3
It started to become obvious that something was off when I pulled up behind the station. The parking lot was almost full, but it wasn’t the usual collection of obnoxiously large pickups. It still held a lot of obnoxiously large pickups, just not the ones I was used to seeing. A bunch of guys must have traded shifts today. I parked my equally large F-150—I had an excuse, what with living on an actual farm—and made my way into the firehouse.
Most of the guys were still pulling gear from their lockers, and a couple were eyeing me funny, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I found one of my fellow medics, Kyle, who was also looking at me funny. He was a redheaded, wiry little snake in the grass, but he happened to be the first person who talked to me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “You guys aren’t supposed to be on until tomorrow.”
“Check your watch there, Tiny. You’re the one who’s off. Really off.”
Kyle could be a tiresome prankster. I glanced at my watch and wondered why I was taking him seriously. “What are you talking about? I’m on time for—”
I noticed the date: the fourteenth. What the hell?
He was staring now. “Yeah.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither does the chief, and he’s got questions. Word is you never clocked in, didn’t call in either. He had to call me in to cover your shift.”
I decided this was more of his juvenile mischief. Had to be. I was running out of patience. “Don’t bullshit me. It’s Wednesday. I’m on mids this week.”
He gave me a quizzical look, as if I’d lost my mind and he wasn’t sure what to say next. “It’s Thursday, and you’re off until Saturday,” he said, with the kind of exaggerated calm we used for disoriented patients. “Maybe longer once the chief decides what to do with you.”
I was at a loss. I’d somehow slept through an entire day and the guy I get along with the least had been called in to ride for me. I was in for an epic ass-chewing.
“Chief’s in his office,” Kyle said over his shoulder as he climbed into the rig. “He said to send you in if you decided to show up today.”
Without a clue of what else to say, I replied with a nervous nod and headed down the hall to whatever fate awaited me. None of this made sense. I was a good medic, damn it. I never left my partners hanging like this. And if this was a setup, then that meant Kyle or somebody wanted to get me in serious trouble. I wondered what I could’ve done to make myself a target, and how anyone could’ve engineered such a malicious prank.
Understand that some of the younger guys can be real meatheads. They’ve bought into the whole first responder mythos and would love nothing more than for the firehouse to be their own personal He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club, where they can belch and fart and scratch their balls while telling raunchy jokes without judgment. What they fail to understand is we girls can be even worse when they’re not looking.
I decided my offense was simply possessing XX chromosomes. These were the thoughts swirling through my bewildered brain as I knocked on the battalion chief’s door. They might’ve been ridiculous, even delusional, but right then they were all I had.
“Enter.”
“You wanted to see me, Chief?” Of course he did, but what else was I supposed to say? I stood in front of his desk with my hands clasped behind my back in the customary stance of someone who’s about to have their ass handed to them. He didn’t motion for me to sit down.
He was a large man who looked older than his years, with a jowly face and the traditional fireman’s handlebar mustache, flecked with gray. He leaned back in his chair and stared me down for several agonizing seconds. “What happened yesterday, Mooney?”
Where to start? I was going home and got detoured by a run I could barely remember? I realized if it actually had happened the day before yesterday, that would explain why it hadn’t been on the news.
Honesty was always the best policy, especially when you didn’t know what was happening. “I don’t have an answer for you, Chief. I don’t even know myself.”
His lips twisted into a scowl. “You understand that’s not going to cut it, of course.”
“I understand. I thought I was on time for my shift today.”
“Twenty-four hours ago, you would’ve been. But you weren’t, so I had to pull someone from his day off to cover your shift. And you can’t tell me what you were doing yesterday. I expect this kind of behavior from the younger guys, but not you.” That last part stung. He might not have meant it as such, but it was a sideways jab at my utter lack of anything resembling a social life.
I was at a loss. It would’ve been nice if I’d been able to remember where the last day went. My mouth was dry, and I swallowed hard. “I got off shift last night . . . I mean Tuesday night . . . and was almost home when I came on that plane crash off 900 North. I stopped to render aid and—”
He held up a hand to interrupt me. “Plane crash? What the hell are you talking about?”
“The one in the woods outside Walnut Ridge. You guys didn’t get the call?”
“Nobody did. We’d for sure have heard about something like that.”
“Well, somebody responded. Maybe one of the nearby counties—”
“You live out towards Carthage, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“I’ll reach out to the other chiefs, but I can tell you there hasn’t been a word about any plane crash. That sort of thing gets around. What kind of plane?”
I searched my memory, which still felt frighteningly thin. “Couldn’t tell for certain. Wasn’t a light plane, that’s for sure. Some kind of jet, but no markings. It was all polished metal. Wings and tail must’ve snapped off in the crash because I never saw them. I assumed it was military.”
The chief stroked his chin as he studied me from the corners of his eyes. In his shoes, I’d have been skeptical too. “How many victims?”
Good question. “Three, I think.”
“You think? You didn’t fully assess the scene before jumping right in? We’ve had conversations about your freelancing before, Mooney.”
No kidding. He’d already held up my last promotion after lecturing me on being too eager for my own good, charging into scenes before they were secure. In my defense, sometimes the right thing to do doesn’t fit into our standard operating procedures.
“No sir, I determined the site was secure.” At least I thought so. The more I tried to recall, the fuzzier it all became.
“What mystifies me is why you didn’t call this in yourself, if you were the first on scene.”
Another good question. I had a vague memory of not being able to raise anyone. “Like you said, I was headed toward Carthage. There’s a lot of dead zones out there and my handheld was out of range.”
“And you went home after that?”
I hesitated to answer that one. “I guess so, since that’s where I woke up this morning. But I don’t remember going home.”
He lifted a bushy eyebrow and drummed meaty fingers atop his desk before huffing out a deep sigh. “You know what? I believe you. You happened onto a scene that rattled your cage. Between that and exhaustion, maybe you found your way home from habit and zoned out.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. “But that still leaves some questions which bother me. If you found a wrecked airplane, worked the scene alone, and nobody else got the call, then we’ve still got potential casualties out there.” He picked up the phone and called his cohort over in the neighboring county.
I spent the next hour in his office waiting for word on my mystery crash scene, to no avail. Nobody in the surrounding counties got the call, and the FAA didn’t have any records of an emergency beacon going off. The military, of course, didn’t acknowledge anything. The chief docked me a day’s pay—fair enough since I hadn’t shown up yesterday—and it seemed like he was getting ready for more when he was cut off by the station alarm’s warbling tone of an ambulance call. “Looks like you’ve got a run, Mooney.”
I glanced past him at the shift calendar on a whiteboard behind his desk. “Aren’t I supposed to be off today?”
“You were. But Jennings is behind on his CE training and here you are, rested and ready. We’ll finish this later.” He dismissed me with a wave, and I was happy to follow his cue. I ran out to the bay and climbed into the already idling squad. Kyle was behind the wheel, waiting impatiently.
“You’re my partner today?” He shook his head. “Try and keep up, Tiny.” I could never be sure if he was serious; it paid to keep my guard up with him.
A laptop mounted between our seats displayed every active call in the county. Ours was highlighted in green, which told dispatch we were responding. It was a slip-and-fall, which could land anywhere in the range between nothing or a broken pelvis. We never assumed anything, though I recognized the address right away. “Frequent flyer,” I sighed. “He’s turning into a weekly event.”
“Maybe for you. Never been there.”
I smiled to myself. “You’re in for a treat.” He reached up to flick on the lights and sirens, and we were on our way.
Ten minutes later we let ourselves into a dingy apartment. I’d been here enough to know where the key was hidden, beneath a cracked flowerpot beside the front door. We were greeted with the overwhelming stench of cigarettes, musty carpet, and human waste. I knew what to expect, and it was satisfying to see Kyle’s freckled nose wrinkle at the odor.
“Code brown,” he said with disgust.
“Back here,” a voice wailed. We made our way to the single bedroom at the end of a short hallway and found a portly man on the floor, wedged between his bed and a motorized wheelchair. An oxygen cannula hung loosely around his neck, away from his nostrils. The first thing I did was put it back in place; he needed the O2. One of his legs was bent out at an awkward angle, which would’ve looked painful if I’d not already known what was up. I could see Kyle was expecting a badly wrenched knee and was taken by surprise when he found our patient’s leg ended at the thigh.
No matter how disquieting the scene—and we’d both experienced much worse than this—it’s always important to project calm. “What’s going on, dear?” I asked lightly as I began checking his vitals.
He rolled his eyes and theatrically waved his hands. “Ain’t it obvious? I fell outta my damned bed!”
“Yes sir, you certainly did.” By now I had a BP cuff on one arm and a pulse oximeter on his finger. His O2 sats were in the low nineties and heading up thanks to having his cannula back in place. His blood pressure was uncomfortably high though, one sixty-five over ninety-eight. That could be chalked up to the pain and stress of his current awkward condition, but we’d need to keep an eye on it. I knew from prior history that he was diabetic (thus the missing leg) and high blood pressure could indicate any number of bad things about to happen. “Have you checked your blood sugar recently?”
He waved angrily at a glucose meter on the floor, as if it were the cause of his problem. “That’s what I was reaching for when I fell!” He was mad at himself, but it was easier to be pissed off at inanimate objects. His breath didn’t smell unusual, which can be an indicator of high blood sugar. I took his meter instead of digging one out of our kit and pressed it against his finger. He wailed like a banshee, all out of proportion to the pinprick that he had to administer himself regularly. Overreactions like that can be annoying, but they’re also common when somebody is hurting for other reasons, and this guy was definitely in a pickle.
Kyle stood with his hands on his hips and shot an exasperated look at me, as if this were somehow my fault. I’d forgotten all about missing my last shift until then. Let your buddies down and you’ll pay for it one way or another.
“Let’s get this chair out of the way first, give ourselves some room,” I said, purposefully ignoring my partner’s attitude. Kyle tapped the chair’s joystick and moved it clear, at which point our patient rolled over onto his back like a helpless turtle, uncovering a mess which is best left unmentioned. Suffice to say we found where the smell was coming from.
Lovely.
“You get the lift,” I muttered. “I’ll get him cleaned up,” and proceeded to use a whole package of wet wipes on our hapless victim. “You hang on, sir, and we’ll get you situated.”
Kyle returned and unfolded a nylon tarp with carrying straps on either end. From there it was a simple matter of getting the patient sitting upright, but heaving him up into his chair wasn’t. I stay fit, but this job required real muscle and I’m not proud to say my already annoyed partner had to do most of the lifting. I just didn’t want to make matters worse and lose this guy on my end.
With our patient cleaned up and mostly comfortable in his chair, we still had business. “We need to get a few more vitals on you, okay?” I adjusted the loosened BP cuff and slipped the pulse ox back onto his index finger while Kyle attached ECG leads. After a few minutes his blood pressure had settled down, O2 sats were back in the high nineties, and the twelve-lead showed normal sinus rhythm. Our assessment didn’t reveal any signs of broken bones or other trauma, other than a severely wounded ego.
The next part was routine. We already knew the answer, but had to ask. “Would you like us to take you to the hospital? We think you should go.”
He looked at me like I had a third eyeball in my forehead. “Hell no! They’ll keep me up all night doing more tests and I’ll come out sicker than when I went in!”
Kyle and I exchanged a look: Couldn’t argue with that. We lingered a few minutes to complete the “against medical advice” paperwork, collected our gear, and left. Back at the station, we wiped down the squad and hosed off our boots.
That run was the highlight of my shift. There weren’t many calls that night, and nearly every one of them was another slip-and-fall. Our single hospital transport came from a minor car accident. It was obvious the guy who got rear-ended was looking to milk the other guy’s insurance for all it was worth, but we never take chances when someone’s complaining of a neck injury.
If that sounds jaded, so be it. After a day like this one, you end up pleasantly surprised when someone’s in actual distress.
It was after midnight when my shift ended, and I was in no mood to go home and sulk. It’s better to do that at a bar, and there’s a little dive along the river that I liked to hit on my way home after a rough day. The beer is always cold and Mac serves the best burgers in this part of Indiana. It was a nice night, so I took a table on the deck overlooking the river to lose myself in the sound of water caressing the rocks.
I must have been really lost in thought, because it was almost two hours later when Mac tapped me on the shoulder: I didn’t have to go home, but I couldn’t stay here. He seemed concerned. Following his eyes, I looked down at the table to find a single bite taken out of my burger and maybe one or two pulls from the longneck sitting by my plate.
I tossed a twenty on the table to clear my tab, which was way more than I owed, but then he’d let me hang out long after closing time. I didn’t have to check my watch to know it had to be well past 3:00 a.m. when I finally climbed back into my truck to drive home.
Taking a turn that led back through the woods, I saw something completely unexpected, but still strangely familiar: a yellow glow off in the trees. I’d finally put all of yesterday’s—or the day before yesterday’s—events out of my mind and here I was, looking at what appeared to be the exact same scene. Did no one actually report this? Or maybe the crash investigators had finally arrived. Air Force, probably. In my gut, I knew that wasn’t a civilian jet.
Against my better judgment, I pulled off onto the shoulder and followed the trail of snapped-off trees into the same clearing.
That’s when I blacked out. Again.