EmergencytheaterTaleinOneFile.txt or Premiere-AngelsOfLight-MovieSix-SeasonTen-Episode60.txt Our current "Movie"as it happens with descriptions of images sent. Uploaded daily. This is a text version of the original still airing imaged, music soundtracked story. Season Ten, Movie Six, Episode Sixty 60.. Angels Of Light. Season Ten - Episode 60. . . . . Short summary- ****WARNING**** The long summary to come is very story spoiling and will take away plot surprises if you read it now before reading the longer story below it. Decide now if you want to read this episode's detailed summary before doing so. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Long Summary- Movie Six, Angels Of Light.. (Episode 60) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Story Unfolds... Season Ten, Episode Sixty.. Movie Six §§ Angels Of Light §§ Debut Launch: October 19th, 2017. **************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2017 10:42 AM Subject: Caps The smell of coffee was a siren's call to Nurse Dixie McCall. It was five in the morning at Rampart Hospital and all was well. ::For now.:: she mused, padding soft shoes down the quiet hallway towards the doctor's lounge. She slipped inside of the door nimbly from the shadows, after carefully looking around for any eye witnesses. Kel Brackett looked up from the stocks page he was perusing. "Come to raid your boss's pantry? Behold the guardian at the gate." he teased, dragging over the tin of Folder's ground coffee into his arms protectively. Her cover blown, Dixie plopped down into a chair with her painfully empty white china mug plastered in red roses. "I've got a coin for safe passage, Dr. Charon. See if you can route the River Styx up to the administator's office. He needs to forget a few things pronto." she grumbled. Her doe eyed face was so frustrated already, that Kel relented and got up to pour her the forbidden brew himself. "Oh? Was there something I missed in last week's departmental briefing?" "So good. This." she sighed, sipping gratefully."I'll say, Kel. How about the staffing budget for starters? Oshiro's way off in thinking that we can get by on his latest dollar figure per month. I outlined clearly to him last month that we need three more nurses on the floor in the E.R. just to keep up on the weekends. Our surrounding population's boomed. Any a.m. traffic jam getting into work shows him that every day. I don't know how Oshiro can't connect dots as obvious as those." "He probably flies in." chuckled Kel. Dixie glared at him. "You're not helping." Dr. Brackett conmiserated. "It takes time to increase any hospital spending. But it'll get there. They're already building new labs and getting another landing pad by the parking lot." "Whoop de ding. Now we can get more patients faster and test them for longer. Look, Kel. I get the whole profits thing. A hospital boils down to being just another business in the long run." "Yeah, at the mercy of all the pharmaceutical and medical supply manufacturers. What a bandaid costs dictates my salary." he frowned. "Never thought of it that way." Dixie sighed. "Guess I'm sheltered at being paid hourly. But still, can you rattle the Underworld upstairs and get me a few more bodies to work with? My overtime budget'll thank you instantly." "You guys have a budget cap?" "Oh, yeah, Mr. Yearly-Salaried-In-The-Stratosphere. And it's even tighter than the E.R.'s equipment purchasing cap." "How low?" "We can hand out six dollars an hour for a brand new nurse fresh out of RN school." "Ouch! That's insane!" Brackett yelled. "See what I have to work with just to make a living?" McCall smirked. "Now I see why you snuck in here for a lake of java. To drown out all your misery." Brackett sighed, mulling over the problem. "Tell you what, I'll gather the other doctors together and we'll see what we can do. Now I'm not proposing you nurses go on strike or anything. It's far too soon for that, Dix. What I mean is maybe we physicians can set up a scholarship fund, to pay for fresh nursing graduates." "That's a nice idea. But that'll take months to implement, Kel. And we've got the whole summer coming ahead of us." McCall said. "The busy season." Kel grimaced. "Yep." Dixie said, gulping down a huge mouthful of steamy fortification. "Hmmm." he mulled. Then he snapped his fingers. "I got it! How about using mutual aid? Don't we have some sort of state program where we can activate staff on calls between hospitals based on immediate arriving case numbers?" McCall's mouth flopped open in discovery. "We do! Oh, Kel. I completely forgot about that. That loophole may be the answer to everything! For this morning and for every other morning that'll roll in afterwards. Thank you so much for that alternative angle.. I'll get right on it." and she shot out the door, abandoning her empty coffee cup. "Your welc--" Kel broke off, grinning in amusement as the door shut behind her. He studied her mug, which was still curling up steam, with a smile. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Johnny Gage was on the payphone, calling around desperately. "Look, operator. Don't hang up.. I'm on my last d--" *click* And the phone went dead. "Oh, for crying out loud! I'm just trying to find my wallet." he hissed, slamming the phone receiver back onto its cradle. "Easy on fire department equipment, Gage. We've got a limited budget." "Ma Bell owns this, Cap. Not us." Johnny told him. He ambled over to where the rest of the gang was happily chowing down breakfast eggs and bacon. "Where's the toast?" "In the frig. Toaster's broken." Mike Stoker shared. He held out his hand. "Got a few dimes to contribute to the cause?" "I'm fresh out." Johnny glared. "Didn't you see me over there?" "Did you check your floorboards in the car?" Hank asked. "When I drop a wallet, that's where it goes most often." "I wasn't that lucky." Gage moped, sinking into a chair and staring at his scrambled sunny sides going cold on his plate. "It's gone. And a million places where I've been last night to check out." "We can always ask around in between runs." Roy DeSoto suggested. "Yeah, I guess we can do that. It's not like I had a ton of cash on me. But it was grocery money for a week. I think I'm in for a bit of starving myself at home." The rest of the gang didn't hesitate. They all reached into their wallets and started pulling out dollar bills and fives to lay on the table in front of Johnny. "Eat. We've got your back. That's the beauty of the fire department." Cap told him. "Pay us back later. But hurry. You've got three seconds to shovel it in." "What? Why three--" EEEoooOOOWWWWWwwwww. The tones wailed from the overhead speaker. "See?" Chet shrugged. "At least that karma's still working for ya." he laughed, sucking in his last gooey egg skillfully from his plate like tea from a saucer. "Let's go, Johnny. That one's for all of us." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Dr. Brackett, studying budget papers. Photo: Dixie, smiling ruefully. Photo: Chet Kelly, with Henry on the couch. Photo: Gage and Cap grinning by the frig. Photo: Roy smiling near the chalkboard. Photo: The squad and engine leaving the station bay. Photo: A white porcelain mug with red roses. ************************************************************ From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, January 7, 2018 5:26 PM Subject: Drop ##Station 51. Other agency assist at East Harbor Beach. Possible drowning. Cross street McNealy. Time out: 09:44.## Captain Stanley picked up the alcove microphone after writing down their response address. "Station 51 copies. K.M.G. 365." Mike Stoker revved up Engine 51 and followed Squad 51 out of the apparatus bay as it made a left turn down the boulevard. Johnny Gage looked at Roy, who was concentrating on the traffic moving around and away from their lights and sirens. "I wonder why the lifeguards need us?" he asked. "That's way the heck away from our service area." "Well, it's not associated with a boat or the coast guard would've had a chopper in the air already to meet us at the pierside heliopad. Could be a structural collapse of some kind." DeSoto guessed. "That would involve us for any technical rescue." Their radio crackled, truck to truck. ##Engine 51 to Squad 51. Where we're headed is an ongoing estuary project with experimental tidal water flow. Chief McConnikee told me at the cap's meeting last week that this place is a kid magnet. No caves but there are several large cisterns and artificial springs that the city can't seem to barricade effectively enough.## "10-4." Gage replied. "Well that answers that." he said, hanging up the radio mic again. He startled when an inattentive driver suddenly darted out in front of them from Roy's blindside. "Whoa! Watch him, Roy! The idiot!" The young teen in the white charger just sped ahead of Squad 51 with a one finger salute at Gage's double horn tap, and disappeared into the crunch of morning rush traffic. Johnny was so worked up, his face was ruddier than usual. "Get his plate?" DeSoto grinned. "Sure did." Johnny huffed, still coming down from being startled. "I got it right here." he declared, waving his pocket notebook around. "Too bad we're not equipped with a car phone like Battalion is, or I'd be calling right now to report that teenager." DeSoto remained sharp and alert as he steered into the open spaces other drivers were making for them, and shrugged. "Just feeling his oats. Kids are kids. I've got two teenagers now. And one of them beginning to act just like our driver here. But he's going to settle down fast. Starting today." he chuckled. "Oh, yeah, how are you going to accomplish that?" Gage smirked. "I'll let him handle getting his first speeding ticket solo. I've already prearranged that with Vince by telling him my son's route home from school every day. Howard's glad he's going to be a firm lesson, believe me." "Will it take long for that to happen?" Gage began marveling at this surprise Roy's tough father role coming out of his partner. "He'll be in jail by tonight most likely. That'll wake Chris up a whole lot. I want my honor roll super sweet son back before the sun rises." "Your oldest is turning into a rebel?" Gage gaped. "Probably not. Just a few late zits popping out. A girl teased him last week about it and now he can't decide if he's a man or still a boy in her eyes. Driving fast is a direct leftover from their watching a James Dean movie on a date." Roy analyzed. "Who figured all that out?" "Joanne. She's a good mother like I've been telling you for years. We'd decided as early as our honeymoon, that no kid of ours is ever going to turn bad and stay that way." DeSoto nodded with conviction. "Whoops. Eyes front." Johnny pointed nervously as the squad got close to the back of a police squad car on silent reds heading to another call in the area. "I see him." Roy shared a nod with the officer as he let him take the open space in front of them when he saw a hand on a gun as a signal that the policeman was on a still active weapons crime call. "I wonder who's getting robbed today?" he asked Gage. "It's probably another bank. If so, that would be number six so far this week for California." Johnny replied. "Glad I'm not a cop." Roy shivered. "A guy could get killed that way." "You think being a firefighter's all fun and games?" Gage huffed. Roy didn't even glance at him. "Boy you're full of salty questions this morning. What's eating you?" "Nothing. I'm.... well, ...okay. I lost my wallet because I think a date got me a little drunk last night." Gage confessed uneasily, focusing inwardly on himself in acute embarrassment. "What a cougar." DeSoto chuckled about his partner's mystery lady. "She was my age! But yeah, she took advantage of me. The whole nine yards. Are you happy?" Gage frowned. "No." Roy said levelly. "You don't have to see her again if it was... ..rape." he whispered, looking away to give his buddy some pride. "Sex with that woman was entirely mutual, Roy. I just....can't remember it." "That's a first." DeSoto said straight faced. "So that's what's really bugging you?" "Yeah. A whole lot." Gage said, leaning on the open window frame with an elbow as he rubbed his face. "Try not drinking next time. Doesn't take much alcohol to cloud the mind in the heat of the moment. For me, that equals about...two beers." DeSoto shared. "Two beers? Why I can... well. I really don't like alcohol. But this chick said she wouldn't go out on our date without sharing a giant margarita from Morrie's." Roy just grinned slyly. "She tipped the bartender to double pour your tequila. That's a really old trick to watch out for, Johnny. That's why you should always get any drinks for the both of you on any date." "Okay, already. Not too proud of myself. I let myself get stupid." Gage slumped. "Over a girl. That's easy to do, Johnny. We're men." DeSoto told him in an attempt to cheer Gage up. Gage chewed on that a while. Then he said. "Thanks for understanding, Roy." Roy's copper hair flashed in the wind as he looked over at Johnny. "No problem. But if I were you, because she used drunk bedding on ya, I'd make doubly sure she wasn't the one who took your wallet." Roy said mildly. "No chance of that. She's native. We don't steal from each other. Maybe our women can be a little domineering at times.. but that's... kind of attractive." "Then think of how your date went in a new light. You were her conquest in battle. Sure sounds like she pulled a counting coup move on you to me." "I was the enemy?" Johnny's mouth dropped clear open, revealing crooked teeth. "You're not that easy to get to like at first." DeSoto frowned, being totally frank. "You come across as being all over the board on any first impressions." Johnny finally relaxed. "I think I can live with that, Roy. But boy, I tell ya, I'm sure going to be the man in charge the day I finally get married." he said, snapping his notebook against his palm with a smack. "Good luck with that." Roy sighed, speeding up a little as the bulk of traffic disappeared from their direction of emergency travel. "Joanne rules the house, like a boss." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Station 51 pulled up sharply at the sight of a park official wearing a red emergency vest. The man was soaking wet. "Over here!" "Can you reach the victim?" Cap asked, throwing on his turnout coat and opening a compartment door for a wench, life belt harnesses and a set of canvas flotation collars. "No. He's too far down into the runoff grill. We don't have anything to cut away the rebar blocking the way." "Mike, Chet, Marco... grab the sawsall, jaws and a few crowbars. Roy, Johnny. We've an inaccessible entrapment." He told his paramedics when the ran up to join them. "Is he still alive?" Gage asked the ranger. "He hasn't turned dark blue yet if that answers the question. That water's sun warmed." the park man said, turning around to show them the way to the site at a run. "Brownie points for no hypothermia." Roy muttered as he and Gage grabbed up full immobilization and resusitation gear. "But he's down in a hole. Might have extremity trauma on top of water ingestion." "That'd be my guess, too." Johnny said, snatching up the Datascope defibrillator and a stokes basket from the back hatch. "Let's go!" Hank hollered. "It's not far!" It was like they had stepped deep into wild scrubland even though they could still hear the snarl of thousands of commuters whizzing by on the expressway. Birds sang from tall mesquite stands and thick green moss blanketed the ground. "Wow, I'd say this project's working out. It's like a jungle in here." Gage snapped. "That's why the kids always come, we think. They're from the city, they've never seen parkland this lush before." the ranger shared. "So we were told." Hank replied. "How much farther?" "About fifty yards." the ranger answered, hustling up a ridge that flanked an honest to goodness waterfall that was splashing down into the concrete box of the L.A. river bed far below. "I've sent my partner to the road to go meet an ambulance. They're already on the way." The gang and the ranger finally arrived to a green arroyo, ringed with tall eculyptus trees and spanish moss. Below was a pond, the source of the waterfall, that sported lilypads, ferns and frogs. The storm grill in question was nestled in between natural bedrock boulders like a door canted forty five degrees from the vertical. There were signs that the soil around the edges had been dug away with the two garden shovels lying on the creek's banks. DeSoto pushed by the ranger and aimed a flashlight down into the drain. "He's not alone." Roy shared as he caught flashes of pale skin and red shirt in the water flow cascading down around the unconscious boy's body. He could see their victim was lying in between two grills, the one in the hill blocking their access and the second, acting as a catch, holding him up from what looked like a very long plummet down into darkness. The ranger was surprised. "What?!" "There are two tools lying on the ground over there. You can't tell me this boy dug this hill out using two hand shovels at the same time." "Holy cow.." the young park official moaned. "I had no idea. I thought we were going to be fine on this one." "What do you mean by that?" Cap asked, setting a hand on the ranger's shoulder to get his attention. "What other kinds of obstacles are down there besides these two drains we can see?" "Underneath this short drain, lies an underground lake. It's deep.. There's no light. And..there's no wall ladder anywhere, leading back up to this grotto." Roy felt sick to his stomach. "Maybe his friend got scared and ran away. Who called you?"" "Nobody." said the ranger. "We saw the boy here squeeze inside and fall, just as we got here to do a water quality check on this cistern." "Do you think a second kid got through first ahead of him?" Gage clarified, moving out of the way so Stoker and the others could start force cutting the grill bars open. "I can't see where else another kid might go. We're inside the intersections of four freeways which box in this marsh project area." the park man replied. "How far down is this lake?" Chet grunted, helping Marco cut steel in a fly of sparks with the sawsall's blade. The cold fire of molten metal splattered against his safety glass visor. "Five stories." the ranger replied reluctantly. "It's... a tidal cave with a network of underwater tunnels that siphon themselves out to sea with the tide twice a day." Roy looked at his watch reflexively for the time and saw that it was low tide currently, on the beaches. "Oh my God. The outflushing siphoning's already begun." cried the ranger. He sat down hard on the ground, in total shock. "I'll go call the L.A. recovery dive team." Cap said softly, running back to Engine 51. "The second child might still be alive down there." the park man yelled, getting angry. "Not from a fall from that height. Not with broken bones." Hank told him. "And not with that kind of undertow current force working." DeSoto shoved the death out of his mind and got to work fast for their survivor. He and Johnny set up suction and got a short spine board ready with plenty of splints and gauze wrap to secure the boy's probable injuries. "I'll go in. I'm thinner." Johnny said as soon as the grill was peeled aside by the others. "Tie me off and snub it off that tree! " he said, fashioning a sliding slip knot off of his life belt's large caribiner snaffle. Cap, Marco, Chet and finally the ranger all got onto his rope while Roy got onto the biophone set up in a thicket of reels a short distance away. "Give me some slack!" Johnny hollered as he shoved a pair of goggles down over his eyes to protect them from the streams of water raining in from the seeping spring just outside. He clutched a peds size oral airway in between his teeth as he repelled down into the soaking darkness of the cistern chamber. "Rampart, this is Rescue 51. How do you read?" DeSoto hailed, plugging in the biophone's radio antennae swiftly. There was no immediate reply. He glanced up at the ranger. "Can you radio out from here on your handy talkies?" "Oh, yeah. The repeater's right there at the top of the ridge. No problem." Roy was halfway into his second hail when Nurse Dixie McCall responded over the airwaves. ##Unit calling in please repeat.## she said. "Rampart this is Rescue 5-1. At the scene of a pair of pediatric falls and aspirant water ingestion. One victim is a fatality. The second is inaccessible for another few minutes. Gross cyanosis on the second male under age ten, is not evident on a visual. Please stand by." ##Standing by 51.## Dixie clicked the pause button on the incident recorder in the glass alcove room where she was, and quickly got on the red phone that was set on the wall above the communications equipment table. "This is Nurse McCall. We've a child drowning with trauma coming in with 51's. Have Respiratory and a trauma surgeon ready for Treatment One a.s.a.p." she told the hospitral operator. "Thanks." Back at the estuary project the gang was tightly ringed around the ground hole Johnny had passed through, holding his life line in firm grips. A new crew of rangers had arrived and they were actively sandbagging the creek to shut off its active fresh water flow into the cistern where the firefighters were working. Hank had no idea how they had brought in the bags of sand until he saw the horses rigged with carrying racks, standing in a clearing. Johnny looked up at Chet, whose face was the only one he could see above him in the sunlight through the earthen drain hole. "Kelly, toss me down your flashlight!" Chet pulled it from his jacket pocket. "Ready when you are!" he hollered back, turning it on so it could be seen. Gage, gasping as he hung on his rope next to the boy he could feel through his gloves, shouted back up. "Okay. Drop it!" He caught the muddy torch deftly and quickly shoved it under his arm so he could see his patient's head under its light. He hadn't even checked for a pulse before he inserted the oral airway into the boy's mouth and between his teeth. He saw steam curling in and out of the Berman's tube aperature. "He's still breathing. Okay for now." Gage smelled vomit in the air. And blood. "He's injured. Let me stop any bleeding before you belay down that other belt." With the torchlight pushing away the darkness above the distant underground lake swirling far below their feet, Johnny located serious issues. "Arterial blood from the left hand." He immediately took up a radial pressure point to staunch it enough so he could wrap it up with dressing gauze from his pocket. "Two tib fib fractures of the lower legs." he mentioned of the pair of backward facing sneakers he could see in outline. "Left sided abdominal distension, no penetrating wounds. Putting on a collar!" he shouted back up. He no sooner fastened the last velcro strap around the boy's neck when the soggy dirt around them began to give way in a river of mud down on top of them. ----------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Dixie turning to another nurse, giving orders at the base station. Photo: Station 51 driving through the L.A. riverbed. Photo: Cap shouting commands to the gang offloading Engine 51. Photo: Roy running with an oxygen apparatus by trees. Photo: Johnny looking muddy and stressed inside of a hole. Photo: A hillside waterfall creek. Photo: Johnny looking mad in the squad. Photo: Gage working with a resusitator and a little boy inside of a water stream. Photo: A park ranger looking worried beside his work jeep. *********************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2018 4:50 PM Subject: Tick, Tick. Johnny reached for his plastic bag wrapped handy talkie and pressed talk. "Cave in! We're getting buried here!" he shouted, wrapping his legs tightly around the boy to keep him from falling into the underground lake far below. "Gage?!" Cap yelled down into the cistern's access hole. "Snub his line. Jump on it! Hold it still! We got you!" Chet, a park engineer, Marco and Cap all threw themselves on Johnny's rope and kept it from moving while the paramedic struggled to hold both his weight and the boy's sodden, limp body's, against the strong flow of mud raining down on top of them. "You all right?!" Roy DeSoto shouted, lying belly down with his arms and legs spread wide to evenly distribute his weight. Roy started gasping as he aimed a flashlight down deep to see how bad the earth had given way. "Johnny! Answer me!" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Joe Early was making his rounds casually. No Urgent Care patient as yet had needed his services as the on call family physician in the E.R.. He was enjoying the peace and quiet inside of the glass alcove room as he sipped a cup of coffee, his routine floor charts cradled lightly in the other arm. Dixie McCall, at the desk in the busy waiting area, glanced sidelong at him through the window and smiled. She got up off of her stool and entered the base station to visit. "Well, well, well. Look who's hiding from the rest of the world in here." "Dixie... Me? Hiding? That's more Dr. Brackett's forte than mine. He actually disappears out of anyone's sight when he gets away. I'm still keeping an eye on things. And my laid back, coffee drinking mind, is still working on these." he said, hefting up his case load charts crooked in his elbow. "Our illustrious boss's. He's already made his clean get away after dumping them on me." "I was joking, Joe. Keep chugging your name sake. You're gonna need it in about twenty minutes." McCall sighed. "Oh?" "It's 51's. They've got a multi-trauma pediatric coming in from a park cistern fall." "Not another one." Dr. Early frowned. "I can't understand why the city won't put up a fence around that wetland project like a good little municipality." "That's just it." McCall remarked, grabbing up her own cup of coffee from the counter near the paramedic receiver. "That land's co-owned by Torrance, Carson, AND the city of Los Angeles because of shared water rights. Each keeps passing the buck on who's gonna raise the funding to erect barriers around that area's public parkland. There's been issues of access that aren't being addressed. For instance, which city's going to be getting the pay gate to enter the park? There can only be one public entrance in, by state law. And everybody wants the visitor fees to collect as taxes." she shrugged. "You sound knowledgeable." Joe grinned wryly. Dixie groaned, frustrated. "Have to be, Joe. I live right next to the d@mned place. I'm getting sick of seeing coroner's wagons leaving the park every time a child dies in there for stupid reasons." "Why can't the cave cisterns be gated off?" "Because transients and vagrants jumping off the railroad lines keep cutting open the grill bars to get in there to bathe or drink from the collection pool at the head of the subterranean pipe entrances leading to the underground lake." "Hmmm. Expensive. And that kind of vandalism falls under the jurisdiction of the.." Dr. Early surmised. ".. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who pays the park rangers peanuts just to patrol the place. They don't have the funds to keep forking out repair bills to the welders every other day when bums break in using stolen train yard tools." Dixie explained. "Catch 22." Joe said. "My guess would be that even with the fencing, people would still get in there because of all the unusual green and running creek water so far from the mountains." "No bet." Dixie nodded, setting down her coffee cup thoughtfully. She got a sudden chill that made her rub the hair down over goosebump flesh on her forearms. "Oooo. Something's not right." she murmured, glancing around the alcove room. "Uh oh." Joe murmured. Both their eyes fell on the live fire department scanner that had been turned down by someone intercepting a paramedic call earlier in the morning. McCall turned it back up again. The county speaker, was red lit and active. ##U.S.A.R. 103 copies, Engine 51. We'll rendevous at the outtake with our divers at cave lake level. We'll swim in to orient beneath your trapped man. Maybe he can't respond to you because his hands are full hanging on to the male child victim.## ##There's that.## came Captain Stanley's voice. ##But that can't explain why he can't bounce on his lifeline rope to signal up to us that he's fine. From what we can tell from up here, the mudslide's over.## ##Copy that. We'll scope his position with hand held search lights. Maybe we'll be able to see what the issue is from our end down below.## came the reply from U.S.A.R.'s lieutenant in charge. ##Appreciate it. You already know about the second victim fatality. He's the reason why you were called to make your recovery. Keep in touch.## Stanley transmitted. ##10-4. I've two going in right now. Let Accountability know for us?## ##Appreciate it, 103. Will do.## Cap answered. Both nurse and doctor grimaced, while they continued to listen to the chatter. "May Heaven protect little boys and brave paramedics." McCall whispered. "Who?" Joe asked her, about the firefighter's identity. "It's Johnny Gage. He's the one they always send down on calls like this. It's because he's so scrawny." Dr. Early scowled. "We should fatten him up before the next time. Why should he take all the risks? He's not a U.S.A.R. specialist." Early grumbled fervently, fiddling with the rings on his fingers. "That day's coming. For all of them." Dixie shared. "I heard this from his captain." "Good. They'll have better gear and equipment to work with that way." Joe Early picked up the white phone receiver on the wall. "I'm calling in a second surgeon solely based on your dimple skin hunch, Dixie." "Why do I always have to be right?" she nodded at him, acknowledging the plan, with unhappy eyes. ::Stay smart, Johnny.:: she wished mentally. ::Keep watching and using that spastic head of yours. It just may bail your butt out of this one.:: ------------------------------------------------------------------ A driver on the 405 going sixty slammed on his brakes and laid on the horn as the bolting form of a shaggy dog shot past him across all the lanes of traffic for a nearby hillside next to the L.A River bed. "Watch out, you crazy mutt!" he hollered, recovering control of his semitruck in a haze of blue white rubber tire smoke. Undeterred, the stray dog kept on running straight as an arrow up a steep incline, and into a park canyon as if his life depended on it. The knee high gold, black and gray coated, brown eyed dog panted heavily as he made a beeline for a distant pair of fire station trucks he could smell in the distance. Station 51's. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Chet Kelly heard the commotion long before he saw the cause. "What th-- Marco, watch your six, there's an animal coming like a bat outta Hell behind us." Lopez turned and gripped his jacket haligan as a defense tool as he whirled about to face it, crouching low. A bush exploded in a shower of leaves as Boot, their once station dog rushed up and past them to the hole where Johnny Gage's rope stretched taut in the grip of three firefighters. He started barking frantically there, without cease. "Boot? Heya, pal! Long time no see." Cap grinned quickly. But then Boot's urgency wiped the smile completely off his face. "Okay. What's going on down there with Johnny? We heard from him just a minute ago before it cut off. Nothing good?" he asked the dog. Boot looked up only once at Hank and the others before he started digging at the dry earth surrounding the gap leading into the partially caved in cistern drain, at a fever's pace, whining loudly. "Wow. Who's this?" asked the park ranger. "He shouldn't be in that area. The earth's still like quicksand from that mudslide." "Let him be. His instincts are solid. That's Boot, a stray we know to be a very good rescue dog." Cap told him, listening close to his handy talkie while peering down into the collapse hole. Stoker added more, rechecking the tie off he had made fast on Johnny's rope. "Ran away from us two years ago to hole up with another fire station. He hits every one we've got in rotation and hangs out for a few months or so with each. Only goes far and long outside when there's somebody in trouble. It's how we met over a decade ago." "D@mn." cursed Hank, as L.A.'s continuous hail to Gage continued to go unanswered. "Why isn't he talking? The radio's not washed out or we'd be hearing feedback over our channel from a speaker short." he told everybody. Roy DeSoto shouted down into the darkness with a retrieved megaphone. "Johnny!? Can you hear us? U.S.A.R. will be staging down below in three. If you can't talk to us, see if you can signal them instead!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gage was in semi darkness and holding himself and the gravely posturing injured boy very still in a grip with both his arms and his legs. He had long ago ripped out the battery to his radio and flung it down into the lake. Once the mudslide had ended, he had found himself cocooned in the soft papery weight of hundreds of old TNT dynamite sticks. ::One spark or violent jarring motion, could set them off.:: he realized. ::They must have cascaded out of that antique gold miner's chest hanging above us once the mud stopped moving. It's only a miracle that we haven't blown ourselves and everybody else within a hundred yards up sky high yet.:: He could feel the unconscious boy dying in spasms against him while the growing stench of rotten gun powder began to burn his eyes and nose::Not like this. Oh, please.:: Before the cave in, Johnny had stopped the boy's hemorrhaging from his hand and legs. But it had only been afterwards, when he had seen the fatal signs of brain stem compression in his eyes. He felt the agonal Cheyne Stokes pattern of breathing, begin. "Easy, little guy. I am so sorry I can't save you." he gasped. "But you won't be alone when you go. I'll be here with you, only a heartbeat away. Try not to move." he said, struggling to contain the boy's subconscious wriggling, physically, with gentle restraint. "You can't move one inch." Gage panted. "It's not safe at all." Another unstoppable flutter of falling TNT sticks rolled out and fell on top of their heads. Gage flinched, holding his breath, waiting for their last moment of life together. Then the deep silence returned, as a leaking, very sticky dynamite stick came to rest against his cheek. It now ended, any further out loud talking, with finality. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Above, Boot continued to dig. And the gang's worry began to build. "He's got his flashlight, a haligan tool. That oxygen we lowered down to him." Roy listed off in another assessment of their situation with Cap. "He's probably just too busy using them. Especially if the kid's stopped breathing." "Search probe. Let's use that, Cap. Then we can see for ourselves what's going on." Chet suggested. "Get on it." Hank told him. "And move the trucks back. We don't want to trigger another slide down there. I'm calling for heavy excavation equipment. We're literally in over our heads." Cap hailed Headquarters. "L.A., Engine 51. Request Heavy Crew Twelve to our location. Approximate rope distance down to our victims is seventy feet next to a full creek bed." ##Engine 51. Rolling Siphon Nine to handle your water flow. E.T.A. 10 minutes.## "Copy the additional. Respond two ambulances in a standby." ##10-4, Time out: 12:59.## It was only moments when Kelly ran back with the powered case containing the search probe equipment. He started assembling it quickly, adding lengths of fiberglass pole to the camera eye assembly tip's cup. "Sure wish we could read his brain." Chet remarked to Stoker as he worked. "What? Gage? We already know what he's thinking. He wants out of there. That and he really wants that kid to survive long enough to make it to the hospital where truly skilled hands better than his can really save the day on a more permanent note." Marco chuckled. "I meant Boot. Look at the way he's staring at us right now." Kelly clarified. The dirt encrusted fire dog was no longer moving soil out of his hole. He was actually glaring at Chet and Marco, and rumbling a little. Marco outright laughed. "He's telling us to hurry up so he doesn't have to rescue Johnny and the boy all by himself." That cracked a smile out of the rest of the gang for a few seconds. "That's peculiar." Hank agreed with Kelly about Boot. "Maybe he ate some bad chili." he joked. Boot jolted to his feet, still keeping eyes on Marco and Chet intently, watching their every move...until they started for the cistern tunnel opening. Then he let out an actual full throated growl and launched himself onto the probe pole, biting down and tugging hard. "Hey, Boot! Stop it right now. No time to play! Gage is in trouble big time!" admonished Marco. Kelly actually threw a glove, hard, at Boot's face. Boot yelped, but didn't let go until he literally dragged Marco and Chet away from Gage's gap by the search pole. Cap held up a hand, "Wait a moment. Boot. Hey, boy. Is it this you don't want?" he asked, kicking the pole's handle. Boot promptly dropped his grip on the probe's end and barked once, immediately ignoring it, even the part lying painfully across his front feet. "Drop it, Kelly. You, too, Lopez. Let's see what happens." Hank guessed. They did so. Boot immediately returned back to digging in his hole next to the rescue rope threading down into darkness. Hank frowned, eyeing up all of his men. "That.. was a firm dog's no.. in my book. Do we all agree on that?" Roy was looking at Boot as if he had grown a third eyeball. "That was odd for him. What does he know that we don't?" "I think we'd better find out a.s.a.p." Cap reasoned, squatting down by Boot to soothe away the dog's visible resulting guilty qualms, about forcifully correcting his firefighter companions. "Okay, Boot, you win. No probe. D@mned if I know the reason why not." Fifteen minutes later, as Twelve was warming up their backhoe and extension crane, there came a shock. Boot had reversed out of his dig tunnel, while the department heads talked rescue, carrying a familiar object of danger, which they all knew too well. "Whoa!! Oh, G*d, no, boy! Put it down!" startled the park ranger who tripped over backwards and started scrambling desperately away from a very patient, seated Boot who was holding a dusty piece of dynamite in his muddy jaws. The gang equally reacted and ran away from Boot swiftly. From behind the safety of the fire engines, Kelly shouted. "Boot, put that down." "In the creek, boy." Stoker added, gasping in fright. "Go bury your bone in the creek, like you used to do with them in your water bowl at home. Bury your bone, Boot. It's yours." "He does what?" Kelly asked. "Chet, will you just shush!" Hank hissed. "Boot. Now. Boot." Mike prompted the dog softly, forcing a reassuring smile that he didn't feel, onto his face. Casually, Boot carried his lethal load past them and down the hill to the creek bank where he dropped it with eminent doggy satisfaction, into the swift current. Immediately, the unstable nitroglycerin and decaying blasting powder soaked through as it sank, and was rendered harmless. Everyone present dropped to their knees in relief and shock. Hank rattled out new orders. "Shut your radios off. All of these vehicles, we back five hundred feet down the road. Stoker, get the bomb squad here pronto. H*ll, tell everybody! We might have a large quantity of miner age TNT artifact in the cistern tunnel if Boot found that one up here buried so shallow." Roy glared at the ranger. "Don't you people survey a little first before building a whole new underground water system?!" The man was visibly shaken. "Not my department. That's..." "The Department of the Interior, yeah, I know." Cap sighed in irritation. "Safe buffer! Red zone, yellow zone, green zone! Got that! Nobody in the first two without full blast armor protection!" "Now we know why Gage shut his mouth so fast." Chet said quietly. "He must be scared sh*tless." Roy fussed, beginning to pace behind the bulk of the engine. "I sure wish I could talk to him. Oh, no, Boot. Don't go back. Hey, no!" DeSoto leaped in vain to try and stop him and missed. He was forced to retreat back to the safe zone while Boot returned to his aggressive digging. Hank was deadly quiet. "If he doesn't stop doing that by the time P.D. gets here with the bomb squad, I'll have them take him out." Kelly qualmed. "Oh, Cap. They don't have to shoot him. He's just trying to help out." "Would you bet your life on a thirteen year old dog's instinct for survival?!" Stanley asked in a hiss of anger. Chet held his tongue. "I didn't think so." Hank sighed in a rush, sucking in a huge, stressed filled breath. "But.." Kelly minced, totally overwrought about Boot. "Go back behind the trucks now, Chet. You're gonna wait, safe, like the rest of us." "Cap, I can't just l--" "MOVE, Kelly! And that's an order!!" Hank roared. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Boot, barking, in a close up shot. Photo: An old crate full of dynamite. Photo: The gang setting up ropes and pulleys. Photo: Gage, pinned in a hole. Photo: A washed out road caused by a mudslide and a backhoe. Photo: Dixie and Kel looking worried in the paramedic base station. Photo: A cave in, filling with brown water. Photo: USAR-1 Truck 103's rear truck logo. Photo: A USAR chief on radio. Photo: Cap talking to his men urgently. **************************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2018 7:22 PM Subject: Booted ::Johnny......:: ::Johnny....:: came a mental touch inside Gage's mind. It was a memory. One that Gage had thought was long lost. "Mother?" he whispered without sound. He smiled, and some of the incredible stress pressing in on him eased greatly. His mother had been dead for some years. He hadn't thought of her since her funeral that he had attended, when he was nine. It was a relief to find out that he could still recall the sound of her voice even after so many years. ::I know why I'm thinking of her now. There's a cold corpse pressing up against me.:: he acknowledged, sadly. ::Feels just like her hand did when I touched it back then. I must have blocked that out until today.:: He didn't know how long it had been since his victim had died, only that he had. Quietly and peacefully. ::It couldn't have been too long ago. There's still oxygen left in this tank.:: Johnny analyzed. He felt his muddy fingers carefully turn off the valve to save it for himself if it was needed. He wanted to release the safety snaffle connecting himself and the boy, to let him fall away and take off some weight from off his life rope, but the danger of the dynamite sticks jumbled around him made that a pipe dream. So the paramedic endured the smell of aging escaped urine, bowel and the boy's souring blood, breath by breath. ::My life is what matters now.:: he reaffirmed. Gage closed his eyes to save his energy to fight against the chilling mud and water trickling steadily down his body. Dimly, he heard the sound of splashing below, but he didn't see the powerful spotlight being aimed up the bottom end of his crevassed hole, two hundred feet below, from the underground lake. ##U.S.A.R. 103 to Engine 51. We think we've spotted where your man is. There's dozens of sticks of old TNT floating in the water around Code F Victim One. Must have been a cache decades ago inside of a hidden old mine. No signs of movement, but there is only light water and mud falling into the lake. Plenty of breathing room for your man up there. He must realize what's happened. We found his radio battery tied up in a bag, floating nearby.## "So, still thinking but unable to take any action. Got it. Heads up on a potential risk to your divers in the area. A dog is digging, on his own, trying to reach Gage, our paramedic. Watch yourselves. We can't stop him until P.D. arrives, if it comes to that." Hank replied on their frequency. The lieutenant diver in the lake swiftly hand signalled the others to return to the surface with their burden, adding the danger gesture to warn them on the reason why. They immediately swam away and the lieutenant in touch with Cap, followed. As an afterthought, he put his own lit up flashlight inside of the battery bag, aimed up so that some of its light might reach 51's trapped man and give him encouragement while he waited for rescue. ##Copy that, 51. Retreating out of the red zone.## -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roy almost tripped himself getting back to Hank by Engine 51. "Foam, Cap. Fill up the hole. Johnny'll figure it out and use that O2 to breathe. And then whatever Boot does under the stuff, won't ignite any sparks." Cap got excited. "TNT's not crude oil, but it is soluable. Just might work minimizing the explosion risks. Good thinking, Roy." He got on his radio to U.S.A.R. and L.A. ##Engine 51. Send Foam 127 to our location. We're going to lay some down as a safety measure.## ##Will do.## came the reply, echoed by the dispatcher. Five minutes later, Cap got Station 127's men gathered in a group. "Not asking you to do this without volunteering. We need to enter a red zone around unstable TNT buried in a hill. Our man's stuck in that cistern hole, unable to help himself because of it. What I need are two foam nozzles placed in two holes. One, in that dog's, and the other in my paramedic's, who's about eighty feet below on a life line with a pediatric victim, down in the second hole. Will you do it? We're guessing there's enough old explosive down there to vaporize a quarter block around that epicenter." Nobody on 127's backed away from the task. "Understood." said their captain, waving them on to carry out the measure. "My men know the risks and will take them." "We can catch the dog." a firefighter offered. "You won't be able to. He's a street mutt with a rescue bent. The best thing we can do is make things safer around him while he goes to town. Time's the main factor. The faster we lay the foam, the less chances there will be for us getting blown to bits by that TNT, while we get my man and the last boy out." Cap shared. "Beats the H*ll out of waiting for the bomb squad. They'll take all day securing that stuff." 127's captain sighed. "Now you see the problem. Our golden hour for that boy is passing. He has major injuries." Hank said. "Say no more. This is the course we have to take, Hank. D*mn police department. Wish they'd speed up their procedures a little when it comes to incendiaries." his colleague captain muttered. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Johnny thought he was hearing things, a fast scraping near his head. About two feet away from his face, a crumble of dirt fell away in the dimness, and then... he smelled wet dog! Mud matted, eagerly digging, claws and paws finally broke through and a familiar impossible sight met Johnny's relieved eyes in the damp darkness. "..Boot!.. How'd y-- " he broke off, conscious of the risks of sound waves around the mummified dry TNT sticks squeezed against his face. ".. careful... careful..." he whispered, holding up hands to try to contain Boot's enthusiasm at reaching him. Johnny's gloves sank into Boot's coat as the dog wormed his whining way inside of his hole to sniff the boy's still face. His hands came away thick with fire retardant foam. ::Oh, this is ...just perfect. Fire foam!:: Gage thought happily. Johnny reached up to help Boot keep digging to let in more foam from his entry tunnel until it began to well up thickly. Johnny slipped on the oxygen mask from the tank he had saved and lowered the rim of his helmet to ward off the waves of foam starting to cascade down around them. Boot's sad whines filled the hole when he realized that he was smelling death in Johnny's arms. The foam matted dog stopped digging and curled up in the space he had created near Johnny's face, sneezing mightily inside of their foam pile. He had decided that he wasn't going to leave Gage's side. Boot tiredly rested, his head tucked neatly underneath one of Johnny's arm pits so he kept some breathing room free of the surfactant that was softly billowing down from above and around them. Slowly, one by one, Gage started grasping and gathering up only those dynamite sticks he knew were sitting completely underneath the foam layer. He began to drop them out of danger range into the lake below, from in between his wide spread, dangling feet. He felt a sudden wave of dizziness sweep over him and a blinding headache began to pound. ::Sh*t, it's the nitroglycerin gel beads oozing out of the dynamite sticks. They're getting in contact with my skin. I'm absorbing it. My pressure's dropping just like it would for any angina patient chewing on a sublingual nitro tablet. Well, at least I can't go into shock now. My heart vessels are dilating nicely.:: Boot's constant soft whining turned into a half choking groan as a spasm jerked through the dog's body. ::Eoo. Same thing's happening to him.:: Johnny realized. ::Poor dog. I have no idea if nitro's a canine toxin.:: Johnny helped Boot clear the nasty tasting stuff out of his mouth with a clean wad of gauze as Boot started drooling and panting next to him. ::He was moving TNT getting down here? That's gonna stop right now.:: He decided to send Boot away. He took off his watch and placed it in Boot's mouth over his teeth. "Here, boy. Take this to Cap. I'm fine, see? You can leave now. Go show him, Boot. Don't worry about the boy. Nothing we can do. You're here for me. Got it? Now, go.. Back the way you came. Let them know you got to me and I'm okay. Good, boy. I'll follow you up.:: Johnny watched as Boot's weary, but wagging tail, disappeared back into the sunlight glowing foam, pouring out of the new hole. Then he bent to tie off his spare rope around the dead boy's chest so he would be able drag him along Boot's escape route, a few feet behind himself so he'd have some crawling room. ::That flowing foam should wash any sticky nitroglycerin off Boot's coat now that he's back under it. Too late for me, though. I don't have any fur. I gotta get out before I pass out from vaso dilation. There's enough gel residue soaking away around here to overdose on:: Thinking ahead, Johnny tied tight tourniquets around his upper arms and legs to keep his core pressure up to fight the side effects. ::Here we go.:: Johnny thought starting to work a slow careful way back up to the surface, worming his way around safely soggy dynamite sticks and mud clumps threatening to act like slippery soap beneath him. He began to use his turnout jacket's haligan tool like a climber's axe to keep from sliding backwards. As he expected, the gang had left his life line snubbed to an anchor but with the ability to get more slack so he could move and still have a life rope to catch him if he fell. ::I love Stoker's knots. Wish I was as good as he is with them.:: he grinned, pushing up through the river of foam. The light above him was grower brighter. ::Wow. Boot's long gone. He's probably already running across the parking lot.:: He felt his heart flutter inside of his chest for a moment and pushed it away with a deep breath from the medical oxygen tank. ::Uh, uh.. Not yet.:: he thought, squeezing his abdominal muscles while holding his breath to slow its rate down. His shortness of breath went away soon after he did the Valsalva trick. Johnny Gage resumed climbing. His next hand grip clutched warm dried grass and it was then Gage knew that he was out of the hole. He heard Boot barking in the distance to his left while he sat up inside of the sunny foam layer undulating around him. He didn't trust standing up the way he felt. Johnny cut away the dead boy's rope from around himself and headed on hand and knees for the nearest tree, carefully checking for dynamite sticks appearing in the foam he was swiping away, while he crawled away from the cistern river bank. His oxygen tank ran out just as his glove reached the roots of an oak tree. He ripped off the oxygen mask and clawed a hole out of the foam glistening above his head, to the sky, so he could breathe. Then he pulled out his chrome silver Zippo cigarette lighter and lit the tree's peeling bark on fire. ::They'll see that smoke and this tree, flaming up easily. There's no way they won't know that I'm not exactly in this spot:: Thirty seconds later, Johnny felt a heavy bouquet of a fanning hose spray start showering over him, washing away the foam and soaking him thoroughly to the skin. ::Bye bye nitro issues. I'm being decontaminated.:: he thought giddily. "Grab my hand!" shouted a voice above him. It was a firefighter from 127's stretched out on his belly on top of a horizontal aerial ladder stretched three feet above the ground over the foam pile. "I'll pull you up with me!" Johnny saw the glove reaching down to him and he reached up. The view doubled and tripled, his visual blurry. "Took a nitro hit. Can't...focus." he gasped. "No problem." And the firefighter hooked a shepard's crook behind Gage's collar and hoisted him up into the air on it long enough to grab his belt and haul him to the safety of the suspended ladder above the foam pond. Gage felt himself hefted face down and firmly held between the rungs before the whole aerial began to move as Truck 127 backed swiftly away from the red zone. "How are you doing?" the firefighter asked, hanging onto Johnny in a tight grip. "Half ...*gasp*.. awake." Johnny whispered, keeping his eyes shut from the pounding in his head. "Where's Boot?" "Who?" the man asked, carefully rolling Johnny over onto his back and into his lap. "The dog. He got me outta there." Gage mumbled, feeling the firefighter place an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. He began to push it away. "Not yet. Listen to m-" The firefighter knocked his hands away. "Shut up and breathe that in. You're blue. I haven't seen that dog since we laid the foam down. Why are you blue, paramedic?" "Uh,..... hypoperfusion from ...n-nitroglycerin....it's not--h.." Johnny guessed, weakily. "Not hypothermia. Got it." The firefighter squeezed off an assisted series of breaths into Johnny's lungs with a trigger valve a few times before he got onto his radio. "Cap, he's conscious! Get that rescue squad over here! The boy's missing. The rope around Gage's second life belt has been cut." ##Copy that.## came the reply. ##We'll start an immediate search.## Johnny could still hear Boot barking. Clear as a bell. "Go get the dog. Get him out of t----It's too late for the k---" His world went fuzzy and indistinct, like a dream, as they bounced on the ladder as the fire engine got adequate distance away from danger. Johnny's mumbling went unheard. Puffs of mechanized pressured oxygen became his whole world as his heart began to pound from increasing hypoxia. In a blur, Gage thought he saw Roy rushing towards him in Squad 51 from up the access road, screaming closer, with full lights and sirens on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back at Engine 51, Cap crowed happily. "They've got Gage!" he said, pulling his radio which had been set to monitor 127's truck-to-truck frequency, from his ear. "How?" Marco startled. "I don't know!" Hank said, smiling. Marco and Stoker started kicking into high gear. Mike asked. "Did they get the boy?" Hank frowned and finally shook his head. "They didn't mention finding him. Gage and the kid were separated somehow." Chet strained his ears at a sound, out of the rescue usual. "That's Boot." he said, pointing out to the foam field. "Hear him barking?" "Yeah, I wonder why he doesn't--" Lopez puzzled, turning to look in the same direction. Bark! said Boot, leaping up high so his head cleared the top surface of the foam retardant's rising layer. "There he is, guys. Whew! He was just trying to find us. Here, boy! We're over here!!" Kelly shouted, gesturing so the dog could see him. Bark! came another excited yap from the dog. A little closer. In his mouth, Chet saw the blue color of a boy's shoe, and a dusky tinted bare leg. "Oh, my G*d. Is he dragging the kid?" Stoker asked, horrified. "It's not safe. He's gonna hit a--" Bark! Bar-- A colossal boom blossomed like a fiery orange and white cancer from the hill as a sudden explosion ripped apart the middle of the foam riddled meadow. It was followed by a cascade of concussions as buried TNT nearby was jarred and triggered into self destructing too, caused by the first explosion of dynamite on the surface. Firefighters everywhere, dove under their trucks for cover as heavy clods of earth, rock and boulders showered down around them in a debris mushroom a hundred feet wide. The earth shook as centuries old hell fire was released from the old mine in one explosion after another. Chet didn't see the fire or the flying debris expanding over the red zone. He could only recall the sight of just moments ago, when his eyes had connected with Boot's happy ones, because the dog had thought he was successfully rescuing another one. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Cap on the walkie talkie near crew applying fire foam. Photo: Johnny reaching a victim tied to a rope. Photo: Stoker reaching out a ladder to you. Photo: Firefighters flinching in a massive explosion. Photo: Chet Kelly looking stunned in a close up. Photo: Truck 127 stretching out it's aerial ladder horizontally. Photo: Boot, peeking out over an edge, between Johnny's legs. ************************************************* From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, April 8th, 2018 7:34 PM Subject: A Matter Of Honor Roy flinched as the explosions in the mine began in earnest as he drove to meet the fleeing rescue team coming directly at him, in the green zone. Thump! ::Oh, G*d!:: He let out an inarticulate shout of suprise when a still recognizable bloody severed tail landed on the windshield. A swipe of the automatic wipers dislodged it a few seconds later, to fall away and off the glass, so he could see again. :: I-I'm so, so sorry, pal.:: "You died in that? D*mn it to H*ll!" he screamed out loud. Then tears came. :: You did it, boy. I hope you knew you mattered one last time, Boot. You got to him down there, all by yourself, and you pulled it off. You saved Johnny. You were such a good, good dog. We're all gonna miss y-.:: his reeling thoughts erupted. "I am so f*cking proud of you, you c-crazy *ss mutt." he whispered over the sound of the sirens. Then there was no time to mourn. --------------------------------------------------------- DeSoto angled Squad 51 perpendicular when he parked, using its bulk as a concussive barrier between 127's landed bucket and the most direct line of sight to the new fire zone. "On the ground. Get him flat. Fast as you can!" he shouted to 127's crew who were unloading Johnny by his life belt and rope from their emergency ladder. "I've got a replacement resuscitator already set up. Is he pulling any of that oxygen in on his own?" "He's got reduced ventilatory effort, but yeah." reported the lieutenant. "Lost consciousness about twenty seconds ago." Hurrying, the crew got Gage laid out with his head tipped fully back to keep his airway open while they worked with his inhalations to maintain regular chest rises using their demand valve. "51? An ambulance is a minute out. What do you think's wrong with your man?" their crew leader engine driver asked. "My men said they couldn't find any injuries on him. He said something but damned if we could figure it out. He's still cyanotic." DeSoto looked up from where he was rapidly setting up the biophone and its antennae. "He got into some decaying dynamite residue. Wash him down asap. He's suffering acute vasodilatation from it." "That I know. Right." said the leader, accepting the clothes shears DeSoto tossed him. Swiftly, the firefighters cut off Johnny's sticky, gore stained uniform clothes and gear and in seconds, they started handle brush scrubbing Johnny's skin clean aggressively under a firm reel line's fanning spray. "What about this chilling? Our water's like pure ice." "Won't hurt him. He's already hypovolemic. That cold might reduce some of his protean ICP that's making him black out." Roy said, hurrying to hail Rampart. "Rampart, this is Squad 51 on boosted band. Do you copy?" The hospital's open line just hissed without a reply. DeSoto bent by Johnny's ear while he waited to connect with a nurse or doctor. "You're safe. You're out of there, Junior. Hold on for us." He looked up and waved to Cap in an urgent swipe to rush Engine 51 in. "Rampart this is County 51. How do you read?" he said, switching to a secondary channel in a test. The amber light on the biophone radio still glowed steady in a confirmed received tie in. "Come on. Come on." He threw the unasnwered phone down when Gage began seizuring. 127's firefighters tipped him onto his side as Johnny vomited, only briefly interrupting his decomtamination shower. "Watch his head!" DeSoto cautioned, using a tarp to keep from getting any of the explosive gel on his gloves and turnout coat. He helped the firefighters clear out Johnny's mouth with a suctioning wand. The convulsion soon ended. They picked Gage up and moved him out of the dirty water puddle they had created, to a dry spot on the level dirt, before starting in again with their long handled scrub brushes. The crew man delivering assisting breaths, kept tabs on the poisoned paramedic's carotid pulse. "He's getting bradycardic." he told Roy. "It's 46." "Noted. When your decon's done, dry him off and bundle him well in blankets. Leave out his arms for I.V.s." DeSoto turned his back to the fire roiling out of the cistern fissure and new blast crater so that it wouldn't distract him as he got back on the biophone. Already he could hear the additional alarm tones alerting new engine companies, over his H.T., that Cap had called in to manage the newly born wildfire spreading downwind and into the wildlife refuge area. Hank was the first one out of the truck as he and the rest of the gang rushed to his side. "Roy?" "He's dyspneic! Get me the I.V. and drug boxes from the squad. Defib's right there. Patch him in as soon as you can." Roy told him. "Rampart, this is Rescue 5-1. Do you read me?" he urged, clamping down on his frustration at the delay of their response, so that it didn't leak out into the biophone's receiver. ##51, this is Dr. Early. I read you loud and clear. Go ahead with your transmission. 39's had a cardiac arrest.## "Code I. Near respiratory arrest. Confirmed environmental nitroglycerin exposure. Pulse 46, unconscious, now post-ictal from an active seizure, on assisted 100% O2. He is undergoing current flush water decontamination." ##All of those symptoms sound like they're due to arterial hypovolemia from an overdose of nitrates through the skin. Epinephrine is contraindicated in this case. Central volume expansion to offset his deflated vital signs will be critical until the half life of the nitroglycerin, still in his liver, has passed. This boosting should start to take effect about 2 to 3 minutes after that shower's done, once established. Use Normal Saline as fast as you can push it. Use two large bore needles into the cubital fossa area on both arms. Those vessels most likely haven't collapsed yet. Add a third into a jugular if you have access. Oh, and 51, let me know the color of his blood when you get a vein. There's a complication,.. a methemoglobinema that causes an impairment of oxygen delivery in the body following nitrate exposure if it's been extremely high.## "Rampart would you repeat that last order?" DeSoto said, watching Chet and Marco set up three I.V. bags and infusion lines. ##Is his blood brown or red when exposed to the air, 51?## asked Early. "Stand by." Roy glanced at Hank. "Cap, prick his finger with your knife. Then show me the site. Quickly." Cap didn't hesitate or question the bizarre treatment. He nicked the pad of Gage's closest thumb, avoiding nerves and bone. "It's dark, almost like chocolate, Roy." DeSoto handed Hank a dressing to bind up the wound. "Rampart, it's brown and staying that color." Joe Early leaned into the microphone at the base station. "The hypoxia you are noting will get worse, before it gets better. Be aggressive on any resuscitation efforts. Titrate 1 to 2 mg per kg of body weight of methylene blue into your best wide open I.V. It should counteract any more of that blood cell binding in under ten minutes. Keep using pure oxygen, even after he wakes up. His blood will still be partially unable to transfer O2 for a few hours after we stop the process. He may become confused, or combative on you. Watch for heart block. I want a new vitals set in five minutes." Roy repeated back the medical orders. Then he abandoned the phone and kicked Johnny's care plan into high gear. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Half way to Rampart, in a speeding Mayfair, Johnny opened his eyes, which began to meet Roy's, from the cocoon of heated blankets that had been nested around him. "I feel like sh*t, Roy." he finally said, through his non-rebreather oxygen mask. "That's an improvement, believe it or not. How's your head? Your EKG looks great." Roy smiled tiredly, reaching for the BP cuff to take another reading for the chart. "Ah. Don't move." DeSoto said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I had to bolus stick your neck." Gage grunted his dislike of needles out loud and long. "My jugular? The worst possible I.V. choice ever made, Roy." he said stiffly, keeping his neck the same way. Then he answered the question."7 of 10. Out of.... breath." "Working on that. It's chemical hypoxia. You're the perfect candidate for a transfusion once we get to Rampart." Gage groaned his unhappiness again, even longer than the first time. Roy didn't change his relieved expression. "Yep. More needles. I could always knock you out with a paralytic and intubate you to get recovery happening a little faster from your perspective." "No... way in H*ll." Gage shivered. Roy grinned and turned up the heat inside of the ambulance. "You found one, and got out of it." "Yeah, I remember that. And... Wait a minute. Where's Boot? He always stays with anybody he gets out. That's the one sure thing about him. Or, don't tell me...." he smiled weakily. "Did he just run away again once things were over?" Roy actually looked away, and stopped pumping up the BP cuff. Then he finally spoke. "He's gone, Johnny. H-He didn't make it out." "What?" Gage gaped in a gasp. "He was killed? I do ...think I... remember a fire. I... Oh, man. Can anybody guess what happened?" "He went back for the dead boy. Stoker seems to think a TNT bundle was bumped when Boot tried to drag him out of the foam while he was still blinded by the bubbles." "Oh, Boot. Why did you have to try and do that?" Johnny sighed. "We were right there and moving in. You didn't deserve to die. Not like--." Still body weak, he couldn't form tears. But he wanted to. "It was in his blood. In his soul, if there is such a thing for a dog." DeSoto couldn't meet his partner's shocked eyes. "Earned that halo a thousand times over." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Four days had passed since the cistern rescue call. The wildfire the self destructing mine had started, had recently shown that it would be with them as a continual engaged fire department battle, for most of the summer. Chet Kelly walked into the rec room past the kitchen and found Johnny sitting slumped on the couch, resting a small rectangular cigar box, about the size of a dress tie, on his chest. He seemed lost in thought. And that made Kelly automatically curious. "What's that, Johnny? Cookies from your aunt?" he grinned, putting a fake hungry look onto his face. "It's what's left of Boot." he replied morosely. Chet immediately started gagging when he figured it out. "Oh, Gage! Why?! That's disgusting. What's the matter with you? Why don't you just bury the thing and be done with it, like decent folk." "U.S.A.R. recovered it. It's sealed. It doesn't smell. I'm.. still trying to decide what I want to do about him. I owe him... my life, Chet. Can't you wrap your grossed out little brain around that concept? Or is it a little too deep for you to comprehend?" Chet didn't take offense. He actually joined Gage on the couch right next to Johnny, and then they both began to stare at the box together. Kelly threw up a hand. "We could always see if we could arrange for a fire department style funeral." "For a dog? Give me a break. The chief would never go for that. He'd think we were both nuts and send us to counseling for PTSD." "Oh. He would. Skip that idea." Chet gingerly took the box out of Gage's troubled fingers and reverently placed it onto his own slumped belly. He just barely stopped himself,... from actually petting it. "We could always.. bury it like one of Boot's bones." Johnny shot to his feet, and snatched the box away from Chet protectively. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Chet." "Why? Nothing wrong with the suggestion, Johnny. Boot did that all the time with the dead squirrels and birds he always found around the station. If Boot were here, he'd probably like that idea." Kelly reasoned calmly. "Sounds perfectly logical to me." said Mike Stoker, entering and overhearing. Cap and Marco were on his heels. "How about cremation? That's clean." Marco shrugged. "He burned enough." Johnny growled. "All right. All right. Don't get your overalls in a kink." Cap huffed. "You can't keep hiding that in your locker, Gage. One of the other shifts might find it and freak out." "He belonged here, Cap. I can't just... take him home. I'd feel funny about doing that. That's kinda sick." Johnny replied. "And hanging onto dead dog parts at work, isn't?" Hank countered, gesturing at the box in Johnny's hands. "Well..." Roy intercepted the two of them and took custody of Boot's box. "I've got the perfect solution. My wife came up with a plan to start a fundraiser to dedicate a memorial to all the children who've died in the cistern park. It's partly to get the powers that be to solve the problem by getting more public aware of it. She said Boot's tail could be interred inside of the statue and be remembered that way, in the place where he made his final rescue. I'm sure the rest of the guys in the other stations would go for this in a big way, too. We could collect the names of everyone Boot helped and combine those on the memorial, to make it less sad of a topic, for visitors." The gang waited on pins and needles for Johnny's reply. They literally were frozen in their shoes at the sight of his building tears. Finally, Gage let out a huge, sad sigh, and spoke. "I was his last rescue save, Roy." said Johnny, his eyes finally drying up. "I'd be honored to become part of it." "Well." Cap said, placing a comforting hand on Johnny's shoulder. "That settles that. Not...seeming to be undecorous but,.. please store Boot's box outside somewhere until these final things get panned out. It's gonna take a while. Up high, perhaps, like in the hose tower, so the rats can't get at it." Gage acted startled. "K-kay. Sorry, Cap, I.. forgot about refuge regulations." "Gage, he's not trash. I wasn't referring to that one." "I'll go store it." said Stoker, taking the box from Roy. "It'll be fine wrapped up in a tarp. I'll warn the other shifts to be careful around it so they don't knock it down." Johnny's eyes follow the box the whole way out the door, but he didn't follow the engineer. He slumped back on the couch, finding that his hands were restless without anything to hold. "I still owe him, guys." "How can you ever repay an act like that back?" Roy asked, gently. "I don't know,.. I... Maybe I ... Hey, should I try finding another dog who can fill Boot's boots?" he said, finally smiling a little. "Then perhaps we might stop missing him so much." The rest of the gang started smiling, all at once. "I think that's a fabulous idea, Gage. We'll help you look." nodded a beaming Hank. ----------------------------------------- Photo: Boot leaping into the air. Photo: Johnny, unconscious in a head block. Photo: Roy, looking down urgently. Photo: Foil suited Hazmat men battling a hot fire. ************************************************* From: patti keiper Sent: Monday, May 28th, 2018 7:39 AM Subject: Plunk Joanne DeSoto was laughing over tuna salad sandwiches and coffee with Dixie McCall in the hospital cafeteria. "So there he was, looking like a child caught with a hand in the cookie jar, after he found out that I had mowed the lawn around him while he took a nap in the living room chair." giggled the petite teacher with a curly shoulder length bob. McCall chuckled. "Roy's certainly not one to go against women's lib. But chivalry in him is most certainly not dead. Being macho and being able to handle everything all in one is all the rage these days with most guys I know." "I can't understand it. He was so tired after working that cistern mine wildfire that started near your place, all weekend, on his normal days off. Of course I'm going to step up to the plate about doing everything around the house. And I told him so, too. Dixie, I actually made him take his apron off." Joanne said seriously, biting her lip. "Oh yeah? And how did he react to that?" Dixie asked, leaning in confidentially. "Like a wounded puppy." "Oh, no." Dixie smiled, conmiserating. "Well, Roy just turned thirty. Maybe that's a bit like how turning forty effects us women. When you burn your candle at both ends, you start to feel like a wet dish rag more and more whenever you try it. Must be especially noticeable when you're already a hard working firefighter." "Really? Do you think that's possible? Wow, I'll just take your word for it. I haven't experienced that effect. I'm..." she broke off politely. "Still young?" the head nurse shrugged off the reference. "Count your blessings that you don't have to cover any gray yet like I do. So the lawn's neat and dishes are already done. So what? You both should still feel like you're fully accomplished and caught up, which is normally not true for about 99% of the rest of us unmarrieds. Tell Roy I told you so. Maybe he'll relax a little more without feeling so guilty about it." A dimming of the sun made both women look up from their meals. The smoke plume from the fire was spreading and beginning to track out over the ocean. Joanne shivered. "Did you know it's already spread over 100,000 acres this month. Even with mutual aid fire departments from New Mexico and Northern California working with all of ours, nobody's making any headway in containing any of it yet." "I'm not surprised. Some head honcho somewhere decided that doing controlled burns in the foothills once every ten years was a lot better than forking out the bucks for doing one every spring. Have you noticed how fast surrounding communities are popping up all around us? Hard to be a good forester when everybody's over protective of that multi- million dollar mountain view out everybody's window. Trees are popular now. That's why I bought a condo and moved where I did so I'd be near a grove of rainbow eucalyptus trees located on a ridge. I wanted to be closer to the overwintering monarch butterflies that come there every year." "Oh, yeah? How's that working out for you?" Joanne sighed, sipping her coffee absently. "Smoke's getting bad at night. Kel and I can't even open our windows any more to cool off while we're sleeping." McCall sighed. "And it's no picnic returning home at midnight after work most days, because so many out of staters are driving in taking a gander at the fiery freakshow burning alongside the blacked out freeway. I've added an extra forty five minutes to my commute time, one way." "Ooo. You can always both come stay with Roy and I for a while. We've plenty of space. The kids are away all of the time with their sports and summer jobs these days. I hardly see them except at mealtimes." "I thank you for the offer but I don't quite feel like a refugee yet. Kel and I are both smokers so a little more blowing in off the mountains can't make that much more of a difference quite yet. D*mned Hollywood. Every day, I blame them for having made cigarettes look so glamorous in all of the movies." "Ever going to try to quit, Dixie?" "Someday. Maybe. Probably when work finally makes gum chewing legal, so I can start chomping my way into a pair of dentures instead." Joanne giggled and pushed her empty plate aside. "So, now where were we? My brain goes out the window whenever I'm hungry and haven't been eating fast enough to compensate." Dixie said, folding her sandwich in half and hunting around for a narrow place to take her first bite of it. "Eat. I'll talk." Mrs. DeSoto huffed good naturedly. "The fundraiser's set for minigolf games at Murphy's Arcade and Golf Course at the new pier. I struck up a deal with the business owner. He's brand new and hasn't had his grand opening yet. The place is ours for three whole days until the 8th when he goes live." "Smart man. He'll get free publicity with the fire department and press doing that. And afterwards, as the official sponsor of the Cistern Park Memorial Project." McCall nodded in appreciation. "All we have to do in return now is... hire a band for our event." said Joanne, flinching at the daunting task placed before them. "Oh. Do we have anybody lined up who's a musician and can play?" "Roy says he knows two people he can think of already who fit the bill." Joanne said excitedly. "Just wait until you find out who they are." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Johnny Gage and Chet Kelly burst into the rec room at Station 51 carrying their mutual guitars, sparkling with energy. Johnny and Chet took possession of the whole couch, moving their instruments, and Henry the basset, out of the way. "Sorry, Henry." said the curly haired Irish firefighter. "But you've got your dog house to live in, that you never use." Chet said, pointing to the wooden one gathering dust underneath the freshly sketched up chalkboard. The rest of the gang looked up appreciatively from their taco dinners at the kitchen table. Marco grinned, reaching for the extra extra hot sauce. "So what's the latest? Battle of the banjos?" he chuckled, meeting the eyes of the others in amusement. "This is going to be family fare." Gage told him, strumming a few bars of a bright, happy diddle. "It's kids we're going to be honoring at the fundraiser, with a lot of grieving parents to soothe. I can't see nabbing any donations from the public if we don't cheer them up, while were at it." "What can be played that won't sound hokey or stuffy, while mini golfing?" Mike Stoker asked. "This." crowed Kelly, and with a nod, both he and Johnny broke out into a Jimmy Buffet tune in a quick silver, lilting duet of harmony and hand slap percussion. Gage grinned happily as he and Chet strummed out the song briskly. "In a pair of matching Hawaiian shirts, what can go wrong playing our set with this kind of stuff?" he said. Chet looked up from his note picking fingers. "It's snappy, happy and jiving. I mean, who doesn't like Jimmy Buffet?" Cap raised his lone hand. Johnny sniffed. "Well, you're not going to be there, you have to work Saturday at Headquarters, because of the fire." "Ah, the joys of upper level rank. Not. I hate brainstorming strategies in a think tank with a passion. Everybody always thinks their ideas are the best one for tackling any issues. I can't get even a single word in, edgewise." Stanley sighed, not looking up from his newspaper. "That whole meeting's going to be a complete waste of my valuable weekend off time." "You could always bust back down to regular firefighter, Cap. Then those weekends full of crisis alerts become mandatory work shifts until further notice." DeSoto said while sipping coffee. His voice cracked at the end. Hank looked up seriously at his paramedic in an evaluating way. "Just how tired are you getting, Roy? Don't lie to your captain, or I'll kick your butt and then some." Johnny stopped playing his guitar and went straightfaced, his fun time over. "He's not exhausted quite yet, but he'll get there in the next day or two." Gage betrayed. "He hasn't gotten any nights off since the explosion. Me? I'm fine. I had two days in the hospital to rest up." "Roy?" Cap said, lowering his eyes and frowning. DeSoto looked up from a taco that just dumped out of his muscle weak hands. He rolled his eyes. "Okay, yeah, I guess I'm a little bushed." "A lot bushed." Johnny corrected, getting up and handing DeSoto a napkin from a dispenser that was out of his partner's reach. "He's already wearing his second uniform shirt of the day." Lopez raised his eyebrows. "What happened to his first one?" "I got shaving cream smeared all over it from the wind. I forgot that I hadn't actually .... shaved off any face hair yet, after dashing out on that last squad call we had." Roy confessed. "Johnny had to toss a towel at me." "Oh, yeah?" Hank mumbled. "Well I'm going to do the same thing, Roy. Right now." he said, getting up to go use the payphone to call L.A. "I'm calling in Brice. When he gets here, go home. Don't come back until 0600 Sunday. Is that clear? Next time you crash into a subjective wall, I want you to tell me right away. This wildfire isn't one you can auto-pilot through in less than shipshod shape. Firefighters get themselves killed that way. And it's usually long timers exactly like the two of us, who manage to do it, by getting cocky and misjudging slowly aging muscles." Roy didn't say anything and finally started scooping up his messy taco, with a fork. "32 is not old." he grumbled. "It's half again more than 21. Don't be stupid." Johnny chided. "Your peak is over. And at 26, I'm beginning the short slide down from mine. It's nothing to be ashamed about. Forty hours a week is an honest firefighter's schedule. Just like normal human beings last time I checked." Roy didn't rise to meet Johnny's gentle ribbing. Cap became further convinced that he had an overly tired man. "Battalion knows we're short handed this summer. Brush details on the Mine Fire are really putting a crimp on all of our urban coverages." Cap shared. "I'm sorry they lost track of how high your OT hours were actually sitting. My instant override, will fix that, uh, that's if your family budget's not in any hot water." "We're fine, Cap. I just knee jerked because my schedule filled up just like everybody else's, because of the mandatory all call work clause applied last week." DeSoto reassured, propping his chin into an elbow propped hand. "You're one year away from a veteran firefighter status on rotation. Then you won't have to respond to one, Roy." Hank offered. "In five months, six days, and thirteen hours, Cap. I do realize I'm slowing down guys. I'm not that blind yet not to see it." "Neither are we." said Mike Stoker. "We've got your back, Roy. One person can't be a Superman all of the time." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Dixie and Joanne sitting in a cafeteria at Rampart. Photo: A fire on a hillside, billowing smoke. Photo: Animated sparkles above and below the memorie of children, watching Dix and Joanne. Photo: Engine 51 on the driveway of Station 51. Photo: Chet and Gage playing guitar Photo: Mike Stoker chewing out a sweaty, grinning Roy. **************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, November 18, 2018 4:45 PM Subject: Dominoes Dr. Kel Brackett was taking a breather from the world, hiding in his office, in the dark. He sighed heavily as he rubbed his face and then leaned against his palms in a short rest. The pile of patient charts on his desk was shoulder high in front of him. "Fine time to go on vacation, Dr. Morton. It's almost the fourth of July. Why didn't I join you?" he chuckled, grimacing at the cold coffee he first swirled then sipped from his earliest morning mug. Shoving the folder stack away, he slid the phone closer and then dialed home for the first time in half a day. "Hey, Dix." he greeted with a false beaming smile on his face solely for the benefit of the empty room when she picked up. ##Is the whole world tired today? You know you're not fooling me, Kel. Your voice is never bright.## McCall pegged. "It's the fire." he confessed. "I've got a mountain of charts that should have gone to a team of pulmonary docs who are supposed to handle smog and smoke inhalation related cases. But no,.. we got them, because the air's really thick today and flaring up emergency COPD and asthma cases." he groused. "So we got them. We're the closest facility." ##It's got to be crazy busy. You're snarly. I'm so sorry.## Dixie conmiserated. ## Need me to--## "No, you're not coming in. Joe and I'll plow through the rest of the shift. If we have to, we'll start transferring the overflow to other hospitals not downwind of the plume. " ##You can always chain lock the doors or break out a bicarb needle. That'll clear the waiting room out in a hurry.## Dixie sighed, only half joking. "Oh, haha. Even the gangs are absent today. Did you enjoy lunch?" ##Yeah, it's been a long time since I've hung out with any of the firefighter wives. Joanne DeSoto was helping me plan out my fundraiser for the Cistern Memorial.## Kel Brackett frowned and let out a sympathetic breath. "What caused the Mine Fire anyway? I haven't had time to read the papers." ##Old dynamite buried in the dirt. 51 was there rescuing the latest cistern victim when they blew. It killed Boot, their dog, who was trying to rescue a boy he didn't know was dead. I was told a foam field interfered with his sense of smell.## "Oh, that's ...that's too bad. Even I've heard about Boot from other firefighters who had a chance to hang out and work with him." ##He was sweet. I used to stop by the station just to say hello, face to face. If any dog deserved a permanent home, it was him. You know... ## she said thoughtfully, ##...that home, I thought, could have been ours, Kel. I was working on officially adopting him the week he died. We were becoming close friends, without even speaking.## Dr. Brackett smiled. "I didn't know that. Would he have even stayed?" ##Probably not. But at least he would have known that another door was always open.## "He sure had a lot of those, Dixie." ##Wait, no what? Really?## "Yeah. I've heard that from at least a dozen different paramedics. They used to banter Boot stories in the coffee lounge all the time. I just.. never listened in past the dog's name. I was always coming and going too fast." ##It's not right, Kel.## "What isn't?" ##That a dog who saved everybody and never asked for anything in return, got killed. It was because of the ignorance of careless people, that he was. It was so g*d d*mned preventable.## "Dixie...Don't go beating yourself up. Hindsight is always twenty twenty when looking into the past. It's a trap." Dr. Brackett warned. McCall was silent for a long time. ##I know. I've.. got too much empathy.## "That's why you're a d*mned good nurse and my girlfriend." Brackett was gracious. He didn't remark on the sudden tearful sniffle that he heard over the line. ##I love you, Kel.## "I love you, too, Dixie. You're my angel of light. See you at midnight for dinner?" he chuckled. ##It's chicken soup and quiche tonight. I'm feeling lazy.## "Sounds divine. I'm sure it'll taste heavenly." ##I'll polish my halo.## Reluctantly, the two of them disconnected with a click. Break time was instantly over and the weight of his responsibilies for the day began to make Brackett's whole body ache again in one big throb. "Time to start delegating." he whispered, trading the desk phone for a white wall one which called the hospital administrative offices wing. "Fifty new beds is far too much to handle." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The sun had set and Roy had gone home on Cap's order, when the tones at Station 51 sounded. "That's us, Gage." Brice said, dropping his newspaper onto the kitchen table. "How can you tell?" Johnny asked, rushing after him, peeling off an apron he had been using to help Chet make some brownies. Already, the perfume of rich chocolate baking filled the air, hiding the fire smoke tang coming in from the outside through miniscule cracks in the surrounding kitchen brickwork. "Those sound clear without any static. Hear that? Call's close." Craig said, as they jogged to the apparatus bay. Gage nodded and drew out his fire fighter's turncoat and helmet from a side squad door, to put on. "What do you want to do?" ##Squad 51. Adult male down, trouble breathing. At Bethseda Nursing Home. 1515 Catrina Lane. 1515 Catrina Lane. Cross street, Avalon. Time out. 2025.## "I'll drive." offered Brice. "You've been on duty all day." "Thanks, Cap." Johnny said as Hank wrote down the address and handed them the slip of paper. "We'll try not to eat them all." Hank smirked. "Better not." Johnny groused at him. "Leave at least half a tray!" "That doesn't make any sense. They're only two of you." Hank huffed in a tease and disappeared. Brice's acceleration onto the street drowned out Johnny's protest comeback. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Two blocks away from their destination, Gage had finished counting slips and adding them to their vehicle log notebook. "This is number 19." "Nineteenth call today? That's light." Brice remarked. "No, nineteenth difficulty breathing call. We've had 32 runs in twelve hours so far." "Ouch. How's our O2 doing?" "Topped off. We're trading out bottles with all of the police departments because they've got more free time on their hands to go get them refilled." "Smart." "That was Roy's idea. He's seen more firestorm seasons than I have." Craig grunted. "Nine more than me." Johnny frowned at their call address, squinting at the writing. "Bethseda. Isn't this the state home for folks with no family?" "Yeah. All widows or widowers with no ties and poor financial situations." Brice shared. "But it's nicely run on tax payer money." "That helps." Gage grinned. "Our patient will be hydrated and well fed. And if we're lucky, he'll be clean." Johnny nodded. "Bathing's twice a day, unless there's doctor's orders for a once a day bed bath around dressings or other invasive daily care equipment." Craig recited. "You remembered that about this nursing home?" "Of course. There are only ten Homes to memorize in your station's service area. You've easy landmarks to recall." Brice shrugged. "The pier, the Arco refinery complex, Rampart, three schools, five churches, a half block of warehouses, six state canyonlands, eight city parks and.. how many nursing homes?" Johnny ticked off on his fingers. "Ten." "I'll... try to add those." Gage mumbled apologetically. "No need. That's why we write things down on paper." Johnny chuckled. "I think only Mike Stoker has a map brain like you do. He's constantly on the big one in the garage." "We quiz each other." Brice nodded. "Oh." "We're here." Craig said, pulling up Squad 51 neatly at the curbside of a tidy white washed single story facility surrounded by pleasant gardens and a water fountain. The fountain was bone dry in accordance to emergency city water rationing while the wild fire was still burning. "Let's bring everything." Gage said as he pulled out the Datascope, the rolling resuscitator, and drug box. Brice carried the biophone, the I.V. box and a spare sheet in case their patient wasn't in a room with a bed and needed lifting to a more accessible open area for treatment. "Hello!!" Johnny shouted as they hurried through the front nurses reception area which had been abandoned because of the emergency call. Gage could see a green flashing light on a panel marked "Living Room". "Common lounge." he said, tossing his head at the call light. Brice made note of that mentally and headed off that way, still announcing their presence. "Los Angeles County Fire Department. Anybody here?!" They burst into a cozy, sunny lobby area that had a blaring T.V. showing the Mine Fire helicopter footage. The two paramedics saw a huddle of folks around a frail, old, blue lipped man wrapped up and almost lost in a big ivory knit sweater, half slumped against a foot stool. It was their patient who replied out loud. "Just people... *gasp*... Getting old." he rasped. "Now Mr. Petersen. I told you to stop talking and to save your breath." said a young, casually dressed nurse wearing a stethoscope and a name tag. It was she who was struggling to hold the man upright so he could breathe a little better. "Hiya fellas. Thanks for coming so fast." Craig Brice helped her reposition Petersen right where he was on the floor into a sitting position and opened his shirt. Johnny drew out a non-rebreather mask and connected it to a top level flow. "Does he have a respiratory drive?" "Yes. Low carbon dioxide won't put him into arrest. This is cancer. He's only got one lung. Another resident forgot about the air quality alert and opened up the patio wide. We shut the doors as soon as we smelled it, but the brush fire smoke filled the room before our ventilation fans could suck it out again." Brice began listening to the old man's wheezing chest with a drum. "Are any other residents effected?" "Oh.. I didn't think of that.. Uh..." said the young woman. An older care attendant dressed in a t-shirt and name tag answered. "No. I checked. It's just Mr. Petersen. He's still about a month away from entering...." he broke off, self conscious. "Well..." "..hospice.." panted the old man under Johnny's hands. "You can say it, son. I know I'm dying. It's... not a secret but a blessing and... a date I'm looking forward to. I'm ... tired of being sick." "Okay, okay.. We heard that. Now just take it easy so you don't feel like you're suffocating so much." Gage told him gently."Just keep breathing this in, nice and slow." he said, pressing the oxygen mask over Petersen's nose and mouth. He used his other hand to push away Petersen's as the old man vaguely panicked and tried to pull it off again. "Just a few more seconds. Give the oxygen a chance to start working." "Ah..." he groaned, a sour sweat coating his skin. Then his lips began to turn rosy pink from dusky purple as he obeyed Johnny's instructions. Brice noted the fresh surgical scar left on the man's chest where surgeons had removed the tumorous lung earlier in the year. "Are you in any pain?" Petersen's shook his head faintly, gripping Johnny's hands over his face tightly with his own as he lay still and concentrated on just breathing. "Not any more... There's nerve...damage." "Give me his history." Brice ordered the nurse. "Any DNR orders?" "Not yet. Mr. Petersen's quite the fighter." said the young nurse with an affectionate smile for her client as she tenderly wiped away perspiration from his face and eyes with a soft cloth. "He wants to make it to spring.." "...so I can die in the garden.." puffed the old man. "Pretty enough place, by the fountain out there.." he chuckled wetly. "It's my last wish. To be with the butterflies when I..." he broke off when suddenly, he went unconscious. "Mr. Petersen?..." Gage called out, tipping back his head to keep an open airway for the oxygen mask. "Can you hear me? Mr. Peter--" he shifted a hand to perform a sternal rub to see how far down he had gone. "Brice. No reaction." Craig nodded, his eyes sharing that a heartbeat was still present, even and strong at a pulse he was feeling at a carotid. "I'll call Rampart. Let's keep him upright against the foot rest. He doesn't need to be intubated." "I'll hook up an EKG so we can see what else is going on." Johnny added. "They'll want a twelve lead over Lead II." "Yep. It'll be Dr. Brackett. He's the in-charge tonight." One of the nurses set an open folder down next to Brice and Johnny so they could read Mr. Petersen's patient record. It included vitals sets every six hours since dawn that day. It listed off current medications and allergies and when the cancer metasticized. Craig Brice rattled off the data he had obtained during his examination to his partner. "Pulse is 110, regular. Left lung is crackly, but not wet at all. No peripheral edema in the limbs. BP is 86 by palpation. There's no skin tenting. Respirations are.." "22 and shallow with improving light central core cyanosis." Johnny completed as he snatched up and read Mr. Petersen's medical information. "His last oral intake was at two, a grilled hotdog and an ice tea. Last med was just two Tylenol for a mild headache." he grinned. "Mr. Petersen, wow, your lunch sounded like it was real tasty. A lot better than mine. I had just boring tacos." Mr. Petersen finger twitched and the corners of his mouth turned up faintly. "He's coming out of it." Gage grinned, "He probably just got a little tired after taking in that few minutes of smoke." "He was badly frightened when things turned stuffy." said the older nurse. "His stamina's not the best." "Does he faint often?" Craig asked, setting up the biophone for his hail. "Not at all. Now's the first time since he arrived to stay with us." "Okay." Then Brice turned to the biophone. "Rampart this is Squad 51. How do you read?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Photo: Dixie at her apartment, dressed in pink, by a glowing lamp. Photo: Dr. Brackett in his office on the phone. Photo: Brice driving Squad 51 with Johnny Photo: An old man in a nursing home, in breathing distress. Photo: A close up of the biophone and the Datascope defibrillator. *************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2018 6:22 PM Subject: Melting Point At Rampart, the hospital was still bustling activity in the E.R. But his eyes noted immediately the flashing incoming call light. Concentration time for him was still hard won, counted in seconds for each file in his arms. Kel bought more by closing the glass alcove door behind him in the paramedic base station room and setting his casework onto a nearby table swiftly. Dr. Brackett replied in moments. "Unit calling in. Repeat your last transmission." Craig Brice cleared his throat and collected his thoughts into condensed form. ##This is Squad 51 with a respiratory distressed 78 year old orally fed male with a history of cancer related pneumonectomy in March. On sixteen liters of O2, with unresolved, fluctuating awarenes levels. His trigger was the outside air." the paramedic shrugged, gesturing at the brush fire smoke hazing up the nursing home's rec room windows. "Understood. What are his vitals?" Brice told him and then added. ##We have twelve lead telemetry ready.## "Send it." Brackett answered, flipping on the paper feed to the biocom demodulation console. ##10-4, Rampart.## said Craig as he pointed to Gage to switch on their feed. Kel nodded as a strip began appearing. "I am receiving. Send two minutes of EKG. Then start an I.V. Normal Saline 1000 ml at a rate of 20cc's per hour. Give him 2 mgs atropine IV to dry out any pulmonary edema you note in that lung. I'll bet he has a ton. If he needs intubation on the trip in, be aware of tracheal deviations due to the changes that were made by surgeons and alter your technique accordingly using an EOA, not an E.T. Transport as soon as possible. I'll have a respiratory oncologist specialist standing by." Craig repeated back his care orders out loud so Johnny could hear them again in double confirmation. Then he said, ## Our E.T.A. to the hospital will be fifteen minutes precisely, Rampart.## "We'll be ready for him promptly." answered Kel, marvelling yet again at Brice's uncanny ability to time future events not yet arrived. Mr. Petersen shook his head weakily from inside of his oxygen mask gratefully. "Appreciate the .....special.." he gasped. "Don't talk." said the older nurse kindly. "They know." she smiled. Five minutes later and hooked into multiple lines, the tired senior was transferred onto a Mayfair crew's cot, by Gage and the EMTs and was bundled up in sheets to start soaking up his cold sweat. The sick man grinned faintly and reached up to his caretaker's hand. "I'll be back, Bet. Keep that garden bench warm for me." "Sure." she nodded, relief warring with worry in her eyes, but not in her voice. Craig nipped that in the butt. "There's no artifact cardiac wise and his breathing volume's still improving with just this minimal intervention." he winked at her. "His will be an overnight stay only I suspect." "He's always right." added Johnny seriously, looking up from the gear he was packing away. "Thank you. Both of you." said the staff each, in turn. "He's a very dear favorite. We'll be missing him all night. His life's stories, that he shares with everybody, are truly wonderful." "Can't wait to hear some of those on the way in." Johnny winked. "Are you up for some serious storytelling, Mr. Petersen?" "In a heartbeat. I've got plenty of those left." he answered, already sounding stronger. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanne DeSoto was bustling around in her kitchen, crisp apron on and hair neatly tucked into a cooking bun. "White? Or red?" she asked her husband, who was sprawled out onto the living room couch, unsuccessfully eyeing up entries for pet shelters in the Yellow Pages. "Red. It's beef, right?" "Flank steak." she replied, her head buried in the oven as she basted the roast in au jus with a long spoon. "And shittake mushrooms." "Joanne. Those are expensive. You didn't have to." DeSoto looked up, the contentment he was struggling to find instantly leaving. "This is why I'm serving wine with dinner." She said primly, holding up a bottle of Malbec. "Roy, we're still in budget, even with your enforced break here happening. I'm eternally grateful to your captain for sending your rear back home." she glared in mock. "Dixie told me the Mine Fire's going last all summer before it's even half contained so there's no use in your working so hard, to put it out. I want a fire of another kind started right after dinner, my love." she whispered romantically, parking herself on his lap and pulling away the phone book. She kissed his lips delicately to which he only half heartedly responded. "I'm sorry, Joanne. That sounds like a fabulous idea with the kids gone." he finally smiled. "Umm hmmm." Joanne murmured, straightening up Roy's hair around his delightful ears. "I arranged double sleep overs at their friends' houses a week ago. I knew you were getting really tired even then when you left for work last Thursday without taking a single sip of your morning coffee. So what are you doing now? You're supposed to be relaxing." she said to him, forehead to forehead in their embrace. "It's Johnny." Joanne laughed and got up to go back to the stove. "It's always about Johnny. That's why he's a regular member of the family these days. What about our engaging Mr. Gage?" "He's.. well.. he hasn't been sleeping. I've heard him tossing and turning, not resting, mumbling about Boot when he's half under. The sooner we find another dog for the station, or for him, the better. Or he's going to end up like me before too long and get put on light leave. He's a bachelor, he can't afford to be off work like we can." Roy told her. "So I've been reading up on all the pounds." DeSoto reached for the directory again and flipped it open to the page he had been staring at. "But I'm stuck when I finally call them. I don't want to ask about finding another dog that looks like Boot. That would be unfair to the dog, with us expecting him or her to be like he was. Do I ask about a puppy? I mean, who's free enough with anybody's schedule to handle all the paper training and the whole nine yards of raising a young dog up to adulthood?" "Collectively, aren't all of you firefighters able to do that? Isn't that why your dogs are brought into the station to begin with? Those lucky canines are never alone. Not with shifts on call 24/7 around the clock around them." Joanne shrugged, tasting some mashed potatoes scooped onto her finger thoughtfully. "But what kind of dog? A dog is the only thing that will make Johnny begin to feel right again about losing Boot the way we lost him." Roy puzzled, almost worn to the core. "Husband. This is simple as pie. Quit trying to be a master chef." she said, drawing him into her eyes once again. "We let a dog, choose him. Isn't that how Boot found all of you in the first place back in the day?" Roy began smiling, for real, at last, as he buried his face in his wife's hair gratefully. "It was. He saved a young biker. That's how we first met." "Then let's let a dog, save Johnny. We'll take him around the pounds on his next day off, before he gets on the back of one of those horses of his, and tries to run away again." "He has?" "Yep. You can tell by the way he walks. He gets bow legged, Roy, when he's been riding too much and for too long." "Ah, Joanne, you'd make a good paramedic. You notice everything about people. I must be blind. I missed that about him." "No, you've just been...distracted. By me." she giggled, pulling him down onto the couch in the beginning of a tumble in the hay. "By design." "Is the stove off?" DeSoto fussed, trying not to grin as he attended Joanne tenderly with his hands and lips. "Yes, but the heat's more than boiling." she laughed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Hot d*mn." said Chet as he and the rest of the gang eyeballed all the news on the television about the Mine Fire and their lack of progress. "I thought we were making headway." he complained, shoving aside the spicy chili popcorn that Marco had whipped up for everybody. Cap sighed, ignoring the broadcasts as he buried himself in a newspaper in his easy chair. "Not with the Santa Anas stirring up. They're early this year." Stoker groaned. "I hate those winds. I can't calculate water flow from our hoselines with respect to evaporation rates in the air when they're blowing. It's really bad for fanning sprays." "The sky's big, Mr. Stoker. And summer's already dry as a bone as it is. Equations like that are impossible. That's why we use helicopter and sky crane water drops. Flooding's the only answer and workable solution to a fire that big in those conditions." Brice agreed. Hank grew serious and set down his paper. "But the water's running out. Just got the report. Soon, on order of the governor, the fire department will be forced to use seawater if any more of the city falls under risk of burning from sparks." "Salting the land?" Gage exasperated. "That'll never fly with city hall. Even to save their own buildings. Salt in dirt's practically forever, Cap. It's deadly poison to local plants and trees." "I know. I know. Tell that to the government." Cap shrugged. "When's the last time you've heard anything environmental issue from the little guys carrying an impact on them? They haven't even gotten their act together long enough to start building desalinization plants for people's drinking water. Our population's tripling, so we're getting thirsty as a result, firefighting wise. Hydrants with low pressure, air backups, gas leaks, are becoming more and more commonplace. This might be the summer where everything comes to a crisis point on that angle. The other chiefs and I all feel that this year, all of that, will happen." "What can we do about it, Cap?" asked Lopez. "Absolutely nothing, pal. And that's the part that really sticks in my craw. We'll have to just wait it out, work it best we can, and see how the whole mess pans out in the end." Hank said seriously. Frustrated, he tossed his newspaper to the floor and flipped over onto his side in the chair, to get lost in his vaguely felt, helpless thoughts. The rest of the gang turned back to the T.V. in an attempt to face the reality that was rapidly spinning out of their control. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was full night at Rampart. Morton, Dixie and Dr. Early were taking a coffee break when a loud noise and bright orange tinged light, erupting from the direction of the burning foothills, lit up their window. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Gage, crouched and holding Boot's face in his hand. Photo: A black and white photo of a brush fire enveloping a freeway. Photo: Morton, Dixie and Early looking out the hospital lounge window, in shock. Photo: A closeup of Joanne DeSoto, smiling in amusement. Photo: A California creek and waterfall, in the sun. ************************************************************* From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2019 12:42 PM Subject: Pressure Point Dr. Early's hand snatched out and captured Dixie's mug to steady it before it jolted out of her grip when the nurse jumped in startlement. "Whoa!" said McCall. "Can this fire get any creepier, fellas? My nerves are shot." Mike Morton just grinned from the bite he was taking out of a triple decker BLT sandwich. "That's the coffee talking, Dix. Your sixth cup today." he mumbled. McCall glared at him wide eyed. "You've been counting them?!" Dr. Morton shrugged, chipmunk cheeked with his late night snack. "I count everybody's. I'm just wired that way. Pops into my brain automatically." Dixie glowered into the depths of her freshly empty mug. "I wish the caffeine would. Then I wouldn't have to waste so much time drinking it." "That eidetic memory is why he's a good doctor, Dixie." Joe reminded her. "Then give him the nurse's schedule to do in my place. I'm ripping my hair out over all of these request/change forms. I'm so much better with patient charts and.. and..and.. confirming M.D. orders." she exasperated. "Floating calendars always drive me crazy!" "Give it here. I'll do it." Mike gestured, stuffing the last of his sandwich into his mouth. "Come on, now.." he chuckled when she resisted. "Double check my case load stack's. I know you know how I work orders even better than I do." That remark earned Morton at least a quarter of a smile. McCall began to bulldog frown but the round rimmed eyeglassed doctor took none of that. "Nah uh. We're trading. Or do you value that headache you've been trying to hide all day, more than taking a break from it?" Joe chortled. "Mmmm. I stand corrected. Mike's an expert doctor. Better belly up, Dix, before he pulls an M.D. string and orders a full neuro on you." "Ah, doctors!.. Okay, it's a deal." she finally huffed, standing up and then working up the courage to peek through the lounge's venetian blinds at the fiery conflagration outside that was still disturbing their usual sense of coffee lounge peace. "Where's a good friendly paramedic when you want to chat over a cuppa? It's all a battlezone in here." Joe sobered. "They're all out there. Fighting that." he gestured to the glowing window. McCall abandoned her coffee mug. "It's summers like this where I really start to get depressed about anybody who has to be a firefighter." She sighed and eyed up her hands' red skin. They were chapped from too many burn care prep washes. "We'll save all we can." Mike comforted her softly. "It's all we can do for them when the ones who need it, finally get hauled in here." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Craig Brice was driving, following the nursing home call. The spectacled paramedic said something aloud the third time Johnny Gage reached for the radio mic on the dash clip, and didn't pick it up. "Don't want to call us in as available yet, Gage?" he asked. "Huh? Wha-- oh." Johnny replied as he realized how much closer they were to the station than the last time he was aware of it. "Sorry, Brice. I guess I'm still tired. It's been an all nighter for me since Roy got sent home last night." Craig smiled kindly. "We won't get a call for hours. Not now. It's rush hour. People will be concentrating on getting to work or school for a while. And the seniors are all thinking about lunch already instead of about all of their aches and pains. We're good here." Johnny dropped his head and groaned quietly. "I knew that. I did." He un-spigotted the mic and spoke into it on auto-pilot. "S-Squad 51, available." ##Squad 51 at 0710. ## came L.A.'s replyback. Brice frowned at Johnny. "You're taking a nap or I'm pulling regulations on you like a--" "....bookworm. Yeah, I know. I won't fight you on that. Pillow hugging's all I can think about right now." Gage shared. Craig minced at his partner's unusual honesty, as he navigated through their last intersection home. He took in a deep breath, and offered some of the same. "I miss Boot, too." he said, keeping his eyes on the road respectfully. Johnny looked at Brice sharply, not quite believing his ears. His mouth worked. But the new silence between them stretched, against his will. It wasn't until the station bay door was opening for them did Brice speak again. "The guys at Ten's are thinking about pooling up cash and getting a... a new... dog." Gage's face clammed up and he remained unmoving in his seat. He studied the fingers in his lap until they were fully parked. He made no reach for his door handle afterwards. "For me, it's too soon. I... feel that... pretty strongly." Brice killed the squad's engine and set the ignition key onto the dash methodically. "Have you figured out why?" "Nah." Johnny sighed. "If I knew the answer to that one, I'd probably be sleeping little better at night." Craig wobbled his head a second time, understanding a bit more. He folded his hands together over the steering wheel and kept his gaze neutral as he dove into uncharted waters. "It's not P.T.S.D. He wasn't a firefighter crewperson, or a patient. Yet......" Gage completed Brice's line of logic. "....all of the grief's still very real. " his voice caught in his throat. "Oh, Brice. I feel like I owe Boot, something awful! I can't help wondering if this is some kind of flawed thinking or not." he said, pulling his emotions back into a firm line. Brice grew quiet. "Is an impression of debt owing a part of survivor's guilt? I have no idea. I'm a paramedic, not a pyschiatrist. Is it abnormal? No. I'd feel exactly the same way if I had been in your shoes. Boot took the equivalent of a grenade for that dead kid he found, Johnny. It doesn't matter that it was pointless how he died. How those two went wasn't preventable for either one of them. Not in the slightest, soo....how about this? Why not.. fix something that is a current issue somewhere, that already bugs the hell out of everybody who's fire department? It's what Boot always did." Relief spread out on Johnny's face like a water fan over a flash over and both of his amber eyes glistened with unbidden tears which he did not let go. "That's.. all true. I'll think on it." Craig bit his lip and met Gage squarely in the eye as he reached out and grasped his shoulder. "It might be the right answer, but... I'm not .. positive it is, Gage. Don't take it at its full face value." Johnny smiled and returned a brief squeeze over Craig's grip in thanks. "You? Being uncertain? This is honestly.. uh,... refreshing, Brice. If that idea isn't the solution it's at least most of it. I sincerely thank you for that. I really needed to hear a whole butt ton of sensibility. And you just gave me some. Come on. Let's go eat. I'm more hungry now than I am sleepy." Gage jumped out of the squad and closed the door behind him eagerly. "Good." Craig said, safely out of earshot. He gathered up all of their run sheets and notes for the log. Brice secretly let his eyes smile once he was alone again. "That's a healthier response to have. Wow." he marvelled. "It worked on him? Usually I suck at mental bandaids. Hmmm." he grunted, quirking up his lip. He was well pleased with the outcome of being able to smooth a little rough road. Then he rose and followed Johnny into the kitchen. ------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Dixie looking sad at a table. Photo: Dr. Morton and Joe comforting someone. Photo: A large distant brush fire in the foothills. Photo: Johnny acknowledging L.A. at night. Photo: Brice smiling by the squad. Photo: Boot, wrestling with a pillow. **************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, December 8th, 2019 18:42 PM Subject: Rounds "What's for dinner?" said Gage, brightly, inhaling deeply at the rich aroma of caramelized roast beef wafting out of the oven. Roy looked up from his kitchen coffee mug hovering over the newspaper, quickly. "You're happy?" He said, freezing over the horse racing column. The circles under Gage's eyes already appeared lighter to DeSoto's critical gaze. "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" Johnny shrugged briefly, stealing a bread roll from a basket that Marco was placing on the table. He sniffed it appreciatively before stuffing the whole bun into his mouth. "Hey, you'll spoil your appetite." complained the hispanic firefighter. "Starving, Marco. Recovering firefighter here. Gimmee another one." Gage gaped at him, snatching up steaming bun number two. "Hmmm. That's all you get. There was only two each for everybody." Lopez replied dubiously, not yet trusting Johnny's change of mood. "Understood. I'll attack my steak next." Captain Stanley was wide eyed at the exchange, and grinning. "It's nice to see you no longer moping. You figured something out?" "Nah, Cap. Craig did." Johnny finally admitted. "He set my rear back on course out of the deep end by putting my life into a new perspective." "Oh, yeah?" Chet Kelly asked, eyeing up his coworker suspiciously. "I wouldn't want Brice monkeying with any part of my life short of saving it in a fire. He's a good fireman, but he's definitely a not Sigmund Freud type, Johnny. What exact book mumbo jumbo did he tell you?" he asked in true ill at ease. "Shush. He's coming. Keep wondering. It's going to be a private conversation memory between just the two of us forever, Chet." he chuckled mysteriously. "I don't need to dig. I'm glad you're feeling better, Johnny." said Mike Stoker, taking out the pot roast from the stove with his fried chicken patterned oven mitts. "It's been a long five weeks watching you battle the blues." "Thanks, Stoker. Hey, Brice... saved some coffee for you." he said at the sound of shoe steps on linoleum getting louder behind him without turning around. "It doesn't smell any older than--".. he sniffed the pot after lifting its lid,.."..four hours. It's still good." "I'll have some." Craig accepted a coffee mug Cap tossed his way, oggling everybody curiously from the corner of his eye. "What?" "Nothing." Roy finally said, smiling hugely. "Dinner's ready. Have a seat, Craig. I'll carve you the first slice." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Chet eyeing up Gage dubiously, profile. Photo: Roy grinning from a kitchen chair in gratitude. Photo: A steaming roast. **************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, December 8th, 2019 21:18 PM Subject: The Grind "G*d d@mn*d fire. You make me wish I had more middle fingers!" Dixie exclaimed as she and Dr. Morton left a treatment room where a badly burned firefighter had just died. McCall quickly banked her tearing eyes with a hasty swipe of her elegantly pearl painted fingernails. "There was no way to save him, Dixie." said Dr. Brackett. "He had circumferential burns around his torso and heavy soot half way down his entire main bronchial tree. I wouldn't be surprised if he has second degree burns in both lungs. The coroner will confirm that for sure after his autopsy." "I'm sick of it, Kel. It's almost fall. Why can't they put out that wildfire? There's no Santa Ana winds to speak of." she replied, pulling her uniform collar away from her neck where ample sweat trickled down her skin. "We'll find out why at the meeting in a few minutes with the fire department. Captain Stanley from Station 51 is here to brief all the senior staff." Kel answered. Dr. Morton arrived from down the hall near the main reception desk. He had another six charts in his arms from more firefighters getting admitted. He had just ruled out the need for either Respiratory or immediate surgery care for each of them. "You okay?" he asked Dixie, noting the heavy sheen of perspiration on her face. "What? You want a running account of every time I get a hot flash, Mike?" she snapped. Dr. Morton looked mildly stunned. "No, I--" "Whoops, there's another one. And another one. And--.." "Dixie! Will you cut that out?" Mike stage whispered to her, fully aware of the full emergency ward's visitors and relatives sitting nearby. Dixie was oblivious, stage whispering just as quietly. "Dr. Morton, you're a grown man. You should already know about the birds and the bees. Well in my case, the ghost of them." She raised her voice dramatically. "Yes! I'm menopausal, everybody! Did you hear that?!" All the older women in the waiting area chuckled while their male companions wore a mixed bag of reactions ranging from surprise to eye rolling boredom. "Dr. Brackett, Can you keep your girlfriend in line? She seems to want to tell me every sordid detail of her personal reproductive history." Morton said, angling his head. Kel's face broke out in full amusement as he crossed his arms in front of him. "Miss McCall is her own adult person. She can discuss anything she wants, Mike. I've never been able to stop her." "Smart man." Dixie quipped, opening up the narcotics cabinet to do a fast hourly inventory. "I was comforting the masses like it says in my job description. Did you miss seeing the first real smiles break out over there just now?" Mike took a good long look at the waiting room. The mood was visibly more relaxed than it had been for days. "Oh. I thought you were going nuts." Morton replied. "Disappointed, Dix." he laughed. "I wanted something I could cure today." "Shall we go, kids?" Kel indicated pointedly, towards the lounge. "We're almost late. Leave your coffee cups here. That's an order. Both of you have had enough." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hank Stanley wasn't in his turnout gear or on call to his fire station crew. He had just come from city hall in Carson where he had delivered the same early morning talk he was giving Rampart's mandatory all night shift personnel right now. His eyes met in turn, every nurse, orderly and doctor present in the room. The food laid out by commissary, lay untouched on the table in front of them. “The Cistern Park fire is unique. The non native plants and trees in that area have numerous protective chemicals with which they coat their leaves to prevent water loss. Many of these substances are similar to wax. Vaporized by the heat from fires, these substances disperse into the air and then congeal over the soil surface when the fire begins to cool. Like the wax on your car, these substances coat the soil, causing water to bead up and run off quickly. In general, the greater the fire intensity and the longer the fire’s residence time, the more hydrophobic the soil becomes. Water can't pentrate the substrate to cool the land and so temperatures rise. Night fog can't bank the flames and any water we drop onto them just boils away into steam as fast as we apply it via choppers. The only option we have is to use fire suppressant chemicals and those as you might have guessed, are already in very short supply. It's a waiting game." Stanley shared gravely. "We dig fire breaks downwind each day and each team can only hope to guide the fire onto bare rock faces and cliffsides to help stave off its widening progression. But there are complications." "Like what?" asked Joe Early. "I would have thought our September rains would have made things easier for you guys by now." "You would think. But they have had no real effect this year. Flames have leaped over the natural freeway grid surrounding the parklands. Because of the fire's duration, we can't shut down traffic when this happens. Life goes on. And by law, we have to allow people to move about for services, their jobs, on those same roads, and for that, they need to run the gauntlet on their own. We firefighters can only monitor the activity and bail people out when situations arise where traffic and flames collide. We can't even protect the neighborhood south of the cistern mine. We've evacuated 1300 homes and there's nothing between the fire now and the city's edge, but a power plant of electrical lines." The worried murmur in the room erupted as Rampart's staff finally understood the magnitude of the disaster still in the making. "Is there a real chance the hospital will lose power as a result of the fire reaching the plant?" asked Dr. Brackett, thinking ahead. "It's a certainty. We estimate we have about twenty four hours before that happens. And that hydroelectric station along the L.A. Riverbed is the only one supplying energy right now to Carson and its outlying subsidiaries. Everybody else in that utility grid is dealing with repairs needed from other wildfires that have thankfully burned themselves out. They won't be able to help us by transferring any power." Hank answered. "Our generators can cope with the outage." replied a hospital engineer. "They run on natural gas and our supply line from Arco Refinery won't be effected by the fire." "You don't understand. We're not just talking about a couple of hours or days without electricity. We're talking perhaps a black out of several months when everything's said and done." Captain Stanley said grimly. The room burst into loud exclamations of dismay and fright. Dr. Morton stood and spoke over the din. "Everybody just sit down. Let's hear the captain out. This is bad, but it's not the end of the world. Let's be quiet." Eventually, the stressed babble faded away. "I'll take individual questions. I have five minutes to provide any answers." Hank told them. Dixie McCall raised her hand. "We've had earthquakes before. Why is this loss of powerlines going to be different than what we've already seen in the past?" "The power plant will disintegrate in the wildfire. You can't generate power, without the machinery. An earthquake doesn't destroy a building like that. But the Cistern Fire will." Joe Early stood, looking at his watch. "Time's up, all. E.R.'s getting another wave of influx patients. Mostly green and yellow triaged. Thank you Captain Stanley for the debrief. We'll do our best to keep all of this information away from the media." Dr. Brackett tossed Hank a wrapped sandwich from the platter on the table. "Eat. I'm sure you haven't had any breakfast yet." "Appreciate it, Doctor." "Where are you headed to now?" Kel asked as the lounge cleared of staff. Hank shifted the tie of his black suit and white shirt combo a little looser from around his neck. "I'm headed to see the family of the little boy we lost the day the mine blew up to pay my formal respects. He's already in the ground, but we in the fire department would be remiss if we didn't offer funds free and clear, to cover those burial costs the city decided not to waive." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo : Captain Stanley in a dark suit, looking pensive. Photo: Dixie, Morton and Brackett in an office, worried. Animated GIF : An ember rain, leaping a freeway, with a rescue squad driving underneath it, using a spotlight. *************************************************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2019 12:17 PM Subject: The Orange Rain.. It was noon on the same day. Hank had returned from his errands, emotionally diminished on the inside, but not showing any sign of it on the outside, to his men. He had pinned on the last silver trumpet of his usual pair onto his collar when the tones began. Next to him at the kitchen stable, Marco jolted to his feet, but Cap grabbed his arm to stop him. "Squad only call. Hear that odd pitch echo? It's going to be a mutual aid assist out of our jurisdiction." "How are we managing to do that kind of thing?" Marco wondered. "Because we have six states worth of firefighters pouring in, little by little, every day, Marco. That's how." Cap smiled. "Our scope of powers have grown courtesy of the governor and his emergency legislative pen." "Far out." replied Chet. Mike Stoker grunted. "Only you would know the background sounds at L.A. Dispatch so well, Cap." "Been doing this for almost too long." Cap grimaced. He looked up as his paramedics piled by him and into the apparatus bay. "Brice, this is instinct. Ride shotgun with Gage and DeSoto for this one." Craig nodded and ran after Roy and Johnny. "What do you think's going on upstate, Cap?" Lopez asked after Squad 51's crew had left. "Unexpected fall out? The flames on our own local fire don't have to be that neighborly to create extra human suffering. This year's proving that point well enough." The rare brass edge to the tones completed its cycle and Sam Lanier's voice came over speaker. ##Squad 51, substituting for Pismo Beach F.D., a female EDP has been reported as a suicide attempt in progress without visible injuries. 400 S Dolliver St. 400 S Dolliver St. Cross street : Cabrillo Highway 1. P.D has secured the scene. Requesting you in, Code 2, reds dark. ## Johnny hollered as he wrote out the address. "Stoker! Do you know where this is on the map?" "Yeah!" answered Mike, jogging over to join him at the radio transmitter alcove by the county map. "I think it's a newly sanctioned butterfly grove in San Luis Obispo County. Here.." he said, stabbing a finger down near a coast line. He quickly traced their route from the station to the call with a finger. "Thanks." Johnny said, committing the way there to memory. He snatched up his paper and the radio mic. "L.A., Squad 51 responding." ##Squad 51. Pismo reports general heavy wildfire smoke and heat in that area, but no embers. Time out: 12:11.## Roy jerked his helmet strap a little tighter on his chin as Brice took the center island seat in between himself and Gage. "That call's a long way from home." he frowned. "At least a three hour trip." "Must be a reason why they wanted us specifically for it." Craig said. "We'll find out." "I said I wanted a vacation away from here." Gage replied. "Didn't really expect it to happen." "Karma had nothing to do with it." Brice remarked. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Squad 51 arrived. All three firefighters were squinting painfully in the bright sunlight which they hadn't seen for many weeks due to the Cistern Fire. They saw San Luis Ambulance and a police squad standing by an undamaged black sports car, crashed off road onto a planted center island with its front bumper snugged up against a palm tree. Engine 64 from the Pismo Beach Fire Department was present nearby, but her crew was absent; their fire hoses were not deployed. "Curiouser and curiouser." Craig frowned as the three paramedics got out of the squad to gather their medical gear. They were walking by the Pismo Beach Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary sign when .... "Hello, boys." came a familiar resonating voice from behind them. Doc Coolidge, the animal control vet from Los Angeles County, stepped out from behind the police car. He was wearing jogging clothes and was sweating profusely. "Doc Coolidge? What the heck?" Johnny exclaimed in surprise. "Did you ask for us?" Coolidge was somber. "I did. I figured my clout could arrange things. Thanks for coming out." Roy hefted up the drug box and dressings box. "Our biophone's grossly out of range. We won't be able to use it. What's the situation, Doc?" "This one's personal, Roy. It's Patty Burns." the vet replied, as he gratefully accepted a water bottle a woman police officer handed him. "Your receptionist from the office?" DeSoto clarified. "Yeah. We've been pulling nasty fire related calls for months. Some ugly, and most of them ultimately fatal. She suddenly snapped after we lost another puppy today in surgery. Patty jumped into her car, and raced straight here." "How did you know where to find her?" Brice asked. "I know my staff. What comforts them. We talk a lot over the operating table. I guessed accurately." he told Craig. "She's asked for you specifically, Johnny. Burns isn't letting anybody else near. Not even me. I guess she remembers what you guys did for that pygmy goat a few years ago." "What's her condition?" Roy asked. "Conscious. She was hysterical. But she's just sitting quietly now. I don't know the exact means of how she wants to do herself in. But I know she'd never touch a gun. She's seen the results of too many hunters and poachers against lifestock and family pets to ever like any idea of holding one in her own two hands." Doc replied. "But she's... said she actually wants to kill herself. And that's the total shocker which made me request some top end help. I knew I was in over my head for this." "We should have tackled her to the ground hours ago." replied the police woman. "Young Miss. That's no way to treat a friend!! I didn't allow the option then, and I'm not allowing that option now! So cool your boots!!" Coolidge told her. "This patient doesn't warrant a physically violent solution." "Our chief agreed with you, city vet. We'll hold back." The officer nodded, dead pan. Doc Coolidge ignored P.D. pointedly. "Johnny, don't worry about the uniform you got on, or what gear you're carrying. She understands emergency medicine in all its facets even though she's civilian. I'm surmising that this is about the loss of animal life in her eyes. It can be no other reason." ::Like my Boot.:: came the unbidden thought in Gage's mind. He swallowed down that pain and kept it from his face. "Okay. Give me a few minutes with her. I'll figure out fast what she may have done to herself here." Doc nodded gratefully and pointed out the right trail to take through the eucalyptus trees. "The park docents say she's sitting on a rock around the bend. They're watching her through their binoculars from a nearby tree crown." Roy handed Johnny a water bottle from the R and R crate Brice had set out. "Take a walkie talkie. We'll be on Tach 2." "I'll try and find out where Pismo's crew is. We don't have their channel patched in yet." Brice decided. "I'll let you know when I know." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gage heard her before he saw her. Burns was weeping and he didn't like the sound of her breathing. "Patty? It's Johnny. Can I come over there? I brought you some water...." "Not... too close.. You'll... you might hurt them.." she sobbed. "They're falling down all over the place.." "Hurt who?" he said, taking off his helmet and setting down the drug and airways boxes. He shoved the plastic water bottle into a jacket pocket for later. He toggled the radio talk button. "She's awake and lucid." he said moving nearer to Burns. ##Copy.## replied Brice over his hand held radio. "Stop it, Johnny." Patty keened, gesturing shakily to the brown leaves on the ground. Only they weren't leaves. They were dead and dying monarch butterflies by the thousands. "Don't crush them any more.." she sobbed. In her lap, she had dozens of butterflies with fire charred wings and missing legs crawling hopelessly through her fingers. " Please help..." In horror, Johnny saw green goo and wing shreds on both of his feet. Johnnny looked up at the trees surrounding them and to the hibernating clusters that never should have been overwintering so soon in the fall. Fire smoke was drifting across the masses and whereever the ash in the air was the densest, butterflies fell from their perches, like orange rain. "No,.. don't give up, little guys. " she pleaded blearily to the fluttering, failing butterflies. "They don't have any more food, Johnny. The fires must have burned it up." she gasped. "They don't have anywhere else to go but here. And it's killing them, too." Her face crinkled in fresh grief and she sagged forward. Gage shook himself fiercely, and hurried over to her, grabbing her around the shoulders as he reached for a pulse point in her wrist. He smelled something bitter and saw a white powder caked around her bluish lips. "Patty, what did you take? Was it pills?" The pulse he found was bradycardic. Very slow. She didn't reply and suddenly went limp in his arms. He bore her to the ground and opened her airway manually. A cloud of monarchs surged up around them and landed on their clothes and faces. Johnny angrily swept them away as he delivered a deep sternal rub. "Patty?" She groaned, and then began taking in a weak series of shallowing breaths, that were adequate enough, to his satisfaction, to last another minute. He snatched up his radio. "She's down. Definite ingested substance." ##We're coming in. They're showing us the way to you.## came Roy's reply. "Bring the O2 on the double!" Johnny added, seeing cyanosis creep over her features in a dark pallor. "And that ambulance crew's stretcher. We may need their suction!" ##Got them.## Burns didn't flinch when Johnny sent a lubricated nasopharyngeal airway down her right side nostril to get around her swollen tongue. "....johnny.. why can't we save them all?.." she begged. The memory of Boot flared up as Gage got an ambu bag set up near her head in case it was needed, and tears flooded his eyes. "Patty... We're only two people. Nobody can fight a big fire...... and win right away. Keep breathing for me. Best you can." He flipped open the drug box, starting to reach for the naloxone, when he corrected himself and began patting down her clothes. "Where are the pills you took? I can't treat you effectively without knowing what kind. Where's the bottle?" Burns smile faded. "That puppy Doc fought to save was number 92, Johnny. He was just a stray, barely five weeks old. That ...d*med fire burned off his tail and a leg." she sobbed, eyeing up a monarch who had lost all four wings, melted by flames, clinging to the back of her hand. "Not you, too." she cried anew. "...so much death.." Johnny coughed, pursing his lips. "Patty. I'm sure he tried... as hard as he could...to--" "...not enough.." "What did you take?" he said firmly, holding her face with both hands so she couldn't see the wounded butterflies moving in rippling drifts all around them. Burns weakly shook her head as she refuse to answer him. "..let me go.." "Not happening." he told her. He didn't find anything in any of her pockets, so he repositioned her head farther back in management so he could leave her briefly to sweep his hands over the ground around where they were, through the ever deepening pile of dead butterflies. There were too many to search through, in too large of an area. Gage nearly smacked himself, with another idea. "Check the car for pills." he said over the radio. ##Doing it.## replied the woman police officer through their channel. Johnny continued digging around them, faster and faster, more and more desperately, feeling the same helplessness he had felt in the mine hole as Boot crawled away from him through the foam. The orange rain grew heavier, obscuring his sight with the sheer numbers of monarchs tumbling from the trees above them. A flash of Boot's face shot across Johnny's vision. "I'm fine." he mumbled, unthinking. "I'm not going to be a victim." Then he remembered where he was, and the patient in front of him. "Roy? Any time now!" Gage shouted out loud. A flash of blue startled Johnny as his two partners arrived. "We're here! I got her.." DeSoto shouted, moving to Burn's head and beginning to assist her ventilations with the demand valve resuscitator he had brought with him. He set a full fifteen liters of oxygen to the flow. "Keep looking. She's unconscious, but still has a pulse. Color's improving." The butterfly reserve docents arrived with a crowd of bystanders and they all began to search for the pill bottle that had to be there. It was Doc Coolidge who located the stolen medication near a tree under where the dead monarchs lay the thickest. He held up the soiled bottle triumphantly. "This is from my office! It's capped, ten pills missing of Acepromazine. That's a phenothiazine neuroleptic. It won't kill her right away. Your protocol standing orders dose of norepinephrine should successfully offset her hypotension." "Will deliver 1mg/mL of Levarterenol at 8 mcg/min I.V.. I'll titrate until we hit 90/P." Brice confirmed, and he soon did so, to a hastily started port in her forearm. "Somebody grab a reading?" "I'm so glad you're such a stupid girl!" Doc worriedly told Burns, grabbing a blood pressure cuff to take one on her, at an upper arm. "She probably thought she could overdose on this dog anti anxiety drug. A stomach pump followed up with some Pepto-Bismol should decrease absorption." "What about activated charcoal?" Johnny asked Coolidge. "Even better. They'll probably tell you to use that en route." said Doc. "Palpating. She's at 76 systolic. No diastolic." "Raising her legs." DeSoto replied. "It's so hot. How can she be shocky?" Johnny wondered. "The pills are a vaso-dilator. They're used in horses, too, to counteract exertional rhabdomyolysis." Doc answered eagerly, lecturing, because he was a nervous wreck. "Not a fun effect here." Gage grunted as he checked her pupils using the sun as a light source and his hand's shadow. "Reactive." "That's a good sign." Coolidge puffed out in relief. "Keep working her, Roy, until the counteragent Mr. Brice gave her takes effect." Inexorably, the medical tide was turned as they battled over Burns. A few minutes later, Squad 51 was ready to transport. "Where's Engine 64's crew, Brice?" DeSoto wondered as they were bundling up Burns onto the local ambulance's cot. "Handling a beach drowning." Craig replied. "They took a walk up because Burns was stable and being monitored by P.D." DeSoto eyed up the EMTs manning the gurney. "We're going to need your medical director's frequency for our biophone on the way in." "Channel Six." replied one of them, trying to ignore the smoke stunned butterflies they were stepping in, and being covered by, unsuccessfully. At the sanctuary entrance, a docent tapped Johnny on the shoulder as Patty was being loaded onto the ambulance. He saw she no longer had to be breath supported by DeSoto, so Gage turned around. "This one's for her. This butterfly's going to live. So she doesn't lose hope." said the woman. She handed Gage a potted zinnia flower that had a recovering female monarch butterfly resting on it. "She can let it go tomorrow when they're both better." Smiling, Johnny took the pot and climbed in to join his soul sick patient. "We got her back, gentlemen. She's no longer dying." Coolidge reported, seeing the last signs of hypoxia leaving Patty's skin because of their ministrations. "See that?" "Neither are they." mumbled the park docent. A fresh breath of wind, as the daily afternoon sea breezes arrived, blew through the butterflies on the ground, reviving the remaining survivors, who gamely returned to the trees as sudden blue sky appeared. "Clear air's coming for the rest of the day and night. The colonies are safe for now, people. " said the woman park volunteer to the crowd. "Thanks for all of your help searching. Pack up your picnics and go home. We're closing early." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the moving ambulance, Burns opened her eyes. Johnny turned over one of her hands, and deposited the fire ash dusted monarch butterfly into her palm. "Hey.. We saved this one." he said softly. "And you." Patty's eyes teared up around her oxygen mask as she brought the monarch close to her cheek so she could feel the softness of living wings against the side of her face on the pillow. "Thank you, Johnny. I'm so sorry for what I did today." she sobbed. "Doc's gonna fire me." "No he won't. He's the one who found you. Now what kind of boss does all that, right before he terminates an employee? Nobody I've ever heard of. Am I right?" he grinned at her. She tried to, and failed to laugh, as she cradled the monarch even closer to her nearest, clearing eye. "I'm so sorry about Boot. Dixie told me about him last month." Patty sighed. "You boys must be as devastated as I am about what the fire did." she admitted, sucking in a deeper breath as she fought the tranquilizer pills effects. "I have an idea about our identical mutual problem, Miss Burns." Johnny shared. "Just hit upon it a few minutes ago." "What's that?" she whispered, settling the butterfly back onto the pink blossomed plant he had shown her proudly. They both smiled just a bit as the monarch slowly unfurled her proboscis and began to take in a little nectar. They found that they couldn't take their eyes off of how hard the butterfly was fighting to stay alive. She quickly grew stronger, and steadier on her feet, as she took in vital nourishment. "I... figured we could let Les and Dave train us up when we're both off duty to be animal control officers. That way, we can rescue every single scurrying, flying, crawling, galloping thing we can get our hands on that's escaping that horrible fire,... and make a difference that matters." Crying openly in gratitude, the recovering secretary reached up to hug her paramedic who was just finding himself equally rescued from a fire spectre that had been burning him straight to the core for so long. "Let's do it, Johnny." she agreed. "I knew you'd have an answer for the both of us." He hugged her back gently. "I'm glad you called for help Miss Burns. Even if it was from half way across the state." "All I could think about was the butterflies. I must have been out of my mind. And when I saw them dying by the thousands, I... it was too much, Johnny." "It was surreal in there. Kinda hellish. That would mess with anybody's head. How are you feeling now?" Gage asked. "I'm tired. Can I sleep?" Patty mumbled. "Yep. These are chemicals, not a head injury. I'll keep her safe, too." he smiled, turning the flower pot around so Burns could see the monarch easier. "So don't worry." Johnny watched as the exhausted vet hospital secretary drifted into dreams. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo : Smoke filling a butterfly forest. Photo: A woman lying unconscious on the ground littered with dead monarchs. Photo: Johnny studying his patient's face, in an ambulance. *************************************************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Monday, February 18, 2020 14:42 PM Subject: Patching In Doc Coolidge was fully sprawled out in a staff lounge chair at the local hospital in San Luis Obispo County. He was hugging the potted flower holding Patty's monarch butterfly on his stomach, as he gratefully closed his eyes to rest. "Wow, I don't know how you two keep up the energy to handle in the field calls like you do. I feel like I'm parbroiled and mentally fried at the same time." Roy chuckled, downing a glass of ice water to follow the half cup of coffee he sipped only lightly. "That was the distant fire's doing, and the fact that this was a very personal patient's call. It always drains you. You'll snap back in an hour or two. What speeds that up is knowing you got there in time, and the fact that it's over." Johnny Gage burst through the breakroom door. "The M.D. on call says Miss Burns going to be fine. The charcoal worked in neutralizing all of the pill junk in her system. They want to hold her a few hours for observation before discharging her to make sure they got it all bound up internally." "Where's Brice?" Roy asked Gage, shaking out ash from his paramedic jacket into a nearby garbage can. "He's making sure Patty Burns' visit to the Hemlock Club wasn't more than just a temporary psychosis effect." Then he grinned even bigger. "Now that I think about it, Craig Brice has totally missed his true calling. He makes one hell of a psychiatrist when put his mind to it. Even my mania shifted down a few notches when I was walking by that door, just overhearing him talking to her, like one." "What did he say?" Doc asked. "It was private." Gage glared at the vet. "So shush. You already got everything, by law, that you needed to know. So finish filling out your mutual aid paperwork, and be happy about it." Johnny moved over to the lounge sink to start washing butterfly bits off of his shoes and knees. "Switching subjects, did you guys see how many dead monarchs were out there?! There must have been a few million at the very least. Or more. Broke my heart to see the wildfire smoke killing them like that." Doc Coolidge sighed. "They have sharp instincts, Johnny. That's what brought them to the coast line, out of season, one of the docents told me. They'll survive fine enough. They've got a good population size playing on their side this year, 125 million strong." Gage nodded in relief, but grew silent, thinking over something very deeply. Then he spilled the beans."Miss Burns wants to join up with Les and Dave in the big fight, Doc." "Oh really?" Coolidge startle grunted, peering out of a deep yawn and a slightly painful stretch. "My secretary ...is hankering to be a city dog catcher?" Johnny met his spectacled eyes evenly."So am I. So stop laughing, Doc. I'm asking you now, fireman to ...critterman, to make us honorary control officers with the county, under your clinic." "Mr. Gage. Are you out of your ever lovin' mind?!" Doc gaped. Gage shifted feet, dropping his newly washed shoe on the floor with a splat. "It doesn't have to be permanent. We don't even need to get paid, Doc. And it'll be just until the Cistern Fire plaguing us back home, burns out. We've both got reasons to go out there and try to save everything still standing on four legs." Doc's sense of the ridiculousness got to him. He reached up two hands like chicken wings, and fluttered them at shoulder height. "Or two with wings." Gage added, not dropping his pegging gaze. Coolidge sobered. "For you, is this because of Boot?" the vet asked gently. Gage's mouth twitched and he blinked at the floor. "Yes, sir. It has everything to do with the memory of that .. that incredible dog." he said, his voice breaking. He mulled over Gage's news, and confession, for long seconds, his ample features softening by subtle increments. Then he coughed with derision. "All right. I'll grant it. For the both of you, Johnny. With pay. Just to make it legal." He levelled a finger at the paramedic's nose. "You listen to my boys one hundred percent when it comes to any hands on animal rescues. You may know fires and human patients, but not how quickly a frightened cow or dog can turn on you in a heartbeat instinctively because they think they're in danger from something they know is far, far bigger than you, that you aren't even aware of, that's sneaking up behind you. I've seen that a million times and every now and then, I still get caught." he said firmly, holding up his crisscrossed, animal bite and scratch-scarred fingers. Gage picked up two coffee mugs by their handles and hefted them in the air in invitation to the Doc. "I stand warned. I know horses a fair bit, if it helps. I own two on my ranch." "That'll do for starters." said Coolidge, nodding at the offer of a hot cup of joe. "Mr. DeSoto, you want in, too?" "I'm now with my family on my off days. I just got off an enforced rest period a few weeks ago due to overworking our favorite d@mned fire. " Roy told him. "That's an honest answer. There's no shame in knowing one's boundaries, Roy. Keep an eye on this one for signs of the same thing once I put him and Patty Burns to work." Coolidge gruffed with a smile as he took the coffee Johnny had poured for him. "Oh, you can count on it." Roy told him over a column of coffee steam. "Stupid won't even enter into his vocabulary." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Three days later, Johnny and Patty Burns were standing in front of the Carson Street Animal Shelter and Clinic, chafing in their new mud brown animal control officer uniforms. "Are we ready for this?" Burns glanced sidelong at Johnny dubiously, feeling the woven blue rope and other animal handling, tools jutting up around her utility belt. "No. I feel like a fish out of water in this thing." he said of the tan shirt and tie. "At least the helmet feels normal." he said. "Speak for yourself. This is my first time wearing one that isn't a bicycle helmet." Patty snorted. "What if I get scared and make a fool out of myself. I mean, if we're facing down a cougar or something outside of the fire zone." "At least you won't fudge your shorts, Miss Burns. Aren't you still sh*tting out the black stuff?" he joked. "Shut up, funny guy." She grinned, smacking his arm in mock insult, just as Les Taylor and Dave Gordon came out the front door of the vet clinic. "Beating up on your new partner already. Looks like a normal first day to me." quipped Dave to Les. "I'll say. Hi guys. Did you remember to bring absolutely everything I told you to bring?" Taylor smiled broadly, sweeping grand arms out towards the two white patrol vehicles newly decked out in water tanks on top of their usual boxed in cage compartments. Gage sighed and held out a box of C and H sugar cubes in a leather glove. Gordon laughed aloud. "Outstanding! Let's go. They've moved the staging area today to north of the L.A. River. Wind's shifted. Gage, you're with me." said the African American animal control officer. "Our radio call sign is Carson 1. Patty, ride with Taylor as Carson 2. Pay attention to the weather reports from the fire department. They won't have time to double check on you in a head count if the Cistern blaze flares up like it almost did on us, yesterday.They've got enough to deal with already." "What's happening? I haven't worked since Friday. And this is Monday. It's my last day of my weekend." Gage asked. "Oh, you don't know all of the details yet?" Les asked. "Not yet." Johnny answered. "The power station's gonna burn down before five this afternoon, guaranteed. LACoFD choppers couldn't keep up with some of the fresher fire storms last night." Dave replied. Gage got worried, fast. "Now wait a minute. Nobody can handle a city wide blackout today. The governor's barely been informed of how bad it might get." "It won't just be a city wide blackout, Johnny. That's a new dam sitting up there. There's no underground back up network even built yet. Try a complete county wide power outage, when those mountain towers incinerate. Hope you prepared your homes ahead of time." Gordon said. "I wish." muttered Patty and Johnny both. Burns' natural intelligence sparkled immediately. "Will our handy talkies still work when they switch to ham radio frequencies?" "Yes. At least that holds over from the usual earthquake protocols." Les shared. "Time to go. Doc says there's a call already waiting for us in the park. A missing pregnant setter, who ran away from home, close to her due date." The two teams separated, each going to a duty truck and piling on in. "Why do pets always beeline for the fire lines? I don't get it." said Gage as he climbed into his assigned truck with Gordon. "The smell of food. There's a lot of wildlife who couldn't survive, roasting up there. In new spots every day. Deer, rodents, songbirds. Predators are attracted to any meal they can scent." Dave replied as he buckled in after testing his amber light bars for nominal functioning. "It doesn't matter how domesticated they are. Everything with a nose is going to go and try to find free lunch. That feeding instinct is hard wired. You can't train it out. Cows and horses refuse to run away from fire because they're prey animals and they panic too easily. You've seen this." "I have. It's not pretty." Johnny said. "They don't understand the danger." "Now you see why the city has appointed us ACO's to duty." Gordon said proudly. "The law can say, evacuate, but people usually won't. Not without their pets. So indirectly, we save human lives, by saving all runaway domestics. Here's your new badge." he said, handing over Johnny's probationary shield. "Remember this, Johnny. We're the only ones between them, and the fire. And these animals, don't know that, until we show them that we mean them no harm first. Carson 2, we're ready. Let's go!" he hollered out the window. Les Taylor at the wheel, with Patty Burns riding shotgun, stuck a hand out of his vehicle's driver's window, in a lassoing sweep. He added an enthusiastic thumbs up. Unbidden, a jolt of healing excitement and an odd eagerness gnawed at Johnny's stomach. ::It's nigh on time I started making the one difference that truly matters the most to me right now.:: he thought. He was finally going to search for, and find, a life that was indelibly of Boot's ilk, and save her from a fiery fate. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Captain Stanley was with Roy and Brice and the rest of Station 51 at the Cistern Park entrance. It held the only road up to the power plant which was clearly in the line of fire from the blaze's slow, summer long progress, up the mountainside canyon valley. He was giving orders to his crew that he had received from his Battalion Chief only a few minutes ago, in a conferencing tent. "The Bomb Squad is certain there are no more dynamite pockets left in the park. Those either blew up or were dug out weeks ago. Our job is to provide fill for the choppers, coming and going from the power plant site. Stoker and Kelly, lay our pump line into the lake and rig for supply and transfers on a inch and a half. Roy and Craig, your job is to handle any medical walk ups, fire or public, to our area. Now I know we're not the official Triage location, but people are going to find our trucks when they get caught and injured while fire watching. The chiefs know to send up an ambulance or two asap when we call. Keep your scba close, we have no idea whether or not that wind direction will keep cooperating like it is. The heat of the day has yet to arrive. We're here to observe the power tower collapses when the fire reaches them. Our hands will be full keeping the press from getting too close while they film the end demise of the plant for the news. We can't close the park from public because it's on Federal Land and not on fire anymore. Report any oddball anything to me as soon as you see it. Marco, you're Public Information Officer. Keep them out of the Fire Department's hair any way you can. Last thing I need is a reporter in my face telling me how to do my job." "Right, Cap." replied Lopez. Dragging out an air bottle to wear backpack style, he left his helmet on Engine 51's running board and a public relations slate with statements already approved by Battalion to give to the news crews. Roy and Brice nodded and returned to sit inside of Squad 51. "I heard Carson Shelter rolled out a few minutes ago." said Roy. "I can't believe Johnny's actually with them today. Was that your idea, Brice?" "I'm not that smart, Mr. DeSoto. Mr. Gage found the solution for that raw heart condition over the loss of Boot, all on his own. It was Miss Burns who suggested it." Brice clarified. "Coolidge must be having a cow knowing he's got two green people working an animal fire scene." Roy sighed. "Johnny was so nervous, that he skipped coming to the house this morning for breakfast with Joanne, I and the kids." "I don't think Barney the vet's too worried. Johnny's a seasoned firefighter. He knows what to do and avoid in equal measure. Even when he's distracted neck deep in something new and technical." Brice grinned. "But he's a bit accident prone. That'll show. I know it." Roy pegged. "Mother hen your partner in your thoughts as much as you'd like if it makes you feel better. Dixie asked me to share that." Craig gestured dutifully. "How'd McCall learn about all of this?" "She volunteers part time at the Carson Animal Shelter. She has ever since the Pygmy goat incident you two handled." "I've no regrets about that. In spite of Brackett's initial ire back then. A life is a life." DeSoto confessed. Brice held up innocent hands and his mouth shrugged in amusement. "I'm a total book worm. I'm not so sure I would have had the guts to do the same as you guys did, without hesitation, like you did for William." "I see a terrified child crying over the loss of a pet and I always fold like a stack of cards." Roy sighed. "That's because you're a dad first, husband second and a firefighter third. Three strikes were already against you in that respect. I guess there's a little bit of wishing to be an animal control officer hero or the worship of that job, in all of us. For every animal encountered is automatically the firm underdog in need of help in every situation. Instant gratification of that fatherly or firefighter instinct comes on every call. That's highly attractive." Brice surmised. "I wonder what they've got?" DeSoto said, listening to the fire band chatter thoughtfully. "We'll find out soon enough. We've got the only freed up ice bags and oxygen for miles around on Squad 51." Craig smiled. "Cornered market." "That's right. He'll find us. You can't take the paramedic out of the man, even when he's wearing a different hat." DeSoto agreed. He felt more solid after that and chugged a whole bottle of water down in fifteen seconds flat, while the two of them studied the bloated, blistering, distant fire line that was inexorably approaching the power plant. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Patty Burns and Johnny Gage standing by a white pound truck in Animal Control Officer uniforms. Photo: The Cistern Fire, glowing red, cresting a hill of a canyon neighborhood. Photo: Cap, looking locked in, on a ridge's top. Photo: Craig Brice, smiling at Roy, in the squad. **************************************************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, October 11, 2020 10:54 AM Subject: Bolster Bluff Dixie McCall turned in an analyzing circle in an open spot, eyeing up every movement of her fellow staff in Rampart's E.D. Mindfully, she opened her fists which always clenched during intense periods of task delegating and took in a deep breath of relief when she realized that everyone had all their bases covered. "That's it. That's all we can do." she mumbled to herself. "My task is done." "It's never done, Dixie." came a friendly tap on her shoulder. McCall glanced down to see the steaming coffee mug that had been encouraged to nudge her in Dr. Morton's hand. "Here. I thought you could use some more." Dixie laughed. "Am I that frazzled looking?" she asked, sipping absently from the cup. Mike grinned. "Never. It's that perfect doo of yours. Every hair always in the right place." "Blame the starched hat. It's brutal by needing eight bobby pins to stay on top of my head." she scoffed. "I'll be glad for the day Admin decides they're a contamination risk in exam rooms. They're the only things we don't cover up with gowns or masks in between patients." "Wow, I've never even considered that angle. It's true, Dixie. Have you brought that up at a meeting?" Morton shrugged, angling his head. "I haven't had time, Mike. What head nurse has any extra to get creative, policy wise?" They both looked up when the lights flickered. "Already?" Mike said, slapping his coffee down onto Dixie's desk and moving over to the fire department radio speaker to turn up the live transmissions. "That's the main generator coming on line." McCall reassured him. "I recognize the dimming pattern." Mike relaxed and rescued his coffee again to drink it down whole as he listened to L.A. rattle off incidents and calls and response crews. "Nothing big yet. Just some animal control officers being dispatched." "Don't tempt fate, Mike. That's like saying the "Q" word." Joe Early replied, stepping up to them with his latest patient chart. "Hi, Dix. Ms. Doone's lab results are so ordered. She'll be feeling better once we rebalance a few electrolytes." "What was her issue?" Dr. Morton asked Dr. Early. "She walked in here weaving like a drunken sailor." "It was probably dehydration. Her blood alcohol was zero and her blood sugar levels are normal. She has no sign of diabetes, nor any history of it in her family." "How are her kidneys?" McCall asked dubiously. "I dumped two bags of NS into her ten minutes ago." "Not yet peeing like a racehorse, but soon, I expect." Early became distracted by the fire department scanner and he pursed his lips, pausing a mid coffee mug pour, from the staff's hot pot. "Crickets chirping." he finally said. "Yep." said both Mike and McCall. "We thought so, too. "First time all summer. Feels... kind of ominous." Joe shivered. "Doesn't have to be. It could be a crest at the top of the hill finally." Dixie chided. "All fires die off with a little help." "A lot of help in this case." came another male voice. Dr. Brackett joined their little group behind the E.R. desk. His eyes roamed over the quiet base station light indicator only briefly as he joined their impromptu coffee club. "The Cistern Fire's the biggest one this state's ever seen, and we've still the Santa Anas yet to come." "Not for weeks." Mike replied. "We might get lucky and snag an atmospheric river." McCall groaned. "I don't know. That might be worse than this fire. A bunch of mud slides from too much rain?" "Can't win in California." Joe sighed. "Not since the gold rush. So what's new?" "Johnny called this morning, all excited." McCall smiled. "Oh, yeah?" Joe grinned back. "What about? It's nice to hear he's cheering up again. I've been worried about him." "So have we all." retorted Mike. "He's got a new hobby working the animal shelter as an officer." Nurse McCall shared. "But I'm half in knots. It'll be no easy ride along for him, because of losing Boot." Kel pursed his lip in amusement. "I disagree. Klutzy though Johnny is, he's got a stern constitution when he puts his mind to it." Dr. Brackett chuckled. "I can't say I didn't see it coming that he'd decide to pick up a dog noose and put on a pound's hat. The man does own an animal ranch. I fully expect to see him, actually ride up to the front doors on a horse with a patient one of these days." All four of them laughed loud and long. Life took a break that hour, letting Rampart rest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Johnny Gage still could not contain his inner excitement. He actually had butterflies in his stomach like a rookie. He glanced at his training animal control officer, Dave Gordon. "Boy, am I nervous." the paramedic chuckled weakily. "What's there to be nervous about?" asked Dave. "You're a pro. It can't be about this fire thing." The dark skinned, early forties man smiled. "It's your usual playground, Johnny." Gage dropped his head. "Is there such a thing as developing an inferiority complex when it comes to dealing with dogs?" "I feel that way about cats one hundred percent of the time. It's their claws I respect." Dave gestured, making ten of them with his fingers in the air over the steering wheel. "Just picture where we'd both be if they were our size." "In their stomachs. I haven't forgotten that grocery store tigress snarling at me from on top of that walk in cooler five years ago." Johnny shivered, thinking about California cougars. "Correct. At least with dogs, we have that Pavlov's bell gene working for us. All we need is a bone or a meat scrap to earn that Fido's best friend rank most of the time. Is it the aggression to strangers possibility that's bothering you today?" Gordon wondered, curious. "Not actually." Gage sighed as they drew closer to their assigned staging spot. "I think it's more now, how I might fold like a stack of cards, if we a..ah.. are too late rescuing one. I was told.... that ...Chet saw Boot running towards the engine seconds before .. " he choked up. "Revisiting that death happened day is okay to do, Mr. Fireman. It's what we all do. I can't imagine what it must be like being too late for one of us, as a paramedic or a first responder. Losing an animal, doesn't hold a candle to that kind of loss, not even as a family pet, as strong as that grief can be." Gage was quiet, reining in reburgeoning, sad emotions. "For me, it's about on a par." "Hang onto that amazing empathy, Johnny Gage. It's a strength, not a weakness. Especially in our line of work." Gordon pulled up to their parking place and shut off the ignition. Across the river, they could see the swollen fire writhing even closer to the power plant's vicinity. Dave looked at his new fire fighting trained partner and winked encouragingly. "We can save this one. She's not over there, according to our R.P. She's somewhere on our side, last spotted near the campsite acreage, staying out of sight, hiding out, waiting to whelp her puppies, if she hasn't already. Her instincts as a soon to be mother will keep her well away from any fire." Dave promised. "She's ours, Johnny. We're not going to be too late. All we have to do is use my smarts about where pregnant mothers like to hole up, and find her." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo : A man leading horses away from a smoky road. Photo: Dave Gordon, animal control, close up. Photo: Johnny Gage before a county map. ***************************************************************** From : Patti Keiper Sent : Wednesday, March 3, 2021 10:44 AM Subject : Par Broiled Captain Stanley ripped off both of his fire gloves and practically leaped out of Engine 51's cab, startling his men. "Front and center, boys!" "What's up, Cap?" Chet asked, almost afraid to pose the question. "It can't be about the fire, because that's still making all of us cry like grown babies." he quipped, hooking a thumb across the river where the water was at a boil at the edge of the fire. "Is that rain moving in yet?" "I've got something faster than that snail crawling Pineapple Express." Hank grinned from ear to ear, holding up his radio attuned to another channel off of the command one. "Wait. Watch. And learn." he beamed. Then he twitched his head oceanwards in a hint. "No way!" gasped Mike Stoker. "You got them?!" "Got who?" Kelly wondered, rubbing a soot covered nose. "I got us more mutual aid by thinking outside of the box." said Cap. "We've been a little obtuse as a department all summer long, struggling with just ourselves and other firefighters to handle our local hell on Earth." he shrugged. All six firefighters shivered when a fiery column of flames rose up in a morass of writhing plasma inside of a dust devil wind. They stared, mesmerized, as it headed casually for the power plant they could barely see through the hazy smoke. Hank shoved his helmet up a little higher on his head. "2100 degree mark right there, gang. That's a fair bit of nastiness. But we're not the only ones who get to play with water tonight. The governor just authorized Navy owned cranes, all they had, to back ours. He just told me, 'Never mind the bill, it's on the state of California's tab.' " Stoker already had his ear to the side of Engine 51's engineer's panel. He whistled appreciatively. "Holy smokes! There must be at least fifteen of them coming our way. My cheek's buzzing!" he said, feeling the vibration of the water crane fleet arrowing in on their location from the west. "Wait a minute, they're hauling saline in those water drops?" Marco gaped. "Yep." Cap confirmed. "Sea water. Because our forest fire tank reservoirs have just about run dry. In two minutes, the plant's shutting down their above ground facility grid so they can begin dousing the fire that's closet to engulfing infrastructure. The conduction risk dangers don't outweigh losing the county's entire power grid for months if we lose this property to the wild fire." Roy chuckled. "Does Battalion know about this plan? It's ingenious!" "He does. I sent the governor to his landline after mine. L.A. made all of this happen between the three of us an hour ago." Chet was still excited and awed. "They sure got here fast." "The beach is just five miles over the hill, Kelly." Cap teased. Craig Brice shifted the glasses on his face thoughtfully. "One alert to the Navy, and then Cap's prime pieces fell into place." He nodded, mollified. "What tipped you off onto this wild idea, Mr. Stanley? Bringing sailors into a fire fight's absolute craziness, and about as far away from the following the rule book, as you can get." Cap deigned to look embarrassed. "Ah... well... A seagull crapped on my windshied on my way into work today. It was an epiphany. I still can't believe I've got a bird to thank for solving all of our problems today." DeSoto's gaze shifted to the river island and the power plant they were assigned to eyeball on fire disaster watch. Two hours ago, Station 51 thought they were going to witness the end of L.A. County's electrical supply. Roy's relief was unbridled. "Wow, we are so lucky here. So, is there anybody we've got to be worried about, who's still gonna be in there?" he asked. Hank got down to business, briefing the gang on a track they had anticipated. "The plant manager and his engineer. They're in scba so they don't need to worry about any one suffocating while they're so close to the forest fire. Captain Stone and his men are backing them up in the control room for the temporary building shutdown, so all of our salt water can land safely on the powerlines and transformers in their yard." "What about the residual energy left over in the equipment?" Lopez frowned. "That's where we come in. We're to put out any sparks or ignition points on the lawn outside. We'll be using our ladder and the aerial the County installed last month. So it's no boots touching the ground, to avoid any and all arcing." Stoker cocked his head at the top of Engine 51. "D@mn. She still looks unwieldy to me wearing that." "That's what her new retractable feet are for. Stand on the runner's board platform to operate your dials. We don't know how long it will take to lay down air drops and support spray over the power plant to protect it, until the main blaze danger passes by and leaves the area. The local power goes back on at that point and the whole island's pretty much electrically active soaked dirt wise, until everything dries out." Brice looked back at the one road that lead off of the island. "What about the bridge?" "The Navy will target that, too. The pavement won't be allowed to buckle. For ourselves, we have enough air to last the rest of the night. Logistics left a flatbed truck full of bottles for both us and Station Eight in the middle of the parking lot." "It's going to be a long night." Marco remarked, stretching his turnout a little looser around his shoulders by pinwheeling his arms to warm them up for hose hauling. "Yep." replied Hank. "But a very short fire assignment for us personally. We get to return to the station to catch some sleep, in the morning afterwards." "Win/ win!" celebrated Chet. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Mom!" came a teen voice just a few months into cracking masculinity. "Yes?" replied Joanne DeSoto to her son, who was on the phone. She was bustling in the kitchen, hurrying pasta for the spaghetti dinner she was hosting for their guests Kel Brackett and Dixie McCall, who was watching and memorizing game plays for their hospital raffle in case the night's city wide fire caused black out that the news channels were hyping about, came to pass. "Dad just called. They've got to babysit tonight." he sighed as he hung up the yellow wall phone. "D@mn it! Er.. darn it!" Mrs. DeSoto swore. "It's always a post brush fire site watch that spoils dinner." she muttered, setting down her colander of steaming noodles into the sink to cool down under the tap. "That's better than a Code I call." Chris shrugged. "Hush. No need to harp the job's barbs before supper." Dixie's ears were sharp. "Oh, well. At least the Merlot won't go to waste. We can always freeze up Roy's dinner for another time." "Hey, can I try Dad's wine?" piped up Chris, sidling into the kitchen and into the forbidden food prep area. "No way, Jose, almost man of mine." she warned. "The apron is on." she teased, ruffling his hair as he swooped in to snag a slice of buttered garlic bread from a towelled basket. "You're only thirteen. Don't rush things." "Had to try." he winked, eating his pilfered snack in two bites. "Wow." his mother blinked. "You can have your sister's plate. She's at a sleepover tonight and took a pass on the pasta get together." "Done deal!" Chris shouted, mouth gaping like he used to do when he was much younger. "Now go set the table for--" Joanne began. "Four. I can count, and subtract." Chris mock scoffed. Joanne just rolled her eyes as she began stirring the sauce in the pan. "You feel like balancing my checkbook, too, then?" Her son looked horrified. "Nah uh. I might figure wrong, and cause an overdraft." "Two dollars if you give it a try.." piped up Kel Brackett from where he was sipping his wine. "It'll put hair on your chest." Chris squealed. "Eewww. Don't rush me. I'm still a growing boy." he said, fingering his newly muscling pectorals. Everybody laughed. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo : Joanne smiling with dimples. Photo : Dr. Brackett close, amused on a couch. Photo : Indignant Chris DeSoto in close up. **************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Monday, March 15, 2021 11:18 AM Subject: Hunker Down Captain Benjamin Stone had one eye on the skylight windows above the control room to watch as the Navy water cranes made their runs to the power plant's river island to dump their loads to soak down the building. A low hum Ben could feel as a vibration in his boots, began to grow. "What's that?" he asked Scott Mason, the electrical plant's senior engineer as he eyed up the metal floor grid underneath their thick room sized insulation rubber mat. "I'm re-orientating the lightning rod conduits deeper into the ground so they'll drain off residuals faster from the wet transformer grids. There's more bleed off than I expected. Usually it's a fresh water rain to handle. Getting ocean water deluges, are energetic interactions magnitudes longer than just a simple lighting strike." "Can your equipment handle it?" asked the Captain. Supervisor Mason pursed his lips. "Yes, but we've an issue that may arise for you fellas, until the left over electricity leaves the above ground power station coils. We're..... sitting on ferrous rock." he said reluctantly. "Oh, wonderful." Stone hissed, in painful mental clenching. He turned to one of his men standing by the door. The firefighter was watching the live electrical arcs crawling across the ground to the power sink disks at the bottom of the retracted lightning rods. Ben shouted, "Shull! Set up a physical runner assignment to the incident commander at regular intervals. Our radios may become compromised by newly magnetized rock in the regolith!" "We're going to lose communications?" the firefighter gaped. "Might. Physics are going to go against us threefold here. In the meantime, that man to man line of sight relay with exchanging slateboards could save our *sses if it comes down to it. The island may become a transmission dead spot in a blink." Stone shared. The lieutenant toggled his H.T. "L.A., Engine 8." ##Engine 8, this is L.A. on tactical.## "We're going manual back up in case of probable environmental blackout." ##10-4, Engine 8. At 14:17.## A new voice came over the channel on Stone's band. ##Engine 51 to Engine 8. Do you need more man power?## came Captain Stanley's instantaneous response over their handy talkies. "I won't turn it down." Stone told Hank. ##I'm sending Kelly and Lopez to you via ropes!## "Copy that." Ben replied. "Mendez! Go tie off their line when they shoot it over. We can rig a stokes after their rappel transfer for air bottles and supplies if we need them later on." "Right, Captain." said the grizzled firefighter on safety watch. He darted for the front entrance with a pair of gloves ready. The plant engineer had more to say. "Now, a second generator localized just for this panel and all of the plant's proximity fire alarms will kick on as soon as the spill over juice from outside falls below 25K kilojoules per minute. It's a safety feature to keep me in control here. It'll provide power for our lights while we're waiting for the air drops' standing water to sink underground beneath the power transfer yard." "That won't take long." Stone nodded. "We'd better get our scba on. The heart of the brush fire's just crested that rise." said, pointing out the vantage windows ringing the control room. The plant engineer blanched. "This is the part of our joint operation for which I've had no training yet. We ran out of time yesterday for me to get any." "Don't worry." reassured Captain Stone. "Smith here will take care of you and stay by your side the whole time we're stuck in place. He'll show you how to put on an air bottle and use it. He'll also give you new ones, when the old ones run low." Mason's grin buckled at the attempted reassurance, but he put on a brave face. "Like an astronaut in outer space, right?" "Yep." replied Firefighter Smith, nodding. "Piece of cake, mister." Stone turned at the sound of a hook from a life belt buzzing down a stretched rope. Marco and Chet, already wearing their air masks, landed neatly inside of the control room from an open upper story window and they both detached from the zip line that had just been established. Chet began counting the civilians in the room automatically."Just him?" "Yeah." Smith answered. Kelly leaned in closer. "How's he holding up with the idea of working in no atmo?" Smith shrugged. "Engineer Scott Mason's scared. But he's also keeping a good mind about himself and his work." Chet coughed, clearing some steam from his mask through the face valve. "I'll keep telling jokes while I watch your backs. He'll be laughing so much, he won't care that he's in a vacuum." Marco was ready. "We have twenty four bottles a man for now with a second truck coming in six hours with the same number, Captain Stone. Our Cap wanted you to know that." Ben did the math in his head. "Outta sight. The fire won't hang around as long as dawn. It'll pass by on the way to the beach. Perfect. Thanks for the report, Lopez. Do me a favor. Could you scout around for a suitable fire shelter around here in case the blaze takes a crack at us anyway?" "I'll find a cooler without any compressed gas tanks nearby, and mark a trail to it on the walls." Marco promised. "Good plan." Ben nodded, slipping into his scba gear's straps. "Be back here in five minutes. By then, the wildfire will be at the river bank, threatening our area and burning up all of our oxygen. Meyers, buddy up with Lopez." "Right!" said a nearby firefighter freshly anticipating new orders. "Our helicopters won't be able to fly in the airless zone when it develops because combustion won't be possible in their engines if they hit a pocket of depletion." Stone told everybody. "What about our local generator's?" Chet thought out loud. Stone grunted. "Hmmm. Feed it a spare bottle's air hose if it quits. Then restart it under a tarp. That should hold in any trapped air we feed it to keep it running, when our free oxygen drops out to nothing. We'll be on our own for a while then, manning charged lines from the doors, on stand by, to protect all infrastructure. So look sharp." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Gordon and Les Taylor brought Johnny Gage and Patty Burns to the Rip Pine Campsite that was deep inside the monster footprint of the burned out zone. Embers on the ground were no longer glowing, but some of the flash burned trees were still smoking. "We're here." said Gordon, breaking out a blue capture rope noose, pole, and an extra large portable dog carrier. Surrounding them, were plastic tarp covered cabins and a stone constructed lodge that had been saved by fire control crews the week before. "This is the last place firefighters reported seeing the pregnant Irish Setter. She was so stressed by all of the activity from the fire departments working around her, that she made it a habit of running upstairs over here, to get away from people." Dave pointed to the main visitor's lodge. "Ah.." Gage exclaimed, sharing an idea. "There's a full bath tub on the second floor, I'll just bet." "What?" asked Patty Burns, putting on her pair of animal handling gloves. "That isn't enough water to keep anybody cool in a fire." "It's to soak down turnout coats in case of a flashover from the forest. Standard policy whenever we move in working any fire." Johnny replied. "But that never happened here, from what I've read. That filled tub was forgotten, apparently." "But found by our lost dog." smiled Les. "The river's undrinkable from all of the char and toxic run off from the soil. Any animal would know this and actively seek out other water sources." Patty frowned. "How do you know she's still here?" Gordon pointed down to a row of canine tracks that exposed the lighter, normal dirt and grass within them. They contrasted clearly against the black soot stained earth. Droplets of glistening white liquid lightly peppered the footprints. "That's lactation residue. She's at least at the laboring stage or just past the post delivery phase. She won't travel now. Her instincts will keep her tending pups. They're the sole priority in her head once the oxytocin kicks in like that, dropping her mother's milk." "You can't argue with hormones." Taylor shrugged at Burns. "Especially a dog's." "Will she trust us? We're from the Pound." Patty mumbled, gesturing to their uniforms and to the gear they were off loading from their trucks. Dave answered her on their way to the main entrance of the abandoned lodge. "Probably not. And the usual food offering won't work either. There's too much BBQ strewn about in the foothills in wildlife that couldn't escape the fire." Les shared more to the vet secretary. "So our game plan is a slow approach until we're close enough to secure her from biting, with this capture pole. Eating free fire food means a greater chance of this dog contracting rabies or lockjaw through her stomach." "I didn't think of that." Patty sighed. "I did." Gage angled his head. "Anywhere a fire's been, is one big, old, garbage dump, until it's been weather cleaned or fill hauled away." Dave reassured their petite partner. "We'll be safe enough. And soon, she and her puppies will be, too. Doc Coolidge will treat anything he finds on them with top notch care, like he always does." The inside of the lodge lobby was silent and smelling strongly of wood smoke and the acridness of leftover fire retardant propellant. Abandoned camping gear from a boy scout troup still lay piled near the reception desk. Dave reached for a western patterned wool blanket that he saw folded on top of a backpack to use as a comfort aid for the dog. "Can I go first?" Johnny suddenly asked. "I- I mean, while completely bare handed, and with you, hiding that thing.... behind your back?" he insisted, pointing to the noose rig. "Sure." Taylor smiled at the dog loving firefighter's paramedic instincts surging to the foreground. Johnny looked confident to the others, but inside, he was actually in a fog, mentally and emotionally fraught. All he could see in his mind's eye was a vision of Boot, climbing up through a hole filled with fire foam, carrying a sodden stick of dynamite between his teeth. A wave of grief washed up and away as he suppressed the memory of that day trapped in the cistern, so he could concentrate on going up the stairs. The soft sound of squirming, contented brand new puppies at the top, elicited a sharp lance of something indescribable through his heart. Any doubt he had feared earlier about getting close to another dog, shattered into dust. Gage took off a glove and reached out towards the mother dog. "Hi there, girlie girl. How are you and your new family doing?" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Photo: Boot side close up. Photo: Boot and Gage in a cave. Photo: Dave Gordon, animal control officer, smiling. **************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, April 3, 2021 5:42 AM Subject: Grit Battalion 7 hopped on the main fire channel from Command's. ##All crews working the island, brace yourselves. Chopper 10 reports the fire has reached your river banks. ## Captain Stone's head snapped up and he and his Safety, Firefighter Duncan, moved to the windows to peek outside. Ben spoke on HT. "Triple check your seals and air supplies. Oxygen levels will be falling rapidly, starting now. We're on our own until the fire passes by! Reaffirm verbally." Fireman Shull Smith, with the power plant engineer Scott Mason, responded from the main control room ringed with observation windows. ##Smith with civilian Mason. Panel 1. ## Chet stood with Mendez, Station Eight's engineer, just outside, with a primed hose from the nearest stairwell. ##Mendez, with HT 51 Kelly, side A. On an inch and a half.## ##Meyers with HT 51 Lopez, Side C exterior, with open route to shelter.## Captain Stone nodded in satisfaction, "Duncan and I are on Side B with med gear and sixteen air bottles near the stokes zip line. Give me a report every five minutes on any observations you note and your current ongoing statuses. Switch to Battalion 7 on Tach 2 for fire conditions every half hour." he ordered. ##10-4.## answered his assignment crew. The plant engineer jumped when Smith clapped a friendly hand on his shoulder after checking the straps on his face mask again. Mason jerked, "I am so not a firefighter. I - I talk to machines. Redirect power relays..." he mumbled to himself, as he balanced powerful electical surges caused by the water the fire department had rained down on top of them in preparation, ahead of the leaping wild fire. "How did I get to today?" he bemoaned, peering at Smith through his unfamiliar air mask. "Everybody gets to shine battling Mother Nature at least once in a lifetime, I reckon. Your number's up to bat, Mr. Mason. But you've got all of us to help you. Relax. We've got your back. We see Mother Nature's fury every summer. She's not going to win today. Our job, is to see that she plays fair." "But you're not in control." stammered Scott, his gloves dancing nimbly as he kept the bulk of L.A. County's power running hot, while he shunted water attenuated excess into the ground, locally. "No, we aren't. But we're really good at turning the beast this year. This canyon is the last fuel that blaze is going to find, before it runs into the ocean. A guaranteed win! All we have to do, is duck a little." Smith grinned. Right then, the roof of the power station groaned and popped, as metal outside heated. "Ah, there she is. Hello, Miss Cistern Fire. Tonight's the night you're gonna die on the beach." Smith chuckled happily. Mason startled, "You mean, this fire's the same one from April that the old mine's dynamite started in that park ten miles away?" "Yep." the big firefighter replied, his face shield glowing with reflected firelight from the burning forest across the river. "She's got long legs, this one. But she's toothless!" Smith bellowed at the flames heat rattling the windows that were tinged from the inferno surrounding them. "Isn't that right, sweetheart?" he asked the air. A cloud of steam hissed nearby and billowed up from the soggy lawn that they could see bubbling around the plant. "Will that stay wet enough?" Scott wondered as he worked across his whole massive control panel. "I think the grass is boiling." "Oh, yeah. No problem. The humidity's through the roof." He held up a gloved index finger. "One side of the combustion triangle's busted. No fuel. One down, two to go. Now, though, she's hungry. Enough to use up all of the local oxygen at ground level before sundown, while we're under her skirts. But only for an hour or two." Smith flipped up another finger. "That's the second side. No more oxygen to burn. Then it's three strikes, when those leading edge flames finally touch seawater, sir. She's out! Her temperature falls to no spark levels as she drowns and gets snuffed. She doesn't have any oil to boat with." Scott smiled, "A wildfire as a lady. Huh. That.. makes this whole mess a lot less scary. Thank you." The burly firefighter cracked open a window next to them to let out escaping air pressure. "We're in a solid box. No way can she sit on us long enough to try any cremation. Heh. My captain sure knows his stuff." Smith said proudly, displaying white teeth through the steam on his faceplate. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the rim of the pine canyon above the power plant's river oxbow island, Roy DeSoto, Craig Brice, Captain Stanley, and Mike Stoker waited, eyeballing the fire's behavior as it surrounded the area below, driven by the easterly prevailing winds. "How are they doing?" Roy asked Hank as he ran over their squad's triage supplies that were laid out in the parking lot at their vantage point. Cap gave him an encouraging thumb's up, but didn't take his ear off of his active radio chatter. Brice didn't take his own eyes, glassing through his binoculars, off of Stone's position at the plant's windows. "Singed a bit, but not melting anywhere." "All thanks to Operation Monsoon." Stoker joked. "Good." Roy huffed. "This is one fire I wish would end tomorrow." he sighed. "I feel bad for Johnny. It's like this blaze has beaten out his heart. You've seen him sulking for four months. Probably unexpected for him, because Boot was our own dog, and not a human patient. Training on dealing with people loss, can never help there." The others nodded in agreement. A sudden gust front against the main stiff breeze tugged their pants legs and began to grow at a steady rate. Brice and DeSoto signalled down to Stanley with a pair of spinning tornado gestures. "We're getting reverse suction, Cap!" DeSoto yelled down to Engine 51's location where Hank and Stoker stood by with the latest fire loss map. "Masks!" Cap ordered, and Station 51 went on their air bottles for safety. Hank made sure the four of them were geared up tight, before he leaned back on Squad 51's hood to re-study the halligan tool weighed down chart. He sighed, readjusting his helmet strap over the face mask. "Mike, you might know this. How far up does oxygen depletion reach, beneath a moving wildfire?" "Nobody really knows." Stoker shared. "Some scientists have guessed it goes as high as treetops because of vegetation resistence on air flow, putting the brakes on any refillling after consumption. Another theory comes from reports of small aircraft stalling out in mid air near forest fires. All plane crashes like those that we know about, happened when they were below treed ridge lines on fire. This is why we ground our water cranes if they find themselves working in the same land depression, near any large fire." "So we're not at risk of suffocation conditions where we are?" "Not due to dropping oxygen levels, no. But possibly to the usual smoke and toxic gases should the wind shift. Think vulcanologists standing over the lava lake in Hawaii. Same idea." Mike shrugged. Cap shivered. "I hate gas pockets. There's too many bad ones out there. Grain silos, locomotive chemical tankers, mines..." he trailed off quickly, remembering Boot's end. "All the ills of mankind, designed into things too poorly adaptive, and ignoring any physics." "And how about those towns and cities on flood plains or along coastlines in tsunami range?" "Don't get me started, Stoker." Hank grumbled in irritation, sucking in a deep breath of bottled air into his face plate. "We are pretty stupid as an overall species, disaster proofing wise." Mike had the grace to smile, through his. "Job security!" Roy DeSoto shouted back from the hilltop overlook. "Check your radioes. Open mic!" he waved. Cap shot away from the fender he was hip leaning on, remembering belatedly, that his steady stream broadcasting HT, was tucked into that jacket pocket. "Whoops." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Gage! We've got to move!" shouted Gordon from the foot of the stairs. "What? Why?!" Johnny replied over his shoulder, his bare hand still outstretched towards the new mother dog as a scent offering. "Wind's shifted! Dispatch says the fire changed direction once it hit the river. You know how low lying valleys get." "Oh, yeah." he said sarcastically. "Don't I? Only too well." He eyeballed the trembling setter eyeballing him. "Uhhh. What do I do, Dave?" he fretted, afraid to touch the six puppies, still wet from being born. "Pick em up and put em into that blanket you found like eggs into a nest!" "But--" "She won't abandon her puppies, Johnny. She's not a bird!" Taylor replied, with growing worried impatience. Gordon expedited decision making. "If she was going to not trust you, you're hand would already be full of bloody holes from her fangs, Gage. Hurry up!" Gage tucked his pro-offered fingers subconsciously against his chest apologetically. "Right. This is now a rapid extrication, is it? Okay.." he smiled meekly at the nervously whining setter. "Don't bite me. I don't eat puppies for dinner." He slowly gathered up the rump of the nearest pup with both gingerly placed hands, and pulled him off a nipple with a soft pop. "Gage! We can see it!" Patty Burns yelled. Real fear had lanced through her voice. "Got it! No time to be delicate." Johnny rushed, grabbing mom by the scruff of her neck and singed collar. He lifted her front half up bodily. "Stand up, girl. We're in trouble. I'll get your kids. Now, go! Downstairs.." The remaining five pups dropped off of their furry breakfast bar, crying loudly at being disturbed. Woof! huffed the anxious setter. But she obeyed Johnny, shooting for the way out with reluctant steps and retracing back to her pups. Gage scooped them up in one grab onto the spread out blanket next to the first pup. He snagged a waste basket to use as a carrier, dumping out its office trash behind him. In moments, they were safely tucked away into the garbage can, bundled in wool blanket. He leaped down the stairs with the mother dog following, practically glued to his leg, the whole way down. "Would you-- Be careful? You're gonna trip me and break my neck!" Woof! the milk heavy setter complained, grabbing onto the front of Johnny's jacket and pulling to hasten his escape. Patty Burns saw them coming. "Les says we drive to the west. Seawards. Maybe we'll find a fire break that's away from the road we lost to the fire." Johnny burst outside, handing her the trash can full of blanketed dog brood. He spun in a circle, reading conditions in the tree tops quickly."Ah, sh*t." he breathed when he heard the tell tale hiss of frying pine needles in the distance. "It's right there!" he pointed. "Let's go!" "There's no smoke yet. It can't be that close.." Les Taylor blurted out, opening truck doors for their rookies as they bundled inside both cabs. "It is. It's not smoky because we're upwind." Johnny grimaced, buckling on his seat belt. "The fire's big enough to burn wherever the h*ll it wants." "We're driving!" said Dave and Les together. They threw on amber bar and headlights to advertise themselves to any local fire crew in the area who might be bee lining for them by line of sight. Both dog pound utility trucks spun dirt in a spray behind them as they sped away from the campgrounds and into the thinnest part of the forest. Patty had her lap full of baby dogs. The irish setter was doing her best to crawl into the trash can to be with them. "Easy girl! Watch the shift stick!" "I got it!" Les replied, leaning a shoulder to shove the mother away from his gear shifting hand nimbly. Taylor cranked the steering wheel full around stumps, rocks and holes as they bounced at high speed in their escape. It was then the first fully ignited tree toppled, to land just feet away in front of them. It began to roll backwards towards them, down slope. "Look out!" cried Dave to Gage as he swerved to avoid hitting the massive burning trunk. "Beggers can't be choosers, man." he shouted, turning directly toward the stable barn to their right. "Going through!" he warned on radio to his partner, racing close behind. "But what if---" Boom! The pound trucks burst through the wooden slat doors and into a wide clay and straw aisle way flanked by stalls. As Gordon had hoped, the stable had been picked clean of everything that hadn't been nailed down. Their way was clear. Johnny was still ducking nearly under the dashboard as they crashed through the second stable door at the end of the aisle. Dave began to laugh. "Evacuated, Gage. I knew this a month ago." He found a new escape path towards the dunes leading to the ocean's shoreline a few hundred yards ahead. A lifeguard truck patrolling surf duty, rushed to join them when they spotted the pair of vehicles off the pavement and sporting burning twigs in their grills. Les picked up their loud speaker mic. "We're okay. No injuries! Would you mind showing us to the nearest freeway outta here? We've a dog newly birthed with six on board. She's going to need a vet a.s.a.p." "Got it, Carson Shelter 1 and 2. Move to the hard packed seep zone before you get stuck in soft sand. Dodge any waves rolling in as you follow us." they replied on their own P.A. Gage picked up his head just in time to see Dave washing away flaming embers with the windshield wipers. "Must be nice having four wheel drive." "All terrain vehicles, Mr. Gage." Gordon grinned. "How many decades is it going to be before the fire department follows suit?" Johnny slumped in relief, back into his seat when he recognized which beach they were on and who was in front of them, leading the way. "Probably not until we take over the lifeguards." he shrugged. "Man, you guys sure do have the best toys." "Time and tide wait for no man." Gordon retorted. "Quit using roadways to reach your calls, fireman. They burn up too easily in a fire." he quipped. "I'll pass that along." Johnny said weakily, still finding his stomach. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Say, Doc?" Johnny asked Coolidge at the vet clinic once they had offloaded their emergency patients. "Hmmm?" murmured the portly vet, still listening to the smallest puppy's heart through his stethoscope. "Is your parking lot in back big enough to hold a full sized camper?" I'm not leaving until I know all of these guys and their mother, are A-okay." Les Taylor smiled. "I'll write you a permit for it so you don't get towed. Come with me." "Uh, could you-- just-- bring me the book of slips here? I'm afraid to move." Gage said, from where he was curled up on the floor rug near the exam table. Mama dog was already asleep wth her head pillowed in Johnny's lap in pure exhaustion. An I.V. line of water and nutrients was snaked into one of her paw veins, running full open. "I'll bring it." piped up Patty Burns. "Along with five cups of hot coffee for all of us." "So what's the verdict, Doc?" Dave asked seriously. "Well, it'll be rocky for a couple of hours due to getting rudely jolted around, but I think everybody's going to make it. There's absolutely no signs of prematurity. That setter there must be an absolutely stellar all around mother." Coolidge giggled appreciatively. But then his smile dropped away. "But now comes the hard part." Gage's eyes got really big. "Oh?" Les, Dave and Patty burst out laughing. Taylor elaborated. "Now you're stuck with having to decide which lucky pup you're going home with in a couple of weeks." Johnny's eyes immediately watered up. "Him.. I want the littlest one." he said, "The one with the Doc. He's got the hardest fight going on." "What are you going to name him?" Patty asked, gently finger tip stroking the soft face fur around the oxygen feed Coolidge was offering the puppy. "He's adorable with these black, brown and white patch markings all over him." "I think I'll call him Grit. Because that's what he's got in ample supply." the paramedic replied. **************************************************** From: patti keiper Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2021 946 PM Subject: Pinned The O2 sensor on the front of Captain Stone's jacket began to flash. "Yep." he muttered, tapping the refresh button on the side of the unit to get a reading with a current numerical value displaying. He broadcast on H.T. "All. We don't have to worry about ground fire leaping the river. We're at six percent oxygen." The power plant engineer angled his head. "Maybe from the outside. But electricity doesn't use any oxygen to move around, Captain. The risks in here remain." shared Scott Mason. "Water's more than enough of an adequate conduit. Keep your eyes peeled on where you see water dripping. That's where pooling power might be hot with overflowing arc and connected to the transformer grid out in the yard. Anything wet might be live with current." Stone frowned. "How do we figure out which spots are dangerous then?" "Throw a coin or something metal where it's puddling. You'll find out really quick what to avoid." replied the engineer. He slapped down a jar full of pennies onto a table that he had pulled out of an equipment locker. "Use these." Ben chuckled through his face plate. "Thanks. That's one trick we're going to adopt. I'll recommend it to the chief next meeting to add to our fire fighting manual." he joked. Captain Stone stuffed in a few dollars from his trouser pockets, and then scooped out a couple of handfuls of change to pass around. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Lunch money?" Chet quipped when Stone handed him some coins a few minutes later. "Zap checkers." Ben told him. "Engineer says they'll jump if they hit any juice." he grinned. "I'll make a wish first." Kelly promised. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Craig Brice and Roy DeSoto closed the doors of the ambulance after seeing the last firefighter who needed follow up at Rampart for heat exposure. Brice slapped the back of the Mayfair and the stand by EMT inside waved back at him, turning his head to the driver to shout that they could begin transport. The rig pulled away and onto the road leading to the freeway. "Think he'll be admitted?" Roy asked Craig. "Nah. You know us firefighters, Mr. DeSoto. If we're not knocked off of our feet.." Brice replied. "...we keep on working." DeSoto sighed. "Sometimes I think our inherent stubborness in this job probably leads us into risking an early demise." "Yeah, but we're having fun." Captain Stanley coughed, clearing some steam out of his face mask. "We do what we love." Mike Stoker agreed. "But I think this summer's fire has shown a little too much love back, don't you think?" he asked Roy. DeSoto nodded as he put away their medical gear back into their cases. "Yep. He was number four to go in today." "It's demoralizing." Brice nodded. "We know we can beat it. But the fire's saying, 'Not yet' at every stage of the game." Stanley added encouragement. "It'll be done by noon tomorrow." he said. "Death by sea waves." "And how many weeks of clean up duty afterwards are we going to get?" Brice wondered. "That depends on the rain." Mike Stoker replied. Stanley was frank. "We'll have clean up around our regular calls until this state of emergency is lifted. Good old city protocols are going to feel normal again soon. The chief saw the weather forecast this morning. It's good news." "Showers by six." Brice shared. "Ahhh." sighed DeSoto, stretching the kinks out of his back from the weight of his air bottle that was keeping him breathing in the vacuum that was seeping in around them. "I will not complain about slipping in a little mud. Bring it on." The gang began to relax guardedly, turning to watch the way the Cistern Fire was going to take on its approach to the sea. Hank checked in with the rest of his men. "Station 51 to Station 8. Status report." he transmitted on their crew to crew band. Benjamin replied. ##The fire's mid leap. Over us now. Our position's solid.## Stone told his fellow captain. ##Your men are fortified and handling the assignment as planned.## "10-4." copied Stanley, eyeballing the writhing mass of pure plasma boiling over the power plant on a cushion of nothing. "Yikes." Mike retorted. "I'm seeing extreme ball fire behavior. And... there goes the linear ground travel front. It's all spontaneous combustion now." "Steel is fabulous, Stoker." Stanley reassured. "They aren't going to cook in there. It takes too much heat to melt that kind of metal. And there's no direct contact being made. The whole conflagration's floating in mid air on top of that vacuum layer." "I wish I had a camera to film this!" Mike said, frustrated. "We could use it for training." "There'll be more fires, Mike." Hank said. "This one's just being a boss. We've been left no time to play." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "He's too young to play, Johnny." Coolidge teased the paramedic at the vet clinic. "I know, I know. I'm just so happy that I-- Well, I guess I just don't know what to do with myself, Doc." Gage beamed. "Puppies can be the best medicine for a broken heart, but are you sure you want to go through with it?" the vet asked Johnny. "Huh? Through with what?" he replied, distracted and in love. "The adoption agreement... It requires vaccines, boosters, check ups, and eventual neutering as part of the agreement with the county pound." Johnny didn't look away from his eye lock on Grit's tiny, sleepy face. "I'll pay anything, Doc. Anything for this little guy." Patty Burns eyeballed the mother setter, who was nursing her other five puppies under sedation, so she could rest. "Do you think they're all adoptable?" she asked Les and Dave, who were filling out their run sheets and grabbing supplies to restock the trucks. Taylor smiled. "We've got a few months yet before the pound has to make a decision on this family." "I'll pay for their care, too." Gage said quickly. Doc Coolidge held up a pudgy finger. "I'll take not one red cent, Mr. Gage. I do twenty free cases a year as a matter of principle, on my dime. She and her brood, are number twelve on the roster so far. Stick with this one puppy, Johnny. One on your ranch, is plenty. That way, little Grit can have a better chance to become a one man dog, instead of being tempted into developing into a nomad,.. like Boot did." "Boot lived a good life." Johnny protested. "As a wanderer." "That's only because he was lucky enough to bond with half a dozen fire station crews. Most nomads don't do so well." Doc shared. "And then we get them." Gordon sighed. "Is she a nomad?" Gage wondered, angling a head at the mother dog. "Hmmm." thought the vet. "She's in very good condition for having been at an abandoned campsite in the middle of a forest fire. She's most likely a run away pet, whose owners decided not to spay, for whatever reason. That's probably why she ran away. She probably found herself love struck one night and began searching for the nearest available nomad. Sometimes, that's all it takes to get into her situation." Johnny's face flattened at the thought. "Grit will get fixed. He'll be no one's cast off. And... thanks for the no bill on him." "You're welcome. With her sweet temperment, and dedication to her puppies, this mama deserved a second chance. She's passed on some of that class to Grit for sure." Doc grinned. Patty Burns thought ahead, thinking along the same lines that she could see tracking across Johnny's face. "Mr. Gage, we could hold a puppy adoption raffle at the dedication memorial fund raiser that I heard Dixie McCall mention last month." "At the Cistern Park? That's a great idea!" Dave Gordon said, snapping his fingers excitedly. "With enough people showing up, I'll bet even Mama there could find a new home." "When is it?" Doc asked. "I could preach about their solid health and personalities in person." "September 9th." Gage answered. "I'll be there." Coolidge promised. Grit woke up fully then, and began yowling loudly for his dinner, his shut eyes pinching in new hunger. The setter stood up, her five dangling young still hanging onto her teats, until Patty encouraged her to lay back down again onto the lamb's wool mat, before they fell off. Doc scooped up Grit, his oxygen feed at all, and placed him onto a nipple with brothers and sisters on either side to help keep him warm. "Eat up, Grit. Sounds like you've got an exciting life ahead of you as a firefighter paramedic's dog. There's a good boy." That just made Gage's eyes water up even more. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dixie McCall got off the phone with Patty Burns. She looked up at Kel Brackett, who was writing on a chart at the head nurse's emergency department desk. "Now that's a fabulous idea right there." she sighed, returning the receiver of the black phone to its cradle on the wall. "Best one I've heard all summer." She sighed at him. "What, Dix?" the dark haired physician wondered. "Using Boot's interment at the Cistern Park Memorial fund drive to peddle some pound puppies." she grinned, sipping her coffee craftily. "Puppies?!" Kel oggled, looking up from his pencil work. "Where did you gals drum up some of those?" "Carson Shelter pound. It seems our favorite paramedic made a very recent four footed save. An irish setter and her new family." "Hmmm." Brackett thought out loud. "I heard Gage was running around with a dog catcher's net recently, from Dr. Morton. Just how are we involved in all of this?" he asked, casting a hand back and forth between them. "We can't have dogs where we live, remember?" he reminded. "No, but you are an excellent BBQ griller. I've volunteered us, to be potato roaster and rib broiler only, at the event." she promised. Kel narrowed his eyes in gentle tolerance. "What's Joe going to be doing?" "He's the bar tender." "And Mike?" "He's one of the band." Dixie said, grinning cheekily, amused at Brackett uncovering another one of her ploys for social activity in their super busy lives. Dr. Brackett laughed full out. "I wonder what he plays." "Saxophone." came Dr. Morton's brisk voice as he walked in on them from handling a call in the base station. "That was Squad 51. They're sending an EMT in with a firefighter for a check up. Apparently, he got a little warm in an airless zone." "Was he wearing his scba?" "Yes." "Then we won't have to deal with any hypoxia issues on top of that heat exhaustion." Kel said, reading the notes Mike had taken down from his notebook. "This doesn't look bad for vital signs." "DeSoto didn't feel like he warranted an I.V. line." Dr. Morton added. "I'll set up Two." offered Miss McCall, heading out into the hall. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "How are we doing, Scott?" Firefighter Smith joked, holding the top heavy, air bottled engineer steady by the shoulders as he walked back and forth along the power panels, making adjustments to power flows or bypassing compromised ones. "Is everybody going to enjoy cold beer tonight out there?" "How do you guys fight fires in these things?" panted Mason, hefting up his self contained breathing apparatus farther up onto his shoulders to minimize its drag on his slender frame. Shull's eyes twinkled through his mask. "We find firefighters built like line backers to compensate. These fifty pound air bottles are just for starters. We've also got hose lines, ladders and tool to haul around." Scott immediately looked sheepish for complaining. "I forgot you guys sometimes carry people, too." "In a pico. So.... can we save everybody's beer tonight? Or is it going to go warm?" Fireman Smith asked again. "Fridgidares are going to remain frigid." Scott smiled. "I'm not seeing anything here that shows that any of the major outgoing transformer towers are being effected by the fire. It's looking good." Captain Stone overheard that. "What can change that?" "Uhhhh. A burning tree landing on critical power lines leaving the island? Our bulk electricity's never fully set in a transit mode, until it gets off the island and into the pole controlled conduits that will carry it out to customers." "Okay." The captain thought out loud. "Do you have a map of vegetation around those relays?" Mason nodded. "Yeah, over there on that wall in the main conference room. See it?" he pointed, one eye still roaming over his bouncing readouts. "We'll take a look." Ben said. Firefighter Duncan aimed a flashlight on their route across the emergency lit control chamber. "Oh, man." he said as soon as he saw the map. "They're all lodgepole pines." Ben's face fell into worry. "And they're going to topple like bowling pins." he groaned. He burst into action, jumping onto his radio channel. "Gang, we've got some trees to cut down a.s.a.p.! Form up!" "Just how old is this power plant anyway?" Duncan wondered. "Any forest ranger should have told them about the fire risks with that kind of landscaping." he said, slapping a glove onto the map's glass face. "From the 1950s." Stone replied. "We never used to have as many wildfires back then, as we do now. Most blazes now days, people cause." "Case and point." Duncan grumbled as they hustled out to the fire engine for a couple of chain saws. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Dang.. We have to dance in all of that?" Meyers inclined his helmet at the sparks popping up on the lawn in the open places in between the pine trees that had been mentally marked, for demise. "We've done it before." Marco Lopez shrugged. "In coreless boots and standing on rubber tarps. Sure." he said good naturedly to cheer up his Station Eight partner. "It'll be like avoiding white phosphorous pockets at jet liner crashes." he said. "We can see those." grumbled Meyers, hissing some air out of his mouth valve in annoyance. "That's why we're going to use these." Engineer Mason said, pacing up to them with a soggy box full of G.E. lightbulbs. "You're kidding." Marco deadpanned. "What if one's a dud?" "We toss down another one, and keep going, until it lights up in the water or until we can get this meter to test the ground." Scott told them. "Here." he said, shoving the lightbulbs and the electrical reader probe rod at them quickly. "I've got to get back over there." Stone eyed his dubious men. "This is the fastest way. We can't pull Scott away from what he's doing to go get us more of these readers from the utility trucks parked in their bay. He doesn't have those keys, or access to them." Ben shared. "Mason had to improvise." Scott grew firm at the firefighters' reluctant faces. "G.E.'s reliable. They've got good bulbs. I've been on their testing lines." said the engineer. "Stay safe out there, fellas." he replied. "I won't let any arc near ya." he promised. "Let's go!" Ben hollered out at Meyers and Lopez. He tried, and succeeded in preventing any nervousness from coloring his voice. ------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Photo: *************************************************************************************** ***This current episode is not yet complete. ***Visit the fiction websites below to read more stories. ***Sister site on Facebook, is building an online archive of Emergency. *************************************************************************************** Emergency Theater Live® =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ Host- Patti Keiper in the United States. ** Theaterhost@voyagerliveaction.com Emergency Theater Live® "Offstory" Email Address For Midi Music Requests and General Inquiries http://www.voyagerliveaction.com/emergency.html Emergency Theater Live® Homepage https://www.facebook.com/groups/emergencyfanfiction/ Writer's Pre-Production Distribution Site https://www.facebook.com/groups/station51club/ The Emergency- Station 51 Club on Facebook ____________________________________ Mark VII Productions and Universal owns all of Emergency!© and its Characters. © 2021. 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