But for the Grace by Linda2

“What’s the matter, John?” Roy asked.

Arriving back at the station after a particularly good run, Roy was surprised when John had crossed the dayroom and sat on the couch looking pensive. When Roy questioned him, he glanced up from the pink bubble gum cigar he was fidgeting with and said, “I was just thinking.”

“Well, now, that’ll get you in trouble every time!” Chet quipped as he entered the room.

“I was thinking about last week,” John continued, speaking to Roy. He threw a doleful look at Chet, but refrained from rising to the bait. Sighing, Roy sat down beside John on the couch.

“What happened last week?” Chet asked, curious. He pulled a chair over from the table and straddled it, resting his arms on its back.

“Don’t you remember?” Roy asked. He seemed reluctant to think about, much less to talk about, last week.

“No, he was off shift that day. Remember?” John said. Roy nodded, he remembered.

“So, what happened?” Chet asked, prompting them when they did not volunteer any further information.

“We went on a run,” John said closing his eyes as if the memory were a painful one. After a short pause, he continued. “It was a woman in labor.”

When Roy and John arrived at the address they had been given, they found both front and rear doors locked. The windows were also inaccessible. Luckily, one of the L. A. county deputy sheriffs arrived shortly after they did. He broke one of the windows and John crawled through, then unlocked the door for the others. Once inside the home, they could hear a woman in obvious pain. Following the sounds, they found her lying on a bed in a bedroom at the back of the house. Approaching her, they found that she was in the process of delivering the baby.

“It’s too early!” she gasped. “It’s too early.” When they tried to question her that was all she seemed to be able to say. Roy soon found that it was not only too early, it was also, too late. As he began his exam he found that the baby was crowning. He knew that prematurity, depending on how premature the baby, carried its own unique threat to the baby’s life. However, how premature this baby was, was a mute point. The cord had wrapped itself tightly around the infant’s neck and by the time Roy got to it, the baby was already dead. Reviving the infant was out of the question. Roy knew no amount of CPR or resuscitation was going to bring this infant back to life, his initial assessment told him all he needed to know.

When she realized that the baby was making no sounds, and the paramedics were looking grim, the woman correctly deduced the situation and began to sob. “My poor baby,” she said over and over.

Running footsteps sounded in the hallway. A man appeared at the door, a wild look on his face. He paused in the doorway. “May?” Slowly he entered the room. Seeing the small, still form Roy was wrapping in a blanket, he quickly realized he was too late. Crossing the room to his wife, he took her into his embrace. Distraught, the woman clung to him and sobbed into his shoulder.

At the hospital, while the doctors were treating and sedating his wife, the husband spoke to the paramedics.

“Thanks for being there,” he said, sounding despondent.

“We did what we could, it wasn’t much….” Roy said, sounding nearly as despondent as the other man had.

“I know. There was nothing you could do.” Tears ran down his face and he swiped at them with his hand. Roy and John felt like crying with him. “It’s just that this is…was our third pregnancy. We really thought it was going to be okay this time. When she didn’t miscarry…well, we got our hopes up,” he said. Hands in his pocket, head hanging, the despondent man wandered off down the hall.

“Those are the kind of runs that break your heart,” John said, twisting the pink cigar in his hands, regarding it intently.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “She cried all the way to the hospital, it was all I could do to not cry along with her.”

“Man, that must have been tough,” Chet said, shaking his head. “I see why you guys were looking so upset.”

“That wasn’t all,” John said.

“What do you mean?” Chet asked, a puzzled look on his face. “She didn’t die did she? Don’t tell me she died, too!”

“No, she didn’t,” John said. “But the other baby did.”

“What other baby?” Chet asked, surprised.

“It was later that day,” John said. He knew Roy did not want to talk about it. Roy had not said anything about it since they had finished the run. John got the impression Roy was taking the whole thing personally, but he would not talk about it. John did not know exactly what it was Roy was feeling. Now it was left up to John to tell Chet what had happened.

Several runs after the stillborn delivery, they were called out to a child down. Both men dreaded those words. Injured and sick children were the hardest for them to deal with. This was the second one of the day.

When they arrived on scene, they found an 18-month-old girl lying on the living room couch, unconscious.

“What happened?” John asked the despondent father.

“I don’t know…she just…passed out.” Pacing the floor, the man was nervous and upset. He kept running his hands through his hair and murmuring. At one point John caught the words, “goin’ to kill me.” At the time he had been puzzled, but later he had understood the man’s meaning, all too well.

“What was she doing before this happened?” John asked, as he set up the biophone to contact rampart. Roy began making his assessment of the little girl.

“Playing, she was playing,” the father answered, distracted.

“John, her pupils are dilated and fixed,” Roy said. After completing his initial assessment, he continued, “there’s no sign of trauma to her head.”

“Did she hit her…” John saw the man was paying no attention to his question. Standing, he walked over to the man and stood in his path. When he had the man’s attention, he began again. “Did she hit her head, or fall, or anything like that?” he asked. The other man shook his head in denial of each suggestion. “Then what did happen?”

“I…don’t…know,” the father answered, becoming belligerent. “You’re the paramedics, you tell me.” Resuming his pacing once more, he turned away from a frustrated John, ignoring him.

“John,” Roy said, “look at this.” On the girl’s chest and abdomen, were bruises. The bruises on each side of her chest appeared to be handprints, seeming to suggest that someone had held her tightly, too tightly. Roy and John exchanged looks, then glanced over at the pacing, agitated father.

Arriving at the hospital, they were met by Lieutenant Crockett. Dr. Brackett confirmed their suspicions. The 18-month-old girl had been severely shaken. He also he told them that this was not the first child he had seen in this condition. The problem was becoming increasingly worse.

When confronted, the father had broken down and confessed that he had been frustrated, lost his temper, and shaken the girl. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he said. “I was just so mad. Things haven’t been going well lately.” He continued, explaining, “I didn’t mean to hurt her. She will be okay won’t she? My wife’s goin’ to kill me if anything happens to her.”

“As it turned out, she wasn’t okay,” John said, concluding the story.

“She died?” Chet asked, tears in his eyes. John nodded, yes. “How could anyone do that? How could anyone throw a child’s life away like that? How could anyone be so cruel, so mean?” Chet asked, becoming incensed. “How could anyone be that horrible, that evil…”

“He wasn’t an evil man,” Roy said, breaking into Chet’s tirade, his own voice expressionless. Having remained silent throughout the story, he spoke now for the first time. “That’s the worst part, he wasn’t evil. Probably he wasn’t even a horrible person. He could have been anyone of us. I did almost the same thing one time.”

“What?” John exclaimed. “Roy, you never….”

“No, but I came very close, too close,” Roy said. John and Chet looked at Roy expectantly. “It was when Chris was a baby, about the same age as that little girl. I had promised JoAnne I would watch Chris while she did some shopping.” Roy paused, swallowing hard. “I’d done it before, no problem.” The other two men remained silent as Roy struggled to find his voice again. “The shift before had been a real bear, I was tired and frustrated. My partner and I had been on several rescues where the victims had died because there was nothing we could do for them.” Roy paused and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the other men. “It’s not an excuse, it’s just a reason.”

He continued his story. JoAnne had left, telling him she would return in a couple of hours. Chris, as with most children his age, was very attached to his mother. When she left, he began to cry. Nothing Roy did could calm him down. After an hour of failed attempts to get Chris to stop crying, Roy had become very frustrated. He had picked Chris up, holding onto him under his arms.

“Stop it,” he yelled, giving him a shake. “Shut up.”

Suddenly, seeing his son’s frightened face, the anger and frustration drained away from Roy, leaving him frightened by what he had done. He held Chris close and told him how sorry he was. Chris had begun crying again, but he was clinging to his father as hard as Roy was clinging to him.

“I couldn’t tell you what brought his frightened face to my attention. Maybe it was just coincidence, or maybe it was grace intervening, I don’t know. But, the scary part is how close I came to…” Roy said, his voice trailing off.

“But you didn’t, Roy,” John said, placing his hand on Roy’s shoulder. “You didn’t…”

They sat in silence a moment.

“Hey, guys, why so glum?” Cap asked, coming into the room. “The run go bad on you?

“No, Cap,” John said, smiling he held up his pink bubble gum cigar. “Roy and I just delivered twin baby girls!”

Roy and John had just returned from Rampart where they had taken the mother and her babies. They had delivered the twins in the back seat of a couple’s station wagon. The couple had been on their way to the hospital when the car had broken down. The twins decided they could not wait. Roy and John arrived only minutes before the first twin. The grateful and ecstatic father had given everyone pink bubble gum cigars, explaining that he did not smoke, but had wanted to do something to celebrate. .

“Well, that’s great. Both babies were healthy?” Cap asked.

“Yep. They were a little on the small side, but they were fine,” John replied.

“And the mother, she was okay?” Cap asked again.

“Yeah, tired, but okay.” John said.

“Well, then, why the glum faces?” Cap asked, curious.

“We were just telling Chet about last week,” John said sobering. Cap’s expression became sober, also; unlike Chet, he had been on shift that day.

“The father who…?” he asked. John nodded. “You know the scariest part about that, and I thought this at the time. The scariest part is; it could have been anyone of us. When I see or hear about something like that, I always think: there, but for the grace…”

The End

Thanks for the beta read, Jane!

Thanks for the inspiration, Audrey!