No Promises

by N. Raines

  "Just let me sit up, okay? I'm tired of lying here like a corpse." She tried pushing herself up, but her arms collapsed and down she flopped. "Oof."

  "Careful." Rick eased her up, propping the pillows behind her back until she was nearly upright. "That better?"

  "Yeah. A little woozy, but…"

  Jesus, she was pale. His nerves jumped. He wanted to help her, but felt clumsy and useless. "You want something to eat? Something light." It might help settle her stomach.

  She smiled. "Thanks."

  When he returned with the tray, her eyes were closed again. Had she fallen back to sleep? Her nostrils twitched as they caught the fragrant aroma wafting from the plate he'd prepared.

  With a grin, he set a tray down on her lap. "Tea and cinnamon toast."

  Her eyes were wide with awe. "You remembered."

  "About your mom and the cinnamon toast?" His face grew warm. "Sure I remembered."

  Sam ducked her head, but not before he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes. A lump the size of a fist lodged in his throat.

  He sat, then leaned forward in the chair, foolishly nervous, as she crunched the toast. "Is it all right?"

  She nodded, wiped a crumb from the corner of her mouth. "Oh. Yeah. It's good."

  "I guess you're supposed to put it under the broiler to finish it off, but I couldn't figure out how that old stove of yours works."

  "No, this is great." She took another bite and a sip of hot tea before looking at him again. "Thanks for rescuing me."

  He snorted, rolling his eyes. "I didn't do anything. It was the EMS guys who got you to the hospital."

  "But you called them. And you found me."

  The memory of her lying still and cold on that concrete floor got his heart knocking against his ribs. He went for pissed off instead. Pissed was better than scared. "What the hell were you doing down there, anyway?"

  "I heard the cat crying. Big Boy. He was trapped in the cellar."

  "And you risked your life for that stupid cat."

  "It wasn't like that. I was never in danger."

  "Like hell! What if I hadn't found you? Who knows how long you would've been down in that dirty cellar? I saw your truck there and you were nowhere around. Don't you know how fuckin' scared I was?"

  She stared at him, her face blank. "You were worried about me?"

  "Was I worried?" Rick's voice cracked. "You have no idea the shit that went through my head!" Her stunned expression had him flummoxed. Jesus, didn't she know how much he cared? Why would she, though, after their fight?

  "I didn't mean to scare you. I just wanted to find the cat."

  "It's my fault." The spindly chair creaked as he leaned his weight against its back. "If I hadn't been such a dick the other night, hadn't said all that mean shit, you'd have waited for me today. I never would have let you go down there by yourself."

  Her eyes clouded with confusion. "That's on me, not you. You warned me something could go wrong." Her hands tightened on the blue-and-white quilt. "What's going on with you? First you're a paramedic, then you're not, then you're going to work for your stepfather. What's really bothering you?"

  He clenched and unclenched his fists. How could he tell her? She wouldn't understand. He hadn't even talked to Cris about it. His own partner. "It's fucked-up."

  "Can't you tell me? Please?" Her face was so open, trusting. Could she handle it?

  But he was selling her short. Sam was strong. She'd survived her mother's death, taken care of her dad through two heart attacks.

  Of course she could handle it. It wasn't her he doubted—it was himself.

  She held out her hand. "It's all right. Tell me."

  He grasped her fingers, and the knot in his chest loosened.

  "When I saw you down there, for a second I thought you were dead." He shook his head. "You don't know how scared I was."

  He swallowed hard and squeezed her fingers. "I told you I was taking time off from the job. But that's not the whole truth. I'm officially on leave. I was under investigation for a complaint made against me.

  "It happened when my partner Cris and I got a call for an infant, unresponsive. We get there and this dude comes to the door." He could still picture the skinny guy, sprouting stubble and pimples, who barely looked out of his teens. "He lets us into this grungy apartment, smells like sour milk."

  Even now the sour stink filled his nostrils. His gorge rose, and for an instant he thought he might puke. He swallowed hard to push the rising mass down his throat.

  "There's a baby, maybe nine, ten months old. His breathing's labored, he's pale, and his lips are turning blue."

  The little boy, dressed in only a diaper and an undershirt, was as floppy as a stuffed toy. Rick got busy suctioning the child's airway to clear it, then administering oxygen with the bag valve mask.

  Cris began questioning the guy. "How long has your son been like this?" "Uh. I don't know. Not too long. He was acting kind of weird this morning, though. Like he didn't want to wake up. Didn't eat much breakfast. Then he threw up, made a mess." The dude was sleepy-eyed and out of it. Was he high or just a run-of-the-mill douchebag? "It's not my kid, anyway. It's my girlfriend's."

  Cris handled the conversation. He knew his shit, knew precisely the kind of questions to ask to get to the bottom of the situation. Rick kept working on the baby,

  "Did anything unusual happen to the child?" Cris asked. "Anything you can think of that might—"

  "Whatta you mean?" the dude asked sharply. All of a sudden he was alert, ready for an argument.

  Cris kept his cool. "Did he have a fall, anything that might have brought about this episode?"

  The dude scratched himself under his dingy T-shirt, exposing a flabby, fish-white belly. "Uh, maybe. Uh, yeah, he fell out of his high chair this morning. That might have caused it."

  Lying fucker. Falling a couple of feet from a high chair wouldn't have caused this kind of injury.

  Cris's eyes narrowed. "I see." Rick knew his partner. The more clipped his voice, the more suspicious he was. "Any chance of getting hold of Mom?"

  Douchebag scratched himself again. "She's at work. She'll be pissed if I call her there. Why you gotta talk to her, anyway?"

  "She's the parent and legal guardian. We'll need her permission in case we need to—"

  "Need to what? Look, the kid's getting better. Aren't you, Dylan?"

  And Dylan was looking better. The oxygen had pinked him up, at least. Come on, Dylan, Rick urged silently. You can do it. Breathe, buddy. Keep breathing.

  But he was still floppy. When Rick checked the baby's eyes, his hopes flattened. The pupils were uneven. He noticed something else too. Fingerprints on the child's upper arms.

  He glanced at Cris and their eyes met. They were so in tune with each other, they instantly had the same thought at the same moment. This was an abused child.

  They had to get Dylan the hell out of there.

  Rick tightened his hold on Sam's hand. Her touch, her steady gaze anchored him. "The first thing you want to do when you treat an abused child is punch the fucking dick who did it right in the face. But you don't, because you're a professional and that doesn't help the kid. The first thing you have to do is stabilize him and get him someplace safe. Which is easier said than done when the dickbag wants to cover his ass and tries to put up a fight."

  "Okay, sir." Cris was well and truly pissed whenever he called someone "sir." "We're going to have to transport Dylan to the hospital. Can you get his mother on the phone?"

  His partner turned cold as ice when something hacked him off. Rick, on the other hand, felt like the back of his neck was on fire. The top of his head might explode any minute.

  Dickbag meanwhile made with the excuses. "But he's already better, see? You wanta take him all the way to the hospital just 'cause he fell out of bed?"

  A minute ago he'd fallen out of his high chair. Get your story straight, asshole.

  "I'm not gonna call his mom at work just 'cause he bumped his
head. Shit. Hospital?" The boyfriend was straight-up sputtering now, his face splotched with red. "What, you guys get kickbacks or something? That's what's wrong with this country today, all this red tape."

  "He should be more alert," Cris said. "We really need to move him and get him to a doctor right away. Are you sure nothing else happened that could explain this condition?"

  The dude puffed his chest, which only made him more pathetic. "Whatta you mean? You think it's my fault? That what you tryin' to say?"

  Uh, yeah, asshole. That's just what we think, and the way you're acting proves it. You don't want us to take him 'cause you're scared you'll be found out.

  Cris looked Rick's way. Again, the same thought. They were wasting time arguing with this loser. "Well, there's one other thing we can do." Cris's tone was measured. "I'll go down to the rig and get the assimilator."

  Rick nodded. "Good idea."

  Cris lifted an eyebrow. "You'll be all right?" Meaning: do you feel safe alone here?

  "Yes." He was worried about the boy, not himself.

  "Yeah, get that thing," the boyfriend said. "Hurry up."

  There was no "assimilator." It didn't exist. The word was code for "time to call the cops to keep this asshole contained so we can do our job."

  They weren't following protocol. The rule was "Two in, two out." In other words, you never left your partner alone in a situation that might turn dangerous. But Rick wasn't afraid. The douchebag was all bluster. A coward who'd put his hands on a baby, but wouldn't attack someone who could fight back.

  Rick stayed with the boy, praying the cops would get there quickly. They had to get Dylan to the hospital as soon as possible. Meanwhile the waste of skin was shooting off his mouth, yammering about all the wimps in the world and how they got that way. "Buncha crybabies, gotta go to the hospital every time they stub their toe."

  Yeah, you're a fine one to talk about wimps. How much courage did it take you, asshole, to pick this baby up and shake him till his brain rattled? How'd you like me to grab you by the throat and snap your neck, you pasty little fuck?

  The douche paused in his tirade. "Hey, where's that partner of yours? How the hell long does it take to get that whatchacallit thing?"

  Rick didn't look at the guy. "He'll be right back."

  Rick jumped out of the chair and began to pace the length of Sam's room.

  "We're supposed to be professional, no matter what. No confrontations, that's what we're taught. Do everything by the book.

  "So I'm waiting for Cris and the cops to come. It takes maybe two, three minutes for them to get there, but it feels like forever."

  Rick paused, cracked his knuckles. "Finally I hear the sirens. By this time Dickbag is on the phone with Dylan's mom, blaming me and Cris for fucking up, blaming the boy for falling. Yeah, it's everybody's fault but his.

  "The cops get there to deal with the asshole and just when Cris and I get the baby down to the rig Mom shows up. She's screaming at us, at the cops, at her boyfriend. It's a circus. Cris drives and I stay in back, working on the boy. I don't even know if he can hear me, but I keep promising him he's gonna be okay.

  "Finally we get Dylan to the hospital, rush him into the ER. Fill the staff in what happened. There's paperwork, forms to fill out and fax to the authorities, phone calls to the 800 number. See, we're mandated reporters. The cops get involved, there's an investigation, the whole nine yards."

  "You did everything you could for the baby," Sam told him. She wanted to make him feel better, but she just didn't get it.

  "You mean we did everything by the book. But so what? All I can think is how much time we wasted waiting for the cops. Why didn't I just grab the kid and get the hell out? So what if the douche tried to stop me? One punch and I could have flattened his scrawny ass. Yeah, I'd have lost my job, lost my license, but what did those minutes cost Dylan?"

  He searched Sam's face for judgment, for disgust, but saw neither. Her eyes welled with sympathy and sadness. "What happened to Dylan?"

  The knot in his chest tightened again. He rubbed his sternum where it hurt. "I tried to see him in the hospital. They're strict with the HIPAA laws to protect patients' privacy, but I thought maybe I could charm someone into at least telling me how the kid was doing."

  Rick arrived at the ICU, still in uniform with the Willowvale EMS patch on the shoulder. If Dylan hadn't been transported to another hospital, Dylan would be in ICU or pediatrics. Under his arm he carried the teddy bear he'd picked up at the toy store. Big, brown, and fuzzy, it reminded Rick of one he'd had as a kid.

  He approached the desk. "How you doing. I'm Rick Russo, a medic with Willowvale EMS. We brought a baby into emergency today, Dylan Sturznak. I just wanted to make sure the little guy got this." He showed her the bear.

  The nurse's professional mask was firmly in place. "You can leave it here, thank you."

  Considering the circumstances, Rick hadn't expected them to let him see the child. Still, disappointment churned in his gut, mixed with anger—not at the nurse, but at the whole shitty situation. What kind of a planet was it where kids couldn't even be safe in their own homes?

  "Thanks." He lingered at the desk, letting the tilt of his chin, the lift of his eyebrow ask the question for him. Is he in bad shape? Is he going to make it?

  The nurse hesitated a moment, then let the mask slip. Her brows lowered and her mouth flattened into a grim line. Her expression reflected all the helpless anger and frustration inside Rick and told him everything he didn't want to know. Dylan's prognosis wasn't good.

  Shit.

  He turned away, his body slow and heavy, as heavy as his hopes. He was halfway to the elevator before he realized he still held the bear.

  Just as he was about to head back to the desk a woman stepped into the hall from the bathroom. Dylan's mother. She stared at Rick, then began walking toward him. He waited, expecting her to thank him for trying to help, for doing his best.

  As he opened his mouth to ask about Dylan, the woman slapped his face.

  "Son of a bitch." She snatched the bear from his hands and whopped him with it while he stood like a stump. "You're supposed to save my baby. Instead he's hooked up to a machine and it's all your fault! Why didn't you do your job?"

  When his arm flew up instinctively to block her blows, she shrank back. What? Did she think he meant to strike back? In that still instant, while she cowered, his anger roared to life and he shouted "Why didn't you do your job and protect him?"

  "She went nuts, cursing me out, hitting me. A couple of orderlies dragged her off me. Somebody called security. I just got the hell out of there.

  "Three days later, they took the boy off life support. He died."

  She recoiled as though he'd slapped her. "Oh God. That's horrible."

  "Yeah. The next day at work, I get called in to the chief's office. The mother made a complaint against me. Said I tried to hit her. They placed me on leave while they investigated." He huffed out a breath. "It was bullshit. I never laid a finger on her. But rules are rules."

  "You didn't deserve that."

  "Dylan didn't deserve to be abused by his mother's asshole boyfriend. At least the cops arrested the guy." Not that it did the kid any good. "It made the papers; you might have seen it."

  Might as well tell the rest of it. "Anyway, when my bosses checked things out, the mother's claims against me were proven unfounded. There were plenty of witnesses at the hospital who saw what happened. They spoke up for me. I never made a move toward that woman.

  "But by then, it didn't matter. They gave me the go-ahead to return to work, gave me the critical stress debriefing, but…I couldn't get myself to care. The chief told me to take some time, think things through. So that's what I've been doing. Trying to do. My partner Cris keeps calling, getting on my case. ‘When you coming back?' They want me to talk more to the counselors. What for? Nothing's going to change."

  As the words left him, so did his energy. He sank down onto the chair. "I promised Dylan h
e'd be okay, but he wasn't. I got the tattoo to remind myself. I got no business promising anything to anyone."

  Sam held out her hand. "Come here." When he didn't move, she added, "You did everything you could."

  Rick snorted. "Everything. It still wasn't good enough."

  "Listen to me." Sam's forceful, take-no-shit tone immediately snapped him to attention. "A lot of people failed that little boy. His mother, her boyfriend, maybe even the system. But you did not fail him. Understand?"

  She swept the tray off her lap and onto the nightstand, wincing a bit as she did. She patted the mattress, urging him to sit beside her. When he did, she slipped her arms around him, held him close. In her embrace, the sense of failure eased. His throat tightened with emotion.

  "You didn't fail him, and you have to stop blaming yourself." She turned his face toward hers. "You couldn't save Dylan, but you've saved others. You saved me."

  "I told you, it was the EMS guys—"

  "You called them. You found me. If you hadn't, who knows how long I would have lain there?"

  He took a breath, and to his horror, it sounded like a sob. He blinked furiously at the tears burning his eyes. "For a minute, I thought I was gonna lose you."

  "Oh, baby, I'm sorry," she murmured. "I'm so sorry."

  "When I found you in that cellar, I felt so friggin' helpless. All I could do was call 911 and tell you you'd be all right. Shit, I got it tattooed on my arm and I couldn't even keep my word."

  "You kept me warm, kept me calm. Kept me company. I knew I was safe with you."

  "I kept thinking ‘If only I had my rig. My backboard.' When the ambulance arrived, all I could do was stand out of their way and let them work. I wanted to be the one helping you."

  She looked deep into his eyes. "And you want to go back, don't you?"

  He couldn't believe he was saying it, but, "Yeah. I do."

  Sam nodded, her eyes glowing with understanding and compassion. "You're a medic. It's who you are."

  Gratitude overwhelmed Rick. She knew him. He was a medic—underpaid, underappreciated, overworked. But he didn't do it for praise or even for money. He did it for the people he could help, those who couldn't help themselves.