Emergency: Parents Needed

by Jessica Matthews

  Maggie didn’t like the situation and the sooner they got downstairs to their ambulance, the better. “You heard us. Step aside so we can do our job.”

  “In good time, sister,” the third fellow with tattoos all over his hands said lazily as he maneuvered himself between her and Joe. “In good time. What’s up with grandpa here?”

  “He’s had a seizure,” she said shortly, not liking the way the other two had surrounded Joe, effectively isolating her. A healthy dose of fear suddenly shot through her system.

  “He owes us money,” Ring-face said importantly.

  “He’ll have to pay up later.”

  Tattoo Hands stepped closer, wedging her against the wall. “We want our money now.”

  “Leave her alone,” Joe demanded.

  Maggie mentally signaled Joe to call for help on the radio, but out of the corner of her eye she saw he couldn’t. Purple Hair and Ring-face had closed in and Joe clearly wanted to keep his hands free.

  Tattoo Hands ran a finger down her cheek. It took everything she had not to shiver or show her fear. “Got any money, sister?”

  “No, and I’m not your sister.”

  His twisted smile revealed blackened teeth. “Ain’t that nice? But if you don’t have any money, I’ll bet you’ve got something better in your bags. Some pick-me-ups, if you know what I mean.”

  He wanted her drug box! She gripped the handle. “Sorry. You’re out of luck.”

  “I don’t think so.” With lightning speed, he grabbed at her bag and she fought to hold on to it with both hands. A few well-placed kicks met their mark if Tattoo Hands’ grunts were any indication. In the background, she heard Joe shout, followed by the unmistakable thud of fists hitting flesh. Just when she was certain she and Joe were doomed, Pruett and Krom raced in to join the scuffle.

  Tattoo Hands shoved her hard enough to send her to the floor, where she landed painfully on one hip, before he scurried out of the room, empty-handed.

  Joe crouched beside her, his face wreathed in worry as he began to run his hands down her legs and arms while she caught her breath. “Maggie? You OK?”

  She took stock of her aches and pains. “Yeah. How about you?”

  “A little sore, but nothing serious.”

  She finally heard the grunts of the would-be thieves as the two officers effectively restrained them on the floor, each with a patrolman’s knee in the middle of his back and each spouting invectives she’d never heard before in spite of her years on the streets.

  “I saved my bag.”

  His eyes flashed with fury. “Damn it, Maggie! You should have given it to them. They could have hurt you.”

  “I couldn’t hand over our drug box. Can you imagine what they would have done with the medicine? They would have sold it on the street for a small fortune. They’d brag about what they did and the next thing you know, they and others like them would try the same stunt with other paramedics. I refuse to let them bully us.”

  “Not at the expense of your safety.”

  “It’s over, Joe. Forget it. Now, help me up, will you?”

  He reached out and pulled her to her feet. Immediately, her hip protested and she stumbled against him, grateful he’d been nearby to keep her from taking another tumble. For a long moment she simply leaned against him, happy for his rock-solid strength.

  “Maybe you need to sit down?” he suggested.

  “Where?” she asked wryly. “I’m fine. Give me a minute to walk it off and we’ll go.”

  Pruett and Krom hauled their prisoners to their feet. “We can get rid of these two and come back and help you,” Pruett said, “or if you can handle him…” he inclined his head toward the stretcher “…you can follow us down.”

  “We’ll follow.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  Their answers came simultaneously. “The patient comes first,” Maggie reminded him. “We’ve wasted enough time. We’ll follow at our own pace.”

  The truth was, Maggie’s hip hurt and she could easily imagine the huge bruise that was forming. Neither the hip nor the bruise would improve over the next few minutes and she’d rather make their descent while her adrenaline high was strong enough for her to ignore the pain.

  “Suit yourself,” Pruett answered. “If you haven’t made it down by the time we get these two taken care of, we’ll be back.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Joe frowned. “You shouldn’t be carrying anyone, much less an unconscious man, down four flights of stairs. What if you can’t—?”

  “I can do my job,” she insisted. “It isn’t as if Martin weighs three hundred pounds and I’m doing this alone. Calling for more help will take time he doesn’t have.”

  Still he frowned, but Maggie ignored him. “If we go slowly, the two of us can handle him.” At his obvious hesitation, she added, “I know my limitations, Joe. Trust me, I can do this.”

  He leveled a hard gaze at her. Slowly, reluctantly, he nodded as if her confidence had satisfied him to some degree. “OK. Ready on three?”

  Carrying Martin as well as her bag was a strain, but it wasn’t the first time she’d had to push herself—it went with the territory. Halfway between the second and third floors, Maggie’s muscles burned from exertion. Sheer determination and pride demanded she keep going because if she stopped, she was afraid she wouldn’t start again.

  “Are you doing OK?” Joe asked over his shoulder.

  “Yeah,” she huffed, grateful he was leading and couldn’t see her expression. But no sooner had she said so than the unexpected happened. Just as she was stepping onto the second-floor landing, something scurried underneath her foot and she lost her balance.

  The stretcher wobbled as she shifted her weight in those few seconds to regain her footing. She couldn’t drop their patient, she simply couldn’t! In spite of feeling as if the whole episode progressed in slow motion, it only took a second. One second to marshal her strength to hold onto her end of the stretcher, one second to keep from pitching forward onto the grimy concrete floor. One second to know that she couldn’t do anything except minimize the damage.

  She came down hard on her left knee. Pain shot through her leg and she squeezed her eyes closed to hold back the tears.

  “Maggie.” Joe’s command gradually registered on her brain. “What happened? Are you all right? Answer me, Maggie.”

  She cleared her throat and swallowed the nausea. “A mouse or something tripped me. I’m OK. Just a little…I’m OK,” she repeated.

  “I’m setting down my end,” he told her. “Don’t move until I get there.”

  “No,” she said through teeth gritted against the ache. “We have to get our patient downstairs ASAP. I’m fine. Really.”

  Joe mumbled an expletive as if he didn’t like the choice they had to make for Martin’s sake. “OK, but don’t try to rush,” he ordered. “Take it nice and easy.”

  Nice and easy, she cautioned herself. As long as she could bend her knee, she was fine. It was better to spend a few extra minutes and deliver Martin downstairs in one piece than hurry and risk her knee giving out completely. As strong as Joe was, he couldn’t carry both of them.

  Step by agonizing step, she followed, grateful for those brief stops when Joe claimed he needed to catch his breath, even though he wasn’t breathing hard. “Almost there,” he encouraged.

  The faded number one on the stairwell door was the most beautiful sight she’d seen. Although she tried to hide her relief after they slid Martin into the back of the ambulance, she suspected Joe had heard her tired sigh and seen her pronounced limp.

  “Can you drive?” he asked. “If not, you can ride in the back.”

  “I didn’t break, Joe,” she said waspishly, although a tiny spot inside her was pleased by his concern. “I can still drive, so take care of our patient.”

  When they arrived at the hospital and gave their report, Martin’s condition had remained unchanged.

  “I see what you mean,” Dr. Mike told them as he exa
mined the spot Maggie had drawn his attention to on Martin’s skull. “We’ll get a CT scan and see what’s going on inside his head.”

  “Let us know how it turns out,” Joe said.

  “Will do.”

  “We also need someone to check out my partner,” he told Dr. Mike. “She banged up her knee and her hip.”

  “I tripped,” she said, “and I fell hard, but I’m able to walk.”

  “We’d better take a look.” He waved a nurse over and before Maggie could say “estimated time of arrival” she was ushered into a treatment room with Joe.

  “This is so unnecessary,” she complained to both.

  “Then we’ll be out of here before the ink dries on the paperwork,” he said with equanimity. “But we aren’t leaving until I know you’re OK.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’ve fallen before and—”

  “Then, like he said, honey,” the middle-aged, no-nonsense nurse said, “you’ll be on your way in a few minutes. Meantime, drop your pants.”

  Maggie’s hands went to her belt buckle, then stopped. “Not while he’s in the room.”

  The R.N. glanced at Joe as she thumbed toward the room’s exit. “You heard her.”

  He grinned. “I’m going, but I’ll be right outside if you need me.”

  As soon as he left, she faced Maggie. “Protective, is he?”

  “Yeah, and I don’t know where that streak came from.” She pushed her trousers down her legs, ignoring the golfball-sized knot and growing bruise on her hip to study her now purplish and slightly swollen knee. “We’re just partners.”

  “Uh-huh.” The woman raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Whatever you say.”

  “We are,” Maggie insisted.

  “Sure thing, honey. Just keep telling yourself that, but it won’t make it so.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SHORTLY after the nurse escorted a physician’s assistant into Maggie’s exam cubicle, Joe relaxed against the wall with his arms folded as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Inside, however, his thoughts were in turmoil. He didn’t like the idea of Maggie getting hurt. And she was hurt. Oh, she tried hard not to show it, but he’d heard the crack of bone against the concrete. He’d seen bigger and tougher guys brought to tears for lesser accidents.

  It was too easy to blame the three guys who’d gotten physical before he and Maggie had traveled down those stairs. If the one hadn’t bounced her across the floor moments earlier, she might have been her usual sure-footed self. Adrenaline had helped him make short work of the two who’d ganged up on him, but he’d still been a split second too late. Even now, thinking of what might have happened was enough to twist his gut into a hard knot.

  The only thought keeping him sane was that the three sleazeballs hadn’t pulled a knife or a gun. They’d obviously expected that robbing a couple of paramedics, especially as one was a slender female, would be as easy as snatching a purse from a little old lady, but Maggie had surprised them. In fact, she’d surprised him and he knew her better than a lot of men knew their wives in the non-biblical sense. He’d seen how hard she worked at her job, how she pushed herself during their training sessions, and how determined she was to be an asset rather than a liability. The worst thing he could ever do was treat her like “a girl”. There wasn’t room for that attitude in their department.

  Yet, it had always been obvious to him that she demanded more of herself because of her gender and today it had paid off. Her entire leg had to have hurt like the devil as they’d carted Kazinsky down those four flights, especially after she’d tripped, but she’d dug in and done it anyway. Without complaining, too.

  The door to her exam room opened and both the PA and the nurse stepped out. Immediately, he stood at attention. “How is she?”

  “She’ll live,” the PA, identified as Sybil by her name badge, answered with the lightest twitch to her mouth, as if she found his question amusing.

  “Can I go in?”

  “Yeah, but give her a few minutes. I doubt if she’d appreciate you charging in on her before she zips her pants.”

  “Does she need to be relieved of duty?” He was already rehearsing his story for the captain and imagining the paperwork involved.

  “I’m leaving the decision to her,” Sybil answered. “If she puts ice on her knee and doesn’t run any of your running-up-five-flights-of-stairs drills or practice a fireman carry, she should be fine. If she has any problems, though, she needs to come back and see us.”

  “OK.” The two moved away and Joe hesitated outside the door. He wanted to rush in and see for himself that she was as fine as Sybil claimed, but Maggie wouldn’t appreciate his concern. Patience, he told himself as he knocked.

  At her quiet “Come in” he entered to find her buckling her belt. They’d been apart for less than thirty minutes and he felt as if hours had passed. Assured she wasn’t writhing in pain and hiding it under a stiff upper lip, his worry lifted.

  Now all he had to do was concentrate on something besides the fact they were alone in a cozy cubicle that didn’t even have a window.

  “Sybil told me you’re OK,” he said.

  She smiled wryly. “Did you have any doubt?”

  “To be honest, yes. You hit the concrete hard and that was after those scumbags tossed you across the floor.”

  She frowned. “Oh, for the love of pete…You’re being completely ridiculous and unreasonable. If anyone else had gotten into a tussle with some low-lifes, you both would have bragged about your bruises. And if anyone else had tripped on the stairs, you would have told him to walk it off and quit being a baby.”

  “Probably,” he agreed.

  “Then why can’t you treat me the same?”

  “Because you aren’t the same. Because…” He had to kiss her. It was the only way he could reassure himself that she was OK. Just one kiss.

  “Because what?”

  “Because when I’m with you, I want to do this.” His objective was simple—to taste her lips and be gone before she could protest. In one swift move he stepped forward, pulled her into his arms, and covered her mouth with his.

  His plan blew up faster than kindling doused in gasoline. He hadn’t expected her to respond so sweetly. He hadn’t expected her hands to drift onto his upper arms then his shoulders, before settling around his neck.

  He certainly hadn’t expected to have this undeniable urge to rip her clothes off until nothing lay between them. Luckily, enough brain cells were still working for him to restrain himself. Barely.

  “You’re really OK?” he muttered against her lips.

  “I’m fine. Truly.”

  Slowly, he released her, wishing they could stay here, cocooned in this tiny room, but it wasn’t possible. Not only were they on duty but someone would need this space for a patient. More importantly, though, he didn’t have anything to offer a woman like Maggie and he couldn’t pretend that he did.

  “We’d better go,” he said, switching his mental gears from concerned admirer to professional partner as he ushered her to the door. “The captain is probably wondering what happened to us.”

  Apparently she wasn’t willing to dissect what had happened any more than he was because she simply nodded. “Can we keep my mishap our secret? I’d rather everyone not know I was so clumsy.”

  “They’ll wonder why you’re icing your knee,” he pointed out. “And don’t think you won’t because I’ll make sure you do.”

  “I know, but…” she winced “…I hate to tell the guys I tripped over a mouse. A tiny, loveable, little mouse. I’ll never hear the end of their teasing.”

  “Just think of all the diseases those critters carry.”

  “I know, but a mouse.” She waited. “Why not a pit-bull or a Doberman? Something ferocious?”

  He shrugged. “We’ll tell them it wasn’t tiny.” He moved his hands about six inches apart. “It was the biggest mouse either of us had ever seen. And it was so big, it knocked you over with one sweep of its tail.” He s
lowed his step to accommodate her limp.

  “I don’t think they’ll buy your story,” she said wryly.

  “Maybe not, but we can try.” He steered her toward the passenger side of the ambulance, but she balked.

  “I can drive.”

  “I’m sure you can,” he said, ignoring her protest. “But humor me.”

  “You like being in charge, don’t you?” she asked lightly.

  He started to protest, then stopped. Taking charge, leading and not following, was a legacy of being left to the mercy and kindness of strangers through no fault of his own. Choosing his own destiny had become important to him as a kid. However, that didn’t mean he chafed under authority—he’d simply learned to control whatever he could and accept the situations he couldn’t.

  “Is it obvious?” he asked wryly.

  She laughed. “Only to me.”

  Back at the fire station, after a short visit with the captain and a quick shower to remove the smell clinging to him from their last call, Joe joined Maggie in the common room, where Maggie’s fears had obviously come to pass. One by one, each member of the crew was regaling her with mouse jokes.

  “You told your tale,” he commented as he sank beside her on the sofa where she was icing her knee as ordered. “No pun intended.”

  “I had to,” she mourned.

  “No one bought the giant rodent story?”

  She smiled. “No, and I told it quite well, too, including beady red eyes, twitchy whiskers, and teeth as long as my palm.”

  He laughed at her description. “Too bad. Better luck next time.”

  “Hey, Maggie,” Jimbo called out. “How do you save a drowning mouse?”

  He saw her visibly clench her teeth. “I have no idea,” she ground out.

  “Give him mouse-to-mouse resuscitation.”

  She groaned as the more boisterous crew members hooted and hollered. “That’s bad.”

  Jimbo snickered from his place in front of the computer. “I thought it was rather clever. Just found it on the Internet.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks for the chuckles,” she said wryly.

  Joe had no sooner decided he should rescue Maggie from a night of mouse stories when the opportunity presented itself. “Hey, Joe,” Shep called out. “Don’t you have any jokes to share in Maggie’s honor?”