Roy DeSoto watched with mild interest as the paramedics from 36s worked frantically over his partner's lifeless body.

"Well, Junior.  I can't believe you finally found something hard enough to crack that thick skull of yours!"

"Oh, sure.  Go ahead and laugh.  At least I don't have a . . . a . . . thing sticking outta my chest."  The two men wandered over to where squad 110 was working on Roy.  "What is that thing, anyway?"

"It's a . . . I don't know.  It's a thing.  It's definitely a thing."

John Gage walked around to view it from another angle.  The both of them were instinctively staying back, though it was a sure bet they were well past any chance of getting in the way.  "Part of an antenna, maybe?"

"Could be.  I don't know.  Kinda looks too flat.  Piece of a metal stairway, maybe?  One of those things that stick up that hold the handrail?  You know what I'm talking about.  Kids get their heads stuck between them."

"Bannister?  Railing?  I don't know.  Might be."

"I'll tell you what it is," Roy said.  "It's a thing."

"It's definitely a thing all right."

Roy giggled suddenly.  "Hey, watch Brice!"

"What?  Why?  What's he doing?"

The drifted, both figuratively and literally, back to where 36s was working on Johnny.  "Watch him," Roy said.  "He's administering the drugs in alphabetical order!  See?  He's got them lined up in front of him and when Rampart adds something to the list, he shuffles it into place.  He's got the IVs hanging in alphabetical order too, left to right."

"Man, I don't believe that guy!  He needs some serious help!"  Johnny glanced up and nudged his partner.  "Aw, man.  Look at the guys."

Off to one side, 51's engine crew stood in a tight knot against their rig, watching soberly as relative strangers worked to save their paramedics.  Mike Stoker held onto the mounting that held the side mirror, his knuckles white against the red engine.  Marco Lopez was mumbling to himself in Spanish and they caught the words "Madre de Dios".  Chet Kelly stood like a statue, tears tracking through the soot on his face.  Cap was holding his radio like a weapon, anguish plainly written on his lean, ascetic features.

Gage and DeSoto went over to them.

"It wasn't you guys's fault," Roy told them.  "There wasn't a thing you could have done."

"Yeah," Johnny added.  "Explosions are fast!"  He looked at his partner.  "Going to be hard on your family if you don't pull through," he said, knowing he was only voicing what was already in Roy's mind.

"Might be harder on them if I do," Roy said unexpectedly.

"How do you figure that?"

Roy crossed back over to look down at himself.  "What if I wake up an invalid?  Or even a vegetable?  I won't be able to support my family.  All we'll have coming in is disability pay, and they'll have to take care of me out of that.  If I just die, Jo'll get my pension and she won't have to spend any of it on me.  Might be better in the long run to just let go."

"One," John said, "you don't know that you're not going to make a full recovery."

"Look at me, Johnny.  I'm like a human shishkabob here."

"Well, yeah.  But that doesn't mean you're going to stay that way.  And besides, I wasn't finished.  Two is, if you think your value can be counted in dollars and cents then you're a lot stupider than I ever took you for."

Roy shrugged and turned away.  "Maybe I'm just a coward, then.  I gotta admit, it's pretty scary to look down and see a thing coming outta your chest."

"You're scared?" Johnny snorted.  "I've got a head injury and Brice is working on me!  I’m probably gonna wake up with all my thoughts alphebetized!"

"That wouldn't be too hard."  Roy looked around, giving Johnny a tiny, sly grin.  "Wouldn't most of them be filed under X?"

"Ha ha!  You know, that's pretty funny coming from a human shishkabob!"

A tunnel opened up in the sky, beckoning them.  Johnny came over to stand beside his partner. Levity abandoned, he dropped a hand on Roy's shoulder.  "I'm scared too, Pally."  The tunnel lowered towards them, or perhaps they were rising into it.

"How about a deal?" Roy asked.  "We come back together . . . ."

". . . or not at all," Johnny agreed.  With darkness surrounding them, the two men shook hands.

#-#-#-#-

A pinprick of light opened in the distance, dilated and grew and the two men found themselves rushing towards an opening at the end of a long tunnel.  In the space of a heartbeat the preternatural night retreated and left them standing in lush, green grass at the heart of a meadow, or perhaps a vast park.

Heavy thunderclouds filled the sky, but a low sun had slipped underneath them so that instead of bringing darkness the stormclouds captured and amplified the light.  Sunshine lay on the trees like molten gold and all the colors were rich and intense.  In the distance they could see a city, a strange jumble of ancient brick and stone and futuristic glass and steel.  Here were Hellenic temples, medieval cathedrals, skyscrapers, and ziggurats.  On the horizon lay the distinctive loops and spirals of rollercoasters and amusement park rides, juxtaposed against a pair of twin towers that looked like nothing so much as the World Trade Center.

They turned in a slow circle.  Here ancient pyramids rose in all their glory from the desert, across a lush green river valley.  There Iron Age circle forts dotted sere and barren downs, giving way to open prarie, shaking under the hoofbeats of a million buffalo while ponies grazed free near clusters of hide teepees.

It was as if the whole world had gathered together all its cultures and eons and assembled them to be near at hand.  The landscape begged to be explored.

As they completed their circle a voice spoke up from behind them, where seconds earlier there had been naught but thin air.

"You have the right to remain silent, Gage.  Not that you've ever exercised that particular right!"

Johnny spun around and his face lit up.  "Drew!"  He had last seen his friend when the young cop died in the ambulance on the way to Rampart.  He threw his arms around Drew and gathered him into a bear hug, then turned him towards Roy.

"Roy, look!  It's Drew!  Hey, Drew!  You know Roy?  My partner?  Roy DeSoto."

Drew shook Roy's hand.  "It's a pleasure.  And you have my sympathies."

Roy grinned cheerfully.  "It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it."

"Again," Johnny said, "that's very funny coming from a human shishkabob."

"Daddy!  Daddy!"

Roy spun in shock, then dropped to his knees.  A tiny girl of about three rushed into his arms.  He gathered her up and stood with tears on his face, hugging her and mumbling.  "Joy!  Oh, Joy!  My baby!  My little girl!"

Johnny was watching in surprise.  A kindly elderly couple had followed the little girl up and now the woman turned to him.  "She was stillborn," she explained, "between Chris and the baby.  Hello, Johnny!  We're Roy's grandparents."

"I'm pleased to meet you," Johnny said.  "I never knew he and Jo had another daughter!"

"Does that surprise you?"

He considered it.  "No, not really.  He never talks about the things that hurt him unless I make him."

Roy's grandmother smiled.  "You're a good friend, John Gage."

"So's he."

Roy shifted Joy onto his hip, shook hands with his grandfather and reached to hug his grandma.  She took his face in both hands and kissed his cheek.  "Hello, Pookie!  We've missed you so much!"

"Pookie?" Johnny snorted.

"Shut up, Johnny."

"It's not like you have room to talk, Squirtmeister!" a new voice joined in.

"Grandpa!"  Johnny turned to welcome his own grandfather.  "You just hush, Pookie."

"Anything you say, Squirtmeister!  Why Squirtmeister?"

Grandpa Gage hugged Johnny and grinned at his partner.  "You never saw the likes of this kid when he was a baby.  You could not change his diaper without getting soaked.  His aim was unbelievable!  I wasn't the least bit surprised when he grew up to be a fireman!"

Roy's grandmother slipped an arm around his waist and addressed both men.  "You won't believe how many people are waiting to see you two!  Mostly people you treated but couldn't save.  They want to thank you for trying to help them, and for taking care of them at the end of their lives.  The pair of you have done so much good!  I wonder if you really appreciate how much positive impact you've had on the world."

The two friends looked at one another.  It was Johnny who voiced the question that was in both their minds.

"So is this it, then?  Are we dead now?"

"Well," she said, "you're not.  Not yet, at least."  She pointed behind him and he realized that a silver thread ran from the back of his neck, tracing back into nothingness.

"Ha," Roy said.  "A monkey on a string."

Roy had no string and Johnny saw his own shock mirrored in his best friend's eyes as realization set in.  Roy swallowed hard.  "It's okay, Junior.  You're young and you have your whole life ahead of you yet.  Go back and live it.  I'm not afraid anymore."

Johnny planted his feet and crossed his arms stubbornly.  "No.  I won't.  We made a deal."

"Look, Johnny, you're my best friend.  You're the best friend I've ever had.  This looks like a nice place, but there's a lot more to life than you've seen so far.  I don't want you to miss out on that because of me.  Go back, please!  Go back while you can."

"We made a deal!"  Johnny's voice softened.  "You're my best friend, Roy.  You're the best friend I've ever had.  I'd rather stay here and see this world with you than go back alone to the one we left behind."

Roy sighed and dropped his head, then kissed Joy and handed her to his grandmother.  "You'll keep taking care of her for me?"

"You're going to try to go back?"  She was shocked.  "But I don't know if you can once the thread is broken.  I don't know if it's possible.  I don't know of anyone who's ever even tried!"

"Guess I'll be the first, then.  Come on, Squirtmeister.  We'd better go if we're going."

Johnny relaxed his stance, put his hand on Roy's shoulder and followed him into the darkness that opened in front of them.  "After you, Pookie."

#-#-#-#-

Johnny opened his eyes as they were sliding him into the ambulance.  He raised his head, ignoring Brice's command to lie back and relax, and looked around for his partner.  Ten feet away he saw a sheet-draped figure lying still on the ground.

He grabbed the ambulance door frame in an iron grip.  "Bring Roy," he said.

"DeSoto's dead," Brice told him bluntly.  "We need to get you to Rampart.  Just let go of the door and relax."

"Geez, Brice!"  Chet Kelly was standing nearby, just out of Johnny's range of vision.  "Do you think you could be a little more insensitive here?"

Brice tried to prise Johnny's fingers loose from the door and Johnny fought him.  "Damn it!  Bring Roy!"

Cap, Mike and Marco were there too, and they jumped into the argument.

"He wants his partner with him," Marco said.  "What harm can it do now?  I know there's room for another stretcher."

Cap and Mike went over, lifted the covered body and carried it to the ambulance.

"It's against regulations to transport a dead body in an ambulance with a living patient," Brice protested.

"You know what you can do with your regulations?" Chet asked hotly.

The biophone sounded.  "Thirty-six, are you en route yet?  What is your ETA."

Brice snatched up the phone.  "Negative, Rampart.  We're having a problem here.  Gage has regained consciousness and he's fighting me and insisting that we transport DeSoto with him."

"Fine," Brackett said immediately.  "Do it.  Just get him calmed down and get him in here."

Brice clenched his teeth, but acknowledged the order and stepped back.  Johnny waited until they had slid his partner's still form into the ambulance, then he released the door frame and allowed them to slide him in as well.

When the ambulance pulled up at Rampart Emergency seven minutes later, Brackett, Dixie McCall and Joe Early were waiting to meet it.  Joe and Dixie both glanced at Roy's covered form, faces lined with sorrow, then turned their attention to Johnny.  Johnny reached out and grabbed at Brackett's coat before they could wheel him away.  "Doc?  Look at Roy for me?"

Brackett nodded and lay a gentle hand atop John Gage's bandaged head.  "Don't worry," he said.  "We'll take good care of him."

Joe and Dixie went with Johnny, walking beside the gurney and talking to him softly.  Brice followed them and Kelly Brackett was left with two orderlies to claim the blond paramedic's body.  They lifted the gurney down and Brackett stopped them so he could pull a corner of the sheet back and look once more at the face of a man who had been not only a co-worker, but a very good friend.

Roy looked back at him.  Brackett shook his head and told himself it was only an illusion.  "Roy?" he whispered?

Roy blinked, very deliberately.

An instant's shock and then the doctor and the two attendants were off and running with the gurney.  The hallway cleared before them as Brackett called out to the nearest nurse he saw.  "We need a treatment room!  Get me a trauma cart!  I want four units of whole blood.  Alert surgery and have them standing by!"

#-#-#-#-

Ten days later, and less than forty-eight hours after he had finally been moved from ICU and into a normal room, Johnny woke to find he had company in the next bed over.  He grinned across the hospital room.  "Hiya, Pookie!"

"Hey, Squirtmeister."

Johnny took a deep breath, amazement registering for the first time.  "So it was real then?"

"Yeah," Roy said, his voice hushed with awe.  "Yeah, I think . . . I think it must have been."

Dixie came in to check on them and fuss over her favorite pair of paramedics.  "Are you fellows up for some visitors?"

They agreed that they were and the guys came in.  Brackett followed them.  "It looked like there was a party going on in here, so I thought I'd come in and join it."

"Man," Chet said, "I can't believe those guys, thinking that Roy was dead!  Give us all a heart attack, why don't they?!"

"Yeah, well, don't be too hard on them," the doctor told him.  "I saw him myself and, as Brice would say, his condition was definitely incompatible with life.  His heart was damaged and his blood pressure was practically a negative number.  I don't know myself why he's alive.  Glad you are, though," he added to Roy.

"Thanks.  Me too."

"My partner," Johnny said, "the human shishkabob.  Did we ever find out what that thing was?"

"You mean this thing?"  They realized for the first time that Cap was carrying a twisted piece of metal, shiny silver and about fifteen inches long.  He offered it to each paramedic in turn so that they could examine it.  Judging from the stress marks around the bent places in the metal, they could tell that it had originally been flat.  There was a small hole near one end and the remains of a metal grommet at the other, suggesting that it was part of some larger apparatus.

"Not a stair rail thing," Roy admitted.

"Could be part of some kind of antenna," Johnny said.  "Doesn't really look like it up close though.  Do you guys have any idea?"

"Actually, yeah," Cap said, "though it's taken us this long to finally find out.  Part of that building that exploded was being used for storage by the department of education.  We went around and talked to everyone we could find who knew what was in there.  The middle school band director finally figured out what this was.

"Roy, you were impaled on a piece from a music stand."

Marco stepped out into the hall and returned with an intact music stand, and they showed Roy and Johnny the piece that matched the one that had been removed from the senior paramedic's chest.

"So now, if you ever feel like you have a song in your heart, you know how it got there," Chet joked.

#-#-#-#-

Later, when everyone had left, Craig Brice stopped in.  They guessed he felt guilty -- if he'd had his way Johnny would have gone to the hospital alone and Roy would have been left behind to die again.  Humility, though, was not in Brice's makeup and his tone was accusatory.

"You were dead, DeSoto.  Kirk and Wheeler called time of death and I checked you myself before we covered you up.  You were not merely unconscious.  You were dead.  Your survival is completely inexplicable."

For a minute there Johnny thought he was going to say 'inexcusable'.

"You're right," Roy said simply.  "I cheated."

"Ah," Johnny exclaimed in disgust.  "Brice!  Chill down! Everything's fine.  Gee!"

Roy looked at him in horror.  "Johnny!  No!  Listen to yourself!"

"Me?  What?  Why?"

"You're alphabetizing your thoughts!"

Johnny grabbed his head with both hands.  "Aaaaaa!  Brice!  No!  What'd you do?"

Brice frowned at them.  "I believe the pair of you are suffering from some form of mental incapacitation," he told them shortly and was gone.

When the door had closed behind him both men laughed.  In the wake of the laughter, though, the mood in the room grew pensive.  "You were dead," Johnny repeated somberly.

"Yeah, well, we both kinda were, for awhile there."

"Yeah.  Did you tell Joanne what happened?"

"No, not yet.  Not sure if I should or not.  She might not be too pleased that I was willing to stay there.  I'm not sure myself how I feel about that.  I love my wife, Johnny.  And Chris and the baby.  Swear to God I do.  How could I have been ready to abandon them?"

"Because you were afraid you'd only be a burden to them if you came back?  And it's not like you had any reason to think there was a choice there, Pally.  Don't be too hard on yourself.  Jo will understand, if you tell her."

"You think?"

"Yeah, I think.  Are you glad you did come back, though?  I mean, it was pretty nice there -- wherever there is."

"I'm glad.  Like I told you, there's still a lot more to living.  And that place will still be there when it's all been said and done, right?"

"Absolutely.  And, Roy?"

"Yeah?"

"Once we've finished with this world, we'll make it a point to go explore that one.  Together.  Deal?"

"Deal."

The end.

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