Cab Of Squad 51: A Short Story

The tension in the cab of Squad 51 was palpable. Bad enough were the emotions when in route to a possible overdose without the additional turmoil Roy’s move to engineer had brought on them.
Some squad calls are routine; the paramedics know what to expect, but with possible overdose or suicide attempts, they know to expect the unexpected. Any combination of drugs, alcohol, weapons or rooftops could be involved.
The strain in the squad differed from the thickness in the air the past few shifts between the two men. This heaviness came from the unknown that awaited their arrival. "Left," Johnny stated just loud enough to be heard over the siren, never taking his eyes from the road as he directed his partner to the scene; wrinkled concentration
crossed his brow. Roy followed the directions without question. That’s the way it had been since their first shift together. Johnny had never failed to find the shortest route to a scene; often shaving minutes from their response time that Roy had not thought possible. It was one of many qualities he had admired about his longtime partner and best friend.
Johnny’s fingers drummed a steady beat on his knee as they raced to the address dispatch had given them. Calls like this one left paramedics almost holding their breath until they could get to the patient. Sometimes they got there in time to make a difference; sometimes no matter how many skills or how much luck they possessed it wasn’t enough. His drumming stopped. His hand moved to the door handle, paused while the wheels came to a stop, and he bolted from the cab. Roy threw the shift to park and grabbed the keys while stepping out of the driver’s side door. The motion so natural to him he didn’t even have to think about it anymore. They might only have seconds left to save a life, and wasting time on carefully exiting a fully parked vehicle wasn’t important. Johnny had to grab twice at the handle to the compartment when the squad lurched backwards from the momentum. When Roy rounded the back of the squad, Johnny already had the drug box and biophone and was halfway up the walk to the front door. Grabbing the rest of the equipment, Roy hurried to catch up to him.
When they reached the porch and knocked on the front door, they were greeted by a man who turned them away. They trudged back to the squad to the tune of Johnny’s quiet grumbling about people calling for help and making them unavailable to someone else who might really need them. He was just closing the compartment on the squad when a station wagon came to a screeching halt next to the curb in front of the squad.
After initially thinking it was a false alarm, the paramedics were practically run down by the lady’s family when they arrived and spilled out of their car yelling at them; asking why they were leaving.
Thinking that maybe there was a problem, Roy and Johnny pulled their gear back out and turned back toward the house in case they were needed after all. In the chaos that followed the group rushed toward the pool house to check on the wife of the man who’d initially sent the two paramedics packing. The group pushed ahead of the two men who could offer the most help if the woman had in fact ingested some pills. The family pushed each other and the two men as they all herded around the edge of the pool. Roy had not so graciously been shoved to the left and lost his footing on the slippery side of the pool. He unceremoniously took a splash along with the drug box. Johnny had eventually made it into the fray only to find out the lady had taken a bottle of aspirin and agreed to seek advice from her personal physician. Johnny fished the drug box from the water and offered his hand to his partner, but Roy hadn’t wanted or needed his help. In a normal situation this would be a call that would be joked about and a great deal of teasing would have followed. After the past week of unrest between the two friends, the situation only seemed to add fuel to the already smoldering
fire.
“You want a blanket?” Johnny asked as he stored the dripping drug box in the side compartment. He didn’t wait for a response and handed Roy one. Roy had never refused his help, denied he needed help yes they had all done that a time or two, but the brief flicker of anger in Roy’s eyes had been totally unexpected. He hesitated for a second while considering asking Roy why his offering help had angered him so, but decided to let it go. Maybe Roy was just mad about the dip in the pool. He turned and rounded the back of the Squad to take the driver’s seat, naturally assuming Roy wouldn’t want to drive in his current state of discomfort.
Roy ripped the plastic from the yellow safety blanket and spread it over the passenger side of the bench seat before climbing in. He’d seen the concern in Johnny’s eyes as he had offered his hand in getting out of the pool. For some unexplainable reason, he hadn’t wanted Johnny’s help or his concern. The return trip to the station was done with a different strain in the air. The adrenaline from the possible overdose had dissipated leaving both men feeling tired, but Roy was the most miserable. The ride back was done in silence except for the noise Roy made each time he shifted in his seat. His uniform clung to his wet skin like saran wrap to a plate of leftovers. Wrinkled fabric bunched across his back where his shirt was partially untucked. How he’d ended up in the pool with the drug box was a blur. That along with the aggravation that the so called overdose was a bunch of aspirin by an obviously spoiled woman who craved even more attention, made Roy very miserable.