Page 14 of Keeping It Professional

I stood up, still shaky, but fine. I was fine. And Brian had a point, maybe, about me and Sophie. Ihadbeen just like her when I started out, and my partner had been patient, at least most of the time. I could do that for Sophie, let her find her way. It might be a shock for her when it all sank in, the weight of our job. Of the lives in our hands. But no way would it hit her the way it did me.

No way, on this job, would she kill her own brother.

CHAPTER 6

SOPHIE

Monday’s shift started off with a bang, two cars crunched together and their drivers out brawling. It took me and Miles both to break up the fight, then I patched up one driver and Miles took the other. Then the cops came and arrested them both.

Our next call was a guy who’d stepped on a tack, demanding a tetanus shot and a “real doctor.” I examined his sole and found no trace of a pinprick, and when I called Miles over, the patient piped up.

“I had my boots on.”

I gaped at him. “What?”

“The tack pricked my boot.”

“Then, how would you— Why would you?—”

“Let’s go,” said Miles.

That started a chain of silly-ass calls — a guy with a bruise he thought might be cancer. A lady who’d dropped a book on her foot. A “wreck” where some kid had got in his mom’s car anddriven into a snowbank at two miles an hour. We skipped our break for a “dog bite” that was barely a scratch, and then came the call every first response team dreads: a patient trapped on a high floor, with the power out.

“This had better be real,” groused Miles, as we passed the tenth floor. “I swear, if we get up there and he’s messing around…”

I adjusted the stretcher. “It’s severe chest pain, right?”

“I’ve been on chest pain calls where the guy took a Tums, and by the time we arrived, he was totally fine.”

We eased round the corner and up nine more flights, and found the guy in the hallway writhing in pain. Miles crouched down beside him.

“Hey. Where’s it hurt?”

The guy rolled on his back, then back on his side. He curled in on himself, clutching his gut. “I don’t know,” he gasped. “It keeps spiking. It’s kind of down here, then up in my chest…” He cradled his belly and groaned long and deep.

“Is it a sharp pain?” said Miles.

“Yeah, sharp. And deep. Like being stabbed… oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Are you able to pass gas?”

The man moaned in pain.

“Any nausea? Vomiting? Diarrhea?”

The man shook his head, then seized up and screamed.

“All right,” Miles said. “Let’s get him on the stretcher. Sir, can you straighten out? Put your knees down?”

The man didn’t answer, just shook his head. We half-lifted, half-rolled him onto the stretcher, and coaxed his knees down so we could secure him. He yelled the whole time and bit the sleeve of my coat.

“Watch it,” said Miles. “Keep clear of those teeth.”

I nodded and lifted the head of the stretcher. Miles grabbed the foot and we started downstairs. Four floors down, I was sweating. Eight floors, Miles was too. The patient kept yelling and thrashing around, fighting the straps holding him on the stretcher.

“Try wiggling your toes,” I said. “To distract from the pain.”

The man kicked and howled. Miles hissed through his teeth. My arms were tingling, my fingers gone numb. A headache was pulsing behind my eyes. I felt bad for Miles shuffling down backward, craning over his shoulder to scope out the turns.

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