Shock Advised (Kilgore Fire #1)

by Lani Lynn Vale

  “It’s not often that God calls such a young soul home,” the preacher said at the closing point of Colt’s funeral. “But there are times, when God feels that it’s a person’s time. Everybody has a certain time, and nobody knows just how much time we’re promised on this earth.”

  A tear slipped down my cheek.

  “I had the privilege of baptizing Colton Aaron Davis when he was a little over three months old,” Preacher Mike said. A man who’d held Colton the day after he was born and cooed over his tiny form. “And it breaks my heart,” the preachers voice cracked. “That I had to tell him goodbye so early.”

  Another tear pooled in my eye.

  “His mother asked me to read this note to you. She wanted you all to know her son like she did. And since she doesn’t think she can make it through the reading of the letter, I’m going to do that for you now.”

  Colton Aaron Davis was born just 8 months ago. He was eight pounds and five ounces with the curliest locks of hair I’d ever seen.

  He started rolling over when he was four weeks old.

  Crawling when he was six months old. And pulling up when he was seven months old.

  He loved to hear me read Goodnight Moon to him.

  He loved to watch Mickey Mouse.

  He loved to eat Goldfish in his high chair right next to me while I ate my dinner, and then fed him his.

  Dogs and firefighters were his favorite things in the world.

  I’d point out an ambulance or a fire truck going down the road and he’d go shrill with excitement.

  A very special man gave him a firefighter bear when he was in the hospital, and not once, in the short time that he had it, did he ever let it go for more than five seconds.

  Tai’s hands convulsed around mine.

  I never got to watch him walk.

  I never got to watch him hit his first baseball at his first little league game.

  I never got to kiss his first skinned knee.

  I’ll never teach him how to drive, or take him to his first day of school. And I’ll never watch him walk across the stage at graduation or dance with him at his wedding.

  But it also means that he won’t suffer anymore. I won’t have to watch him wither away, or try to defeat a cancer that shouldn’t have been inside him in the first place.

  He’ll never cry because it hurts anymore, and I’ll never have to wonder if he’s in pain.

  Because he’ll be in heaven, and he’ll never hurt again.

  He’ll be able to run and play with his grandfather. He’ll be able to look down on me and I’ll know that he’s in a better place.

  I thank you all for being here to celebrate Colton’s life, because he was the most special little boy in the world.

  Run fast, my boy. Bask in the rainbows and sunshine. Say hi to Pawpaw, and hug him tight for me. Think of me, because there won’t be one second that passes that I won’t be thinking of you.

  I collapsed.

  Tai caught me and turned me.

  I buried my face into his neck and cried.

  “Now, I ask you to let the family leave first once the pallbearers make their way down the aisle. Thank you,” Preacher Mike said.

  I was passed to Tai’s brother, Jack, as Tai walked to the casket with four of the six men that’d come to visit with Colton while he was in the hospital.

  Oh, how he would’ve loved to see Tai in his uniformed glory.

  All the shiny buttons and brass was beautiful on him.

  They said some words that I couldn’t quite make out, and then they easily picked up my baby’s casket.

  My hands dug into Jack’s strong forearm, and his arm around my back tightened as I watched them walk away with my baby.

  I followed, gathering strength now from the man at my side, only holding him slightly as he walked with me down the aisle.

  I stopped at the top of the church’s steps, the one I attended when I could, and gasped when I saw the gleaming red fire truck they set Colt into.

  It was fitting.

  Soul wrenching music started to play, and I gasped when I saw Allen, the fire chief, start to play on bagpipes directly behind the truck.

  I cried harder, my hand covering my mouth as I watched my little boys’ dreams come true.

  I love you, baby.

  Chapter 5

  You know those memories that sneak out of your eye and roll down your cheek? Yeah, fucking tears. That’s what I’m talking about. Those suck.

  -Text from Tai to Mia

  Mia

  Two months later

  “Are you sure you want to work with this one, Mia?” Chuck asked.

  It was sweet the way he was acting.

  He’d been sweet ever since Colt had passed away.

  In fact, the whole staff had.

  The labor and delivery ward had been a life saver for me, giving me the courage to move on with life when I was on a floor that specialized in just that…life.

  Each and every day, children were born.

  Beautiful little babies that I got to hold, clean and care for.

  They were the highlight of my days.

  But there were two things that were missing from my life that would never heal.

  My baby boy…and the man that’d taken care of me the month before Colt had passed, and the short time after before I’d pushed him away so rudely.

  “Yes, Chuck. I’ll be fine, I promise. They asked for me, right?” I asked.

  I’d taken care of the couple when they’d come in for false labor pains over two weeks ago. When I’d sent them home, they’d been in high spirits, charged to wait just a few more weeks before they came back to have their baby.

  But when they did come back, it wasn’t with the same excitement as their first visit.

  This one was somber and sad.

  There wasn’t a smile to be seen. This wasn’t a joyous occasion like it had been the last time.

  “Okay,” Chuck said. “If you have any problems, or you need me to help in any way, I’ll be here, okay?”

  I smiled.

  “Yes, Chuck. Thank you.”

  My first plan of action was to go say hello to the couple.

  Normally, I would’ve done that in rotation with the other patients I had to see, but I was only given the one patient, Talia.

  I knocked on the door and walked inside once I heard the ‘come in.’

  “Hi, Talia,” I said with a smile.

  Talia looked awful.

  Then again, I wasn’t sure I didn’t look awful right along with her.

  She had deep bags under her eyes which were bloodshot and puffy. Her lips were swollen from what I guessed was her biting them, as she was doing right then.

  She had her hand clutched against her belly as she stared at the monitor that, last time, had shown her daughter’s heartbeat, but this time showed nothing.

  Talia didn’t reply, but her husband said a soft spoken hello.

  I smiled at him, even though I knew he could tell it wasn’t a real smile.

  It didn’t reach my eyes, and lately never did.

  Estes Reynolds was an Army Ranger.

  He was what I would call scary.

  But today he looked like any grieving father.

  “Is there anything I can get y’all?” I asked.

  Talia didn’t reply.

  Estes, however, said, “Water.”

  I nodded and left the room, my stomach sinking the further and further I got from the room.

  “You okay?” Masen asked.

  I grimaced at Masen, my very best friend in the whole wide world.

  We met during Mr. McCormick’s lecture in ninth grade about the human anatomy, and had become the best of friends ever since.

  “I’m gonna be okay,” I said. “I feel bad.”

  Masen gave me a look.

  I held up my hand.

  “I know, I know,” I said.

  The look was because she hated that I was taking this case. She firmly believed that I n
eeded to take some time for me, something which I hadn’t done as of yet.

  I couldn’t be idle, though.

  Not now.

  Not when I needed my brain to be functioning instead of thinking about things I wouldn’t ever have again.

  But five hours later, as I cleaned up the stillborn baby girl of Talia and Estes Reynolds, my heart was breaking all over again.

  The doctor was talking to the parents, consoling the mother.

  Estes was standing at my side, watching as I cleaned the little girl up to make her presentable.

  And, as I cleaned that beautiful baby, I sang.

  “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” I sang with tears in my voice.

  ***

  Two days later

  I didn’t know why I was there, but I knew the moment Talia saw my face, seeing that she was grateful, had made me have doubts. That’d not been my intention in coming.

  I’d come because that woman, that beautiful twenty-four-year-old woman, was me, two months ago.

  She needed to see me there. She needed for me to be there, and be strong, even though all I felt like doing was crying.

  We were at the same funeral home that Colt had been in…and the size of the coffin at the front of the room was bringing back memories that I would never intentionally want to revisit again.

  But for Talia and Estes, I’d come.

  I sat in the back of the room and thought about my life two months ago.

  The night I’d gone home after Colt’s funeral, Tai had tried to follow me, but I’d pushed him away.

  I’d pushed my mom away.

  And Masen.

  And I hadn’t come back to myself.

  But seeing the funeral from their point of view, seeing the grieving mother, I realized that it was time to come back to life.

  To eat again.

  To sleep again.

  And that started with two things.

  One, was apologizing to Tai.

  The second, was getting a new place to live.

  I couldn’t have reminders of Colt everywhere I went if I wanted to heal.

  Sure, he could live on in my heart and memories, but all of the baby things he no longer needed, and would never need, I needed to find good homes for.

  But first, I’d start with that apology.

  ***

  Tai

  One day later

  “This was on your truck,” PD said. “I brought it in because it looked like it was going to start raining.”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking the box with a furrowed brow and placing it on the bunk directly next to me.

  PD left, and I was left staring at the box that didn’t have anything on the outside but three words.

  I’m sorry. Mia.

  I opened the box, wary of what was inside.

  I hadn’t spoken to Mia in two months…not since the day of Colton’s funeral.

  Not for the lack of trying on my part, either.

  She’d just refused to talk to me. Answer the door. Hell, I’d even tried to talk to her mother, but her mother didn’t have any answers for me either, seeing as Mia was doing the same thing to her, also.

  But for me to get to a random box from her all these days later was odd.

  But I opened the box, nonetheless, and wished I hadn’t.

  Because inside were three things.

  One was a photo framed in an ornate gold trimmed picture frame, another was a bear.

  A tiny little bear dressed in a fireman coat and hat.

  The other was a note.

  I didn’t want to get rid of this. I’m cleaning up my house for a move, and I just couldn’t give it away. I’ll want it back some day…just not today.

  I’m sorry for everything, and I’m also grateful.

  I hope you’ll accept my apology for how I’ve acted, and that you will forgive me.

  <3 Mia.

  I held the firefighter bear in my hand, remembering what it’d looked like in that little boy’s clutched fists, and swallowed the lump that formed in my throat.

  The tones dropped, and I looked up at the red light above the door and winced.

  I had a headache. Had one on and off for months now.

  Ever since I’d met Mia.

  Although we hadn’t spent much time together, we’d been through so much in that short time, and I found that I missed her.

  Missed a lot of things about her, actually.

  Like the way she laughed, and the way she smelled.

  The way her smile drooped on one side.

  I found myself dreaming about her a lot, and I hoped that maybe this olive branch she offered wasn’t riddled with thorns.

  Because I really did miss her.

  Standing up, I tucked the bear into my pocket and jogged outside into the bay where the ambulance was.

  Today, I was on the bus.

  I enjoyed the ambulance.

  Especially when I had someone to drive it for me since people were stupid when it came to emergency vehicles.

  “Yo,” PD said as he got into the driver’s seat. “What was in the box?”

  I pulled the bear out of my pocked and showed him.

  He cleared his throat.

  “Shit,” he said gruffly.

  I nodded.

  My thoughts exactly.

  “What’d we get? I wasn’t paying attention,” I asked.

  “Fender bender from what I heard,” he answered, pulling out a full thirty seconds before the rest of the boys on the truck pulled out.

  In East Texas, when ambulances were dispatched, the engines always dispatched with them, regardless of whether it was just a medical call or not.

  The drive to the scene of the accident was riddled with stupid drivers, the banes of my existence.

  I was getting less and less tolerant of all the bullshit that some drivers pulled on the road.

  How freakin’ hard was it to pull over to the side of the road when you saw the red flashing lights coming up behind you?

  Personally, I didn’t think it was that hard, but people never failed to surprise me, something that was happening more and more lately.

  “Uh, oh,” PD said.

  I looked up and growled.

  “Fucking amateurs,” I said.

  There were four people in front of a smashed up car, and all four of those people were from a volunteer fire department that was stationed just outside of the city limits.

  The area of Kilgore that I worked saw a lot of calls that ran along the border, and the fire department they were with tried constantly to pick up the calls that were in the city limits.

  Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal because we always wanted the patient’s safety to come first.

  However, HEMS, this particular EMS service, didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.

  Which also meant they didn’t know other people’s asses from that hole in the ground. Which, in turn, wound up fucking up the patient even more than they already were.

  And none other than Tom Spurgis, the head dumbass in charge, was the first one to walk up to me the moment I got out of the truck.

  “Ahh,” he said. “If it isn’t my favorite person ever, Taima.”

  I grinned.

  “What kind of patients do we have?” I asked, opting for business instead of the who has the bigger dick’ game that Tom wanted to play.

  Tom narrowed his eyes.

  “Sixty-one-year-old female; chief complaints are chest pain and abdominal pain. From the seatbelt,” he clarified.

  I nodded and walked to the car, stopping when another HEMS member refused to move.

  “Move,” I ordered shortly.

  The man sneered.

  He was new.

  Obviously, he didn’t know me, because if he did, he wouldn’t be posturing. Instead, he would be moving his fucking ass.

  “Easton,” Tom growled. “Move so they can look.”

  Easton moved, but I could tell it was with the utmost reluctance.<
br />
  He gave me about three feet, and I took it, stopping next to the window while the rest of the firefighters behind me started to get their gear ready to unstick the door that was keeping her pinned inside.

  “Ma’am,” I said.

  She shifted just her eyes to me.

  “Hello,” she said the moment she saw me, awareness flashing in her eyes. “I’m okay.”

  She wasn’t okay. She was grimacing in pain, and she was holding her chest.

  “What hurts, Judith?” I asked Mia’s mom.

  “My left arm, mostly,” she said. “But that’s pretty much it. My chest isn’t even hurting much anymore. Nothing else.”

  “When did the pain start?” I asked, warning bells going off in my mind at the mention of her chest and left arm.

  Her car wasn’t even that banged up, so her left arm most likely shouldn’t be hurting.

  “Right before I hit that curb,” she admitted, rubbing her jaw. “It was the weirdest thing. One second I was fine, the next this awful pain hits in my left arm, and then I’m banging against the guardrail.”

  I gestured for PD to get me the blood pressure cuff and went around the other side to wait while Fatbaby finished getting the passenger side door opened.

  He finished in a few short moments, and I crawled inside.

  Once inside, I could clearly see that she was sweating profusely, and she was now moving her jaw even more.

  “Does your jaw hurt, Judith?” I asked.

  She wiggled her jaw once more. “A little. Why?”

  “PD, I need you to give her three hundred and twenty-five milligrams of aspirin and some nitro,” I ordered.

  PD was back within moments with the aspirin, and Judith took it.

  “Water?” She asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Chew it,” I said. “What’s her BP?”

  “180 over 100.”

  PD put the Nitroglycerin pill up to her mouth and said, “This one just melts under your tongue.”

  I looked at Judith, at the question in her eyes, and said, “I think you’re having a heart attack.”

  She gasped.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  I got the board in place behind her back while PD stabilized her neck, and within moments, we were removing her from the crumpled vehicle.

  “Where’s Mia?” I asked.

  “She’s at work. Wait to call her until we know,” Judith ordered.