognizable. We called Air Care for the battered woman and the man I’d coldcocked with my light. I got him right at the temple, shattered an eye socket, and destroyed his left eye. The woman went by helicopter to the hospital and a second ambulance called in transported the man I’d hit. He was in police custody, violent, and they insisted he go by ground rather than put a helo at risk.
I was detained on-scene while the cops did their investigation before clearing me. I was confident there’d be no charges against me. Meanwhile, the story unfolded. The woman, a Jill Saunders, had run from Bobby Z., who was the man Laura pronounced dead on scene. The redneck who attacked Bobby was another thug with a long history of arrests, named Richard Lathrop. He launched himself on Bobby, I guess trying to be the hero, then maybe rape that poor woman for himself afterward, and there seemed to be no doubt he was still in a feral state. Eyewitnesses said Lathrop used brass knuckles on Bobby. Many of the denizens of the dive looked uneasily at me, but the cops who’d seen what happened, as well as the witnesses, seemed to accept I was defending Laura.
I’d only hit him once, and he was armed with the shattered pool stick when I took him down. Ann and Laura both seemed very defensive of me, and finally, we were let go. One way or another, a call was placed to Briggs, who told me my shift was over and to head home. It was policy that a medic was put on paid leave in the wake of any altercation while an investigation went on.
“Don’t sweat it, Keith,” he told me. “From what the cops are saying, you were on the side of the angels. This is mixed emotions. Part of me wants to kill him for hitting the doc, and the rest of me wants to give him a reward for finally killing that dickhead Bobby Z. I knocked the fuck out of two or three of ‘em when I was riding a box. Sometimes shit gets out of control and you’re left without a choice. That sounds like what happened tonight. Fucking cops run so many calls at those shit bars that they get complacent, and then a good medic gets attacked. Anyway, go get some rest, son.”
He ended the call and my mind turned over the word son. It wasn’t the first time he’d used that affectation, but the truth was, over the span of my career, he really had become my father figure.
“You’re my hero,” Laura said when we got to her house. “Come on upstairs, hero. It’s time I pampered you for saving my ass. God, I sure the hell won’t be bitchy to EMS anymore. It’s chaos. Not even controlled chaos, just chaos.”
“It’s the water where I do my swimming,” I said. “I don’t question it. I just accept it. You do the best you can with what you have, which usually isn’t nearly enough. But it’s something I drill into students and junior medics, to not waste time on scene diagnosing what you can’t treat anyway. Abdominal pain, for instance … no matter the diagnosis, it all comes down to we start an IV, give oxygen, and transport, whether it’s a gall bladder, appendix, ruptured ectopic pregnancy, or constipation. Trauma is easier. You can see what’s going on. But take that little girl Luree with the closed head injury. At the end of it all, IV, oxygen, monitoring, and hope you get her there in time.”
“True,” Laura said with a pensive expression. “I’ve only seen the patients and never considered what you encounter. It’s raw out there. I’m glad the pool stick only gave me a headache. Hard lessons learned are the ones that stick, right?”
“Yeah, you … you’re a doctor and I’m not going to blame you for getting tunnel vision with the patients. But sometimes you need to assess the scene.” I kissed her, loving and longing. “I thank God it wasn’t worse, Laura. God, I’m … I just reacted. It was like combat. The dead guy? He’s the one who tried to sweep you off your feet at Louie’s, the one I fought off. Burn in Hell, Bobby Z.”
“Jesus, you’re my hero twice,” she said, then kissed me again.
Upstairs, she drew a hot bath in her whirlpool tub, deposited me into it, then got in and bathed me, massaging and caressing, soothing her master. As the adrenaline burned off me, exhaustion crept in. She shook me awake some time later as the water started cooling. I got out of the tub, and she dried me with a towel, then herself. We stumbled to bed and she stroked my hair until I fell into a deep sleep.
We both woke half-starved at daybreak, and decided fuck cooking, then went to IHOP, where we both ordered hearty breakfasts and helped ourselves to strong coffee, when a tall and imposing black woman appeared at our table. “Dr. Peters?” she asked.
“Oh!” Laura exclaimed, surprised. “Have a seat and share some coffee, Marilyn. Keith, this is Marilyn Cross, one of our OR nurses, and why aren’t you knee-deep in the operating room already, come to think of it? Sit. God, you look worn out.”
Marilyn sat, and I could see she looked an emotional wreck. She was beyond tired. “I’m trying to understand yesterday,” she said. “I’m on FMLA time right now. I was working on that poor bus driver when they yanked me out of the OR to tell me Luree was hurt with head trauma. It was hard shifting gears from tough OR nurse to scared mom. They … they told me you brought her in. What happened?”
“Keith here was medic in charge,” Laura said. “The bus driver … he had a stroke, which we think led to the accident. Luree … your daughter?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Marilyn said. “Leon stayed with her overnight. Thank … thank you, Dr. Peters. She’s our only child, our Luree. But … how were you involved?”
“Well, I got bitchy with Keith the other day and he dared me to ride a shift with him,” Laura said. “I did, and he was right. Whatever they’re paying him isn’t half of what he deserves.”
“We did all we could, which mostly amounts to getting her to the ER as fast as we could,” I said.
“Kaela kept wanting to be with Luree,” Marilyn said.
“She seemed a sweet kid,” I offered.
“They’re inseparable,” Marilyn told us. “She’s … she lives four houses down from Leon and me.”
“What’s Luree’s prognosis?” Laura asked.
“They think she’ll recover, but will need all kinds of therapy,” Marilyn said. “Leon’s mom is flying in next week and my sister will be here the week after. Thank God for a support system.” She opened her mouth to say more but sobbed instead. Laura stood and awkwardly hugged Marilyn while the woman cried. The waitress approached, looking nonplussed.
I stood and spoke quietly to the waitress. “The woman’s daughter was hurt badly yesterday,” I told her. “It’ll be okay. She’s just overwrought. We have her tab, Miss. Just add it to ours.”
“Y’all are friends?” the waitress asked.
“Yeah, or they are, at least,” I said. “I was the paramedic on that call.”
“I thought I reconnized you,” the waitress said, and winked. “Ain’t seen you before with your clothes on. Y’all good on coffee?”
“Refill, please,” I said, handing her the pitcher.
“Got it, and y’all just flag me down if you need more.”
By this point, Marilyn’s emotional storm, or at least this outer band of it, seemed to have passed. “Breakfast is on us,” I told her. “And you won’t be any good to Luree half-starved.”
“Thank you for Luree’s life,” Marilyn said.
“Mrs. Cross, all I did was speed her to the hospital,” I told her honestly. “Thank Luree. That kid’s a fighter, but she’s going to need you and Leon in a huge way for a while, as I understand it.”
The waitress returned with coffee and chow, and Laura ordered a second breakfast of whatever she was having, and slid her plate before Marilyn. “Big Chief there is right,” she said, and smiled. “Starving yourself helps nothing. And this doctor thinks you’re too tired to drive. How much sleep did you get overnight?”
“Not much,” Marilyn admitted.
“Keith, I’d like to drive her to the hospital after breakfast, if you’re willing to follow us?”
“Absolutely,” I said, very proud of Laura and her extension of humanity to Marilyn.
But I had my own food for thought from this encounter. I seldom, almost never, had follow-up with patients. Oh, we had our frequent flyers, but they were seldom serious matters. As field medicine was something Laura’s education and experience had denied her, anything beyond the field was denied me. I seldom took one step into a hospital beyond the emergency department, except for the occasional L&D patient run straight up to the obstetrics department. I found myself happy for that.
Marilyn was shattered by this, and her kid was going to live. What about those hopeless ones like Caleb? I couldn’t imagine the wrenching ordeal so many others endured. I couldn’t do it. I guess in that moment, I found a new avenue of respect for Laura. She’d just needed the shell cracked off of her humanity, I guess like a pecan, I thought with dark humor behind my poker face. Marilyn managed to eat about half her breakfast, and I did the same, my appetite suddenly dust and memory amidst the emotions of the morning. Laura only picked at her breakfast, for that matter, but the three of us put down the whole second pitcher of coffee and most of a third, then got OJ to go for all of us, and at my urging, a to-go breakfast for Leon. At this, Marilyn had a genuine chuckle.
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