Page 45 of Keeping It Professional

Sophie laughed. “Icheated, huh? What’s that in your hands?”

I remembered my snowball and wound up my pitch. Sophie shrieked and ran off, kicking up snow. The dog squeezed under the fence and joined in the chase. It jumped on Sophie and tripped her, and she went down with a shout. She tried to get up again, but the dog swarmed in. It thrust its snout in her face.

“Baddog! Get off!”

The dog licked her. She yelled, then she cracked up laughing.

“Time out,” she gasped. “Dog interference.”

I pulled the dog off with one hand and thrust up the other, lifting my snowball to drop on her head. Sophie saw it and slapped it and it exploded over us both, a sparkling snow shower cold on our necks. The dog danced around us and snapped at the snow.

“What’s its name?”

“I don’t know. Rover, I think.” I bent to check its collar, and the bone-shaped name tag. “Not Rover. Dover. What kind of name’s Dover?”

Dover ran off and came back with a stick. Sophie took it from him.

“Aw. He wants to play.”

We played with the dog till it got tired and went home, then Sophie dropped down to make a snow angel. I took advantage of the moment to pelt her with snow, and she jumped back up like she had a spring on her ass. She chased me in circles around the backyard, hurling handfuls of snow at me, till I spun back and caught her.

“Hey! No! Let go!” She grabbed for more snow, but I pulled her close. For a moment, she struggled, then she went soft in my arms. She leaned back and smiled at me, and her cheeks were all red. Her nose and ears too, pink from the chill. A dusting of snow sparkled across her shoulders, and in her hair where it hung loose. I’d never seen her so beautiful, so I kissed her cold lips. She kissed me back and I felt the chill fade, heat rushing up as we deepened our kiss. I bit back a sigh. She slid her hand up my back. I thought,God, she’s perfect, and in that instant, it happened.

She stuffed a handful of snow down the back of my neck.

I yelled. She ran off. I gave chase, still shouting. She ran inside, kicked her boots off, and raced up the stairs. I pounded up after her and caught her on the landing, and dragged her into a punishing kiss.

“You’re pure evil,” I growled.

“Yeah? I’ve been bad?”

I scooped her up so fast her left sock flew off. She yelped and I bounded up the rest of the stairs, two at a time, then straight down the hall. I tossed her on my bed and she pulled me down with her, and leaned back and smirked at me.

“So, what’s my punishment?”

We developed a sort of sixth sense at work. I’d hop in the driver’s seat when I could see she was tired. She’d take the lead when a patient got scared. She knew when my experience gave me the edge, and rushed us back to the hospital while I worked in theback. More and more, we justmovedwhen we rolled up on-scene, no need to check what the other was thinking.

It was a gray, sleety Wednesday when we got the call: some little kid stuck in a tree. We went in expecting a quick, routine scene — fire department would grab the kid. We’d check him for splinters. His parents would thank us and we’d be on our way. But I could see, pulling up, this was something else. Two cop cars were parked alongside FD, and a small crowd had gathered around a hollow oak. Sophie shaded her eyes.

“I don’t see any kid.”

I couldn’t see any, either, except on the ground, two little boys bundled up in snow pants. One clung to his mom’s leg, sodden with tears. The other kept trying to get to the tree.

“He must’ve fallen,” I said. “Grab a spine board.”

Sophie was already on it, hopping into the back. One of the cops came trotting over.

“It might be a while yet before they need you.”

“Yeah? Where’s the kid?”

“Up there somewhere.” The cop jerked his head back at the tree. “He crawled into that crack, and it’s hollow in there, and I guess he kept climbing until he got stuck.”

“Stuck?” The crowd parted, and we headed through. One firefighter was down on her back in the mud, shining a light up the hollow trunk. Another stood watching, and he tapped her foot when he saw me.

“Medics are here. Want to let them look in?”

The firefighter slid out and got to her feet. “He’s about ten feet up, too high to reach. And it’s narrow in there. He says he can’t breathe.”

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