When The Tik-Tik Sings

Two

TwoIn the wake of the explosion came fire and a chaos alien to the residential area of the laid-back tourist town. The source house, the fourth of seven on the right side of the street, was gone; just gone. Those parts of the walls, ceilings, floors, furnishings and contents not obliterated by the concussion had taken to the sky in flaming shards and were already dropping back as scorched hail, or drifting back as blackened confetti. What was left collapsed into the basement which burned like the sixth circle of Hell. An exception was the front door frame. The door was gone but the frame still stood over the three-step stoop, over the flaming pit, like a grave marker. The front third of the roof had blown off in one chunk. It cleared the sidewalk, Erin, the drunk, and his Lexus and landed in the street in one burning piece. Having dropped to the pavement and covered her head, Erin did not see it land. But she heard it, tons of burning wood, ripped shingle, torn flashing, landing ten feet away with a crack and crunch that rattled her teeth. Hot embers pelted her and the Lexus like shrapnel. Finally, the hot rain stopped and Erin's world was deathly quiet.

“Sugar t**s, what the f**k was that?”

The Fire Department was there in no time, attempting to deal with the catastrophe. 'Attempting' because, despite their best efforts, the man-power from the city's four stations wasn't enough to do the job. The roof burning in the street, the yards peppered with fiery shrapnel, were merely their first discoveries. In minutes, they found that thanks to radiated heat, the houses on either side of the pit were ablaze, along with a four-stall garage facing the street behind. If that wasn't enough, the explosion, or the fires, or perhaps the flying roof had cut a neutral line in front of the blast house. This electrical short crossed the street and set two residences there on fire. That threatened an auto body shop on the corner. It was a beautiful start to everyone's day. 'A' Shift wasted no time calling the chief. The chief wasted no time calling the troops; every firefighter in the city.

Among these was the Station 2, 'B' Shift gang, firefighters, paramedics, friends, and department rejects all. Stationed together in the low-rent district because each was considered a trouble-maker, they arrived as a gang, in their personal vehicles, loaded down with gear. Benjamin Court and Nestor Pena led the way with Ben riding shotgun in the New Mexican's SUV. Josh Tucker and Dewey Arbuckle, massive truckies, weightlifters and beer lifters both, were behind in Tuck's van, with their little sister, rookie paramedic Kristina Pierce. All found their progress arrested by, considering the hour, an impressive crowd of rubber-neckers at the Garfield – Shiras intersection. It was as close as they were going to get. They piled out wearing helmets, bunker pants and boots, carrying coats and gear, and hoofed it through the cars and crowd to the scene a half block north.

Erin's squad, now crossways on the street, kept the crowd back. But Erin, Ben noted, was nowhere around. Five-inch hydrant lines from both ends of the block fed two engines, going opposite directions, fighting a ridiculous number of fires. Part of a roof lay smoldering in the street. One house was a door and a burning basement. The gang saw immediately they were joining a cluster.

Then came Erin, wearing a flak jacket and a stylish jogging ensemble, running down Garfield toward them. A Fire Department ambulance, Station 1's 1-Boy-16, followed her with lights flashing, apparently with a patient on board, headed out.

“Who they got?” Tuck shouted. “A taxpayer? Or one of those dumb asses from 'A' shift?”

“Citizen.” Erin backed up her squad to clear the way for the ambulance. She leaned out the open window. “He was inside the house when it went.”

“Balls!”

“Both balls,” Nestor agreed.

“And a big c**k,” Pierce added. Ben smirked, looking from Pierce to Erin, and shook his head. The gang broke up laughing. Not at a burned man, but at the pain life dished out and at the way their rookie had quickly learned to deal with it; the way they all dealt with it every day. 1-Boy-16 sounded its siren and eased through the crowd. Erin pulled her squad forward, closing the street back off.

It was then the 'B' Shift gang noticed the dark Lexus at the curb. A man inside, handcuffed to the steering wheel, gave Nestor a new reason to laugh. “Should we ask?”

Erin shook her head. “Just another day at the office.”

The gang moved past Engine 4, with three lines pulled, two from the bed, one from a side mount, charged, and snaking to three separate structures. “What a f*****g circus!” Tuck said.

It was that, Ben thought, taking it in. A circus with five rings. Only the Calliope music was missing.

Without an air pack, face-piece dangling from his neck, Ben moved through an open overhead door into the burning garage, eating heat and dragging a charged 2½ line on his shoulder. The fire was floor to rafters in the back wall. He opened the playpipe nozzle and unloaded seventy-five gallons a minute across the base of the flames. Wet on red, that was the name of the game. Everything was pie until he saw movement on the right. Three hunched Duncan Rural firefighters had entered the opposite end of the garage through a walk-in door. Blue lighters! It wasn't that pro firefighters had anything against volunteers; they were well trained, energetic guys. But they faced the monster for love instead of money. How screwed up was that?

The band of men, three in a conga line, wore full air packs and gear but gave themselves away in black turnout with white reflective tape, as opposed to the yellow and orange of Duncan city. That and the sad fact that between them, they carried one red 1¼ grass hose that made them look like the Three Stooges taking a garter snake for a walk. And they were messing with his fire.

In the movies, this would have been the instant when an angel appeared on Ben's right shoulder to say, Don't do it, followed by a devil on his left sneering, Go ahead, let 'em have it. But this was real life, where firefighters and incorrigible rogues made split-second decisions. Before his conscience stopped him, Ben pivoted the nozzle blasting the fire, heat, and smoke across the garage and at the volunteers. The trio had no choice but to retreat.

Ben heard a guffaw and turned to see Nestor, portable radio in hand, leaning on the overhead frame laughing his keister off. “Nice,” Nester said. “Now… if you're done harassing the whistle pricks?”

“Maybe.” Ben shut down his line and lowered the nozzle. Gray smoke swirled around him. “Why?”

Nestor waved his radio and pointed at Ben's. “You forgot to turn yours on.”

“Yeah. Let's go with that. I forgot.”

Nestor smiled impishly. “Ethridge is politely requesting our presence.”

The day when 'A' Shift's commanding officer, Captain Booker Ethridge, politely requested anything would be one chilly day in Hell. Both knew it. Even if it had been true, it wasn't by the time the pair arrived at the Incident Command Center. Ethridge was a good guy, but tactless. The grizzled captain, talking to Art Blackmore, his engine driver, when Ben and Nestor walked up, growled, “Grab 1-Boy-18 and get over to the 800 block of High Street. 1-Boy-16 has been in an accident.”

Nestor moaned. “This is the best fire I've had in years.”

“Sorry to ruin your good time, Pena.”

“Can't you send a couple of rookies?”

“I can,” Ethridge barked. “But I'm not going to.”

“How bad is it?” Ben asked.

Blackmore butted in. “We're not there, Court, are we? What do we look like? Swamis?”

Ben smiled. Blackmore was an ass – which was his problem – but he was also their Union president, which was theirs. Blackmore liked himself a lot. Neither Ben nor Nestor shared his opinion. The result was rancor and a perpetual verbal shoving match. “The man I was addressing looks like a captain,” Ben told him. “You, Art, look like what you always look like, a p***s with ears.”

“Enough,” Ethridge barked. Five fires and he had to play referee? Goddam firefighters and their nonsense; like psychotic kids. “Can we get back to work? I don't know how bad, Ben. They were hit by another vehicle. They're out of service and their burn patient needs to get to the hospital. When you get there, you'll know. Then you can tell me.”

Ben lost the coin toss on the way to the rig. Nestor got to drive and he was stuck with patient care. There were a hundred places on earth Ben would rather have been.

Being hit by a taxpayer while operating an emergency vehicle was worse than traumatic, it was embarrassing. And a screw up a city employee couldn't live down. It was a shame because it was rarely the firefighter's fault. Nine times out of ten, the blame lay with the citizen. Despite blazing red, bright white, or electric green paint, despite sirens and pulsing phasers, despite reflective tape and the yellow, red, white, and blue flashing lights from stem to stern, one day a citizen was going to slam into your fire engine, truck, or ambulance and claim they 'Didn't see you' and 'Didn't hear you'. That was the situation 'A' Shift paramedics Bennehoff and Cooper were in when Ben and Nestor rolled up. A Caddy had blown a red light and broadsided 1-Boy-16 in an intersection.

“Take Roger Ramjet, will you?” Ben asked Nestor. “I'll check the patient and crew.”

Nestor eased past a cop directing traffic and parked 1-Boy-18. Ben tossed their jump kit into his vacated seat, for Nestor, then headed for the wrecked ambulance. Nestor started for the Cadillac.

It took the New Mexican a minute to track down the driver, who was out of his steaming vehicle roaming, and several more to get him to stand still. He denied injury and angrily refused to be touched. As he had no acute distress, Nestor called another ambulance, from one of the volunteer Mutual Aid groups, to let them argue with the guy.

1-Boy-16's patient compartment had been stoved in. The same could be said of the pride of the ambulance driver, Shug Bennehoff. Ben found him unhurt but genuinely pissed. “The chief's head is going to explode.”

Unable to disagree, Ben offered the only salve available. “It'll be an improvement.”

Sandy Cooper, the paramedic treating the patient when the accident occurred, was sporting what looked to be a broken arm. Ben could barely hear her moans because the burn patient on the cot was screaming his head off. “Has he been like this since the accident?”

Cooper shook her head. “Before. Been screaming since we left the fire. I don't blame him.”

“Me neither. What's his name?”

“No idea,” Cooper said, wincing as she held her arm.

Ben and Nestor transferred their empty cot to 1-Boy-16 and moved the patient, and Cooper, into their ambulance. Bennehoff, opting to remain with his crippled rig, refused to join them. They took off for the hospital.

In the back, Cooper treated herself, tying her arm in a sling while Ben busied himself over the burn patient. Sadly, there was little he could do. Cooper, estimating second and third-degree burns over eighty percent of his body, had established an IV and oxygen at the scene before they'd run. All that remained was to keep the wounds clean and the patient cool without sending him into hypothermic shock. To that end, Ben covered him with a sterile sheet and poured saline on the burns. The patient screamed non-stop. But no doctor, Ben knew, would authorize painkillers in the field for burns that severe. There was no point asking. The patient continued to scream while Ben radioed an 'inbound' report to the hospital. Ears ringing, he cradled the mic, silently wishing Nestor would get them there.

Up front, Nestor was in paramedic heaven. Legal speeding, carefully weaving through the maze of downtown one-way streets, without the stress of patient care. He alternated their emergency tones with a switch in the steering wheel. An ear-splitting 'siren' for the straight-a-ways, a flick to 'wail' for the intersections, and the god-awful 'phaser' reserved for assholes who ignored the others. He gave some phaser to a soccer mom making love to her cell phone. “Curb right for sirens and lights!”

Northeast Iowa wasn't New York but it wasn't a desert island either. There were plenty of folks in need of medical attention, and in Duncan, they got it at the 300 bed Duncan Memorial Hospital on the edge of the Port District. It had an ER, an Intensive Care Unit, a Psychiatric Unit, and its own Burn Unit; music to the paramedics' ears. In Ben's case, make that the paramedic's numb ears. The patient was still screaming. The intensity of his shouts had lessened since Ben had applied the saline, and what seemed to be a word or two were finding their way out between the shouts. But, if they were words, they were foreign and meant only more noise to Ben. “Any idea what language he's speaking?”

“Nope,” Cooper answered with a frown. “Don't know that either.”

Though his burned rags had been cut away, the patient still wore a set of dog tags. Ben examined those, found them as foreign as the patient, and returned them having learned nothing. In a way, it made things easier. His inability to decipher the man's cries isolated Ben from the pain. Thankfully he would soon be handing the problem off.

Nestor took the curving drive to the Emergency Room and backed into a stall. Ben abandoned ship and helped Cooper down. He released the cot and he and Nestor rolled it out. They dropped the wheels to the carport pavement and pushed through the sliding doors as the patient perfectly summed up the trip by screaming at the top of his lungs.