Annoyed
By Audrey W.
Station 51, one day in 1975 . . .
“Hey, Gage.”
The dark-haired paramedic looked up from where he was seated on the leather couch, a newspaper open on his lap. The source of the mention, Chet Kelly, was at the table in the kitchen end of the dayroom, an open flyer about the San Diego Zoo in front of him. The two men were on duty, but with spare time after a rescue.
“What?”
“You ever wonder what it would be like to give a giraffe CPR?”
John screwed up his face in puzzlement.
“Wha--” He folded up the paper, set it on his lap and leaned forward. “Chet, what in the world made you ask that?”
He shrugged, trying his hardest to not smile at the annoyance in the other's voice. “I was lookin’ at these pictures of zoo animals in the pamphlet and I just thought I’d ask.”
“Well, you asked. No,” Gage answered as he shook his head. “Man, sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with your head,” he mumbled as he sat back and picked up the paper again. He started to open it up, but stopped when Chet continued.
“You’d have to do chest compressions, then run a race to its head to do mouth-to-mouth.”
“No I wouldn’t. Roy would be there for that.”
“So you have given it thought.”
John put the partially unfolded paper back down on his lap. “No, I have not. Chet, that’s just dumb.”
Chet slowly shook his head side to side with a sigh of shame, trying hard to suppress the grin that was still trying to appear. “Way to throw your partner under the bus.”
Just then, John’s partner Roy DeSoto entered the room through the open doorway from the apparatus bay.
“Who’s throwing their partner under the bus and how?”
“Gage here,” the mustached fireman said, pointing to the wide-eyed paramedic still on the couch. “He’s giving you the crappy part of CPR on a giraffe.”
Roy looked baffled as he shifted his gaze from Chet to John.
“Do I want to ask?”
John put the paper aside, then got to his feet. With a roll of his eyes, he walked over to the table and grabbed the pamphlet from Chet. He held up the picture of the giraffe.
“That’s all you need to know,” he said as he put it back down on the table.
Roy figured he was right; sometimes with those two shiftmates in a conversation, the less known the better off he was. However, he’d soon remind his partner that he outranked him overall and he sure as heck would not be the one lip-locked to the long necked zoo resident. . .
**Now they have me thinking like them**
He skipped the coffee he came in to get, instead turned to go back out the door.
“Hey, where ya goin’?” Gage called out.
Roy waved with his right hand as he kept his back to them and walked away. “That’s all you need to know!”
Chet and John looked at one another. The latter pulled out the chair beside the engine crew member, then sat down.
“CPR on a giraffe,” he said with a snorted laugh as he again eyed the picture. “Ya know, come to think of it, it would be pretty amazing to save a giraffe. Why, Roy an' I might even become famous. . .at least for a little while. Maybe we could go on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. Can you imagine that? I wonder who the other guests would be. . . ”
Chet just rested his chin on the palms of his hands with a sigh, his elbows on the table. John was more amused now than anything and that certainly wasn’t what he’d been going for. In fact, it was annoying the heck out of him.
This was inspired by the picture of a giraffe. :o)
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