Trusting God and Johnny

"Spread your tiny wings and fly awaaaaay," Johnny warbled enthusiastically, if off-key.

"Shut the door!" Chet Kelly shouted from where he huddled in front of the open oven. "And while you're at it, shut your mouth!"

"Ah, you wimp," Johnny sneered, nevertheless closing the station's back door and returning to the warmth of the day room. "Know what your problem is Kelly? You've never seen a real snowstorm, that's your problem!"

"This one's real enough," Marco Lopez put in. "Did you see the news last night? They were showing all the farmers and orange growers lighting smudge pots to try to save their crops. There were icicles dripping off the oranges."

"It's not bad enough that gas and meat cost a fortune," Mike Stoker complained, "but now fruit and vegetables are going to be sky high too!"

"I'll tell you what worries me," Captain Stanley said. "All these people who aren't used to adverse weather are out there trying to drive on this stuff. I know I passed eight or ten people in the ditch on my way in this morning, and at least one bad accident. And I want you to promise me, Mike, Roy, that you'll be extra careful with our vehicles while this lasts."

"Sure, Cap!"

"Always do!"

"Hey, Roy!" Johnny grinned, "Want me to drive? After all, being from Montana, I am probably the most experienced with this kind of road conditions."

Roy DeSoto gave his partner a long, level look while everyone waited for him to respond. Finally Johnny started to squirm. "What?"

"I'm trying to decide," Roy said, "whether I want to spend the day listening to you complain that I don't trust you enough or listening to you gloat because I admitted you're a better driver than I am in a snowstorm."

"Oh. How about if I promise not to gloat?"

"Cross your heart?"

"Absolutely!"

"Well, okay then. You can drive."

"Really?" Chet Kelly burst out. "You're going to let the disaster magnet drive? Are you nuts?"

Roy shrugged. "Sure. He's my partner. You've gotta trust your partner, right?"

* * * *

"Squad 51 to Engine 51."

"Go ahead Roy."

"Cap, Johnny says we're coming up on a patch of black ice just before the entrance to the pier. We just wanted to warn Mike about it."

"Thanks. He's warned."

Roy reached to hang up the microphone, then braced himself as the squad slid sickeningly towards the right and a drop into the cold, cold waters of the Pacific. Neither man spoke as Johnny steered into the skid, regained control and finally brought the little red Dodge truck to a stop beside the padlocked gates of a small amusement park that was closed due to the abnormal weather.

Mike stopped the engine well back and crept forward until he was beside them. The six firefighters jumped out and stood shivering in their turnout coats, staring upwards and assessing the situation.

"What kind of an idiot goes skydiving on a day like today?" Cap demanded. Dark grey clouds lowered over the ocean spitting down needles of sleet and occasional snow showers. A punishing wind whistled through the narrow alleys along the waterfront and sang in the guy wires supporting the closed and darkened rides.

Three quarters of the way up the double Ferris wheel a figure dangled from the lines of a parachute that was caught on the very top of the ride.

Using a bolt cutter on the chains across the gate, the firemen entered the park and made their way to the base of the Ferris wheel. Cap leaned back, taking in the distance to the trapped skydiver, the layout of park and the narrow walkways. "He's well above the height of any of our ladders, and we'll never get a truck in here. Roy, Johnny, I hate to say this, but you're going to have to go up and pack him down."

The support structure of the double Ferris wheel was treacherously slippery. The wintry mixture of rain and snow soaked the metal beams and girders and the arctic wind froze it almost as fast as it hit. The two paramedics climbed carefully, testing each step and handhold. Each of them carried a heavy coil of rope and they stopped periodically to make a length of it fast to some portion of the structure and lash themselves to the wheel, so that if they did slip and fall they would be brought up short of the ground.

After what seemed an eternity they finally drew even with the trapped skydiver. A quick assessment was all it took to determine that the young man was uninjured, but suffering from prolonged exposure to the cold.

"One of us is going to have to rappel down with him," Roy said, fastening a safety harness around the man's waist.

"You can," Johnny said. "I'll go on up and drop down a line for you." He turned away to climb higher on the ride but Roy stopped him with a hand on his arm. Johnny looked back and found his partner regarding him seriously.

"You be careful!"

"I'm always careful," Johnny told him demurely. "What, you don't trust me? What happened to 'you gotta trust your partner'?"

"I trust you," Roy replied. "Be careful anyway."

Johnny gave him a cocky, crooked grin. "Always!"

Being extra careful, Johnny climbed alone to the top of the wheel. He used his knife to cut the rest of his coil of rope free from what he had already tied to the wheel on his way up, made it fast to the top of the wheel and tossed it down. The rope was wet and beginning to freeze and as a consequence it uncoiled only reluctantly.

Ten feet below him Roy finished tying the skydiver to his own climbing harness, then clipped them both to the rope Johnny had dropped. He got the victim to hold onto his neck and pushed them both off. They slid down a few feet and came to a stop. Watching them from the top of the Ferris wheel, Johnny saw Roy mouth a mild obscenity, though the wind tore his voice away.

"Roy? Problems?"

Roy looked up at the sound of Johnny's shout and hollered back. "The rope's too wet and frozen. It doesn't want to stay on the descender!"

"Well take it easy! Be careful!"

"What's the matter," Roy shot back, "don't you trust me?"

"Sure. You gotta trust your partner. Be careful anyway!"

Roy worked with the rope for several seconds and finally managed to free them enough to descend another foot or two before the rope jammed up again. The HT still dangling from Johnny's harness sounded and he answered it.

"Engine 51 to HT 51!"

"HT 51. Go ahead."

"Is there a problem up there?"

"The rope's frozen, Cap! Roy's having trouble rappelling with it." Even as Johnny spoke the rope slipped free of the rope descender and Roy and his victim slid down wildly, Roy fighting for control. After a few heart-stopping seconds that seemed an eternity to those watching both above and below he managed to get the rope back on the descender and bring them to a halt. He paused there for several seconds, getting his breath back, then completed the descent slowly but with no further incidents.

There was an ambulance waiting but with only a driver and no attendant. "Half the crews didn't make it in this morning," the driver explained. The firemen pitched in and quickly loaded the half-frozen skydiver.

Roy cast a look back at the Ferris wheel, where his partner had forgone the rappelling ropes and was slowly making his way back down the structure itself. Snagging Cap's radio, he addressed Johnny without bothering with a preamble. "Be careful!"

Johnny stopped, one arm crooked around an upright, long enough to pull out the HT. "I'm careful already! Sheesh!"

Roy sighed and shook his head, then reluctantly climbed into the back of the ambulance with the victim. Cap slammed the double doors and slapped them twice and the ambulance pulled away, slowly at first but gathering speed, lights and siren blazing.

Back at the pier it took Johnny a good ten minutes to finish his descent of the icy ride. The wind had picked up, the sky darkened and sleet and snow fell ever heavier. By the time his feet finally touched the ground the dark-haired paramedic was shivering violently inside his heavy turnout coat. Cap had called Mike on the radio and had him start the squad so it would be warm. Johnny climbed in, opened his coat and simply sat for a good five or ten minutes waiting for the heat to leach the cold from his bones.

When he was finally ready to go Cap motioned to Chet. "Kelly, you ride with Gage. I don't want anyone driving around alone in this mess."

"Aw, Cap!" Chet whined. "Do I have to?"

"Yes."

Grumbling disconsolately, Chet climbed into the squad and the two vehicles started back for Rampart and Station 51 respectively.

Driving conditions were atrocious. Rising winds threw freezing slush onto the windshield and froze it there faster than the defroster could keep up with. The wipers picked up chunks of ice and snow and clattered ineffectively across the glass. Visibility was horrible and the road had disappeared under a heavy coat of slush. Even Johnny, with his bragged about experience with winter driving, didn't dare go faster than five or ten miles an hour.

The first half mile had barely dragged past when the radio came to life.

"L.A. to Station 51. What is your status?"

"L.A.," they heard Cap reply, "we're 10-8 to base. Squad 51 is 10-8 to Rampart."

"Fifty-one, we have received a communication from Rampart base. They advise that they have lost biophone contact with the ambulance carrying your victim. Last contact indicated that there was some sort of trouble. We are unable to raise the ambulance on the radio from this location. Have you had any contact with them?"

"Negative." Johnny could hear the concern in Cap's voice mirroring the clenching in his own stomach.

"There's probably lots of reasons why they'd lose contact," Chet offered, his words encouraging but his tone of voice bleak.

"Sure," Johnny agreed, but he didn't believe it for a minute. They were in trouble. He knew it as sure as he knew his own name. Somewhere out there in all this mess his partner was in trouble -- bad trouble. And all he could do was creep along at five miles an hour, staring into the gloom for some sign of them and praying they arrived before it was too late.

With the heater going full blast the cab of the squad was like an oven. Still ice and snow built up on the windshield, obscuring their vision. A thick fog had settled in with the storm and the vehicle seemed almost to float along. Even the engine, creeping along behind them, was barely visible. In the surreal white mist it was as if they weren't even moving.

They had both windows down halfway, peering out anxiously into the gloom. Johnny swore softly. "In this mess we could drive right by them and not even know they were there."

"John, I think I got something," Chet said.

"What? Where?"

"Up ahead on the right. There's a light of some kind, reddish orange, flickering irregularly down low. It looks like," he hesitated, "like a strobe light maybe?" What he was really thinking was that it looked like a fire, but that was one possibility that he didn't want to admit, even to himself. They were passing through a short stretch of canyon that connected the seaside to the city, abandoned now since late summer mudslides had doomed the high-dollar houses that perched atop the canyon walls. The roadbed ran partway up the west side of the canyon, with rock walls climbing away to their left and the verge to the right dropping into an abyss that was, in this storm, a sea of white.

Johnny pulled up to a careful stop next to where the light flickered low on the road as Chet used the radio to alert the engine. Pausing only briefly to fasten his coat and pull his gloves back on, Johnny jumped out and ran, slipping and sliding, to the edge of the ravine. Chet joined him almost immediately, quickly followed by the rest of the crew. It took a minute, peering into the mist and trying to make sense of jumbled shadows, before they realized what they were looking at. John Gage's heart lurched.

The ambulance lay on its side in the ravine, one single light still flashing sporadically. From the battered condition it was obvious that it had rolled at least once on its way down the hill. Not bothering with words, Mike and Marco ran back to the engine for ropes and climbing gear and began making lines fast.

Cap raised the radio and called for backup and another ambulance. Leaving Mike up above to man the ropes and watch for help, he joined Johnny, Chet and Marco as they made their way down to the crashed ambulance.

They found the driver first when Marco literally stumbled over him. He'd been thrown from the vehicle and lay sprawled against the hillside. The slush around him was stained red, though already he was being covered with a blanket of clean white. From the angle of his neck it was obvious that he was beyond any mortal help. Johnny lay a hand against his neck anyway and found his body already cold and beginning to stiffen.

With this dread omen behind them, they continued to the ambulance.

Johnny reached it first. The doors to the back were closed and he prayed that it still sheltered living beings. He tried to pull the doors open but they were jammed fast so he beat on them with his hands and called out. "Hello? Roy? Can you hear me? Are you in there, man?"

He was rewarded with a shout in return, but not from his partner. "Hello? Help us! Please, God! Help us! Get us out of here!"

"Okay! Just sit tight, now. We're going to help you. Can you tell me if you're hurt?"

"I'm okay, but I think the fireman's pretty bad. I was strapped in when we crashed, but he got thrown all around. He was talking to me earlier but he's not now and there's a lot of blood around."

Johnny's stomach tied itself in knots. Cap came up with a pry bar. Johnny never did know where he got it -- if he'd carried it down or called up to have Mike send it down. He stuck it into the crack between the doors. The ambulance was lying at an angle on its right side. Marco added his weight to the bar and he and Cap together popped open the right door, allowing Johnny to crawl into the chaotic interior.

The skydiver had freed himself from the gurney and was crouched in the rubble, holding Roy's bloodied hand. The paramedic lay sprawled amidst the wreckage. The mangled remains of the biophone lay near his head and Johnny wondered if that was what had caused the darkening bruise on his temple. His color was bad and even as Johnny crawled up to him he could see that he was breathing too fast and too shallowly.

The skydiver looked up, startled, then released Roy's hand and scrambled towards the opening. Johnny caught him. "Are you hurt at all? Anywhere?"

"No, I just want out of here! Please! I gotta get out of here!"

"All right." Johnny grabbed a blanket that was still draped over the gurney, wrapped it around the young man and passed him on to Cap. He knew the engine crew would get him up out of the ravine and into the warmth of the big Ward-LaFrance. Dismissing the man from his mind for now, he crawled over to his partner.

"John?" Cap called in. "How's he doing?"

"Not too good." Squatting beside Roy, Johnny swiveled on the balls of his feet so he could look at his captain. He had pulled out his memo pad and his lucky green pen and was writing as he talked. The young paramedic's face was somber. "Have L.A. get in touch with Rampart. I'm not seeing any signs of spinal injury, fortunately, but his vitals are crap." Johnny handed over the paper with Roy's vital signs on it. "He's got a compound fracture of the left arm -- that's where all the blood is coming from -- and I suspect there's some internal bleeding that's going to have to be addressed. He's also shocky, to the point that it's becoming life threatening. I need the drug box and the trauma kit and permission to start an IV. Do we have an ETA on the ambulance?"

Cap raised his radio and turned to the side, sheltering from the bitter wind as he talked to L.A. Inside the crashed ambulance Roy moaned in pain and shifted slightly as he approached consciousness. Johnny rubbed his fingers lightly in a circle on his best friend's right shoulder. "It hurts, I know. You just hang in there. Trust your partner."

Chet ran up with the gear Johnny had requested as Cap turned back. "Rampart advises D5W, wide bore, full open. Bad news on the ambulance. There's not another one available for at least 45 minutes."

Johnny paused briefly, then returned to administering the IV, talking over his shoulder. "Roy can't wait that long, Cap."

"So what do you want to do?"

The paramedic considered as he deftly inserted the needle and taped it down. Grabbing a wad of bandaging and a splint he immobilized Roy's broken arm, then brushed his friend's hair from his forehead with bloodied fingers.

"Once we get out of this canyon we're less than two miles from the hospital. Since there's no apparent spinal injury, there's no reason we can't sit him up. I say we put him in the squad between me and Chet and drive him on in."

"It's your call," Cap told him. "We've got a stokes waiting."

With Cap, Chet and Marco helping it was only the work of a minute to get Roy extricated from the wreckage and strapped into the stokes. They covered him with an orange blanket and drew him back up to the level of the road. Johnny and Chet climbed up first, lifted Roy back out of the stokes and sat him up in the middle of the seat of the squad.

Cap and Marco remained long enough to spread a second blanket over the body of the ambulance driver. With the skydiver waiting in the engine, their first obligation was to the living. Another team would come soon to retrieve the dead. By the time they reached the road Johnny and Chet were nearly ready to go. They had only to try, again, to clear the little squad's windshield of ice and snow. As soon as they had it clear enough to provide some visibility, they climbed in and headed for Rampart.

The journey was interminable, terrifying and surreal. Chet sat sideways in the passenger seat, with one arm around Roy's shoulders and the other across his chest, supporting him. He had tucked the IV bag between Roy's head and his own arm and he kept his fingers curled around the senior paramedic's right wrist, monitoring the fast, thready pulse that he found there.

Johnny focused on driving, peering out through the diminishing hole in the ice on the windshield. They came down out of the canyon, the squad picking up more speed on the downgrade than Johnny was comfortable with. Still, he refrained from touching the brakes, not wanting to send them into a slide. At the bottom of the hill the canyon road intersected with a wide city street, deserted and eerie in the storm.

Chet's legs were braced against the floorboards and he drew in a sharp breath as he glanced at Roy. Roy had remained unconscious throughout the rescue. His face was pale, eyes closed above the oxygen mask.

"Geez, DeSoto!" Chet grumbled nervously, his voice pitched just a bit high, "how can you sleep through all this?"

"He trusts his partner," Johnny said as they made the turn onto the city street and the squad slewed sickeningly. Chet caught his breath with a gasp as Johnny fought the steering wheel and pumped the brake, getting the truck back under control. When they were straightened out and headed for Rampart Johnny took one hand off the wheel to grab the microphone. "Squad 51 to Engine 51."

"Go ahead."

"It's real slick at the intersection. Take it easy."

"Ten-four. Thanks for the warning. How's Roy?"

"Hanging in there."

When the lighted sign marking the entrance to Rampart Emergency finally drifted into view out of the fog Johnny could have gotten out and kissed it. He made the turn carefully, gritting his teeth as the squad fishtailed anyway, and pulled up to the emergency entrance without bothering to turn the squad and back in.

Figures poured out the door to meet them. First came two orderlies with a gurney, followed by Drs. Brackett and Early and head nurse Dixie McCall. They came up on the passenger side and Chet climbed out, still supporting Roy as they reached around him to ease the injured paramedic out of the truck. Johnny jumped down and ran around to help, sliding on the icy parking lot. He made it around the truck just in time to follow the gurney into the warm, bright building.

"See, Pally?" he teased gently, tapping his unconscious friend's shoulder lightly, "they brought out the big guns for you!"

"Only the best for our boys," Dixie agreed.

* * * *

The morning after the storm dawned bright and clear, if still cold. The engine crew had reluctantly returned to the station and spent a busy shift responding to numerous car accidents and one bad fire. With no replacement paramedics available the squad had been taken out for the remainder of the shift. Chet, driving slowly and with his heart in his throat, returned the truck to the station.

Johnny waited at Rampart while Roy went into surgery. It was touch and go for awhile and at one point Roy's blood pressure dropped suddenly and it looked very much as if they might lose him. He rallied, though, and when a very tired Dr. Brackett came to find Johnny in the waiting room in the wee hours of the morning he greeted the anxious young man with a faint smile. "He's come through surgery. The worst is over. He's going to be fine."

* * * *

Sunlight streamed in through the window, soaking the cheerful hospital room in warmth and belying the cold still outside. Roy was still heavily sedated and Johnny sat quietly in the chair by the bed, content to watch him sleep. The door opened and the engine crew came in.

"How's he doing?" Cap asked.

"Good. He's doing good. He'll be out for a few weeks, but he's going to be fine."

"Great!" For the first time since hearing that the ambulance was missing, Cap allowed himself a huge grin.

"Man," Mike said, "I'm glad I don't have to drive in that kind of weather all the time! I think the sheer weight of the engine gave us a little bit of extra traction, but it was still slippery as hell. I don't know how you managed in the little squad!"

"Yeah," Marco chimed in. "Even Chet was impressed."

"Well, I wasn't that impressed," Chet objected.

"Oh yes you were," his friend contradicted him. He turned to Johnny. "You should have heard him! He's been telling everyone he sees what a great job you did driving here in that storm. What was it he's been saying? Oh, yeah! 'I don't know how Gage got us here alive through all that!'"

"Yeah," Cap said. "I guess you were pretty scared, hey Kelly?"

"I wasn't scared!" Chet protested.

"So basically," Johnny pressed, "you're saying that you trusted me?"

"No, no!" Chet backed away, holding up both hands as if in defense. "I don't trust you as far as I can throw you. I just knew you weren't going to crash is all."

"Well, if you don't trust me, then how did you know I wasn't going to crash?"

Chet shrugged as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world. "Because, Gage, DeSoto trusts you. I just knew you wouldn't let him down, is all.

The end.

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