 |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The four
with Engine 51 became galvanized. "You heard that weirdness. I'm
taking what that civvie said as wholly
genuine, gang." Cap said crisply. "Stay
belted in. We'll use E51 to transport Mike and the second
victim to our gear
set up. Throw two stokes on the hose bed plus only the essentials."
"That'll
be the drug box and the trauma kit with the resuscitator." DeSoto
relayed to Chet and Marco.
Moments later, they were barrelling into the church grounds, sounding their
air horn. Hank got on
the radio. "Engine 51 to L.A. The scene's been secured
around our effected firefighter. Have any responding
fire support you have
coming, protect the bravo, alpha and delta sides of the church for an
immediate
rescue and relocation operation."
##Copy, E-51. Do you require USAR assistance?##
"Negative,
L.A. Both our victims are easily assessible." Cap answered.
Suddenly Vince Howard came over the
main fire channel. ##L.A., this is
A-24 on fire band. Emergency traffic!##
Silence followed
as all transmissions on any fire crews' handy talkies
were paused voluntarily by the firefighters
listening in. They were paying
attention and were waiting for the L.A. police officer's priority
transmission.
L.A. responded in a sole reply. ##A-24, channel is clear. Go ahead with
relay.##
##Our first known church site victim has critical injuries. He needs immediate
physician level
intervention. New victim two is minor.## Howard said quickly.
##10-4. Be aware, Chopper Five is
en route with Dr. Brackett from
Rampart General. E.T.A. is three minutes. Will you have a different
20 for
their rendevous?## the dispatcher asked.
Hank Stanley voiced a reply. "L.A., HT 51.
Engine 51's med set up is at the
intersection of Resolute Way and Ridgeline. We've set up a clear
landing
zone away from power lines and fire thermals. We'll be transporting
both victims to the
LZ there to intially treat, and afterwards, flying them
both out of the red zone."
##L.A.,
Chopper Five. Do you copy HT 51's coordinates?##
##Chopper Five, L.A. We do. We have a current
visual on their tarp.##
A fourth voice entered the communications patch. ##L.A., Fire and Police
I.C.
We both acknowledge the mission. Can I get an updated total on victim numbers,
A -24?##
Vince Howard replied. ##Three. Two live, and one non-fire fatality in an adult
male, by GSW.##
In Engine 51's cab, Chet snarled. "Who was shot? G*d d@mn it!"
Marco was pale. "They can't
tell us that over the airwaves, Chet. Too many
fire buffs like to listen in on scan."
Hank
turned around in the driver's seat. "We'll see that answer
with our own eyes right now. We're here!
Bail out. Grab Roy's gear before
any hoses!" he ordered.
The ring of towering fire encircling
town rose to a deafening roar of sound.
The firefighters glanced at it only briefly. Lives were at
stake and the larger
danger was still fairly safely, long minutes away.
"Who's worse?!" DeSoto
shouted to Vince's group, huddled over two lying
on the ground in the graveyard.
"Stoker!"
Howard yelled back as they both rushed together. "He's got a badly
burned arm and a knife embedded
near a femoral artery. Breathing's
distressed."
Roy finally arrived and dropped to his knees
beside Mike. He swept his eyes
over him head to toe. He deemed all the wound aid that he could see
already
in place, as controlling exterior bleeding adequately. He glanced at Angel while
his hands
flew into the trauma bag for an oropharyngeal airway. "Has he moved
since he blacked out?" Roy asked.
"No. I don't know why he did it. All I did was free his left foot from a belt strap
restraint."
DeSoto nudged him aside and took over Martin's head hold on Mike. He put in
the airway over Stoker's
tongue. "Not your fault, mister. Thank you for your
help. We've got it from here."
Angel backed
away and ran to the river to wash the blood off of his hands.
Lopez was already connecting a positive
pressure oxygen flow mask. "He's at
twenty six a minute, Roy. Aiding him on the in's." Marco reported.
Two delivered
breaths later, and they could all see the gray beginning to leave Mike's face.
DeSoto
swept his hands in assessment down Mike's body and found a soft
lumpy quadrant over his upper right
abdomen. "Kelly! Grab a five pound
sand bag, and place it here! He's got an internal bleed."
"Got
it!" Chet said, quickly applying one from a stokes.
Hank finished cutting away Stoker's sooty
clothes from around him so they
could see and work clearly on his injuries.
"Let's roll him
over. I want to look at his back." Roy told them.
Cap startled when he found Mike's uniform shirt
hidden underneath him.
Inside of it was a large piece of tissue. Hank gasped, but kept his cool.
"Can we save this skin, Roy?"
DeSoto then noticed Stoker's right hand and forearm, as it was uncovered.
Just muscles and white tendons were showing from elbow to finger tips.
Mike's shock was so profound,
that the burned areas weren't oozing fluid or
blood out of exposed capillaries any more. "No. Leave
it for Recovery.
Wrap anything raw on that limb in sterile sheets and start irrigating
with saline
to chill it. We've got to keep gross swelling down to prevent
compartmental syndrome."
"Roy?"
prompted Chet, eager about next steps.
"Plastic tarps. Line his stokes with them." Roy replied
shakily, keeping
a grip on Mike's carotid pulse as he spoke. "He won't need a spinal board
or a
C-collar. There are no fractures. Let's load and go, Cap. Every
second counts here."
"I'll
take a pressure when he's on the hose bed!" promised Kelly as he
laid the draped chicken wire scoop
stretcher alongside Mike's good side.
"Marco?" DeSoto checked verbally.
"He's manually
ventilating fine for me. Might even be fighting it a little bit."
"Keep him pinked regardless."
DeSoto rose to his feet. "Bundle him up and get him on the engine. I'm
going to go check on the other
two victims." Roy said.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rockford opened his burning eyes as awareness slammed back in. He
awoke to see Sara's face beaming
down at him. He sighed tiredly. "I
must be in Heaven."
Sara Butler tearfully shook her head.
"No. We're definitely still in H*ll.
Complete with fifty foot flames and a corpse." She tried to grin.
"Who finally got him? Wasn't me." Jim groaned.
"It was Vince. Blair was about to shoot one
of us. How's your head?"
"Spinning... But that's... probably because..I'm..." he trailed off.
Sara bent her head even lower to hear him.
"...still in love, girl." Rockford whispered, grinning
at his newest
little trick to get her close in.
"Such a kidder." Butler scoffed, straightening
up again, relieved.
"That's a concussion." DeSoto said, suddenly appearing to look at
Jim's
eyes with a pen light. Then he noticed Rockford's empty holster.
"But first, where's your gun?"
Sara answered. "Lieutenant Becker's got it for safe keeping."
Roy placed a hand on Jim's chest.
"You're breathing fast. Are you
short of breath, Mr Rockford?"
"No, just.... tired from the
fight. I'm 52, Mr. DeSoto. I can't walk away
from battles like I used to."
"We'll give you
a free ride to the first aid area. Just relax. You're okay
from what I'm seeing so far. My pals will
load you up in a minute, then we'll
all get out of here and to a hospital."
"Which one? Can
we go to Rampart?" Jim asked urgently.
"Why there?" Roy asked, holding him still.
"My dad's
there, remember?" the P.I. complained weakily.
"Yeah. All right, we'll pick there. It's the closest
anyway." smiled Roy.
But his grin didn't last as he got to his feet. He got in three steps
towards
Todd's body when Becker stopped him.
"It was a kill shot." Dennis told him, tapping himself on
the forehead
to show Roy where the bullet went in. "There's brain matter protruding."
DeSoto
closed his eyes after verifying that certainty of death, for the records,
to free himself of any paramedic
care obligation to Todd, legally.
"At least he's not suffering any more. He sounded completely insane
on the radio. No rational thoughts at all at the end. Do we take or leave him?"
"Leave him." Becker
nodded. "Go help your friend. I'll stay and guard
the body until the coroner gets here."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Five minutes later, the sight of Chopper Five, running hot, with
Dr. Brackett rushing up to them
with a field surgical bag, almost made
the gang of Station 51 weep in relief.
They were offloading
Mike from the Ward, in between delivering
breaths on the demand valve, when a sudden gagging choke
from him,
got their attention.
"Set him down! Right here!" barked Kel Brackett. "Let me look
at him!"
Roy swiftly removed the oral airway and suctioned out Mike's mouth.
Kel maintained
a head tilt with his knees while he looked at Stoker's eyes.
"Not a seizure." he sighed. "He's coming
to, gentlemen." he smiled, working
swiftly with syringes of medication, atropine and epinephrine,
to stabilize
Stoker's wavering vital signs. "His breathing's normal."
DeSoto switched out Marco's
demand valve for a non-rebreather mask set
at 15 liters flow of oxygen. "Respirations... Sixteen and
deep."
Chet was as good as his word and offered up the results of a taken blood
pressure. "80
over 56, doc. Pulse is ...120 and thready."
Brackett diverted his attention to the knife sticking
out of Mike's groin.
He lightly touched it with a medical gloved grip to see if the handle was
pulsating.
It was. Regularly. He grinned again. "The artery isn't compromised.
The blade's sitting just on the
outside of it against a pulse point."
"And what about that abdomen?" DeSoto fussed, pulling away
warming
sheets so Dr. Brackett could see the five pount sandbag resting there. Kel
carefully moved
the weight slowly off of Mike and cast it aside. Then
he gingerly palpated the shapes of every organ
located underneath the
ugly bruised site. "Ah..." he sighed. "My guess is a contused liver.
It's
not ruptured. I can feel the three lobes clearly. I think his blood loss
inside was just into the
sheath surrounding it. It seems like the
hemorrhaging has splinted itself. We'll just use one leg
chamber and
the whole abdominal pocket on the M.A.S.T. suit to help its natural
blood pooling
reduction along."
Stoker coughed wetly. A conscious one. Kel and Roy moved quickly
to his head
again and cleared out his mouth a second time. Roy was
amazed at how calm Mike was as he came to
the rest of the way.
"I ... think I've been degloved, Roy." he analyzed. "My right hand."
"I
know." Roy answered. "Keep still."
Stoker made a face and started holding his breath, when his
burned arm
jerked involuntarily.
"Whoops." Kel muttered to himself. He instantly drew up a
dose of
Versed as a pain killer option and added it to the Ringer's Lactate I.V.
that Roy had begun
on the engineer's good arm. "How's the pain now?"
"..Fading a little.." Stoker gasped, starting
to breathe again more easily.
Mike's frightened eyes briefly shot to his shoulder on the burned side.
The others saw that he was afraid to look farther down.
"I can save this arm, Mr. Stoker."
promised Kel. "It'll take a few grafts
and a lot of therapy. But your skin will grow back again on
its own
for the most part. Your dermal generative layers aren't burned at all.
What I'm seeing
is just macro blistering."
Roy addressed the stabbed foot and found that the bandaging Becker
had applied was still doing its job. He slipped his fingers below the
ankle bone and pressed in. "This
foot still has a pedal pulse, doctor."
"Good." said Kel. Then he leaned over Stoker to tell him
more.
"Your pressure's stable, but I can't give you a full blown narcotic for
the rest of your
pain, because your systolic's too low. I've given you
an amnesiac instead. You'll forget you're hurting
from moment to
moment, but you'll also lose a little orientation, in a few minutes,
about what
we're doing and the passage of time. So don't be startled
by it. Okay?"
But Mike was already
drifting mentally. He didn't answer.
"Is he ready to be patched in?" Roy asked.
"Yes,
make it a twelve lead. They'll be using in-depth monitoring once
he hits the O.R.. We won't need it,
Roy, but keep a defibrillator handy.
The effects of multi-trauma are always unpredictable."
Hank
tapped Marco and Chet's shoulders, where they knelt by the
engineer, to get their attention. "Go get
the helicopter crew so we
can load them both up. Stabilization's over!" he shouted over the roar
of
the helicopter's rotor blades.
Kelly and Lopez left at a run.
"What do you got now, Roy?"
Kel asked, pointing to the open Datascope.
"Sinus tachycardia with P.V.C.s." DeSoto read off of
the EKG monitor.
"I'll get you a strip."
"That's the fluid loss talking. Wide open the Ringer's
until his systolic
starts sitting above 100 with the mast suit on. Then set it T.K.O."
the doc
ordered. "Okay... Who and what's next?" Kel asked, straightening
up and hurrying in a protective
crouch against rotor wash, over to
Rockford's stokes.
"Blow to the head in a 52 year old male.
A punch to the face.
He was out for a little bit." Roy reported. "Name's Jim Rockford."
"How
long was he unconscious?" Brackett asked, looking down at
the P.I. as he approached.
Sara Butler
saw the doctor coming. "About ten minutes." she replied,
looking up from her tight hold on Jim's hand,
where he lay under a
yellow shock sheet.
"Sweating up a storm here." Rockford grumbled at the
two of them.
"Oh.." He took in a fast breath at a sick twist he felt in a lung.
Kel frowned
and knelt by him, taking a firm wrist pulse. "From the
heat of the fire or because you're feeling
cold?" Brackett asked him.
"I'm not in shock." Jim replied. "Look, doc, you're wasting your time
with
me. I've taken hundreds of right hooks to the kisser before today.
I'm tired because I must
have run ten miles in a raging fire today
hunting down the arsonist."
"Where is he?" Kel asked,
looking around the landing zone.
"He's dead." Rockford shared. "A police officer told me that
he
had to take him out."
"Who declared him a fatalilty?!" Brackett growled, yelling at Roy,
displeased.
Jim came to DeSoto's defense. "Nobody, Mr. Top Dog. So quit
barking up the
wrong tree!" Rockford gasped. "That guy's got two
noses now and the second one hanging out of his
face, is made of
brains!"
Brackett sobered and turned back to ministrating care to Jim.
"Oh.
Now I understand. Undeniable sign of death."
Rockford wasn't happy, even then. "Ah, the full glory
of splattered
gray matter. Speaking of which, did I scramble mine? I've got
a real headache all
of the sudden." Jim frowned.
Kel checked out his pupils with a pen light. Then he ascultated
Rockford's
lung sounds. "Mmmm hmmm.." rumbled the physician.
"Uh, huh, what?" Jim rasped.
"As I figured."
Brackett, listened, distracted.
"Well don't keep me in suspense!" Jim finally boomed, making
Kel
wince and pull out the ear pieces of his stethoscope.
Kel smiled. "You're in the beginning stages
of getting bacterial
pneumonia, Mr. Rockford. That heat you're feeling is a fever
coming on. I'm
hearing the start of wet wheezing."
"Told ya!" Roy hollered back from where he and the Station
51 gang
were loading Mike Stoker into the rescue helicopter.
Dr. Brackett's eyebrows rose
up in amusement. "That's news I can
use."
"...smart aleck firefighter..." Jim grumbled under
his breath.
Kel chuckled, and waved over the chopper crew to get set to
carry Rockford into
the passenger bay. "Almost done." he
told them. Then he turned back to his patient. "No, Jim. That's
an on point paramedic. One of my best. You should have
listened to him in Triage the first time
and gone safely home."
"How'd you know I was there earlier?! I never saw you in
that tent."
Jim coughed. He fussed with the nasal cannula
that Kel was fitting under his nostrils, to ease his
breathing with
a little oxygen flow.
Kel grabbed Jim by a wrist and held it up. A green triage
ribbon
still fluttered there.
"Oh." said Rockford. "I was color coded.."
"...as a walking
wounded. Yeah." Kel smiled. "Now you get a yellow
one."
"What? Why?" asked Jim, getting up
in arms again.
"Because you can't stand any more. I can see both of your legs
shaking. That's
exhaustion from exposure to the elements.
A firefighter you are not. If you cooperate on the flight
in, I won't
start an I.V. on you. You need antibiotics, not a fluidic life line.
Do you have allergies
to any medications that I should know about?"
"None. OwwW!" Rockford yelped as Dr. Brackett bared
one of Jim's hips
and gave him an injected broad spectrum sulfuric.
Kel pocketted the syringe
into his jumpsuit after capping it. "How's
the headache now?"
"It's...hey! It's gone!" Rockford
sputtered, surprised. "How'd that
happen?"
"Endorphins." Brackett said, getting out of the
way of the flight crew
so they could take the P.I. away. "Aren't they beautiful? That I.M.
did
more than just deliver a slow release cure for your lung bug.
Consider it free acupuncture."
"Get me out of here, Sara! Before he decides to bleed me with a jar
full of leeches!"
"Don't
tempt me!" Kel hollered back. He only began to smile once
his back was turned to Jim. ::Hole in one
day, today. Looks like
all of the good guys are gonna make it.:: Brackett thought happily.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two weeks later, Sara Butler and Jim Rockford clung to each other
tightly as they surveyed the
charred remnants of what was left of
her house.
"I hope he burns." Butler sniffed, getting
tearful at all that she had
lost in the fire.
"He didn't."
"I mean in eternal Hellfire.
The bastard! Any sympathy I once had
for Blair Todd just went up in smoke!"
"Like your house?"
Rockford said gently.
"Oh, Jim..." sobbed Sara, burying her face in Rockford's broad
shoulder.
"Aww, Sara." he coo'ed, taking her into both of his arms affectionately
in a hug. "You are
more than welcome to come live with us."
Butler looked up at him, eyes watering. "You mean..*sniff*
with you
and Rocky?"
"In our trailer." he nodded.
"It's kinda small." she said honestly,
regarding her date's rugged eyes.
"Well, yeah. It's a tight cozy. But we've sure got a big ocean
view. The
best in all of Long Beach." he invited.
"But I'll be living right next to work, Jim.
Looking at it, through the
bedroom window from the bed."
"You mean, through the mail slot from
the living room couch?" he
amended.
Sara smacked him good.
"Ow." Rockford grinned. "Just
kidding about the flop only thing."
Butler finally cooled down and soon they were snuggling again,
trying hard to admire the charred moonscape of black surrounding them
with mixed emotions. Sara
sighed and dried away the tears from her
face, using the sour wind. "So what if I said yes?"
Smiling gently, Rockford kissed the top of her head softly. "Well, I'd
only accept that answer, after
I've put something shiny and round
on a finger. Right there." he said, caressing her left hand warmly.
The shocked look on Sara's face beamed brighter than the memory of
every flame that had consumed
the forest that was her fast beating
heart. "I... do love you, Jim... I really do.. so.........consider
me
moved in?" she gasped, daring herself to smile, just a little, as
the whole implicated weight
of his original question and offer,
began to overwhelm her.
"Spell it out for me a little
better, girl. I'm dim, because I'm old."
"Yes, Mr. Rockford, private eye, two hundred dollars
a day, plus
expenses. My answer is yes. I very much want to be your future wife."
Soon, the
two of them became more melted together, than even the
charcoaled canyon that was sheltering them
from the recovery efforts.
FIN..
|
|
 |
