Deep Night (2 page)

“Auto versus building at the 7-Eleven at 2341 East Colfax, driver unconscious, unknown medical, reported multiple injuries. Sending fire and medical.”

Chris stuffed the rest of a double bacon cheeseburger into his mouth, wadded up his trash and tossed it in the fast-food bag on the floor. He started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street. His partner, Sara, grimaced as she snapped the lid closed on her salad.

“You're going to kill yourself if you keep eating like that,” she told him.

“Thank God I know a paramedic who'll save my life.” He flashed her a crooked grin. Death by cheeseburger wasn't something he worried about. The whole time he'd been in Afghanistan, all he could think about was a juicy cheeseburger so big it would barely fit into his mouth, and now that he was back, he didn't deny himself the pleasure.

“I'm not a miracle worker.” As she spoke, she reached for the radio in anticipation of the call.

“Then why the hell am I riding with you?” he teased.

“Ambulance 25, come back with location,”
the dispatcher's voice filled the cab.

“East 23rd and York and heading toward Colfax,” Sara said into the microphone.

“Need you on a code 10 at 2341 East Colfax, vehicle versus building, injuries unknown. Could be multiples.”

“Copy.” Sara hooked the microphone back on its clip and flipped the switches to turn on the lights and siren. A code 10 was considered an emergency call, which meant they needed to get there as fast as safely possible.

As usual, the drivers in front of them went through various stages of panic as they tried to get out of the way. Some moved right, some tried to merge into the outside lane, while still others simply stopped in the middle of the road. Chris skillfully maneuvered the ambulance through the urban labyrinth. Traffic was surprisingly heavy for eleven on a Wednesday night.

“Did the Rockies game run late?” he asked, driving up on the curb to get around a line of cars. As they approached the intersection, the Opticom sensor picked up the ambulance's signal and switched the traffic light to green. Chris cautiously checked to make sure everyone in the opposing lanes was paying attention, then turned through the intersection and headed toward Colfax.

“Don't know, but maybe that's a good sign. They've been playing like Little Leaguers so far this year.” Sara kept a wary eye on the traffic, too. Tonight was Chris's turn to drive, but that didn't mean she would relax and let her guard down. As field instructor, she was the senior medic, so everything he did was her responsibility.

“Remember the video game
Frogger
?” he asked, crossing two lanes to get to an opening.

“Watch out for that car!”

Chris slammed on the brakes, stopping just inches from a black Camaro that had run the red light.

“Fucker,” Sara muttered.

“Language, girl,” Chris reprimanded with a smile. “Your mother would wash your mouth out for words like that.”

“Fuck you,” she snapped back. But even in the darkness of the cab, he could see the twinkle in her eyes. Their relationship went much farther back than the six months they had spent together in the cab of this ambulance.

Their families had been next-door neighbors for most of their childhood, although Sara was two years younger than the youngest Wilson boy. Back then, Chris thought she was an annoying little girl who followed them around the neighborhood. Now she was his boss.

Chris turned into an alley, pulled up next to the 7-Eleven and parked behind two police cruisers. A fire truck and two more police cars were in front of the building.

“Showtime!” Sara exclaimed as she unfastened her seat belt and exited the ambulance almost before it came to a complete stop. She opened the back doors, grabbed her medical kit and jogged toward the wrecked vehicle.

Chris jumped out the driver's side, got the stretcher out of the back and hurried to catch up with her. For a short woman, she could really cover a lot of ground quickly. He saw his brother Sam standing next to a late-model Expedition that was stopped almost completely inside the store. Sara was kneeling on the ground and taking over CPR on the driver.

“What happened?” Chris asked.

Sam, who worked for the Denver Police Department, shook his head and answered with typical cop dark humor, “Probably in a hurry to pick up his beer…until he realized they didn't have a drive-through.”

“Anyone hurt in there?”

“Looks like it. Fire department beat you here…again.”

“Yeah, well, they're better drivers than medics. I'd better take over before they kill someone.” Chris ducked under the yellow tape that marked the boundaries of the scene and headed inside. He glanced at Sara, who was working on the driver. “Need any help?”

Before they had arrived, two firefighters had pulled the man out of his car and were administering CPR. “I'll take this one,” she said as she ripped open a sterilized intubation packet. There were all sorts of injury-specific packages included in their kit, which made it easy to treat patients. “Check inside for patients.”

By the looks of the scene, the driver must have passed out or was in the throes of a heart attack when he pressed the accelerator instead of the brake. The big SUV had jumped the curb and plowed through a paneled plate-glass window, sending a shower of glass all over the store. He'd taken out a short brick wall and continued inside until a six-foot-tall shelf of soda and water bottles stopped his forward progress.

Luckily, the two-liter bottles had taken the brunt of the blow, and carbonated syrupy liquid was spewing like little geysers. There were two more firemen, one working with the customers and the other gauging the building's integrity. Chris approached them, his gaze already assessing the damage. Lacerations, bruises, embedded glass and one woman holding her arm that was already starting to swell, indicating it was probably broken.

His adrenaline kicked up a notch, and he mentally shuffled the customers into levels of triage. First, there was the little boy with a gushing wound on his forehead, then the ashen-faced older woman who was sitting on the floor looking like she was ready to pass out. Possibly a heart attack or a diabetic attack and, of course, shock. And there was the teenage girl with shards of glass stuck in her face, dangerously close to her right eye. All this flashed lightning fast through his mind. He was used to quickly assessing injuries and dealing with them, moving from one person to the next.

Chris keyed the mic on his portable radio. “We're going to need two more ambulances at Josephine and Colfax.”

“Roger,”
the dispatcher answered.
“Ambulance 12 and Ambulance 37, do you copy?”

There was confirming chatter on the radio, but Chris ignored it as he knelt down to check out the boy's forehead injury. “Hi, my name's Chris. What's yours?”

The next five minutes were a blur. Another fire truck showed up and more firefighters hurried in to help. Chris moved down the row of injured patrons and divided them into groups, with the most serious being loaded into the ambulances and the less serious being instructed to drive themselves straight to the emergency room. Sara had gotten the driver stabilized, so she and Chris transferred him to a gurney and loaded him in the back of the ambulance. They also transported the woman with the broken arm, who rode in the front with Chris while Sara and two of the firefighters stayed in the back with the man. With lights and siren blaring, they got to the hospital in less than twenty minutes from the time they had arrived on the scene.

Chris backed into the emergency dock and jumped out. “I'll be right back to get you,” he promised the woman, who nodded weakly. He had stabilized her arm with a temporary splint, but he held off on pain medication because he hadn't had time to cross-check it with any prescription drugs she might be taking.

The gurney, loaded with the elderly and very overweight driver, was heavy and unwieldy. Even though Sara could have handled her share, the firefighter jumped in and did the heavy lifting with Chris. They dropped the wheels and rolled it through the emergency room doors. Orderlies met them inside and took over freeing up Chris to grab a wheelchair and return to the ambulance for the woman. She was supporting her wounded arm with her other hand and almost lost her balance as she tried to step down from the vehicle. Chris caught her and helped her onto the chair.

Next to him, the last ambulance arrived, and in a flurry of activity, they unloaded their patients and wheeled them inside the hospital. Chris got the woman to the registration desk, then helped unload the other patients.

Finally, when everyone was settled in the emergency room, Chris waited in the cab, filling out paperwork until Sara returned, pushing the now empty gurney up to the rear door. He hopped out and joined her at the back.

“How is he?” Chris moved to the other side of the stretcher and helped her lift it into their ambulance.

“We got him here alive, and now he's in good hands. Apparently, he has a history of heart disease and hypertension. He was awake and talking when I left. I called his wife. She's on her way.”

“Let's get the bus ready for the next call,” Chris suggested. Their uniforms were still fresh and it didn't take long to tidy up and restock the ambulance, since there hadn't been any blood or other bodily fluids to remove and sanitize. They gave it a quick wipe-down, removed the discarded medication packets and other used items and restocked. Within just a few minutes, they were back on the road. They drove slowly, circling through downtown, heading back to their post.

Although the city ambulances worked out of Denver Health Medical Center, they didn't wait there for calls. Instead, they would hang out at one of the three dozen or so posts that were all over the city. The spots had been chosen because they were in parking lots near restaurants or convenience stores that provided easy access to food and restrooms while keeping the medics spread out to quicken response times.

Chris pulled into a big, empty parking lot, backed into a space and turned off the engine. Their post was in City Park, across the street from the Denver Zoo and only a few blocks from several fast-food places. They rolled their windows down and settled back, waiting for their next call. The roar of a lion echoed eerily through the night, followed by the screech of a howler monkey.

Sara leaned her head back on the headrest and closed her eyes. “That's why I like this post. I love to get to the zoo after closing time because the animals are more active at night.”

“Including the ones roaming loose on the streets.” Chris studied her silhouette, which was backlit by the streetlights. They had hung out together as children, but the difference in their ages had seemed huge when they were in high school. He hadn't given her a second thought as he spent four years in college, then another four years in the Navy. He had hardly recognized her when they were introduced after orientation when he was assigned to her ambulance.

She looked nothing like the skinny little girl he had known, her knees always scraped, her cheeks freckled and sunburned and her feet bare. That was more than eight years ago. Since then she had grown up to be a very attractive young woman.

It was a startling thought. The past six months had been a blur of long hours on the ambulance, rotations in surgery, in OB, in pediatrics and in the emergency room. No sleep and much to learn had left him no time to breathe, much less miss sex.

He gave himself a mental shake.
Now
was definitely not the time to start thinking about sex. It had been a long dry spell since he'd been back…actually since he had left for Afghanistan. But the warning that stuck in his mind was “
don't dip your wick in the company ink.”
Even when he was in the military, relations with fellow soldiers had never worked out well. Someone always cared more than the other person, and it wasn't always the women. He'd seen plenty of men do stupid things when the woman transferred out or went back home to her real life.

Spending so much time together, basically trapped inside the ambulance, bred a closeness that could easily turn to passion. Familiarity might be mistaken for emotion. And there were plenty of stories in the department that proved that intimate relations rarely ended well.

Once he made it through probation, he could relax a little and find someplace else to tickle his wick
.
And Sara would remain his friend and co-worker.

Chris checked his cellphone for messages, more as a distraction than because he thought anyone would have called. Four years out of the country in the military was an effective death to all but the deepest friendships. And now, most of the friends he had made while in the military were scattered to the winds, so they, too, were out of touch. His absence had the same effect as if he were starting over. Only his family had welcomed him home.

“So, how did I do tonight?” he asked. He wasn't really concerned that he'd done a bad job, because he had been a good field medic. But he lacked experience as a street medic, which, he was discovering, required a whole different type of medical knowledge.

“You did fine,” Sara answered, turning to him with a smile. “You still need more hands-on with medical calls.”

He nodded in agreement. “I never saw a heart attack or a stroke in the field. Plenty of severed limbs, gaping holes, gunshot wounds, shrapnel and other battle-related injuries, but those were all so obvious.” This was quite different from anything he'd encountered since his return.

“There's plenty of blood on the streets,” she promised. “And you'll learn how to deal with the rest as they come.”

He sighed. “It's pretty overwhelming.”

“Just look how far ahead you are of everyone in your class in med school.” She pulled the plastic container out from behind her seat. “Want some salad?” Sara offered.