Page 18 of A Sudden Response

“I’m hungry,” Eric announced as he dropped down on the couch near her, well, more like practically fell on top of her. He threw his arm around her shoulders as he leaned back against the overstuffed couch. “Go cook for me.”

She snorted. “I’m not your bitch.”

Eric sighed heavily as he leaned into her even more. “It’s really not healthy to live in denial.”

“Uh-huh,” Joe murmured absently as she flicked through the channels of the station’s large flatscreen television. It figured that the one time that she had sole control of the remote that there was nothing on.

“Why are you not seeing to my needs?” Eric demanded as he stole the remote from her.

Normally, she would have stolen it back on principle alone, but right now, she really didn’t care. They’d already been held over on their shift by four hours to cover two downed trucks and thanks to three bang-outs, they’d been going all day without a break and only got back to the station a half-hour ago.

After cleaning out the truck and restocking it, she’d somehow managed to drag herself into the station and dropped down onthe couch, where she’d been counting down the minutes until she could go home, order a pizza, take a shower, and do a load of laundry before she crashed for the night, knowing that she had to get up early tomorrow morning to do it all over again. Just as she was imagining how good it would feel to crawl into her bed, the phone rang, shattering her fantasy.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Eric said, groaning as he got to his feet and made his way to the phone by the old desk and dropped down on the chair being held together by duct tape and a few prayers. With a resigned sigh, he picked up the phone as he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose while Joe sat there, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

Dispatch wouldn’t screw them over again, would they? When she saw Eric’s jaw clench, she got her answer. Yes, yes, they would, in fact, screw them over, happily so, it seems.

“We were supposed to be off four hours ago. Yeah, I know we’re short-staffed, but we’ve been going all day,” Eric said as he stood up and began pacing around the room as far as the tangled phone cord would allow. “We have no problem covering emergencies, but-” Whatever dispatch said had him closing his eyes and dropping his head back. “They called 911 because he refused to take his pills?” he asked in disbelief.

With a lovely mixture of softly spoken swears, Joe stood up and made her way back to their freshly cleaned ambulance, knowing that there was absolutely no way they could refuse this call since it came in as an emergency and they were still on duty. Well, they technically could, but she actually wanted to keep her job.

Even though it was her turn to drive, she climbed into the passenger seat and pulled out an emergency run sheet. Not even thirty seconds later, Eric yanked the driver’s side door open, jumped in and slammed the door shut, violently rocking the ambulance.

“This is fucking ridiculous,” Eric said as he maneuvered the ambulance out of the parking bay. “Next time they ask us to come in and cover their asses, we’re saying no,” he snapped as he flipped on the emergency lights with a little more force than was probably necessary.

She gave a noncommittal “Mmmhmm” as she started filling in the paperwork with their information, knowing that by the next time dispatch asked them to cover a shift, they’d be over this bullshit call.

Eric sighed dramaticallyas he tossed the soft restraints onto the stretcher. “Fine, if you insist,” he said, sounding put out.

“If I insist about what?” Joe asked as she quickly double-checked the restraints to make sure that they had enough.

“On making me spaghetti for dinner,” Eric said with a heartfelt sigh as he jumped out of the back of the ambulance, hoping that she’d just give in and do it. He was a starving man, after all.

Joe snorted as they pushed the stretcher towards Nicholson House, the shithole residential program that decided to call 911 because one of its residents decided to refuse his meds tonight.

This was a purely bullshit call.

Over the years, they’d seen their share of fucked-up nursing homes that had no fucking clue what they were doing. They’d dealt with nursing homes that had no idea that one of their residents had been dead for two days or that one of their patient’s bed sores had turned into five-inch craters on their backs and legs because they couldn’t be bothered to roll them over. They’d also seen patients left tied to chairs in the middle of the hallway for days at a time with huge puddles of piss and shitaround their feet, but residential programs, in his mind, were the absolute winners in the incompetency category.

Most residential programs were run by companies that were more concerned with milking the insurance for every dime that they could get their hands on instead of their staff’s safety. Dangerous work conditions, flax rules, shit wages, and piss poor treatment caused high turnovers in most of the residential programs they’d come across. It was just common sense that if you constantly fucked over your employees that you were going to eventually be left with the employees who had no fucking clue what they were doing and really didn’t fucking care.

Nicholson House was a prime example of a fucked-up residential program. Twelve years ago, when they’d started out as EMTs, Nicholson House had been ruled with an iron fist. The seasoned staff had been well-trained and didn’t take any bullshit from the patients. They did their jobs without fear and were fair with the patients. Every shift was run smoothly. They knew where the patients were, what they were doing, and if a patient stepped out of line, they didn’t hesitate to bring them back in line and get them to focus on their program.

Now...

Now whenever they got a call for Nicholson House, they usually found the staff smoking outside by their cars, watching television, or drinking coffee in the kitchen while bitching about their jobs. The patients? Well, in his mind, a residential program that catered to violent, mentally unstable patients might want to know where their patients were. Call him crazy, but if he worked eight hours in a two-level home with sixteen dangerous individuals, some of whom really did listen to the voices in their heads, he might make it a point to know exactly where they were and what they were doing. At the very least, he would damn well make sure that all the sharp objects in the house were locked up.

Eric bit back a curse as they pulled the stretcher up the cracked walkway of the dimly lit yard and passed a group of employees smoking. One of the employees acknowledged them with a small wave, but other than that, they were pretty much ignored.

“Hold on,” Eric said as Joe raised her hand to knock on the door. “I have a bad feeling about something,” he said, stepping past her and opened the unlocked door.

He shoved the stretcher to the side of the walkway, not wanting to leave it unsupervised in the house or scare the hell out of the residents with it. The sight of their stretcher had set off more than one fight in programs like this in the past. Since the patients with violent tendencies were usually the last to find out that they were being transferred to another psychiatric facility, they usually got paranoid when they saw a stretcher suddenly appear. Since he liked to avoid helping restrain a patient that wasn’t his, they’d leave the stretcher outside until they needed it.

They walked into the large house and closed the door behind them. Joe gestured to a sign above the alarm that read,Door must remain locked and armed at all times. No excuses!

“Nice,” Eric said, sighing heavily as they walked past a large living room where three patients were playing a video game.

A young guy the size of a linebacker suddenly stood up, glaring at them. “You better hope you’re not here for me!” he bit out, taking a menacing step towards Joe.

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