Page 1 of Sebastian

CHAPTER 1

Newt

Ellie and I had just finished cleaning and refilling the stock in ambulance sixty-one when the clang of the call bells rang out over the staticy PA system of Firehouse Twenty-One, followed by the address and information of the call. An abandoned warehouse fire. Should make for an easy call for her and I, at least.

Firefighters scrambled to their trucks, pulling on their fire gear and climbing into their assigned vehicles seconds before the big trucks lumbered out and raced away, sirens blaring.

“Here we go again,” Ellie quipped. “No rest for the wicked.” She flashed me a grin as she slammed the back door to the bus closed, and then quickly rounded the vehicle to slide into the driver’s seat as I popped my small frame up into the passenger side.

“I prefer staying busy. Makes the shift go by faster,” I replied as I fit my coffee cup into the holder that Ellie slid out from the dashboard, and then popped a handful of M&Ms in my mouth, reveling in the chocolaty goodness that burst over my tongue. Hopefully the sweet treat—one I was truly addicted to—would get me by for the rest of this shift as we hadn’t had a chance to grab anything to eat from the station’s kitchen since breakfast this morning.

It had been back-to-back callouts today, mostly small stuff like kids getting cuts and scrapes, or a new mother going into labor with no one home to help her navigate the new and exciting experience, but we both loved it.

As I was also currently putting myself thorough nursing school, moonlighting as a paramedic was the ideal job and helped pay the bills, and I wouldn’t trade my team at Station Twenty-One for any of the other stations I’d worked at. I was so thrilled when Ellie and I were offered a permanent spot at Twenty-One, as the rotation between houses had become frustrating and difficult to co-ordinate with my shifts at the hospital. The station was a block from Mercy Hospital, where I was doing my internship, and my apartment only a block farther than that, so the convenience of walking between the three was perfect.

Buckling my belt, I grabbed the sidebar of the door as Ellie flipped on the lights and whipped the bus out of the garage, heading to the address we’d been given for the call. An abandoned building fire typically didn’t give us much to do in the way of providing medical care but we were on hand in case anyone nearby happened to need our help, or in the event one of the firefighters who risked their lives running in to the burning buildings needed assistance after inhaling too much smoke or in the event that they suffered an injury of some sort, as had happened to Jase Turner several months back. It was a job-related hazard, I guess.

The night was alive with the crackle of flames, painting the sky in hues of orange and red as we pulled up to the site. My pulse quickened as Ellie stopped the ambulance off to the side of Engine forty-three. Yellow and black-garbed figures dotted the blacktop as the firefighters rushed into the fray.

The wail of sirens echoed in the distance as we grabbed our gear bags from the back of the ambulance and raced towards the scene, the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

The building loomed before us, a towering inferno of flame and smoke swallowing everything in its path.

“Over here!” Hawke Colton’s voice echoed from beyond the smoke and embers filling the air.

Suddenly, through the haze, I spotted Cyrus MacMillan and Quinn Sanders, two more firefighters from my station emerging from the flames, carrying a figure between them, Hawke bringing up the rear.

My heart sank as I realized it was a victim who’d obviously been trapped in the building during the blaze.

This wasn’t going to be pretty.

The firefighters hurried toward us, their faces grim beneath their soot-stained masks. Without a word, they gently lowered the victim to the stretcher. The victim’s clothing had all but burned away, only small scraps of remaining material trailing over parts of his body, and revealing the extent of his injuries.

But there was no time to dwell on the horror of it all. We had a job to do.

We quickly assessed the victim’s injuries.

“Damn, he’s bad,” Ellie muttered, her voice laced with concern.

I nodded grimly, taking in the charred flesh and labored breathing of the victim.

“Let’s get him stabilized and out of here,” I said, my voice steady despite the chaos around us.

I knew there was no time to waste. We needed to act fast if we were going to save him.

Together, we sprang into action, our movements swift and sure.

“Airway’s compromised,” Ellie called out, her voice cutting through the roar of the fire. “We need to intubate.”

I nodded, handing her the necessary equipment as we worked in tandem, our movements synchronized like a well-oiled machine.

Through the maze of charred skin, I managed to get a line into his foot and pushed saline, followed by a dose of morphine, hoping to ease his pain as best we could. Ellie applied saline-soaked sterile dressings to the worst of his wounds.

We gotta move,” I announced. “He’s not gonna last long out here.”

With the victim stabilized as much as possible, we carefully loaded him into the back of the ambulance and I slid onto the jump seat, hooking up the monitors to the bus’s interior power and monitoring systems so I could keep an eye on his stats easier.

Ellie closed the doors and with a double tap to the back of the bus, she hurried around and slid into the driver’s seat. Cranking the engine, Ellie simultaneously spoke into the mic. “This is ambulance sixty-one, we’re on route with a burn victim, ETA three minutes.” Relaying the details of the status of our patient, Ellie expertly navigated the ambulance through the labyrinth of emergency vehicles filling the street and we began the short journey to the hospital.

---