A Day In The Life

The Story Unfolds... Season Nine, Episode Fifty Six §§  A Day In The Life  §§ Debut Launch: July 1st, 2011. ------------------- ************************************************** From:  patti keiper (pattik1@hotmail.com) Subject: Sugar and Spice and Everything....   Sent: Thu 7/21/11 1:30 AM Riinnnng! ".. Ahhh!" mumbled Dixie as she nap jerked awake on her rumpled canopy bed as her front apartment door bell suddenly rang. "OhmyG*d.." she groaned, her muscles following betraying instincts as they got her to her stumbling feet to fetch a robe. McCall's groggy expression gelled into an irritated scowl as the angle of the moon through her bedroom window told her what time it was. "Five a.m.?!" she blurted out. Feet finding soft slippers, McCall felt her way into the living room without turning any lamps on to spare her sleep crusted eyes. "This had better be a fire or I'm.." She jerked the door open.."...Hi, Mrs. Fishmeyer? What are you doing here at my door? Are you feeling sick?" she said sweetly, her tone barely keeping ice from casual politeness. "No, no.. I'm fine dearie.." said Millicent as she shoved on by Dixie and reached out for the nearest light switch.. "I just need to borrow a small cup of sugar." "Oh, no..no..no. Don't-!" Dixie simpered in horror.. Flick! "AHHH!" she grunted, falling back against the wall as her nosy neighbor sent unwanted light bulb illumination deep into her headache-y brain.  "Okay. I guess a trip and fall wouldn't be so good for someone at your age, Millie." she admitted, covering her eyes with her messy frosted hair. Millicent just beamed as she helped herself to Dixie's cupboard for the sugar bowl she knew was there. "I'm only 94, Dixie. A few more lumps wouldn't make that much difference in my case. I had two feet stuck firmly into the grave a month ago." "I know. I'm the one who found you in cardiac arrest by your petunias and called the fire department." Millicent's sweet silver eyes twinkled. "I figured you owed me one since you broke three ribs along my sternum doing that car-deal-plumbing-regurgitation thing on me." "That's cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Millie. C.P.R? You were dead. I had to do something. Your eyes were still reactive to light." McCall told her, sinking miserably down onto a breakfast stool.   "Oh, yeah? Well, so are yours from the looks of things. Did you and Kel do too much hosting at your party last night? We all heard the racket." she said, digging out a crumbled plastic bag from her quilted sea green flannel robe pocket. "From the community room? Millie that's over five hundred feet away from everybody's apartment." Dixie insisted, joining Millie in the kitchen to help herself to a cold glass of water she got from the tap in the sink. "I had the windows open. Ninety two degrees isn't hot enough for me." Dixie eyed up her neighbor professionally. "You're still feeling cold? And you waited this long to tell me..." she pegged accusingly. "It's five in the morning." "5: 03, dearie. Look at your watch. I can't be that bad, I'm hungry. So I decided I'd bake some cookies. Hence the sugar loan." gestured Millie at her barely filled baggie that she was filling with one tiny one eighth measuring spoonful at a time, myopically. "Humor me, Millie. I'm going to check you out." said McCall, reaching into another cupboard to pull out Kel's medical bag. She dragged out a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. "Sit down." "I'm not done getting the sugar yet." Dixie upturned the whole bowl into Millie's bag dramatically and tied the large baggy swiftly shut with a deft knot. "Yes you are. See?" Millie sat, cowed reluctantly. "My pulse rate's fine. Ever since that shock Roy and Johnny gave me, I swear I can hear my heartbeat inside my ears." Dixie snorted as she wrapped a cuff around Millie's thin rosy arm. "I'd be listening for my pulse, too, if a bee stung me and stopped my heart cold." she scoffed, blowing loose bangs out of her way as she read the dial. "So, speaking of which, are you?" "I'm freezing." Millie peeped. "Your pressure's normal, thank G*d." Dixie said, sighing as she released the air on the band. "I'll fix you a cup of hot tea." Millie nodded her thanks, still sitting quietly on Dixie's bar stool. Then she leaned over and whispered in a conspiratory tone. "So, was Chet really there at your party?" Dixie dropped her head from where she was setting a tea kettle onto the gas stove. "Yes, he was. And yes, he's still cute as ever. But he's already got a girlfriend. A real serious one." Millie was disappointed. "Oh, yeah? Who?" she asked curiously. "I can't tell you that. It'd be an invasion of Mr. Kelly's privacy." Dixie told her kindly but firmly. "Aww, Dixie. I wouldn't tell a soul. I'll bet she's really cute." McCall didn't rise to the bait. She just got frank. "So why this sudden interest in a firefighter old enough to be your grandson? You've been at it for two weeks now." "He saved my life. He was the one giving me octagon when I wasn't breathing." "That's oxygen. And you remember that?" Dixie asked, surprised. "Sure do." Millie blinked shyly. "I was floating all around all of you. And boy was I embarrassed my shirt was torn off and wide open for the whole world to see." "It was night time and it was just the seven of us in your garden. The neighbors didn't see you. They were all still sleeping." McCall prompted firmly. "Besides, it wasn't for long. I covered you up with a blanket as soon as we got your heart going because I knew how you'd feel about it all."

"I still got cold." Fishmeyer mused, accepting the tea Dixie finally poured her eagerly. "That'll happen. So, how are you really? Something tells me that your visit tonight isn't just a simple little grocery borrowing call." Dixie grinned gently, patting Millie's age trembling freckled hand. "I think I want to become a nurse at the hospital. I've had that notion in my head ever since I woke up there. Is that possible?" Millie asked, grasping Dixie's folded hands. Dixie McCall's shocked mouth flopped open and just stayed there, the water glass in her hand completely forgotten in her fingers' grasp.

***************************************************** From: patti keiper (pattik1@hotmail.com) Sent: Sat 9/03/11 6:16 AM Subject: It's Never Black and White "She's so sweet, guys. But what am I supposed to do?" Dixie moaned, practically running like taffy off of her emergency desk stool with indecision and mild anxiety. Brackett shrugged. "What you've been doing for the last seventeen years, Dix. Delegate the responsibility. Mrs. Fishmeyer's request is, conveniently for us, not your department." McCall dropped her head reluctantly to the side. "Yeah, but she's our neighbor, Kel. A good one. I can't just turn my back on helping her out a little." Joe Early just smirked, his gray eyes sparkling beneath his silver bangs. "We already did. We saved her life last month. Millicent's bill has already been earned in full for services rendered as far as obligation and duty is concerned. Nobody said that included hand holding a ninety four year old through a nursing degree and training program, no matter how well we're acquainted with the patient." Dixie's eyes remained dubious and full of guilt. Kel's mouth twitched in irony. "You know.. If I recall right, only the reverse is true." McCall drained her coffee mug unenthusiastically. "I'm afraid I don't follow." Brackett moved carefully out of slapping range before he clarified. "Roy and Johnny saved your life; they were practically bound to it while you were training them. Remember almost being squished by a certain fast falling car?" That cracked a very faint smile out of the petite nurse that was impossible to hide. "I am being a little ridiculous, huh?" she asked, keeping her eyes lowered to the desktop. "Yep. No train, no pain." Kel grinned right back at her once she had glanced back up again at them. Dixie finally handed out the two admittance chart stacks she had been preparing for the doctors while they talked. "These are ready. All they need are your signatures." Early nodded in agreement with Kel's sentiment. "Send her on to Volunteering, or off to the nursing school at Ojai. Your schedule's full enough as it is." Kel snorted. "Even if it has been a little slow in the case load depart--"

Dixie's eyes widened from coaxed happy to horrified. "No..no..no..no. Don't say it. You'll jinx--" The emergency desk station phone rang immediately. The red one. Dixie just closed her eyes in defeat after glaring daggers at Kel acidly. She picked up the receiver from the wall. "Rampart Emergency, this is Nurse Dixie McCall speaking." Suddenly, she was snapping her fingers at Joe for a blank doctor's notes chart sheet to write on. "Okay,..how many?" Joe and Kel looked at each other in anticipation and Dr. Brackett almost began to speak. Dixie held up a one moment finger. "..Uh huh....Got it. Okay. We'll be ready in ten minutes." She hung up the phone. Kel was all business. "What do we got?" Dixie reported from her notes. "That was L.A.P.D. They've just had a prison break and riot gone bad. Not only are a lot of inmates and officers wounded, but one or two felons actually got out and got away and are assumed to be still shooting up the west side of town somewhere in Carson. We've eighty minor, and five critical coming our way." Dr. Brackett started snapping out orders. He grabbed a passing orderly's sleeve to get his attention. "Go find Sharon Walters. Tell her to set up all the available rooms in the hospital with whatever general floor staff she has coming on shift. Right now." "Yes, sir." the man replied and walked quickly away for the nearest stairwell. "Joe.." Kel prompted. "Can you call Communications and have them tune into the scanner in the base station and have it piped out here? We're gonna need it for preliminary casualty estimates. And a TV set to the news wouldn't be such a bad idea either." "I'm on it." said Early, picking up a black wall phone. Dixie's mouth ironed out into one of concentration."I'll initiate a Code Orange. All off-duty personnel in an all-call page?" she asked both doctors. "Yes. Including surgical and the residents' staff." replied Early. "Especially Mike. He can sail that boat of his into the harbor if necessary if he's gotta get here fast. I have a feeling we may need his medical command skills from the navy in a triage operation out in the parking lot before all of this is over." Brackett gruffed. He watched the hallway call lights turn amber as McCall finished speaking with the hospital operator. Then they all heard the hospital intercom come to life. ##Doctor Orange to Emergency. Stat. Doctor Orange to Emergency. Stat.## Soon, those who could rendevous from in-house first for the crisis alert, were there. Joe Early took over as the Logistics Head, leaving Brackett free to handle Rampart's incident command. Joe motioned his assembled staff away from the desk into a close huddle along one wall of the corridor. "Listen up, people. We have an MCI of just under one hundred involving blunt trauma, burns, and a whole lot of GSW's." That drew a gasp from the younger med students standing close by their preceptor physicians. "Sir, what the heck happened? Did a war break out?" asked one of them. Joe smiled. "In a way, yes. Let's just call it another foray into the old cops and robbers game. And here's us, getting ready to do all the clean up. For a while, we won't know who's actually winning this one. And we won't care. We'll be treating both indiscriminately. Got it?" A burble of affirmations met his ear. "We are orange until further notice. Perform your assigned tasks and get ready to start receiving patients in five minutes. Let's move!" Early ordered.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Station 51's exit bell on the door leading out to the backyard, rang just once. "I'll get it!" said Mike Stoker, shooting up out of his chair. The lanky, soft spoken engineer beat Boot the dog out of the kitchen. Hank started smiling with raised eyebrows. "Okay, who spiked the coffee with more coffee without telling him?" asked Cap. Three magazine and newspaper laden hands pointed squarely at Gage. "I didn't make the coffee!" Johnny said incredulously, his mouth still full of pilfered donut. Chet Kelly scoffed. "No, but you did buy the jumbo sized filters instead of the smalls. You know how Stoker likes to measure out grounds by knuckle depth from the bottom." insisted the curly haired Irish fireman. "Not my fault he's so unobservant five minutes after waking up from a nap." Johnny speculated, a half smile betraying the joke he was playing on the engineer. Cap just narrowed his scruntiny, talking louder to be heard over Boot's excited yapping over a door bell call excursion. "Yeah? Well if we miss a turn today in the Ward and pile through a freeway wall into the L.A. River bed, the two of you are gonna be coming in after us." Gage looked surprised in mock. "You had some doubt about that?" Next to them, Roy hissed out a cautionary whisper. "Down, boys. It's the caffeine talking for the both of ya."

"Huh?" Johnny said, eyeing up his partner. "Oh, uh,.. sorry, Cap." he remarked sheepishly, raining crumbs all over Marco's sports page. "Hey!" Lopez irritatedly shook them off with disgust. Hank took in a deep breath and let it out again, offhandedly checking his own carotid with a few fingertips. "Racing, just like my mouth is. Ditto, Gage. Wow. Somebody go dump that thing out.." he said, pointing to the chrome coffee pot centered on the table, "..and replace it with a pitcher of ice water. We're gonna need it before too--" he broke off when Boot's noisy barking suddenly fell into silence. Then Stoker's voice came high and squeaky. "Guys?! Get out here! On the double!" The gang ran and skidded around the corner to the right to get there. Some of their urgency left as they approached when they heard Mike hook the door shut with a clever foot. Something soft, yellow and billowy was in his arms. "You're not going to believe this. Look!" he said, his face still stunned and tight with concern. Inside of a blood sodden flannel blanket lay a naked newborn baby, placenta and umbilical cord still attached. Roy's fatherly and paramedic instincts kicked right in. "Whoa. Give her to me." he said about the weakly squirming infant, actively shivering in the gory mess surrounding her. He could still see signs of fresh birth purpling, around her head, arms and legs. Gage immediately gripped her upper arm, feeling for the brachial artery. "Fast, but strong." He quickly eyed up the stains soaking up from the pool of blood cradled around the baby's tiny body and the amount dripping onto the concrete floor. "There's a lot of hemorrhage here, but none of it is hers." DeSoto nodded, carefully tipping back the baby's head slightly so she could breathe better. "I agree. The cord's already drained out its volume on its own into her circulation and sealed itself off." He looked up at Hank in a new thought. "Cap, the mother can't be too far away yet. This afterbirth's still warm."

************************************************** From:  patti keiper <pattik1@hotmail.com> Subject: For Life.....     Date: Sat Oct 1, 2011 10:29 pm Chet Kelly stayed on the floor, eyeing up the bald, armed convict who had pushed him down. Wisely, he made no grab for the handy talkie lying on the floor between them and he said no words at all as he fought to regain the wind that had been knocked violently out of him. The gunman glanced over at his shorter, fire haired companion who quickly paced the whole distance around the vehicle bay at a nervous jog.  "How many?" he growled at him, pulling perspiration drenched orange material away from his neck. The smaller convict ducked his head. "This isn't all of them, Stu. I'm hearing noises in the kitchen." Hank spoke up, still not moving his hands. "Uh, those are our two paramedics. They're not going to try anything. All they have on their minds right now is that baby. They brought her in there so they'd have a higher up place to treat her off the floor." Cap noticed some blood smears staining the orange material on Stu's jail colored jump suit. "The mother may be in trouble, too. H-Have you seen her?" he asked very softly, keeping his eyes downcast to show that he was offering no confrontation whatsoever.

Just talking proved to be too much. Stu paced over to Hank angrily and jammed the muzzle of his gun hard under the captain's jawline as he gripped his hair tightly in a control move. The others saw that he was taller than Cap easily by six inches or more and was a hundred pounds heavier. "We're asking all of the questions here! Not any of you fire boys!" he said a little wild-eyed with stress. But then his monstrous sudden rage was forced down in a very difficult mental battle. "But,...since you asked so nicely, I'll--"  Stu broke off when an agonized, mournful howling from Boot outside began close by. Stu's younger accomplice grinned, his mouth missing teeth underneath a mop of dirty and tangled red hair. "Aww. Ain't that sweet? Your mutt's found the rest of our bait already. That didn't take long." he sniffed, looking at a few bloody fingernails. "Stu, I told you the dumpster wouldn't work for hiding it." said the tinier man, his bloodshot blue eyes, bugging out of his acne scarred face. Hank felt a sick stab of nausea when he realized that they were referring to a fresh corpse; the baby's mother. Behind him, Mike Stoker barely stifled a gag of horror.  Cap dipped his head in subtle warning to his engineer not to provoke their sudden, emotionally unstable invaders. On the floor, Kelly finally began to breathe again as air suddenly returned to his stunned body in great heaving gasps. In a few seconds, his eyes were no longer as glazed nor as frightened as before. Cap never looked away from Kelly as he recovered slowly. Stu finally shifted beady brown eyes away from the gang. "It's not like we had a lot of choices, Ice. There's still too many eyes out there with the rush hour on the freeway!" he snapped, pushing up a little harder on the gun pinning Cap's head under his huge hand. The gang's expressions must have betrayed some unveiled disgust because the younger, red maned man just started grinning bigger. "What? Why the long faces, gentlemen? We're not baby killers. Babies don't squeal in any way that matters. Girls on the other hand, are notorious for running at the mouth exactly when you don't want them to." Ice explained coolly, trying to neaten his gore spattered hair with a few fingers. Stu wasn't so relaxed. He turned a carefully calculating look at their fire station hostages. "One of you. Go call your dog in so he doesn't give away our fun little impromptu party crashing here to the neighbors."

Roy crouched down behind the table after sliding the baby into his arms, wrapping her inside of a kitchen towel hastily. "Do you see the guys?!" he asked, scared as he kept up the baby's bagged breaths. "No.. I'm gonna--" Gage hissed. The kitchen door suddenly popped open. Cap was the first one through the door. "Whoa!" he said, intercepting Gage's defensively swung chair with a firm grip. "It's me! There's two of them. Now put this down before they see it!" Gage hastily complied and kicked it back over to the table with a backward foot just as Stu and Ice pushed the rest of the gang into the room before them. "Well, well, well." said Ice, eyeballing up Roy and Johnny and all of their medical gear spread out in front of them. "How's our tiny tyke doing, boys?" he said, checking the muzzle of Stu's gun, for lingering smoke. "Earned a halo, yet?" he said, waving a plume of powder smoke away from his face animatedly. DeSoto carefully rose and sat back down into a chair with his burden so he could stretch his patient out once again onto the table top for good manual ventilations. "She's alive. Is it safe to say that she's going to stay that way?" he asked the convicts, placing his other hand on the baby's chest to feel for rib cage rise as he kept on bagging her with oxygen from the tank. "Oh, yeah. We like kids. We don't like dogs. Especially trackers like yours." said Ice. "Cap, is he--" Johnny asked aside to Hank. "I don't know." Stu jerked his gun meaningfully. "Everybody just shut up and sit down!" They sat. Marco, Chet and Cap eased slowly onto the couch. Stoker and Gage slid into chairs surrounding Roy and the baby. "Nobody reaches for anything from anywhere without my say so!" the convict thundered. "And that includes anything doctor for that pathetic lump of meat in your arms." he glared at Roy. The large, bald, leader thug slowly surveyed the room, spotting the two wall phones. One by one, he methodically ripped the receivers off of their mounts, severing their cord cables. Chet spoke through the corner of his mouth at Hank, squeezed in next to him. "What if we get a station call over the intercom, Cap?" "We'll figure that out when it h--" "He said quiet, firemen!" Ice yelled. "Or do I have to start slicing out a few tongues here? Shouldn't be too hard to do. That baby was easy to cut out." he said, holding up the blood stained knife that he had used outside. Gage's face hardened into something unreadable and his widened eyes glittered in shock and anger. His gaze connected with Cap's asking the question and Cap replied with a small shake of his head to let both Roy and Johnny know about the mother's death at the hands of their kidnappers. Johnny twitched with rage beside Roy who was calmness itself as old combat vet instincts kept him cool but aware and assessing the situation. He was already divorced from his hands which were automatically keeping the baby alive without his having to even think about it. DeSoto used his non-threatening position with the baby girl to speak. "So you've got us. Now what happens?" "What..?" Ice blinked, caught off guard by Roy's matter of fact question. "We eat like kings for starters, medic man." said Stu grandly, waving the gun and his arms expansively. "You have no idea how awful prison food is, until you've been forced to eat the slop they dish out there." he said. "Ice, go see what these boys are gonna cook for us. Bound to be something good in the frig over there. These are fire fighters! They burn through a lot of calories in their line of work, don't they, while doing all those newsworthy heroics? Gotta be some really good grub around here considering all of that." Chet was trembling and he barely hid a sudden grunt of pain as a muscle cramped in his side. Hank noticed, glancing down at Kelly. He leaned away from him to lessen pressure against his side, realizing that Chet was still hurting from his collision with the convicts as they barged their way inside the station. Kelly, swallowed dryly and didn't look back at Cap to hide his condition. Marco already knew something was amiss, but fear made him act foolish. "He needs to lie down now, Cap." Ice overheard. "Who needs to lie down? Are we that scary?" he mocked. Chet finally wiped his sweaty lip. "I do, sir. I was caught... by the door." he gasped. Johnny was all analytical, from where he sat, watching Chet. "Is it your ribs?" "Something... deeper." Kelly shook, his skin gray, his breathing gurgling oddly. "Nobody moves!" Stu glared at them caustically. Cap's anger finally rose. "If he gets worse..." "It won't matter a peep." Stu said evenly, cradling his gun against his cheek, "Remember? We're both lifers." And with that both convicts began to laugh uproariously at their own private prison club joke.

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