by E!lf

We are healers.

I remember that vividly as I work to control the bleeding. In many respects a gunshot wound is treated much the same as any other injury that violates the human body -- a car accident, a compound fracture, a knife wound.

A shard of glass embedded like a sword in a man's stomach.

"Rampart, this is squad 51. We have a male, approximate age 45, who has been shot twice with a large-caliber handgun. One bullet passed through his left leg just below the knee, the other has lodged in his right shoulder." I'm working with Billy Hanks, a good paramedic. I should know. My partner and I gave him his field training. I take the pad he's offering with the patient's vitals on it and let him take over keeping pressure on the shoulder injury.

"Pulse is 105, BP 90 over 65, respiration 36 and shallow. We have him started on four liters of oxygen and are attempting to control the bleeding with pressure bandages."

"Ten-four, 51," the voice over the biophone belongs to Joe Early, a good doctor and a good friend. "Start an IV, D5W, wide bore, full open. Administer 5 milligrams MS, IV. Keep well-ventilated and transport as soon as possible."

"Roger, Rampart. IV, D5W, wide bore, full open. Five mg MSIV. Keep well-ventilated and transport ASAP." Cops are milling around, taking pictures, stringing crime scene tape, doing cop things. Vince Howard from the sheriff's department is waiting to ride in with us in the ambulance. I wonder briefly if they thought at all about it when they called us -- when they called *me* of all the paramedics in Los Angeles -- to treat this man.

Three years ago I was a rescue man out of station 10 and proud of it. When the fire department started looking for recruits for this new program they'd dreamed up, the paramedic program, I wasn't interested. The way I saw it, there were enough ambulance attendants out there already. But then something happened -- a patient died that I thought should have lived -- and I took the time to look into the thing. It sounded good on paper, training rescue firemen to administer real first aid in the field, but the legislation wasn't in place yet and I was still inclined to wait.

And then I met Roy DeSoto and his almost evangelical zeal for the paramedic program won me over. But more than his arguments for the program, *he* won me over. The best way I can describe it, and this probably sounds stupid, is that even though we were completely different, when I looked in his heart it was like a mirror and what I saw there was a reflection of my own soul. In the years since, as we've grown ever closer as friends, partners, brothers in everything but blood, the same basic element at the core of our beings has united us. I am a bachelor, he is a family man. I am a free spirit, he is bound by his responsibilities. I am a high-energy adrenaline junkie and Roy is the most laid-back human being in Southern California.

We are healers and that is the glue that first bound us together.

We get the victim ready and load him into the ambulance. Billy puts a hand on my arm. "Want me to ride along?"

"Nah. I'm good."

He nods and slams the door and the ambulance heads to Rampart with sirens blazing.

At the emergency room I help to move the victim from the gurney to the table, then fade into the background and watch. Joe Early works with gentle efficiency. The man was stable by the time we reached the hospital and soon the good doctor is giving orders to ready him for surgery. As the nurses move in, he steps back and addresses Vince, waiting next to me.

"Did you catch the guy who shot him?"

"I am the guy who shot him," Vince replies. "This is our mad bomber. He had seven sticks of dynamite in the basement of an elementary school and was getting ready to push the plunger."

"I see." Joe's eyes find me and I see comprehension there, and a respect that warms me. "You do good work, John. He'll live to see his day in court."

I nod briefly, not quite up to a smile. I am pleased, though. I haven't let the program down, nor my partner, who has always believed in it so strongly.

Leaving the treatment room, I find Billy waiting for me. He falls in beside me and calls us in available. Without discussion we head for the elevators and I push the button that will take us up to ICU.

It has been five days since a bomb in the lobby of Tres Hombres Restaurant shattered the plate glass windows and sent a jagged shard of glass roughly three feet long and two inches wide completely through my partner's body. Getting him to the hospital without bleeding to death was only the first hurdle. He survived the surgery needed to repair the horrendous internal injuries he'd sustained, but then infection set in. For the past seventy-two hours he has wandered in fever dreams, slipping in and out of a coma, not recognizing me when I stand beside the bed and talk to him.

As we approach ICU the first thing I see is Roy's wife, Joanne, standing outside his room with her face in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. I swear that my heart stops beating as I hurry to her side and take her in my arms.

"Oh, God, Jo!"

She pulls back to look up and me and I realize suddenly that she is smiling through the tears. "It broke, Johnny! The fever finally broke! I tried to call you. His fever's broken."

"Well of course it has!" I give her my best crooked grin and lie through my teeth. "I knew all along that that's what you were going to say. Is someone in with him?"

"Dr. Brackett and Dixie and one of the nurses. They're changing the dressings and checking him over. I thought I'd better wait outside. I don't want him to wake up to find me crying all over him."

I squeeze her shoulders, give her a kiss on the temple and leave her to go through the door. Dr. Brackett, at the foot of the bed, looks up from Roy's chart and gives me a smile, the first real smile I've seen since we brought my partner in. They've finished with the dressings and Dixie and Carol are bathing him and changing his sweat-soaked sheets and hospital gown. I move in to help, lending my strength to their gentleness, as we work together to make him comfortable.

Cops are driven to protect and to serve. That's why they become cops. Firemen have a deep desire to save lives and property and that's what draws them to their tankers and ladder trucks. Both are among the most honorable of professions and both claim many lives each year. But men like us, like Roy and me, we have a little something extra pushing us along, guiding our lives, making us what we are.

We are healers. We are paramedics.

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