by Steven Swaks
“It’s all yours,” the cop shrugged.
Johnson stepped back, “Go for it,” he said looking at his firefighter.
The young man nodded.
“Do you need the halligan?” The Captain asked.
“Nah, that should be ok. I’m just going to kick it first, and I’ll go get it if I need it.”
The firefighter faced the wooden door. He stepped back, and smashed it with his right boot just above the handle. Another two blows and the door busted open with a snapping sound. Part of the doorjamb shattered and flew inside the small apartment.
Johnson was the first one to walk in. Experience and common sense stepped in. Old folks home, somebody fell down and crawled to the panic button. There was nothing much more to expect.
He was wrong.
An older lady was eating a light meal at a small dining room table. She was frozen in a cramping fear with screaming terror in her eyes. She only wanted to eat her soup, pet her cat, and watch her television shows, but then, the front door exploded.
Johnson stopped his life-saving action. Something was off. “Are you ok?” He asked, even if the answer was obvious. Of course she was ok, or at least until they’d invaded her home.
The old lady was still holding her spoon with a shaky hand.
“We knocked several times, but you didn’t answer,” Captain Johnson said with a caring voice, trying to justify his intrusion.
“CAN’T HEAR,” she said louder than she should have with her index finger tapping her ear.
The captain reflected for an instant. Were they in the right apartment?
“What about the panic button?” He asked her, gesturing a clicking motion with his thumb.
She pointed at a narrow kitchen counter.
Johnson scanned the tiled surface and quickly spotted the little plastic box.
A brown cat appeared from behind a microwave oven further down the counter. The feline walked past the button toward the captain, tail waving straight up in the air.
Johnson shook his head. “You can’t leave your panic button on the countertop,” he highlighted his speech with a swiveling index finger before pointing at the device. “You have to wear it around your neck.” He indicated his own throat to clarify.
Alex walked in. “Are you all right, madam?”
“No, she’s going to be pissed because we just busted her door open,” Johnson said holding in a laugh. “But hey, that’s not our fault.”
“Madam?”
The old lady looked at Alex.
“She’s deaf.”
“Oh.” Alex picked up his blood pressure cuff out of the medication box.
She vigorously shook her hand. “NO, NO, NO, I’M FINE! BUT YOU BROKE MY DOOR!”
The officer came closer. “You guys can take off if you want. I can take it from here.”
The boys walked out of the building.
Ben opened the back of the ambulance. “I love this town. We eat, sleep, crack a door open once in a while…”
“Yep, the captain was bummed out about that one. Let’s go back to that burger place and get you some food. We got our excitement for the day.”
Sisters
Jessica Miller sat at the edge of her bed for a while, her bare feet resting on the thick carpet. She didn’t know why, but sitting like that on her pink comforter was reassuring. It was home.
She was cute, even if she didn’t think so. Some people–especially boys–said that she had a baby face. She did not even know if she was supposed to take it as a compliment or an insult. Either way, they did not run after her in school, which was completely fine with her. She had a passive beauty, the one that blossomed once people willing to know her understood who she truly was. Her pale blue eyes beneath sandy blond hair were nothing original at first, but a sparkle of inner joy and love for everything and everybody shined through them like infinitesimal fragments of her beautiful soul.
She stood up and stayed still for an instant. She quickly looked at a framed drawing of the Prince of Peace. She loved that work of art. It was almost like a father figure looking down upon her at all times. He was there to protect her. She knew. She loved every detail, the deep and loving warm blue eyes, the thick curly hair, and the full beard. Even the white shirt covering His shoulder exuded passive power and fatherly love.
She began to walk toward her bedroom door, each of her steps muffled on the thick carpet. She rotated the silver knob and opened it into the empty corridor. She knew her parents were not home. As a tire salesman, her father was probably on the road somewhere within three hundred miles, and her mother was an underappreciated nurse running around the local community hospital.
She stopped in front of her sister’s door. At twenty years old, Tracy was two years older, but not nearly as mature as she was. Her older sister was perpetually stuck in the Goth phase of her life she had started in junior high. Such a shame, her deep black hair coloring, concrete-thick black eyeliner, and bright red–and occasionally black–lipstick just didn’t do it.
Jessica wondered about her, about the kind of crowd she was hanging out with, her unemployed twenty-five-year-old boyfriend, her ever-spreading tattoos, her smoking behind her parents’ back (they denied it, but they knew about it), or even some marijuana once in a while (they didn’t know about that one). She had steadily been going downhill since junior high, ever since… nothing. There had been no major traumatic event able to justify her attitude. No divorce, no death in the family, nothing to explain her behavior but her simple life in Stone Falls. Their town was not the most entertaining. Jessica knew that, but it could have been much worse. At least they had a fair amount of sunshine, the mountains nearby, and their great church.
This was precisely why she was standing in front of her sister’s door on this late Friday morning. She could already hear Slaughter and The Dogs playing through the bedroom door. She gently knocked on the white door, just beside a Go Away! Sign.
No answer.
She knocked harder to cover the sound of the punk music.
“WHAT?”
“May I come in?” she asked in a calm voice.
“Yeah, sure, whatever.”
Jessica opened the door. If her room looked like a white and pink princess’ room (her parents had surprised her when she was eight. She had not had the heart nor the desire to change it ever since), her sister’s room looked like a dark dungeon.
Black and purple tones dominated the room amid a few skulls (a skull phone was bitchin’), a large silver-framed mirror with a skull at each corner (Tracy had found it on eBay, the shipping had been a real headache), an upside-down cross above her bed (that one was just for her sister), and a bed with half-height bedposts. Piles of dark-colored books littered the floor next to thick purple curtains drawn all the way. It was not that she really cared to look out the window.
Jessica walked closer to the bed where her sister was sitting, legs crossed, her back against the head of the bed.
“What do you want?” The older sister asked with a quick upward nod.
“We have Cubbies tonight.”
“We have Cubbies? Your churchy thing with the brats? Nah, thanks,” she shook her head.
“The brats like you say are young children… and I was hoping you’d come,” Jessica said with a gentle voice.
“You want me to come?” she asked raising her eyebrows.
“I was hoping.”
“Nah, nah, nah, that was something I did in September because Dad was on my back. He’s busy now. I’m done with that crap.”
“But we need you.”
“So does my boyfriend!” she laughed.
Jessica stayed silent, but she kept direct eye contact with her sister.
“Don’t give me that look, that guilt trip Mickey Mouse game. You don’t care about the kids. You just want me to go to your church. That’s the only thing you care about, God, God, God. I’m so tired of hearing about it.”
“That’s not true,” Jessica defended hersel
f with a soothing voice. “You know I care about the kids. And you can stay in the playground and help out for the games. You don’t even need to come in. Not all the game leaders are Christians, you know that. We’d like them to be, but they’re not.”
“Second-class citizens, huh?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It sure sounded like it.”
“We just want to give a safe and Godly environment for the children. That’s all.”
“That’s nice, but I’ll pass on it, thanks.”
Jessica looked around the room with neutral eyes. “I worry about you.”
“Oh, God. Here it goes again,” Tracy said rolling her eyes.
“What are you going to do next year?”
“We talked about it a million times. Stone Falls Community is fine with me. I’ll enroll for the next semester. I promised Mom a million times! But do me a favor and keep one thing in mind, little girl. You’re my younger sister, not my mother. Got it?”
“Got it. I just don’t like–I’m scared to see you out of school and hanging out with your boyfriend. I don’t like the things he does. You know, people talk. The police know him.”
“Oh, please. He’s not wanted by the FBI!”
“I only want you to be ok. That’s it,” she shook her head without looking away.
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
She softened her gaze. “Is it still no for tonight?”
“Sure, Bill. You ain’t gonna see me with those brats. Now get out of here, sis.”
Jessica pursed her lips and walked out. She knew the declining situation would not last.
Ravine
“Stone Falls Engine 61, Engine 64, Truck 61, Battalion Chief 61, Medic 61, vehicle over the side, Keesler Canyon, Highway Patrol en route,” the station’s P.A. radio announced.
Alex and Ben sprung out of their recliners, trotted down the corridor, and crossed the hangar toward the exit.
“That’s 63’s area, where’re they?” Ben asked on a brisk walk.
“They must be on a call,” Alex guessed. Once in the ambulance, he picked up the mic. “Medic 61 en route, please advise fire of an extended ETA.”
“10-4 Medic 61.”
“Eight minutes to get on scene from downtown to the canyon, not bad,” Alex said scoping the accident site.
There was nothing to see, a steep wooded incline, a two-lane highway curving to the right, a highway patrol cruiser, and a fire engine parked with red flashing lights at the edge of a heavily brushed fifty-foot ravine down toward a stream. The mid-afternoon sun was filtering through towering oak trees. There was nothing to find but a man waving frantically.
Ben parked the modular ambulance in front of Engine 64.
The man ran to Ben’s side as he opened his door. “This is bad! He’s got to be dead! This is bad! I saw it! The car flew off the road and flipped in the air. It crashed down the ravine. It’s all under water now! I’m telling ya, the poor guy’s got to be dead!” His hand highlighted his speech rolling his palm upwards before diving toward the ground.
“Where’re the firefighters?” Alex asked.
“They’re already down there! There’s a small path right there, by my house.”
The two paramedics picked up their trauma kit and backboard before climbing down a narrow rocky path toward the bottom of the canyon. The frantic man led the way, his jacket flapping in the wind with each leap over large rocks.
Alex and Ben were slower with gear in hand or in backpacks. They took more time to avoid slipping on the trail, looking down to dodge the ankle-twisting traps while scanning to find the car. So far there was nothing, only dwarfing trees, thick undergrowth, and a few boulders.
“He’s got to be dead!” the man panted, “the car flew upside down! I’m telling you, he’s dead!”
“Did you see the car down there?” Ben asked looking at the bottom of the ravine.
“No! I stayed on the road to wait for you guys!” the man said before another hop.
More emergency vehicles arrived. Ben glanced up. He saw the retractable white 90-foot ladder on top of Truck 61.
“Oh Lord!” the frantic man screamed.
Ben looked down. A left rear tire was all he saw. He looked closer as they approached. The back of a small sedan was buried in thick bushes. The front half was underwater in the stream. Ben slowed down. The driver’s dead, he thought, before hearing voices emerging from the other side of the car where Engine 64’s crew was.
The improvised guide stopped in his tracks behind the car.
Ben walked around the vehicle with Alex right behind him. They both stopped, gear in hand. Speechless, they stared for an instant, witnessing a scene which was not supposed to be.
The driver, a young woman hardly out of her teens, was standing amid ferns with the three firefighters. Her curly brown hair was not even wet or ruffled. She only had a small red mark on her forehead.
“Are you ok?” Alex asked.
“I’m fine,” she answered with a smile.
“You should have seen the look on your faces!” the young Engine 64’s Captain said.
“I shouldn’t be here, should I? I shouldn’t be alive?” she asked.
The men did not say anything, but the answer was obvious.
“Uh, do you have any pain?” Alex asked.
“I’m a little bit sore, but that’s it.”
“We should still take you to the hospital, to be on the safe side.”
“That’s fine.”
The crew immobilized her, purely by precaution, and transported her to Stone Falls Community Hospital.
They wheeled her in, strapped on a backboard, because rolling in the air before crashing down a ravine definitely qualified for full immobilization, even if she only had a bump on her head.
The paramedics waited for the nurse. Not that she was busy, but they weren’t coming with a critical patient. They transferred her onto the hospital bed. Alex gave his report, the mechanism of the accident, the damages on the car, the patient’s condition–or lack thereof–vital signs, past medical history, allergies, and so on.
Ben walked out to recondition and clean the ambulance while Alex stayed in to drink coffee and complete his paperwork.
Outside, a middle-aged woman walked to Ben. “Good afternoon,” she said with a concerned face.
He clicked the last black safety belt on the yellow gurney and looked up. Even if the woman was older, she was still beautiful (a pricy haircut and careful makeup probably helped). She was tall, slender with tight brand jeans, a white blouse, and matching jacket.
“Did you help my daughter?” She asked with a cracking voice.
“The accident with the young driver?”
She nodded without speaking.
“We did, but don’t worry. She’s fine.”
“What happened?” Her shoulders relaxed.
“She crashed in Keesler Canyon.”
“How bad was it?” Her brown eyes focused on him.
Was he supposed to downplay? Tell the truth? The daughter was fine anyway. “She could have been… I mean, she was very lucky.”
The woman shivered.
“You can go inside to see her.”
“Thank you so much for your help.”
Ben politely acknowledged.
She walked in.
He rolled the gurney to the back of the ambulance and walked to the driver seat. He sat, his foot dangling over the metal step. He turned on the radio. Financial talk show, nah, oldies, not bad, what else? Classic Rock, that was more like it.
Alex opened the passenger door and stayed out for a minute while rearranging his clipboard.
Ben broke the silence, “What did I tell you? Ever since that disaster ages ago, Stone Falls has been a safe haven. When people smack themselves and they should be dead, they walk away like they just went to buy an ice cream cone.”
“What are you talking about? Don’t tell me you wanted that girl to get hurt?” Alex
glared at him.
“I didn’t say that. Of course I’m glad she is fine. I’m only stating a fact. Aside from the everyday booboos, we don’t have traumas.”
“A heart attack or a seizure is not really a booboo, Ben.”
“I’m not talking about medical. I’m talking about traumas. Think about it. When was the last time we had a medevac? The other towns are swamped, and we don’t get anything.”
“Is that supposed to be bad?”
“Yeah! I mean, no, but I’m tired of the training. I want to get busy once in a while. This town’s like Safe City Central. Nothing ever happens here.”
“Come on, Ben. You shouldn’t complain. At least, soon, we’re going to get fat people falling off their treadmills after their New Year’s resolution!”
Lights
What time was it? Gina didn’t know, nor did she care. 3:00 PM? 4:00? Maybe 5:00 if she had fallen asleep. Had she slept?
She lay on the light pink rumpled sheets. Light pink was nice. Cheerful. At least that was what she had thought in the store. It hadn’t changed a thing. What was she thinking? That sheets would improve her life? Woopty doo, new bedding, new life. She was an idiot. She knew that one. And just in case she forgot, her mother reminded her often enough.
She didn’t move. The lone ceiling light was soothing. She couldn’t help but stare at it. The fixture was simple. Cheap. They had bought it at Home Depot. She couldn’t even remember the price. Was it ten bucks? Twelve? It wasn’t much either way, but she liked it. She could see the bulb through the inverted glass dome. It changed intensity sometimes. She didn’t even know why, as if it was trying to communicate with her. It wasn’t making any sense, but in her strange reality, nothing was. Her light was comforting. That was all she knew. It wasn’t very strong, but it was a warm presence in the cold house.
She didn’t want to look at her room. The light was better. Her bedroom was bare, a tiny desk, a dresser with a couple of missing knobs, and a rundown rug over the old laminate flooring. There were no ornaments on the wall, except for a framed picture of her father. The bastard had left her alone with her mother. But he was the only sane family she had left, so she’d left the picture on the wall.
