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************************************************** Subject: Mop Up.. From: patti k (pattik1@hotmail.com) Sent: Mon 4/13/09 12:05 AM **(Portions of the 240 Robert characters' dialogue following is taken from the 240 Robert Pilot, Apology. First Aired August 28, 1979 Writer : John Furia Jr. with Story by Rick Rosner)** Johnny watched as the others loaded up the kayaker into 240 Robert Air. They had moved Gage to stand near by the landing area so he could join the man for the trip into the park hospital. Roy climbed up the rope and jogged his way over to Gage and Ted, who was holding Johnny's arm to steady him. Gage's I.V. was hanging around his neck like a trophy by a bungee cord. DeSoto laughed. "Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes." "I could say the same thing." Johnny said, not letting him take his pulse at the wrist. "Just what the h*ll happened down there?" "A wire broke off a pole and snagged the lift cable." Roy told him. "Bad?" "Yeah." Roy said. "I had to cut it for them. Fast." "But..but.. shouldn't that have crashed that chopper the second it got fouled up?" "That's what usually happens when a chopper gets trapped by ground debris." "But all that wind..." "Yeah." "And all those trees.." |
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"Yeah! I know." Roy agreed. "It's a miracle she stayed flying.." "What a pilot.." Gage sighed, stars in his eyes as he saw Morgan peek out the flight cabin to watch the others fuss over the kayaker's stretcher bubble door until they had it locked up snug. DeSoto teased him about the glazed look in his eye. "Are you going out on me here?" Ted, who was still busy with moving his gear, misinterpreted the comment and grabbed the back of Gage's neck, thinking he was fainting again. "Whaa--? I'll catch him!" Both DeSoto and Gage started laughing and both shrugged Cassidy's paramedic concerns off. Roy bailed him out. "I meant emotionally. About a girl Johnny's fixating on over there. He's fine." Ted let go of supporting Johnny's head a moment later. "Oh. I should've figured. He did the same thing when he got sweet up on Julie Beck back at home on your last visit to Sierra." Then he leaned into Johnny's ear. "Sorry, chum. But that fiery little redhead's taken from what I've been overhearing." he smirked. "Taken?" Johnny gaped in dismay. "Yeah, I overheard Thibideaux over there ribbing Applegate about a date those two went on when she first joined the 240 Robert team." Cassidy said as the three of them watched the kayaker being checked and rechecked for flight travel safety. "Oh, yeah?" Johnny grimaced in disappointment. "Well, how long ago was that?" "A bit." Ted told him. "But I'm just guessing. I haven't found out how long 240's been in operation yet. It's only my first day shadowing them." he confessed. "I might have a real chance, then." Johnny whispered, his boy like grin returning. Roy just shook his head ruefully. "Ah, Gage and his feminist fixation in full swing. I think he's fully recovered, Ted. A libido's proof positive." Cassidy's face blanked out in seriousness. His eyes sparkled, mock firm. "Really? Well I wanna go on playing flight paramedic here. So keep him acting sick until after I get us both into the air. I wanna see exactly what that sweet little black and white bird can do." Tim said of the chopper. "Me, too." Johnny smiled, eyeing up the pilot with admiration. "I promise I'll groan for ya. But just a little." he said. "I wanna keep my eyes open so I can watch her the whole trip in, so don't authorize a stokes for me. Please?" "Deal. You'll sit." Ted said, with an eager nod. He wrapped up Gage's still active trailing EKG wires and handed Johnny the small monitoring machine to carry personally. "Got that? Exercise'll warm you up faster." Johnny laughed. "Yeah." Then he faked a stagger as he took it. "Ooo, my arm.." he kidded. "It's still cold numb." Ted just ignored him as he kept on watching for the signal from Trap to load up Johnny into 240 Robert Air, with impatient, folded arms. Roy smirked. "So suck on this. That's what it's for." DeSoto said, re-fastening the Res-Q-Air mask over Gage's face from the bag Ted had left by Johnny's feet. Then he passed the whole unit off to Gage's free hand and shoulder. "There. All snug?" he asked about all his tubes and wires. "What? Do I look like a pack mule here?" Johnny complained, blowing off flowery billowing steam curls around the flowing oxygen mask. "Yep." Roy scoffed good naturedly. "Ted can't carry all that stuff by himself." Then he moved over to the cliff to help Chet get Cap and Marco out of the ravine by using C.B.'s deployed jeep winch and cable. |
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A few minutes later, the rescue crews were almost ready. "Okay, easy now. One, Two Three.." said Trap as Thib and C.B. maneuvered the kayaker's litter onto the flight rack locking pins. Hank poked in his head into the bubble. "How's he doing?" Thib gave him a thumbs up. Stanley matched it in relief, then went to go fetch Johnny. Soon, Ted Cassidy and Gage were buckled in the caretaker seats with Paramedic C.B. Harris monitoring the kayaker's condition continually. A minute later, the others moved off to let Morgan launch with her four passengers. "240 Robert Air to Appalchia Central." Wainwright radioed once she was in the air and safely above the ground winds. ##Central, by.## "With an ETA of five minutes, I have two medical emergencies, one with head and back injuries, multiple fractures. The second with chills and hypotension. The first patient is an epileptic." reported Morgan to the ranger base doctor and nurse listening in. "We've got I.Vs on both." By the rescue jeeps, Trap sighed as he re-packed up his med kit. "Have to admit it, Morgan. You're one h*ll of a lady.." he said to the silhouette of the chopper against the sky as he listened to her radioed out broadcast to the ranger base. Next to him, wrapping up ropes, Thib smirked. "You know, I really would like to hear about those two dates you two went on.." "Oh, you would, eh? Well, someday, I will write you a song about it." Applegate promised him. "Well something tells me that there's a little something more to it than that." Thib jabbed, probing. Trap didn't bristle. He finally admitted an observation. "You know, she's pretty gutsy. For a girl, she's gutsy." "Trap, why don't you go tell her." Thib said simply. Applegate sighed and then nodded, in appreciation of the truth. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mike Stoker pulled up in Johnny's land rover. He parked it and got out, rejoining the two 240 Robert sheriff paramedics and the rest of the gang who were talking in low voices about the next plan of attack concerning Bluebird Five. "Hey guys, how'd it go?" he asked. "Fine. Got him out." Stanley said. "But Gage froze a little taking a swim. We sent him in with the victim to get warmed back up." "Boy, were we lucky. I packed up our campsite. Completely. Deer's on the roof." Stoker told them. Kelly eyed up the blue tarp tied to the top rack of the land rover. "Well, vacation's over for us, that's for sure. No steaks tonight." "Why? Did something else happen?" Mike wondered, spinning around in place to check out their surroundings. |
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"Oh, Mrs. Collins." Terri said. "I hope you don't mind me watching your grandson like this. He's actually a lot of fun to be with compared to most of my coworkers." "Miss Blake, I brought him here to... stretch a little." the old woman said, skirting specifics. "Keep at it. Joey doesn't seem to mind so why should I? He's already told me so much about you. So I just had to come out and meet you for myself." Terri grinned, handing Joey another pine bough to add to a practice shelter they had built next to the parking lot. "He's a charming little boy." Sarah watched her only grandson sadly. "But a troubled one." she shared. Blake frowned. "If you don't mind my asking. How so? I mean, he's so happy and carefree." Terri commented as she watched Joey steer his toy ships around the landscaped garden's gravel. Collins chided a dismissing huff. "He's TOO positive. Haven't you noticed how protective he is of his navy cap?" "Uh, huh." Terri answered honestly. "I've asked him about it more than once but he always changes the subject every time." Sarah took Terri's arm and turned her away from where Joey was playing inside the pine bough lean to. "His father was killed on assignment while aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid, nine months ago. It happened a few days before Joey's seventh birthday." "Oh, I'm so sorry." Blake murmured, taking Sarah's hand. Collins patted Terri's grip reassuringly. "A gasline ruptured and started a fire. Ben was overcome by flames while trying to save his captain." Terri hated death and she found herself glancing away to hide unbidden tears as she studied the sun's rays shimmering on the lazy current in the creek near them. "They buried my son with the highest of naval honors." Collins concluded. Blake met her eyes. "And his mother?" "Carol died when Joey was three and a half, of cancer. Ben and he became very close during that time. And beyond. Then Ben died and left us both behind." Collins whispered sadly. Terri said the first thing that came to mind. "Your son must have been an admirable man." Sarah's face furrowed at a memory. "Problem is. Even at the funeral, Joey never cried a tear. Not even when the sergeant at arms presented him with the flag." Sarah broke off, hiding her reactions so Joey wouldn't notice. "He should feel something. Anything." she insisted to Terri, who was listening very close. "Not grieving isn't natural. Therapy hasn't helped at all. So I figured bringing Joey back to where he and his father spent their happiest times couldn't hurt." she grinned. But then she let go of Terri's hand. "Oh, I shouldn't be dumping all my problems onto you. You probably have enough to worry about already." "Boy do I." Terri said, wiping away sympathetic tears as she laughed. The two women talked until the sun peeked through the lower most beech branches hanging low over the water. Then Collins noticed her watch. "Oh, my gosh." Sarah exclaimed. "Time to be heading back. Come along Joey dear. Let's go. We've got to get our beauty sleep if we're departing on that mountain expedition tomorrow morning." "Oh, that's right." Terri realized. "I did see your names on the registration form. Funny I forgot that when it was I who planned out the course." "Not a problem, Miss Blake. Joey and I like to live simple. Takes a lot for us to be noticed in most cases. But we'll be ready for you being our guide. We have our tents and horses already assigned to us. And our camp rations. But I think I forgot to bring one thing from home. A pillow to sit on afterwards." Terri giggled. Joey ran up suddenly then and sat down on Terri's lap. "Hi, kiddo." Sarah, said, ruffling Joey's hair. "Did you have fun out there?" "Yeah." answered the boy. "I found some deer tracks and I saw a really big porcupine over by the birch meadow!" Sarah's eyes twinkled at Terri. "Oh, really?" "Uh, huh. And a blue jay, too. He scolded me for getting too close to his nest. Let's go, Grandma." "All right. I'm coming." Sarah said. The three of them got up seconds later and headed for the warm lodge. |
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Terri Blake broke out of her reverie and concentrated on the trail in front of her as her mount placed one careful foot in front of the other in the half frozen mud. ::Oh, Joey. Ken. Be safe. I can't stand it that you're not." she sobbed suddenly. Her face wet, Terri realized she was getting impatient for operations to begin. Blake coughed loudly as she turned her horse around briskly. She thundered back to the main lodge's stables and heliport to meet up with Sarah and the rest of the park rangers in her search party as fast as she could. Ten minutes later, Terri and her group, along with Mrs. Collins on Jodi the mule, all left headquarters, bound for the deep woods where Bluebird Five lay lost and buried. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joanne Almsted glanced Johnny's way from where she was quickly stabilizing the second kayaker for another chopper flight to a larger trauma center that could handle all of his extensive injuries that she knew would require surgical intervention to repair. The skull fracture and expanding epidural hematoma and the broken spinal vertebrae films were glaring at her from the illuminated xray shadow box and their chilling abnormalities made her move even faster to drill the rest of a set of emergency bore holes into her patient's head to relieve his slowly building intracranial pressure. Gage met her stare from where he lay on his side on a nearby gurney. "Don't waste a single second on me. You already know how well I'm doing here. He's first for you and I really mean it this time." Johnny told her, pointing to his very normal EKG reading blipping away on his attached monitor. "I'm just V-tachy from hunger which that I.V., is fixing." he told her pointing to the rapid drip in his I.V.'s chamber. "No longer shivering..." he said in challenging mock singsong, holding out a level hand. "I'm warm enough to wait more than just a little while for treatment." |
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************************************************** Subject: Message from the Sky From: patti k (pattik1@hotmail.com) Sent: Fri 5/22/09 2:12 AM Birds were the first thing that entered Ken Baxter's awareness. Then came the pain. "Ahhh!!" he grimaced, folding up his limbs from where he lay on his side on dusty bare ground matted thickly with fall rotting pine needles. A branch was cutting into his throat, where it had been pinned awkwardly from the way the pilot had landed after slicing himself free of his seatbelt harness. Desperately, Ken tore it away, and gasped when a strong odor choked him. ::Fuel. The chopper's leaking.:: he thought dimly. ::Got... to get aw--:: Then another horrid thought came to light. ::Joey! Did he make it out, too?:: he wondered frantically. Keeping as still as he could for the moment, Baxter moved just his head, palms and elbows as he craned about, searching for the boy who had been his passenger. "Joey?!" he yelled, his voice echoing through the tiny, deeply shadowed valley gorge into which they had fallen. There was no reply. Grunting, and breathing hard, Ken located the most concentrated pile of crash debris that had fallen from Bluebird Five still suspended eight feet up the ancient pine tree. It had saved them from a full ground impact. He rolled over and began to crawl, belly and elbows, back to the patch of wet dirt that lay directly under line-of-sight with the upside down suspended helicopter cockpit. Pure agony in his abdomen and upper leg stopped him a foot short of his goal. Glancing down, Ken saw a dark red wetness staining his jeans and something white. ::I don't want to know what the h*ll I've done to myself now.:: he panted, resting his forehead on trembling, pine needle gouged hands. But inwardly, he knew that sickening pale glint, might possibly be bone showing through torn skin. ::Oh, lordy. That'd better be metal or something and not a snapped-in-two thigh. Don't want to... bleed to death out here like a stuck pig in front of the boy.:: he fervently wished. "Joey! Answer me!" he shouted again, peering up into the remnants of the chopper hanging overhead. |
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Nothing answered him but the wind and birds, trickling down to Ken in the feeble sunlight under the pine trees. Moaning and stifling a cry of pain, Ken peeled off his pants belt and tightened it anew around his injured leg above the hideous wound he didn't want to see. Immediately, the thick and sluggish hemorrhaging slowed and the numbness and tingling increased. "Joey, I need you to make some noise, real loud. I can't find ya!" Baxter gasped, reeling from a growing shock that was seeping inexorably into his awareness. "You're gonna haveta lead me to--" he broke off, recognizing a bright bit of blue and pink stripes lying underneath a shattered rotor blade, mostly covered in chewed up pine needles. "Joey?!" Ken yelled. Having tended the worst on himself as best he could, Baxter dragged himself cautiously around pools of still drip accumulating aviation fuel over to the half buried shirt he had spotted. "I've found you, boy! Move for me!" Ken saw a caked hand poke itself out of the leaf litter feebly followed by a small cough. ::He's breathing!:: Baxter celebrated mentally. Baxter got to Joey's side and uncovered his face and neck where he lay on his stomach. The Collins boy was only half awake and straining to draw breaths in occasionally. "Easy now, son. I think you just got the wind knocked out of ya after we both bailed out of our seats." |
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Joey struggled, beginning to panic. Baxter sat up painfully, curled over his swollen leg. He tipped back Joey's head after rolling him over onto his back. "Relax, just relax. That band around your middle gut will go away mighty quick now that you're fully awake. All right? Just look at me right in the eyes and concentrate on loosening up that gut cramp. You're fine. Okay? Just breathe as it comes." Joey's bright, frightened eyes took in Ken's bruised ones and finally Joey didn't look away as the boy gripped both of Ken's wrists in a tight grip of fear. A thin, full inhalation rewarded both boy and pilot as Collins ceased to panic under Ken's warm hands that were cushioned around his face. "Oh, G*d.." Joey sobbed, as first words of speech finally escaped his lips. "That really sucked r-*gag*" he coughed. "Yeah? But we're alive and not smeared all over the mountainside. Good job unbuckling your harness. But we're not done yet. We're still in danger. The fuel tank's compromised." "And we might be barbeque if we don't.. Hey, you're bleeding.." Joey worried, sitting up stiff and sore, with Ken's help against a piece of chopper hull. "Not anymore. At least not much." Ken gasped. "Banged up my leg among other things. You hurt at all?" Joey patted himself. "My ribs, a little." "Where? Right there?" Ken asked, probing the boy's left side under his shirt. "Umph.. yeah. I heard something crack when I hit the ground." "No holes." Ken pronounced, looking at the large bruise he had found there. "Nope, I don't think so. Dad used to say, last thing I'd want, is to be making noise through a new mouth in the rib cage after any fall." "Your dad was a smart cookie, son. A collapsing lung is nothing to shake a stick at." Joey sighed, freezing in place, remembering something emotionally painful. But then he began gingerly picking at the pants material around Ken's hidden injury. "We've got to tend this." he warned. The pilot stopped him when agony erupted. "I don't want to know." "But..." "Call it a mental thing." Ken said more firmly. The Collins boy studied Ken's gray and sweaty face, analyzing. "All right. At least it's covered." Joey told him, drawing his hands away. "So let's get out of here. I think I saw some of the cargo bay stuff land over there. Might be blankets and our packed food close by." "Most likely. We'll grab them and a container for water. There's a creek down at the very bottom fifty yards that way. Saw it shining earlier." Ken told him. Joey looked up fearfully at the wind shivering, mangled chopper still hanging in their very lucky lone giant of a pine tree. "Any chance she'll explode?" "Nah, I turned all her power systems off. Let's just not play boy scouts with any matches until we're well away from her." Ken joked, trying to grin for Joey through his pain. "We'll make a signal fire for smoke later that doesn't risk her spilled Jet A-1. Only thing that'll set her off is static from friction." "You mean from all this wind and rubbing branches on her hull?" "It's possible. Something we can't overlook. Pine sap's highly conductive. So let's hurry." Slowly, Joey helped Ken drag himself out of flammable ground cover a long distance away from the chopper's tree. He found a smooth, sunheated rock table in between two bus sized boulders to use as a shelter out of the afternoon's cooling winds. "Here." Collins told the dazed pilot. "This place's warm. I'll head back for our stuff." Ken gasped. "Look sharp for a hand held radio. We had two stowed in the back on a rack. They may have been tossed out with us." he murmured weakly, sagging mentally against his will. "And be c-careful." "I will." Joey said, heading back cautiously, exactly the way they had come. |
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