Broken Glass
Too small.
Too big.
Kitchen's too tight.
Bedroom's too bright.
The toilet's jammed up too close to the bathtub.
Whoever built the vast variety of apartment units that covered the southern portion of L.A. County was a sadist of the highest order. Each new vacancy Hank saw had a worse defect than the one before it, until eventually he found himself standing in what had to be some hapless art student's attempt to render M.C. Escher's drawings in the real world.
After wasting a day and a half looking at the psychedelic shoe boxes and broken down fishbowls for rent, Hank was more than a little discouraged. His old place hadn't been a palace - it was just a six sided box with a couple of walls thrown in to divy the place up - but it had been large enough to accommodate him and a reasonable plumbing set up, without necessarily being large enough to seat a Raiders game. He almost wanted to call HQ and ask if it was too late to change his mind.
Hank crossed another apartment off his list, and winced at the siren as it wailed past. "Good lord, this place sounds like an echo chamber," he said.
The manager snorted and rolled his eyes, which was the first sign of life he'd shown since Hank had knocked on his door. "We're across the street from a hospital, it's always like this. I'm surprised the para-whozy-whatzits can hear themselves think. Prolly can't."
Hank scowled. "The sirens don't sound that loud in the truck."
"Sure they don't. Come on, buddy, lemme show you the bathroom."
But Hank wasn't interested in the bathroom, or any other part of the apartment unit. "Say, do you know which hospital that is?"
"Rampart General. It's a charity hospital."
Hank frowned, confused. "What the heck is a charity hospital? A church with a first aid kit?"
The manager shrugged. "It's a county hospital. They take bums and deadbeats. The jerks I gotta throw out when they don't pay their rent." Another siren wailed, and the manager rolled his eyes, as if the sound wasn't fit to make his ears bleed. "There's another one, probably some old wino in another gutter. Them's our good tax dollars going up in smoke over there!"
Hank looked out of the window, and recognized immediately the style and shape of the red boxy truck fast on the tail of an ambulance taxiing towards the back of the hospital - it was unmistakably an L.A. County squad. He thanked the manager for his hospitality, and didn't wait for the half-assed answer he knew the manager was dribbling out. Instead, he ran to his car and weaved his way out of the cul-de-sac the apartment was tucked into, and made his way over to Rampart General. He hoped that getting a first hand look at one of the main reasons he'd taken the promotion would give him the strength to continue his house hunt.
The ridiculous orange seating was a dead giveaway: Rampart General Hospital was most definitely a County run facility. Hank was convinced that the very first law ratified at the very first County Board of Supervisors meeting was that every County owned building had to have at least one awkward wooden chair that rocked despite everyone's best attempts at leveling it, one dusty embarrassing piece of drapery that resisted all attempts at cleanliness, one wall of ugly green, brown or orange tile that was at least partially visible to the public at some point, and one hideous orange chair. He hadn't come across the curtain or the tiled wall, but the wooden chair was in a tiny alcove beside the admissions desk, likely for some poor hapless clerk to use while trying to type up admit info, while the eye-searing orange chair had spawned nine babies and were all sitting together in the middle of the damn floor, screaming to all the world UPHOLSTERY PROVIDED BY THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES.
The admissions area was really just a large intersection of two very busy hallways. Folks stumbled into the crossroads from all four directions, most of them either in crisp white uniforms, soft bluish green scrubs, or in various states of disrepair. Some people seemed to float right through the room, using it as a giant thoroughfare. Others paused helplessly after arriving, until they either stumbled over to the desk, or collapsed in one of the hideous orange chairs.
Several people bumped into Hank on their way to or through the room, before finally a pert-nosed, pig-tailed young woman draped in a red and white apron caught his eye. She stood from her tiny perch in a corner of the room, and approached him with bright, wide eyes. As she got closer, Hank began to look around uncomfortably - the young woman wasn't a woman at all, but a girl who looked to be just on the cusp of puberty, and she was definitely headed directly for him. He backed away, just a little, as surprised by her intensity as her obvious youth. She weaved around a shuffling old couple and stepped over a whining toddler on the floor, and closed the space between herself and Hank with uncanny speed.
"Hello," she said, and smiled big and bright and completely unnaturally. "Are you lost, sir?"
"No, I don't think so..." Hank looked back at the long counter labeled 'admissions', and turned back to the child with what he hoped looked to be a friendly smile of his own. "Seems like the admissions desk to me."
The girl's wide, mechanical smile shrank a little, and her wide eyed gaze shifted just a little into confusion. "Uh, well, yes. Did... do you need to see a doctor? I can help you fill-"
"No," Hank said simply.
"No?"
"Nope."
The smile, which had been slowly shrinking as she spoke, dropped completely from her face, and left her with a wild stare. "Oh."
They stared at each other for several more seconds, before Hank could feel other eyes on his back, his shoulders, his chest. He looked up, and saw several people, broken and sick folks in street clothes, and fussily white draped people wearing name tags, all watching him with wary curiosity. He cleared his throat. "Actually, maybe you can help me. Do you know if the hospital offers public tours?"
The wild stare became even wilder, and her eyes began to slide around the room, as she obviously searched for a lifeline. "I... I don't actually know. What kind of tour?"
Hank spread his feet and hunched down into himself, to bring himself down a little closer to Earth. He still towered well over the child, but she seemed to relax a little as he compacted his long form just a bit. "I'm a firefighter, and I'm about to be assigned to a station with paramedics for the first time, and I was hoping-"
"Oh!" The girl smiled again, but this time the wide smile was genuine, and she held her hands up excitedly. "Just a second, I know just who to ask!" She skittered around and dove into the thick of traffic at the short wide hall across from the waiting area, where patients seemed to disappear to for treatment. She stopped at the far end of the hall and bounced on the balls of her feet for bit, before she began an animated conversation with the wall.
Hank watched her for awhile before finally following her path down the wide hall. Soon, he saw that the girl was speaking, not to a wall, but to a handsome blond woman seated at a smaller version of the giant admissions desk at the front of the hall. This smaller desk was set into a deep alcove, so that it sat flush with the wall that Hank thought the girl was talking to. The alcove was set up with what looked like radio equipment and first aid supplies from some futuristic sci-fi drive-in flick. He probably recognized about half of what he was looking at, but the rest was a mystery.
The handsome woman had a no-nonsense look on her face as she listened to the wide eyed girl with what appeared to be dwindling patience. The girl seemed to know she was treading thin ice, as her eyes grew wider while she stammered and sputtered about firemen and paramedic tours. Beside the blond stood two young firemen who shuffled through a box of the futuristic looking medical supplies, and very pointedly didn't involve themselves in the girl's rambling questioning.
Finally, the woman held her hands up, clearly at the end of her tether. "Hold on there, Leslie," the woman said. "Is he in uniform? Did he have some kind of identification on him?" The girl shook her head no to both questions, and the woman sighed, a long, deep sigh. "Then how do you know he even is who he claims to be?"
The girl's mouth mouth dropped open. Her cheeks pinked up, and then she screwed her whole face up like she'd just eaten the world's tiniest, angriest lemon. "You know what, Ms. McCall? I bet he thought he could just tell me any old thing, and I would believe it, because I have a baby face! Well I'm gonna go over there and give him a piece of my mind!" She spun on her heel and took one marching step right into Hank's chest. "Oh!" All her feisty bravado deflated, and she looked back helplessly at Ms. McCall. "Uh, this is the guy," she said.
Ms. McCall smiled wanly. "Of course it is."
The two firemen paused in their digging long enough to look him up and down, but they returned to their box of medical goodies with a shared shrug. Hank wasn't too concerned, as he didn't recognize them either. Instead, he approached the desk, and looked the woman in the eye, since she seemed to be the nearest seat of authority available. "Good afternoon, ma'am."
Her smile shifted ever so slightly, and the whole room lit up for one brilliant moment. "Good afternoon."
"Listen, I'm a fireman with the L.A. County fire department. I've just transfered from a brush station clear across the other side of the county, where we didn't generally serve much of a population. This new assignment is going to be my first with a fully vested paramedic team, and while I had a tour of the station itself, I didn't get much of a chance to talk to the paramedics themselves. I just happened to be in the neighborhood, and I noticed one of our squads rolling in here, so I thought I might come in and observe." Hank heard a bit of commotion from the front end of the hall, and looked to see some poor old soul being wheeled in from the double doors that lead directly outside. A flurry of movement took place out of the corner of his eye, and Ms. McCall was soon skittering away to deal with the interruption. She and a host of scrambling men disappeared into one of the doors set into the hallway, and left Hank standing there, looking and feeling rather lost. So much for trying to charm his way into a chance to observe.
One of the firemen extended a hand to Hank. "I'm Dobson, from 14s. This is Coleman." Coleman was too busy dealing with a clipboard and their precious box to speak, but he did lift a half hearted hand in greeting. "You know, you've probably seen all you're really gonna get to see of anything in here. Depending on your position, you might never even get this far into one of the hospitals."
"I was afraid of that," Hank said. "Mostly this was just personal curiosity on my part - I'm happy enough to participate this far, even if it means extra paperwork."
"The paramedics are the ones who'll deal with that mostly," Coleman said without looking up from his clipboard.
"I don't understand," Hank said. "Your captain doesn't have to deal with a little extra too?"
The paramedics both paused and looked at each other. "I dunno," Dobson finally said. "We never asked him."
Hank shrugged. "Not that I know what a normal amount of paperwork is gonna be like. I guess I just have first day jitters."
"Promotion?" Coleman looked slightly more interested - slightly.
"Yep. I'm half terrified I'm gonna show up next shift and they're gonna write me up for showing up in the wrong building and leaving my old station without an engineer."
"Ohhhh," both paramedics said, and exchanged another look. Hank's natural paranoia was beginning to bloom in the face of all these meaningful looks. But Dobson just smiled. "Stick around, Cap," he said, and looked at a point somewhere past Hank's left shoulder. "I think I see your tour guide coming this way right now."
Hank turned and followed the line of Dobson's eye to see a scrawny, dark haired boy strolling through the halls like he owned the emergency ward. He seemed to have friendly words for everyone he passed, and made several clumsy passes at several exasperated looking women as he made his way to the desk. Hank didn't recognize the boy until he reached the desk, and gave him a suspicious look. It was the same look he'd given him when Hank had parked his truck in the back of the station. Then the boy's face lit up, and a wide, crooked grin made his already childish features look positively cartoonish. "Hey!"
"Hello," Hank said. "Gage, right? Johnny Gage."
"Yep, you got it, you got it." John turned his smile to the two uniformed paramedics and hooked a thumb at Hank. "Y'all not scaring him now, are you?"
"I think he's probably trying to scare himself," Coleman said drily.
"Or maybe he's planning on scaring you," Dobson said. "After all, he's here on an off day! Imagine what he'll be like on duty!"
John laughed and shrugged. "I don't see anything wrong with checking out the lay of the land - that's what a good firefighter's supposed to do, right? I sure did my research before taking the paramedic training."
"On your day off?"
"Well, when the heck else was I supposed to do it?"
"Yeah, okay," Dobson said. "But what's your excuse now? What are you doing here in Rampart when you're off shift? Don't you get sick of this place?" Coleman jabbed his partner with an elbow with a low hiss, and the two squabbled a little over the too-late hint for silence.
"Hey," John said, "I enjoy my time off as well as the next guy, but I've been stuck here overnight for days on end too, and I gotta say, it's not fun sitting in here all alone all day. When one of my buddies gets stuck in here on the injured list, I like to visit, you know? Keep the spirits up and all."
"Well, we saw him already," Dobson said. "So he's had visitors, don't worry."
"Yeah, but you're not me." John was still smiling, but Hank could see the hint of danger in the kid's face. If he hadn't known better, he'd have called the sudden darkness on John's face jealous possessiveness. "Besides, I've been stuck with Daniels for the last three shifts now, and I'm probably gonna have him for another three, bare minimum. He's a great guy, don't get me wrong, but he's not my partner. " By then, the smile was completely gone, and Hank was more than sure that the wild dangerous uncoiling in Gage was definitely possessiveness. "I just miss Roy, okay?" John snapped his mouth shut, and visibly folded down the passion that was threatening to rip through the hallway. Hank wondered if he'd meant to reveal himself so vividly, to expose so much raw emotion to a couple of guys who didn't look to be above rubbing a sore spot.
But Dobson and Colemen didn't poke any fun at John. They simply nodded solemnly, as a unit. Some kind of understanding passed between the three of them, something that Hank could observe, but not understand himself. "Yeah, he's not saying," Coleman said, "but I think he's wondering when you're going to swing by again."
"Sure he did," Dobson said. "He was saying he figured Johnny was trying to catch some overtime, remember?"
As the three of them discussed Roy's special language and worked out translating it to English, Hank began to feel that awkward wallflowerness take root. These men weren't even on the same shift, and there was a closeness shared between them that left Hank clearly in the cold.
"Say," John said suddenly, turning to a sharp eye to Hank. "You haven't met Roy."
"I haven't met anybody outside the station," Hank said.
"Oh, well this here is Dobson and Coleman from Station 14," John said.
"Well, yes, they mentioned that," Hank said, his sarcasm a little sharper than he'd intended.
"Well, you said-"
"We never got his name," Coleman said drably.
John looked at all three of them like they were insane. "This here is Captain Stanley. I guess - do I call you Cap already? Or do I wait until next shift?"
Hank shrugged. "I don't know, I guess. Sure, call me Cap now - I might as well get used to answering to it."
"Yeah, plus we don't wanna confuse Roy."
"Why would Roy be confused about what to call me?"
"Well he won't if I call you Cap!" With that, John waved to the paramedics from 14, and shuffled over to the elevator. "Aren't you coming, Cap?"
Hank gave up trying to follow John's reasoning and followed him onto the elevator.