Broken Glass
If Dixie had a dollar for every disaster that walked through those doors, she'd have been a billionaire ten times over by the time she'd sent Kel off last night. But her imaginary fortune would easily have tripled if she started counting from when she'd gotten to work that next morning. Anybody who'd thought the wild west was a thing of the past would think twice after five minutes in Rampart's emergency ward.
And, no, she damned well wasn't exaggerating just because no one could get in touch with Kel. Part of her wanted to call the police - it just wasn't like Kel to disappear into thin air like that. For the five years he'd headed the ER, Kel had probably taken about fifteen days of unscheduled leave, eight of which were spent in a bed right there at Rampart, fighting for his life. As for the rest, he always, always, always called with details of how long he'd be gone, where he could be reached if he was needed, and assurances that arrangements had already made to cover his unexpected absence. Today, though, the clock clicked by with no word from Kel, and they were still scrambling around trying to borrow busy doctors left and right from other floors. If there'd been time to feel the panic, she and Joe and Mike would probably all be huddled around Base Station screaming like banshees.
"Ms. McCall?" Dixie turned towards the young nurse manning Base. "I have Dr. Brack-"
Dixie shoved her sheaf of paperwork into a nearby orderly's hands and nearly broke her neck to get around the station desk. "I'll take it, Sally. Go help Dr. Morton in Room 3."
Sally handed off the phone, but she looked worried. "He was asking for Dr. Early," she said.
"Fine, fine," Dixie muttered, and punched the lit button on the bottom of the phone. There was a crackle of static while the extension connected, and the hollow tone of open line. "Dr. Brackett? Joe's with a patient right now - are you all right? We've been calling your house for hours now, and nobody's ans-"
"I'm fine, Dix," Kel said smoothly, like there was absolutely nothing strange about the boss forgetting to show up at the county's largest and busiest emergency ward without so much as a peep. But then he sounded strained, the way some patients do when they're trying to power through some unbearable pain. "A... family emergency has come up." Family... had something happened between him and Stan? "I won't be in today."
So the anniversary dinner must not have gone down like he'd hoped. Too bad. Dix wanted to ask about it, but she already knew he wouldn't talk. "Any instructions?"
His response was terse, guarded, like he knew she was itching for sordid details on his personal life. "Just keep doing what you do."
"Will you be in tomorrow?"
Kel took so long to answer, that for a minute Dix thought she'd lost the connection. "I... I hope so. I'll let you know before my shift begins." That was no kind of an answer, and they both knew it. "I promise," he said softly. Whatever his problem was, he was obviously tender about it, too tender to talk, and Dixie was running out of time to try to drag the answers out.
"Okay. Is there anything-"
"I'm fine." A burst of noise erupted down the hall, and the smell of smoke and burnt flesh wafted down towards Base. "You'd better get going."
Paramedics from 78 and 110 were running into Emergency, wheeling what seemed like truckloads of wheezing, soot covered kids into the hospital. "Call me if you need anything, Kel," she said breathlessly, and scrambled to get into the thick of things.
"Dixie! I need you in 2, on the double!"
She hurried into Room 2, where three teenaged boys on stretchers were tucked up against the walls of the exam room, being poked and prodded and hovered over by a bevy of nurses and interns and firemen. A fourth patient lay on the table, staring wildly about the room. She was about the same age as the boys, but it was clear that she was in much worse shape. She wasn't wheezing, she was gurgling, an awful sound made more awful by the fact that Dix didn't need a stethoscope to hear the damage. "What in God's name...?"
"Lab explosion at a science fair," Joe Early said. "Banning High, damn near burnt to the ground. She's gonna need a surgeon." He rattled off a series of instructions. "I could kill Kel."
"I just got off the phone with him," Dix said quietly while she set up a tray. "Some kind of emergency, no details."
"He deals with emergencies every day, Dix," Joe started, but he paused when she looked up at him. He shook his head, as if to dismiss her disapproval. "We've got a couple details - he's not home, and he's not answering his pager."
She shrugged. "I'm sure if he'd called five minutes later I'd have gotten him to come in... but the way he sounded, I don't think that would have been a good idea anyway."
"Suction." Joe turned his attention to the terrified girl, trying to work a breathing tube down her throat, a task made doubly difficult because she was conscious. "Hold her head!"
"Let me," Dix said, and swept the doctor out of her way. She looked down at the shaking girl on the table and smiled a little. "It hurts, and it's scary, and we're sticking you with things, I know sweetheart. But if we don't do all this scary stuff, it's gonna get a lot worse, so just help us out." The girl blinked tears out of her big brown eyes, but she nodded slightly and visibly relaxed - until she started to choke. But it was enough for Dixie to get a clear path for the girl, and the crisis was soon abated. She was shuttled off to surgery, and two more students showed up to take her place.
Joe worked quietly, which told Dix that he was 1) pretty ticked at Kel for taking so long to tell them nothing, and 2) almost as ticked at her for sympathizing with Kel. She didn't care - she knew Kel Brackett, she knew his moods, and she knew his love of medicine and people. She knew that for him to behave this way, something was seriously wrong, and he didn't need any recriminations from his staff. And she knew Joe knew all that too, and would come around in the end. Besides, Joe's quiet anger didn't affect his efficiency or his bedside manner, so she could take his glares, so long as the patients got what they needed.
Still, after more than an hour of repairing a seemingly neverending train of terrified children (because for all their height and manly muscle and womanly curves, they were still just children), Dix was starting to run out of mercy for dear Dr. Brackett. The half formed thought that someone had better be near death in this emergency threatened to break through, but she clamped down on it. Dix wasn't a superstitious woman, but she knew all too well the kind of terrible disasters that could break a man, and she knew perfectly well that everyone came to the same end eventually. No need to wish it any sooner on anyone, especially not someone close.
Dix wasn't a superstitious woman, but the universe seemed to think she might want to reconsider that stance. The next patient that came bursting into Room 2 was no child, but a full grown man still in his turnout pants. The jackets and shirts had been stripped off altogether, which removed all his identification from his uniform, but no one at Rampart General needed it. Even the secretaries up on the administrative floors of the hospital recognized his shock of flaming red hair whenever he showed up. His face, usually so bright and animated (and full of affectionate disdain for his partner) was slack and pale - ashen. He was on a back board, his left arm and leg were both splinted, and there was blood seeping through some bandages piled on his lower left chest. Panic began to bubble up in Dix, and she quietly excused herself from the room.
The halls were overflowing with crying teens, moaning firemen and panic stricken parents looking for news. Orderlies and candy stripers did their best to keep the walkways clear, ushering people this way and that, but as soon as a vacuum opened in the mass of flailing limbs, some other horror stricken person would fill the gap. The stench of burnt chemicals and blood filled the air, mixing noxiously with the antiseptics and disinfectants that usually circulated throughout the building.
Dixie kept her head down and bowled her way through the onslaught, desperate for a breather. She nearly made it to the break room when she literally stumbled over three shaking women - a pair of trembling student nurses and an equally nervous young intern. The nurses were trying to gather blood soaked gauze into a pile, while the intern randomly dropped freshly soaked pieces to the floor. It was unsanitary, a fall hazard, and also just really disgusting. "Ladies," she said sharply, and the three shaking women turned to her, red faced. Dixie fixed her glare on the intern. "I'll give my students a pass, since I'm sure they were just following orders, Dr. Peterson, but you really should know better."
The intern sighed. "Have you ever stitched up a patient, Ms. McCall?"
"No, I haven't," Dixie answered. Dr. Peterson looked crestfallen. Dix sighed and decided to take control of the situation before the poor girl burst into tears.
She looked beyond the young doctor, to the familiar fireman propped up on the stretcher. He was gripping his helmet in both hands - a captain's helmet. She didn't know Captain Hammer very well, but she'd met him once or twice, usually in the line of duty. He was conscious and alert, and trying to smile at her, though pain and blood dripping in his eyes made his expression look more like a grimace. "We're going to have to get him cleaned up a little better than this. Betty, get this mess cleaned up and take a break. Lila, bring some fresh gauze, a bottle of iodine, and some tape, and then you can take a break too." She looked at Dr. Peterson. "Do you want me to stitch him up? It's not typical, but it's not impermissible, either."
The intern, who still looked like the whole world was coming to a crashing end, brightened a bit before a flash of terror skittered across her face. "Is that alright with you, Capitan Hammer?"
The fireman shrugged. "My paramedics tell me Nurse McCall's the best of the best. If you trust her, I trust her."
"Oh, I trust her," Dr. Peterson said with a little too damned much enthusiasm, and took a giant step back. Like magic, Lila returned at that moment with armfuls of supplies and dumped them in Dr. Peterson's arms, before dragging Betty to her feet and away from the whole sordid mess. Peterson juggled the supplies and handed Dix the bottle of iodine with a wide, hopeful smile.
"Well, Captain, we'll see how much you and she trust me once I start hemming your face together," Dix grumbled. But she looked at the painfully smiling fireman, and she melted a little. "This is gonna sting," she said softly, and poured the brown liquid straight from the bottle, right over his head. He grunted a little, but he didn't flinch. "It's probably nothing compared to a two alarm church fire, is it?"
"Three alarms," Hammer said. "Just in time, too - I called for that alarm right before the floor went." He grunted again when Dix pressed a long wad of gauze over the gash on his scalp. "How's DeSoto?"
Dixie grit her teeth. "I don't know, Captain. I ran away."
Hammer chuckled a little. "They like you too, Ms. McCall."
"They?"
"DeSoto and Gage. The sun rises and sets on good ol' Dixie to hear them tell it."
She tried to smile back, felt her lower lip tremble, and dropped the smile. "Do you know what happened to him?"
"Short answer? He saved my life." Dixie looked down at the man. "The floor caved, he grabbed my leg when we went down. Kept me from dropping right into a firepit, but he went down hard on some exposed steel pillars. Went down like a ton of bricks."
Dixie shook her head. "I don't understand, he looks like his left side's been crushed. How'd he keep hold of you?"
"With every bit of strength he had left." The smile seemed to be fixed on the fireman's face. "He's gonna be okay, right?"
Dix had no idea how DeSoto was going to be. "Oh, yeah, he'll be fine. Dr. Early's with him now."
Hammer nodded. "John will be glad to hear that." He winced and hissed, as Dixie made her first pass with the needle and thread over his eye. "Sonofabitch!"
"I'm sorry." She worked faster, less interested in making a pretty, invisible scar than in finishing up with the poor man. "Is Johnny around?"
"He was. He rode in with me."
"With you? Not Roy?"
Hammer chuckled. "He said Roy would die then and there and haunt him for the rest of his very short and miserable life if he didn't ride with me in the ambulance." He sobered, and the full pain of potential loss turned his face into a bleak mask. "I... I think Gage was only half joking."
Dixie nodded. "He's an emotional guy, and they're good partners. He's probably trying to imagine doing the job with someone else and failing miserably."
"Yeah, those two are attached at the hip. I'll talk to him when I get out of here." He looked far away for a moment. "I have to talk to all of them, anyway."
Dixie stilled. "Something wrong?"
Hammer smiled again. "No, no. It's just that a few weeks ago the Battalion Chief lists came out, and, well, I placed high. I never told them I was taking the exam."
"And you're thinking of taking a promotion if you get an offer."
"Yeah," he said, and winced when the needle began to pull through his skin again. "But... it's not an 'if'."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I've gotten an offer. Two, actually. One is way up in north county, where everything burns to the ground twice a year like clockwork."
Dixie squawked. "Hey, don't make me laugh, you already look like a bad copy of a Picasso."
"Sorry," he said, chuckling slightly himself.
"No need to apologize, it's your face." She twisted awkwardly, trying to follow the path of the cut. "Where's the other offer?"
"East Los Angeles."
Dixie thought for a minute. "HQ?"
"Yeah." He looked so distant, like his mind was lost on another world, and his body was just a warm shell left behind for Dixie to practice her darning.
"Hey." Dixie twisted down a little further, made eye contact. "Is that what you want?"
He snorted. "Must be - I took the exam, didn't I? Besides, Battalion Chiefs aren't expected to actually go inside the damned burning buildings when they do have to show up for the fires." He shuddered. "I'm not old, not by a long shot, but... I think I'm getting too old for this. You know?"
"I'm pretty sure you're not old enough to be worrying about your age interfering with the fire service, Captain Hammer. I do think, though, that your skills would be put to just as good use in charge of a whole battalion as they have ever been in charge of a single station. If your taking a promotion means spreading your wealth a little further through the county, well, that can only be a good thing, right?" Dix cut the thread as inexpertly as she'd stitched the Captain up, and covered the laceration with fresh bandages. "Well, let me apologize in advance for ruining your future family photos, Captain, but at least it's done." She handed the last of the bandages off to the waiting intern with badly shaking hands.
"Now you should take a break, Ms. McCall," Dr. Peterson said confidently. "Thank you for your help."
"Yes, thank you" the fireman said. "I thought those other two were going to faint if they had to stay here much longer, and I was probably going to follow them down. And thanks for the advice, too."
Dixie smiled weakly. "Everybody says I'm brimming with advice." She turned away, in search of that breath of fresh air, before she absolutely choked to death.