Dream Weaver

The night before he died, Roy DeSoto dreamed of rain falling on orchids. He dreamed of the scents of lavender and antiseptic, of Joanne sobbing hysterically and of a phone ringing unanswered. He dreamed of John Gage wearing a full feathered war bonnet, hovering over him, working frantically. Johnny's hair was trimmed shorter than Roy had ever seen it and the young Indian was saying, "my people cut our hair as a sign of mourning. It's a show of grief."

The bed moving awakened him. He blinked groggily and peered around, disoriented. Sun streamed in the window and the thin flowered curtain moved lazily in a cool breeze. Roy focused on the clock. It read nine a.m. and he started in a panic, a jolt of horror washing the last conscious memories of his dream away. He tried to reach for the alarm clock and was surprised and confused to find his right arm tied loosely to the bedpost with a silken scarf.

"Resistance is futile," a familiar voice assured him in sultry tones. Looking around he found his wife standing beside the bed. She was dressed as a harem wench, wearing layers of scarves and little else.

"I gotta get to work," he said helplessly. "I'm late for work!"

She walked around the bed, captured his left arm and wrapped a scarf around his wrist. "You're not working today," she reminded him. "You took a personal day. You have a date with your wife tonight, remember?"

He thought about it. "Oh. Right. Our class reunion."

Joanne tied his left wrist to the bed and smiled seductively.

"Where are the kids?" he asked.

"My sister picked them up early this morning. They're spending the weekend at her house. We've got the place all to ourselves for a change."

Considering this, he grinned slowly. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." She pulled another scarf from her costume and blindfolded him with it. As she leaned in to kiss him he blushed and giggled like a teenager.

Way off in the distance downstairs the phone rang insistently, but Roy and Joanne were focused on one another. Lost in the moment, they didn't bother to answer it.

#-#-#-#-

"Well, he's not answering." Johnny hung up the phone in the station kitchen and turned to Chet Kelly. "But if he was answering, he'd tell you I'm right!"

"In your dreams, Gage! You haven't been right about anything since the day you were born!"

"Right about what?" Mike Stoker had walked in late on the conversation. Johnny and Chet both immediately turned to him.

"Hey, Mike!" Johnny said, "you remember a traffic accident? Shift before last, at the corner of Colorado and Vine?"

Mike thought about it. "Yeah?"

"Little redhead, about five foot five, blue eyes, freckles? She was trapped in the back of a station wagon. We had to cut her out but she wasn't hurt."

"And?"

"Was her name Sherry or Cheryl?"

Mike shrugged. "I don't know. I was taking care of the engine. Does it matter?"

"Yeah!"

"Why?"

"She left a business card with her number on it with Vince. Asked him to give it to the 'cute paramedic'! Only she scribbled her name on it and you can't tell what it says. I'm absolutely positive that she told me her name was Sherry, but genius here thinks it was Cheryl instead."

"It was Cheryl!" Chet insisted.

"It was Sherry!"

"Cheryl!"

"Sherry!"

"Ryl!"

"Ree!"

"Stop!" Johnny and Chet both froze at the sound of Captain Stanley's voice. He came into the kitchen, glanced at them, then did a double take and came back over to study Johnny. "Hey! Nice haircut!"

Instantly Johnny's expression went from animated to sulky. "Thanks," he said sullenly.

"What? You don't like it?"

"I asked him to just take off a little. Just enough to satisfy the chief. Look at this! He . . . he practically scalped me!"

"And that would be bad," Chet agreed in tones of mock sympathy. "After all, scalping people is your department."

"Oh, you . . .," Johnny glowered at him, "you're gonna think 'scalped'! Anyway, I oughta get excused from having a haircut on religious grounds."

"How do you figure that?" Cap asked.

"My people cut our hair as a sign of mourning. It's a show of grief."

"Gosh," Chet said innocently, "when you were born the whole tribe must have shaved their heads."

"Oh, can it, Chet!"

"You're just mad because I remember Cheryl's name and you don't."

"I do remember Sherry's name!"

"Why don't you just ask her?" Mike suggested.

"Oh yeah, that'd work," Johnny snorted. "Hi! I was just wondering if you'd like to go out with me. Uh, what was your name again?"

Marco Lopez had been sitting on the couch in the day room trying to watch the morning news. Now he looked up. "You've got her last name, right?"

Johnny blinked. "Yeah. It's Johnson."

"So just call her 'Miss Johnson' until you find out for sure what her name is."

"Aha!" Johnny's face lit up. "Marco, you're a genius!" He turned back to the phone and dialed a number from a white card he took from his shirt pocket. "Hello? Is Miss Johnson there? Hi! Miss Johnson? This is John Gage. I'm a paramedic. We met last week at that traffic accident. Yeah, that's right! You still doing okay? That's great. Say, listen. I've got a bet with another one of the firemen here. He's arguing with me about what your name is. Is it Sherry or is it Cheryl?"

Chet waited at Johnny's elbow, holding his breath.

"Cheryl?" Johnny repeated. Chet grinned hugely. "You see," Johnny continued, "I told him it was Cheryl but he just insisted your name was Sherry!"

"What?" Chet exploded! "You did not! You said it was Sherry! I told you!"

Johnny gave him an annoyed look, hissed at him and flapped a hand in a clear "go away and leave me alone" signal. Chet turned to the room at large. "Do you believe this guy?"

Johnny was still speaking and Chet's annoyance evaporated as the paramedic said hesitantly, "the . . . the blond guy? No. No, I'm the dark-haired guy. You know," he laughed encouragingly, "the tall, dark, handsome one . . . . That's my partner, Roy. No, he's not here today. He took the day off to go to a class reunion. With his wife," Johnny added, stressing the last word a little more than was probably necessary.

"She meant Roy," Chet crowed. "She wasn't hitting on Johnny at all!"

"Yeah, he's married. Yeah, it is a shame. He is a nice guy. But, hey! I'm a nice guy too and I'm single. You think maybe you might want to go out with me sometime?"

"I don't believe it," Chet shook his head. "He never gives up."

"There's nothing to lose. And you might have a good time. Yeah? Great! Friday okay? Eight o'clock? Great! I'll see you then. I'm looking forward to it too! Okay, then. Until Friday. Bye, Cheryl."

He hung up the phone and turned around with a self-satisfied grin.

"I don't believe it," Chet repeated. "She was hitting on Roy and you wound up with a date with her anyway?"

Johnny shrugged modestly and his grin turned wicked. "She was really impressed that I remembered her name."

#-#-#-#-

"Oh, wow!" Roy DeSoto stood in his kitchen. He was dressed in a dark blue suit that brought out the color of his eyes. The jacket hung open, his shirt was still unbuttoned at the collar and his tie dangled loose around his neck. Joanne had stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room and he was eying her with appreciation. She wore a strapless turquoise ball gown with a full skirt that reached her calves. Her hair was up off her neck and a small but genuine sapphire pendant sparkled at her throat. "That's your prom dress," Roy said. "That's the dress you wore to the senior prom."

She laughed, delighted. "Mom and Eileen didn't think you'd recognize it. I knew you would." She came over and wrapped her arms around him for a long kiss, then stepped back, buttoned up his shirt and tied his tie. "I had to let it out a little," she admitted, looking down and blushing.

"You're even more beautiful than the last time you wore it," her husband told her, smiling gently. "You're still gonna be the prettiest girl at the ball." She fastened his jacket and he stepped back. "There's just one more thing," he said. Crossing to the refrigerator, he took out a small box and removed a double orchid corsage. Fastening it to her bodice, he slid his fingers down below the neckline to protect her skin from the sharp point. He giggled a little. "You know, last time I did this I was so nervous about this part that I stabbed myself with the pin."

"I remember," she laughed. "You bled all over your handkerchief."

Roy reached to brush his fingers over the delicate flowers and an eerie shiver crept up his spine and filled him with an undefined dread. He offered his wife his arm. As they left the house together he found himself checking the sky apprehensively for rain clouds, but the southern California evening was perfect, the sky turning a dusky powder blue as the sun sank below the sea.

#-#-#-#-

"How come I gotta be on the team with the short guys?" Marco complained.

"Hey! Watch it, pal! You're not exactly Kareem Abdul-Jabbar yourself, you know!"

Marco rolled his eyes at Chet and sighed.

"Look," Cap said reasonably, "We decided it perfectly fairly. It's command officers versus firefighters with one paramedic on each team." The six sweaty firemen were stripped down to their undershirts for a three-on-three basketball game.

"Okay," Marco persisted, "but how come we get McClary? We should get Gage. No offense, Matt," he added to the short, burly paramedic who was covering for Roy.

"I'm not siding with Gage!" Chet protested, his declaration mingled with Johnny's voice.

"I'm not playing on Chet's team!"

Cap shrugged and tipped his head questioningly at Marco. Marco sighed. "Okay, okay. Give me the ball. What's the score again?"

"Sixteen to ten. You bring it in bounds."

Marco took the ball out and poised to throw it to one of his teammates but then straightened and pointed. "Hey, look! It's Roy and Joanne!"

The men of fifty-one temporarily abandoned their game and came together in a knot to watch as Roy's little cream-colored sports car pulled onto the lot and he got out. He waved a hand to them and circled the car to open the door for his wife. Their mocking catcalls turned to wolf whistles as she rose from the car in her gown and the couple walked over hand in hand.

"Hey, man!" Johnny said, "I tried to call you this morning but you didn't answer the phone!"

"He was probably tied up," Joanne said innocently. Roy turned red and bit his lip.

"We don't want the details of your kinky private life," Chet joked, never dreaming how on-target the comment was.

Johnny, though, could read his partner like a book. He laughed. "I want the details!" he said. "Next shift. A play by play!"

Joanne slapped his arm and he made a show of doubling over in pain.

"Joanne, you look beautiful," Cap said.

"Yeah," Chet chimed in. "When you get tired of this bozo and decide you're ready for a real man just let me know."

"Watch it, buster!" Roy told him, mock-threateningly. He looked around. "The station looks different."

"Yeah," Mike said. "There was a guy from the city here doing some landscaping." They looked around, admiring the new plantings. A light evening breeze ruffled the branches of a flowering bush and carried to them the light scent of fresh lavender.

A shiver of dread settled over Roy and a strange thought wormed its way into his mind. 'This is how a ghost feels,' he thought, 'when it's reliving the last day of its life.'

#-#-#-#-

The fast-fading radiance of sunset backlit the Oceanview Hotel, rising like a faerie castle on a cliff above the sea. Roy turned his car over to a uniformed valet and he and Joanne walked arm in arm into the vast and elegant lobby. They passed a sign that read, "welcome, Class of '67!" and followed the arrow through an atrium, surrounded on all sides by the hotel but open to the sky above. A waterfall cascaded down three stories on the wall to their left and wound its way through the area in an artificial stream. In the middle of the stream a miniature castle stood on an island, continually showered by the sparkling spray from an enormous fountain. The whole thing was lit from above by colored lights and the effect was magical.

Roy stopped to kiss his wife beside the waterfall, then they crossed a small bridge and let the music draw them into the ballroom beyond.

#-#-#-#-

"He's gonna be okay," Johnny was saying, "but we wanna run him into the hospital anyway, just to be on the safe side."

"Where are you taking him?"

"Rampart Emergency. You can ride in the front of the ambulance if you like."

"I'll go ahead and drive. That way I'll have my car with me."

"That'll be fine. You know where it is?"

"Not exactly. Can't I just follow the ambulance?"

"Follow me. I'll be driving that red squad truck there. We won't go so fast."

The woman went for her car. Matt climbed into the ambulance and Johnny started packing up his gear. Cap, leaning against the engine, called over. "You need us for anything, John?"

"Nah! It was anaphylactic shock from the bee sting. He'd oughta be fine now that we got the epinephrine in him. I'm just gonna follow the ambulance in and pick up Matt."

"All right then. See you back at the station."

Johnny got in the squad and drove away. Cap turned to climb aboard the engine but Chet tugged at his sleeve. The short fireman hadn't been paying attention to the scene. Instead, he was watching across the street where a couple of middle-aged women were beginning to pack up the remains of a yard sale.

"Spare me a minute, Cap?"

"What? You want to go to a yard sale?"

"Just for a second. I can see what I want to buy from here."

Cap followed Chet's gaze and sighed. "Okay, go on. Make it fast."

#-#-#-#-

There was a resounding crash and a scream from the atrium. All the lights in the ballroom flickered erratically. With Joanne at his heels, Roy followed the scream to its source.

A small child had waded through the stream and was climbing on the miniature castle. He had managed to dislodge one of the colored lights and it dangled just at the surface of the water, sparking and sizzling, sending deadly jolts of electricity through the stream. The child's mother stood at the side of the stream, frantic.

"My baby! My baby! Oh, my baby!"

Roy looked around and singled out one of the hotel employees. "Where's the fuse box that controls these lights?"

"Uh, down in the basement. Through that door over there."

"Can you go cut the power for me? Holler when it's turned off. Stay by the fuse box until I tell you that you can turn it back on again." He followed the young man to the basement door, then waited until he heard a shouted all clear. The lights went off and the fallen fixture stopped sparking.

Roy pulled off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pants legs and waded across the stream to the castle.

#-#-#-#-

"Hey, Gage! I got a present for you!"

Johnny, coming into the kitchen, froze for a second and then walked over to where his fellow firemen sat at the table. His eyes were glued to the object that lay in front of Chet. "Where did you get this?" he asked and there was awe in his voice.

"Oh, well, you know. I just happened to see it and I thought of you."

Gently the paramedic picked up the full feathered war bonnet and hefted it, testing its weight and judging how durable it was. "This is beautiful!"

"You like it?" Chet asked, surprised and then, bluffing, "I mean, yeah! Of course you like it."

"Of course I like it," Johnny agreed. "Look, do you even know what this is?"

"Well, yeah. It's an Indian headdress."

"An Indian headdress," Johnny snorted softly. "It's an heirloom. Not my tribe. Cheyenne, I think. You can tell by the beading. Look at this." He pointed out the string that held the feathers on. "Now, anymore we just use fishing line, but check this out. See that? That's sinew, probably from an elk or a buck. And the beads. See the off-white beads with the carving on them? That's bone or horn. And the glass beads are hand-blown. Whoever made this probably traded venison or corn or pottery for them at a fort or trading post. This thing must be a hundred years old. It belonged to an old man, maybe a chief."

"How do you know that?"

"He'd have had to be old to count so many coup," Johnny answered, indicating the feathers. "Where'd you get it?"

"I bought it at a yard sale across the street from that last response. Paid a nickel."

"A nickel?" Johnny shook his head in disbelief. "Somebody didn't know what they had! And you really want to give it to me? Are you really sure?"

Chet had meant it as a joke or even an insult, but he smiled at the expression on his friend's face and remembered the guitar Johnny had given him when he hadn't been able to afford to buy it. "Yeah, I'm sure. Hey! Put it on!"

"Oh, I can't put it on," Johnny said instantly in that tone of voice that means, 'I really want to put it on!' Even as he spoke his hands were moving of their own accord, settling the weight of it on his head.

"Hang on a second," Chet said. "I want to get my camera!"

#-#-#-#-

Roy climbed the castle and retrieved the little boy who was perched there. He carried him over and handed him off to his mother, then climbed out of the stream. He reached back for the dangling light, meaning to tie it up away from the water until the hotel could get an electrician in to fix it.

Down in the basement, the hotel employee who had been charged with handling the fuse box waited. One of the guests had come to the top of the stairs and was calling down reports. "He got the kid off the rock," the man yelled. "He's out of the water. It's safe now."

"Oh, good," the younger man said and flipped the breaker.

Two hundred and twenty volts of pure electricity shot through Roy's body. He stood frozen, holding the live wire that was electrocuting him, unable to turn it loose. He shook violently and the air sparked around him. A woman screamed somewhere.

"Turn it off!" the man on the stairs shouted frantically. "Turn it back off again!"

The power died and Roy fell like a rag doll. As the darkness settled around him, the last thing he saw was Joanne running towards him, spray from the fountain darkening the front of her dress and settling like rain on her corsage.

#-#-#-#-

"Raise your hand and say 'how'," Chet instructed.

Johnny, wearing the headdress, stood with his hands on his hips and regarded the other fireman with affectionate exasperation. "I'm not gonna do that. That's movie Indian stuff. That's corny, man!"

"Well, do something!" Chet said, snapping a picture. "Turn your head. Let me get a profile."

Obligingly, Johnny turned his head and struck a noble pose.

#-#-#-#-

Joanne flung herself down by her husband, shaking him frantically. She held a hand in front of his mouth and then laid her head on his chest, listening for a heartbeat. A woman dressed in the hotel's livery came over carrying a phone on a long cord.

"I'm trying to find a doctor! I don't know if there's one staying in the hotel right now!"

"The fire department!" Joanne gasped. "You need to call the fire department!"

"The fire department? But --"

"Yes! Now!"

"I'll get the phone book."

Joanne snatched the phone away and dialed herself, not dispatch but another number. One she knew as well as her own.

#-#-#-#-

The phone rang and Johnny paused in his posing to answer it.

"Station fifty-one," he answered grandly, "Fireman John Gage at your -- what?"

"He's dead!" the woman on the other end of the phone was sobbing hysterically. "He isn't breathing and I can't find a heartbeat. He's dead, Johnny! Johnny, he's dead!"

"Who -- Jo? Joanne? Who's dead? Calm down! I need you to calm down and talk to me!" He glanced around to where the rest of the station watched him, faces reflecting shock and expectancy. "Roy," he told them tersely. "He's been electrocuted." Johnny turned back to the phone. "Jo, where are you? Are you at the hotel? Okay. You know CPR. Remember? I need for you to start doing CPR. Don't stop until we get there. We're on our way!"

He hung up the phone, absently brushed the headdress off and left it in the middle of the floor as he ran for the squad. Focused on his goal, he was only dimly aware of the engine pulling out behind him and of the captain's voice coming over the radio.

"L.A. this is station 51. We are responding to a still alarm at the Oceanview Hotel. A man has been electrocuted. Please respond an ambulance to our incident."

"Ten-four, 51. Ambulance is responding."

#-#-#-#-

Carrying the cardiac monitor, oxygen tank clattering behind him, Johnny ran through the lobby of the Oceanview Hotel. An excited woman waved him onwards from the entrance to the atrium. Matt McClary came right after him with the drug box and biophone and the rest of the station followed on their heels.

Roy lay on his back on the damp brickwork, Joanne frantically administering CPR. Roy was barefoot and his pants were rolled up. His tie hung loose again, shirt open at the collar. His lips were turning blue.

Cap took Joanne's arm and drew her up and away, wrapping her in a reassuring hug as Marco took over chest compressions and Chet slipped a mask over Roy's face and began giving him hits of oxygen. Matt wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his upper arm and Johnny ripped open his shirt and began sticking cardiac sensors to his hairy chest. Mike Stoker set up the biophone and contacted Rampart.

"Rampart, this is rescue fifty-one. Come in please. Rampart, rescue five one."

"Go ahead fifty-one."

"Rampart, we have a male victim who has been electrocuted, apparently from a light fixture falling into a fountain. At this time he is cyanotic and has no pulse, no respiration," Mike glanced at Matt, who shook his head slightly, "and no blood pressure. We have him on forced oxygen and are performing CPR. Johnny's hooking him up for an EKG now."

"Understood, fifty-one. Go ahead as soon as you're ready."

"Ten-four." Mike took a deep breath. "Rampart, be advised that the victim is Roy DeSoto."

There was a slight but telling pause and then Dixie McCall's voice came back, still calm and collected but with a deadly grave undertone. "Understood fifty-one. We will be standing by."

Johnny hovered over his partner's body, trying not to look down at Roy's still face. Joanne was right; Roy was dead. John Gage had been a paramedic long enough to understand that that condition was not necessarily permanent, but that didn't mean he liked it any better. He worked frantically, his own long face lined with concentration and the fear of grief.

He nodded to Mike that he was ready and Mike turned back to the biophone. "Transmitting a strip now, Rampart. This will be lead two."

While the EKG was transmitting Johnny, anticipating his orders, tore strips of tape off and stuck them to his forearm. He ripped open an IV and the scent of antiseptic mingled with the ozone and the ladies' perfumes.

#-#-#-#-

Tiredly, walking slowly and with heavy tread, the men of fifty-one returned to the day room. Five of them took seats around the table. Johnny Gage alone remained standing. He went over to pick up the feathered headdress from where it still lay on the floor. He stroked it gently, smoothing the feathers and running his thumb over the pebbled surface of the beadwork. From the look on his face his thoughts were a thousand miles away.

"I never want another run like that one," Cap said finally.

"Do you realize he was clinically dead when we got there?" Mike asked. They considered that in silence for a long minute.

"Thank God we got him back," Marco said.

"Yeah," Chet agreed. "He's going to be okay." He waited a few seconds. "He is going to be okay? Right? Johnny?"

Johnny started like a man awakening from a dream. "What?"

"I said Roy's going to be okay, right?"

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, sure he is."

"You don't sound too certain of that," Cap observed.

Johnny shook himself and came over to join them, settling the war bonnet carefully on the table before he dropped into the last seat himself. "Well, he was electrocuted. That's a tricky thing, you know. There's still the possibility that it could trigger a cardial infarction."

"A heart attack," Matt clarified. The others nodded.

"They're keeping him on a heart monitor for awhile so they'll be right on it if it does happen. He's on medication to strengthen his heart and he'll have to do some physical therapy too. He's got some bad electrical burns and they might have to do a skin graft, but Dr. Brackett doesn't think so. And, with electrical shock, there are a thousand side effects that could crop up even years from now."

"Like what?" Cap asked.

"Heart arrhythmia, joint pains, insomnia, depression. We'll just have to keep an eye on him is all."

"Do you think he'll be back to work?" Chet asked dubiously.

"Oh yeah!" Johnny said. "Yeah, of course. I'm sure he will. They're going to keep him in ICU overnight and probably, barring complications, move him to a regular room in the cardiac care unit tomorrow. We can go see him after we get off work and he'll probably be back in two or three weeks at the outside." He glanced around the table. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to dwell on things that might go wrong. It's just that, well, he scared me tonight. I can't help but worry. But, yeah, he's going to be okay. Chances are he's going to be just fine."

"Well good," Cap said. "Then we'll go on that assumption. But we'll keep an eye on him just the same."

Johnny was still looking thoughtful and now he tapped the table pensively and looked to Chet. "Did you say anything to Roy about getting this headdress?"

"No, of course not. How could I have? I didn't even know it existed until after he and Joanne had left for the dance. Why?"

"Oh, just something kind of strange that happened. At the hospital, when Roy finally woke up again, he looked up at me and asked me why I was wearing a war bonnet."

The End.

*Click above to send E!lf feedback

Stories by E!lf Guest Dispatchers