“Be Careful What You Wish For”
By Ross
Following the passage of the Wedsworth-Townsend Act, Firefighter PM’s, Roy DeSoto and John Gage, were reassigned.
They were still working out of Station 51. The ‘powers that be’ had just transferred them from Captain Wallkin’s B-Shift, over to Captain Hammer’s A-Shift.
The pair was seated on the bench in front of their open lockers.
It was their first shift back at Station 51, since the Paramedic Bill had been signed into law, and the two men were discussing how ‘liberating’ it was to finally be able to go on runs—without an RN onboard.
Firefighter Chet Kelly breezed into the room and approached the duo with an open dictionary in his hands. “So…fellahs…What does para-medic mean, anyway? I tried to look it up, but it doesn’t seem to be in here.” His eyes sparkled with mischief and he quickly buried his face behind his book. “It goes right from paramecium to paranormal. Hmmm…Paranormal: events beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding. Possessing abnormal mental powers—Is that it? Is that what paramedic stands for? First-aid beyond the scope of normal medical treatment? Are the two of you ‘psychic’, or somethin?”
His pigeons—er, audience, just stared back at him in stunned silence.
Kelly closed the gap between them and pressed the dictionary, complete with his pointing finger, right up to the dark-haired paramedic’s face, so he could peruse the definition of paranormal, if he should so desire.
Gage shoved the intrusive tome away. “Yeah. We’re psychic,” he shot back, sounding every bit as insincere as their questioner. “And, if you don’t keep that damn dictionary out of my face, I can see a knuckle sandwich in your immediate future.”
“Sheesh! Sorry, Gage. Was I invading your personal space?”
The two newcomers exchanged a couple of pained expressions.
“Kelly, here, is obviously a ‘para-fireman’,” DeSoto wittily observed, and his paramedic pal was forced to snicker.
The locker room door reopened just then and their new Captain’s ‘dress-capped’ head appeared. “Role Call in 3, gentlemen!”
“Aye, aye, Cap!” the trio acknowledged, speaking in perfect unison.
Less than a minute later, Gage and DeSoto were lined up in the parking bay, right alongside of A-Shift’s engine crew.
“I hear Rubio and Thelen ended up on C,” Engineer Mike Stoker remarked, just for something to say.
“Oh yeah?” Chet Kelly chimed in. “At least we’ll get to say ‘hi’ to them, from time to time.”
“I still don’t get why the Department had to go and pull a switch-a-roo with our crew,” Firefighter Marco Lopez lamented, following a few more moments of uncomfortable silence. “Just when we were really beginning to ‘gel’.”
“Right!” Kelly quickly concurred. “A-and, near as I can tell, the only difference between our rescue guys and these rescue guys is these guys have those ominous-looking, little black holsters on their hips.”
Both rescue guys reached, instinctively, for their paramedic assessment kits.
“Yessir,” Chet ranted on, “I cannot wait to see what these ‘paramedics’ do that makes them so darn special.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Kelly,” Stoker warned.
The Station’s claxons sounded just then, causing the engineer to appear clairvoyant.
“Station 51…Construction accident…Witnesses report a worker has been impaled and buried in a concrete form collapse…1127 Gardenia…One-one-two-seven Gardenia…cross-streets Yankton and Paloma…ambulance is responding…time out: 7:58.”
“Station 51. KMG-365,” Captain Hammer acknowledged.
All six firefighters piled into their respective trucks and the apparatus pulled out of the Station, lights flashing and sirens wailing.
At the accident scene, twenty minutes of back—and record—breaking digging later…
A sweat-drenched, and sore, Marco Lopez crouched beside his fellow lineman and watched as their two new shiftmates continued to work on the now freed construction worker.
Both paramedics were covered in dirt from the collapsed trench—clear up to the armpits of their turn-out coats. Their coats’ sleeves were drenched in red—all the way up to their elbows.
Lopez couldn’t take his wincing eyes from the gruesome sight. “Would you look at all that blood. Mike was right. Be careful what you wish for. Man…I’ve never seen that much blood before in all my life.”
“Why don’t they give up, already,” Kelly countered. “The guy’s gotta be dead. It took us too long to get him outta there. An’ did you see the size of that hole in his side? Nobody could lose that much blood and not be dead.”
“Then, how come I just saw his arm move?”
“Which one?”
“The one with the tube stuck in it.”
“Nerves.”
“His mouth is moving, too. I tell yah, it’s a miracle.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, Marco.”
Kelly hated to admit it but maybe—just maybe—there was something pretty special about paramedics, afterall.
The End—er, Beginning
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October Picture 2015 Stories by Ross
