by Jamie Davis
Dean was surprised that she was aware of the nature of his patients, but if he had learned nothing else over the course of the past three hours, it was to not underestimate this woman. “My patients do present some challenges, but for the most part, I believe they are no more dangerous than most of the human patients out there.”
She stopped him where they were walking in the hallway with a hand on his arm. “You really believe that?”
He nodded, “Of course I do. I’ve seen nothing that leads me to think that my patients are any different when you come right down to it. If you know anything about recent events here in the city, you know that it has been humans who have been the most dangerous by far.”
“I fear you are a fool, then,” Jaswinder said. “There are many more dangers out there lurking in your patients’ community than you know. You would do well to watch your back. For all you know, something could be hunting you right now.”
Dean laughed aloud. “I doubt that. I’m not that important. No one has any reason to hunt for me.” He said it and kept up a brave front, but inside he was wondering if what she said had some flavor of truth. He had already made an enemy of Artur, one of the oldest vampires in the world. Would that qualify as dangerous? He certainly thought so.
“I have to go relieve my previous shift,” Dean said, checking his watch. “I’ll remember what you taught us about maintaining awareness on our scenes. Thank you again for the excellent class.” Dean left her standing there in the hallway, where she turned to talk to her team members who were waiting nearby. He did have to head off to the station. Brook and Tammy would be waiting for him and Barry to get there. He pulled his key fob from his pocket as he headed outside and across the street to the garage where his pickup truck was parked. It was time to go to work.
Jaz watched as the naive paramedic walked away from her. She had been expecting some sort of pushback when she was tasked to lead this class for the city. She dealt with it head-on, just like she always handled the doubters and haters out there. She knew she was young, and a woman, and she knew what that meant to some of the people she encountered in her line of work. She was used to being underestimated by men meeting her for the first time. She was also used to putting such men in their place when they got out of line, and to be honest with herself, she looked forward to it.
She told Chad and Grant to head down with the gear to their black SUV where it was parked in the underground garage. She needed to head upstairs and meet with the Chief and her father to give her evaluation on the paramedic crews’ preparedness level based on her assessment during the class. The two Station U paramedics in particular weren’t ready for what was out there right now. Not ready at all.
7
Barry had gotten there a few minutes earlier. As usual, Dean and his probie partner went through the shift checks on the gear and the ambulance.
“Hey, Dean, thanks for drawing fire from me in that class earlier,” Barry said.
“No problem. She didn’t need to do that to you in front of the whole class,” Dean replied. “On the other hand, I don’t think you’ll be late to class again. Am I right?”
“You got that right,” Barry laughed. “Still, she didn’t have to be such a colossal bitch about it.”
“No, probably not,” Dean agreed. “Still, you have to admit that she knew her stuff, and she had the qualifications to teach that class, after all. I can’t imagine how tough she must be with all she’s had to have seen. She’s got to be my age, after all.”
“The same could be said about us, Dean,” Barry reminded him. “There are things we’ve seen that we just can’t un-see.”
“True,” Dean said as he zipped up the bag he was checking and placed it back in its compartment in the ambulance. “True indeed.”
They were interrupted by the alert tones from the overhead speakers in the ambulance bay, followed by the sound of the dispatcher’s voice over the radio: “Ambulance U-191, respond for an injured subject, at 4782 Seventh Avenue.”
“Time to load up and do our jobs,” Barry said. Dean nodded and headed around to the driver’s side so that Barry could take the lead. He was doing a great job, and Dean knew that while his probie was an experienced paramedic in the normal sense, he was still learning how to manage their particular patients. But, he was a fast learner and he was getting to the point where he knew as much about Unusuals as Dean did. He was doing his research and making sure that he learned something from every call. Barry was a good example of the quintessential EMS professional.
Dean navigated across town to the area of the 911 call while Barry operated the lights and sirens to help clear the traffic in front of the speeding ambulance. The follow-up information was not very helpful. The dispatcher had very little detailed information on the call, only saying that another responder was reportedly on the scene ahead of them. Dean hoped whoever it was who was on the scene would be able to fill them in on what was going on.
The ambulance turned onto Seventh Avenue, where some rather large homes were situated on broad lawns set back from the road. This was an old and affluent section of town and Dean had never been on a call here before. Most Unusuals either lived in poorer neighborhoods or tended to blend into the urban counter-culture of the downtown scene. Dean started checking the GPS instructions because the house numbers were not well marked and homes were too far back from the street to easily read the numbers on the front. Then he saw something he knew marked the house in question. There, parked under the overhanging porch roof on the side of one house, was a beat-up white van Dean knew very well. The responder reporting from the scene was Gibbie.
Dean pulled the ambulance up into the driveway behind Gibbie’s van. Together he and Barry gathered their gear and went up to the front door, which was ajar. The two paramedics heard voices coming from inside the house, shouting or arguing, Dean couldn’t tell which.
“Hello. Paramedics here,” Barry called as they entered the home. As Barry pushed open the door with Dean behind him, something large whizzed by in the air at head-height and crashed onto the wall just inside the entry foyer. No, not just onto the wall. Whatever it was went through the wall, leaving a soccer-ball sized hole in the dry wall on both sides of the foyer. Dean saw that there was even a chunk taken out of the wooden two by four stud inside the wall.
He and Barry started to back out towards the door when the door was slammed shut behind them. Something large impacted the interior side of the front door pushing it closed. Dean looked behind him at the now closed door and saw a large frozen bird carcass, maybe a large chicken or a turkey, lying on the floor. It still had its label and packaging on, and Dean could even see the supermarket bar code. As he looked at it, the frozen bird started quivering and then, without warning, launched into the air, flying past his head in a whoosh, bouncing off the walls down the entry hall before turning the corner, and flying into a room on the left. There were screams of alarm and more crashing sounds.
“Dean, is that you?” A familiar high-pitched voice sounded from down the hallway.
“Yeah, Gibbie. It’s me and Barry. What’s going on?” Dean replied. Gibbie was a middle-aged, somewhat flamboyant vampire who had been trained as a civilian first responder. He and Dean had run black market EMS calls together when Dean had been suspended from the fire department a few months back. Life was never dull when Gibbie was around.
“Dean, Barry, watch out. There’s a frozen turkey flying around,” Gibbie called.
“We already figured that out. Thanks for the heads’-up before we got here, by the way,” Dean quipped. “Where’s the patient? Is he or she with you?”
“Yeah, he is in here with me and Kristof,” the vampire responded. “If you keep low, you can usually avoid getting hit by the bird.”
“Kristof is in there, too?” Dean wondered just what was going on. Kristof was the owner of a very successful restaurant downtown called Sabatani’s. He was also a Djinn, more commonly known as a genie. “Is Kristof alright?”
Dean didn’t know what he was talking about, but that was not the problem at hand. There was a patient here, and there was a definite scene safety issue, too. Dean looked back at Barry.
“Let’s stay on the floor and commando crawl down the hallway until we can see around the corner into the room they are in.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Barry said. “I’m certainly not standing up while there’s a frozen turkey flying around.” The statement was punctuated by the whizzing again at standing head height. The bird crashed into the wall and through into the next room where both paramedics could hear it crashing around, breaking everything in its path.
Dean snorted out a chuckle as he heard the words come from his partner’s mouth. The things he had seen and heard while on the job at Station U were the types of things that he never would have expected, even from an exciting job as a paramedic. He turned and pushed the heart monitor in front of him on the ornate tile floor, while he started to crawl down the hallway. Barry came up behind him, pushing the medication and trauma bags in front of him.
When Dean got to the open doorway, he saw a high-end residential kitchen with a built-in double refrigerator against one wall. One of the freezer doors was open. There were custom wood-paneled appliances of other sorts around and two granite-topped islands in the center of the room. Crouched next to one of the islands were the two Citizen Emergency Response Team members, Gibbie and Kristof, and they were bent over another man Dean did not know, who lay supine on the floor. Gibbie held a wad of gauze to the man’s head. That must be their patient and he seemed to be unconscious.
“Thank God you’re here, Dean,” Gibbie cried in his high-pitched voice. In other circumstances Dean might find the situation and his friend’s flamboyant nature humorous. Now was not the time to laugh, though. There was a patient to attend to.
“What happened, Gibbie?” Dean asked as he crawled over to the patient.
“It is my fault, Dean, not Gibbie’s,” Kristof said. “I was paid to offer this man a wish. As one of the Djinn, I cannot refuse a wish once payment is made. I always warn my client of the risks of accessing my wild magic. It’s unpredictable at the best of times and I warn them, but that almost never changes their minds.”
“So what happened to this guy?” Barry asked. He had crawled up next to Dean and was starting a hands-on assessment of the patient. “Hey, he looks familiar. I’ve seen him on the TV before, haven’t I?”
“Yes, Mr. Jones here is Cam Jones from Cam Jones Automotive Mile over on Route 40. He does those ads where he tells everyone how crazy he is to make deals, and smokes those big cigars.” Gibbie said.
Kristof ignored the distraction of the man’s celebrity and answered Barry’s first question. “His new wife hates his cigar smoking, but he was having trouble giving them up. He said he tried everything from e-cigs to hypnosis, but was unable to quit. He knows me and understands my true nature after selling me several cars over the years. He came to me to ask for help. When he called me over here to his house I thought he was calling to book my restaurant to cater an event. When I realized what he was doing, I tried to stop him, telling him that it was a bad idea. He had discovered the formal words to request the granting of a wish from me, however, and I had no choice.
The frozen bird carcass flew by overhead, careening around the kitchen and bouncing off the cabinet doors before zooming out of the room through an open doorway. Everyone ducked and stopped talking while it bashed from wall to wall above them.
Once it left the room again, Dean looked over at Gibbie. “How did you get mixed up with this?”
“I came along because Kristof’s car was in the shop and he needed a ride,” the frumpy vampire said. “I was just going to stay in the van since it was daytime, and I needed to stay behind the window tinting. But when we got here and I saw that the carport overhang by the front entrance blocked the sun, I just had to come inside. I love Cam’s ads on the TV and I wanted to see if I could get a selfie with him for my social feed.”
The frozen turkey flew by again and Dean looked up as it went by overhead. Then he looked at the unconscious patient and smelled the acrid odor of cigar smoke still in the air. He shook his head as it hit him what had happened.
“Don’t tell me,” Dean started. “He handed you your fee for the wish and then actually said it didn’t he? He went and wished he could quit ‘cold-turkey’?”
Kristof nodded and looked a little ashamed. “I told him, just like I told you the first time you asked me about it. I can’t control how my magic acts. I’m just a conduit for the wild magic. It interprets the words and acts upon them. Sometimes it gets it right, but most of the time, not.”
Dean looked at his partner. Barry had completed his assessment. “How’s Mr. Jones, Barry?”
“He’s unconscious and unresponsive. He has one pupil in his eyes that is slower to react than the other to light, and the whole right side of his head is swollen,” Barry said. “He’s definitely got a closed head injury and needs to get to the trauma center. He probably has a brain bleed. That means his brain is starting to swell inside his skull. If we don’t get him out of here, his brain is going to turn to mush.”
“Agreed,” Dean said. “My guess is that the turkey is going to follow him unless we can find a way to deactivate the magic.” He blinked and rubbed at his eyes. That cigar smoke was really irritating him. He was allergic to smoke. “Kristof, there has got to be a way for you to turn this off. Think. There has got to be something we can do.”
“I told you, Dean,” Kristof said, chastised. “I have no control over the magic. Once it is activated, it has to play out on its own.”
Dean sniffed, and wiped his nose. His allergy was really kicking in right now, probably because they were in an enclosed space of the kitchen with the smoke. Dean stopped and looked around, ducking as soon as the bird flew by once again. He sniffed the air, trying to zero in on the source of the smell. He saw it, as soon as he started looking for it. There was a smoldering cigar against the far wall by the kitchen sink. It had rolled under the lip of the cabinets there. He darted over to it, dodging the frozen bird once again, and grabbed the still-lit cigar. He reached up from his crouched position, flipped up the faucet lever to turn on the water, and held the cigar under the faucet.
Gibbie shrieked, “Look out, Dean.”
Dean turned and saw the frozen bird turn and zip right towards his head, but just before it got to him, it fell to the floor and skidded into the cabinet by his knees and lay still. Dean let out a sigh of relief, realizing he had been holding his breath.
“Huh,” Gibbie said, letting out a long breath. “That was really easy.” He looked at his partner. “Why didn’t we think of that, Kristof?”
Dean and Barry shared a glance and then the two of them went to work on their patient. Gibbie had done a good job of stopping the external bleeding, so that was already taken care of. They hooked up the heart monitor and blood pressure cuff to start getting vital signs and then Dean looked at the Djinn.
“Come with me, Kristof, and help me get the stretcher.”
The genie nodded and followed Dean outside and to the ambulance. On the way, the Unusual CERT team member tried to apologize the whole way to the ambulance.
“I hate using my wish magic, Dean,” Kristof said. “I avoid it at all costs, but sometimes there is nothing I can do.”
“Nobody is blaming you, Kristof,” Dean said as he pulled the stretcher from the back of the ambulance. “I know you can’t control it. You told the guy the truth. It’s on him. Besides, maybe this will really get him to quit smoking, right?”
The two of them brought the stretcher back into the mansion and then the four of them lifted the portly used car magnate up onto it. He had to weigh over three hundred pounds. As the paramedics took over rolling
the stretcher outside with all their gear, Dean looked at the two CERT responders. They looked a little shell-shocked by the whole incident.
“Come by the hospital while we drop Mr. Jones off,” Dean suggested. “I’ll get you some supplies to refill the gauze and stuff you used up back there to treat him before we arrived, okay?”
They nodded from the shadows of the Mansion’s front door, Gibbie was careful to stay back away from the sunlight. Dean waved after he shut the ambulance’s rear doors and then he climbed in, flipped on the lights and siren, and drove their patient to the trauma center.
8
When Dean and Barry came out of the ER’s ambulance entrance to get back to their unit, Gibbie’s van was pulled up next to it. Dean had a bag of supplies he had retrieved from the restock room at the hospital. Walking over the to the passenger side sliding door of the van, he slid it open and handed the bag to Kristof.
Barry walked up next to him and laughed aloud. Dean looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, I was just thinking of what Ms. Jaswinder Errington would say about staying safe and sound with a flying frozen turkey as your enemy,” Barry said, continuing to chuckle.
Dean laughed and turned to explain the joke to Kristof and Gibbie. He stopped when he saw their faces. They had both assumed a shocked and maybe even frightened expression.
“What?” Dean asked. “You act as if we just invoked the devil himself.”
Gibbie was the first to speak. “Did you say that Jaz Errington is in town? Is her father, old man Earnest Errington here, too?”
“I don’t know her by that name, or if her father is here, but I guess that’s the same person,” Dean said. “She was in headquarters earlier today teaching us a class on scene safety and self-defense. She was a bit of a hard-ass, but seemed to know what she was talking about. Why do you ask, Gibbie?”