Page 21 of Catching Fire

Luke approached her, staying calm. In his most soothing voice he said, “Ma'am, we’ll need to take your vital signs.”

She balked again. “I don't need you to take my blood pressure! I need you to take me to the hospital. I'm fixing to have a heart attack.”

Kalan looked to Luke who looked back at him as if to say, “this is new to me too.”

“We can do that, ma'am,” he told her. “But first we need your vital signs.”

Again, she sighed heavily, sounding incredibly put out. She pushed up one heavy sweater sleeve, revealing a frail arm.

Luke was the paramedic here. Though they were all trained for medical calls, Luke was the ranking officer now. So Kalan followed along and acted as his assistant.

In no time at all, they had ascertained that her vital signs looked incredibly normal. And Luke told her so.

“I don't care!” She was full-steam angry with them now. “I need to go to the hospital.”

Luke nodded. “We can do that ma'am. But if there's nothing wrong with you, the bill is going to be very expensive.”

“Well, there is something wrong. I told you, I'm fixing to have a heart attack.” She said for what was likely the third time.

“But I don't see anything wrong with your signs.” Luke again tried to calm her down, though it clearly wasn’t working.

Even her blood glucose was fully normal. Kalan had expected that number to be off when everything else came up good. But the more Luke suggested that she was not going to have a heart attack right this moment, the more she insisted she was.

He didn’t want to be here. Kalan wanted to be back with Seline. He still hadn’t fully apologized, and he still didn’t know how to explain that he’d lost control while he was kissing her. How did he tell her that and not scare the crap out of her?

He’d taken her out on two dates—as per the FBI’s instructions that they appear as boyfriend and girlfriend in public. But he’d dicked that up, too. Each time he’d felt the conversation pull him under, each time he’d touched her and felt that kick, he’d had to pull himself out of it. He was there to keep her safe, not kiss her while the BRK walked right by.

But he’d kissed her goodnight each time, soft and sweet—not the growling creature she’d had to push off herself the first time. And he kept it all to himself because, if she told him to leave, she’d be a bodyguard shy. The whole thing was turning into a clusterfuck. And he couldn’t even figure a way out of it because he had to keep his mind on this stubborn old woman who wanted a ride to the hospital for no good reason.

Kalan turned away from her and whispered to Luke, “She’s going to give herself a heart attack from being so mad at us. Then where will we be?”

The first part of the job was keeping people safe. But the second part—and Kalan appreciated working for a chief who made this one much lower down the list—was not getting sued.

Eventually, they relented.

Luke got the stretcher and wheeled it up her bumpy front walk. It had shock absorbers and was as padded as it could be, but it wasn’t going to be a pleasant ride from her front door to the street.

Luckily, that distance was short. This neighborhood was not one for big yards or grand houses. Which is why she was wheeling around a tank of O2, rather than using one of the newer over-the-shoulder machines.

Once they had her loaded and locked, Kalan drove while Luke stayed in the back with their patient, who continued to insist she was going to have a heart attack. Kalan rolled his eyes.

They left her at the hospital with two orderlies and a nurse who were as confused as they were about her fully normal vitals. Once they'd signed all the paperwork, Luke and Kalan were grateful she was out of their hands. At least she was demanding treatment for her pending heart attack to the hospital staff now.

They climbed back into their rig, put everything to rights and got ready for another run. But, when their comms stayed quiet, Kalan called in and asked anybody if they wanted anything from the sandwich shop. Might as well get lunch while it was calm.

He laughed as Sebastian rattled off an order, and over his shoulder he heard Ronan with another. One by one, everyone announced that they needed a sandwich, and soup, and chips and … Until the chief got on and picked up the tab.

That was kind, but he looked to Luke. “Getting a to go order this big is almost a guarantee of getting a call as soon as they bring it out.”

Kalan expected Luke to agree, but instead he looked out the window while they sat in the parking lot waiting for one of the employees to bring it out. The truck was unusually quiet. He and Luke got along. Luke was a bit of a talker, not like being on a run with Patrick or Ronan.

So when Luke turned to Kalan with an expectant expression, Kalan grew concerned.

“The house fire the other night …” Luke let the words trail off.

His friend had looked worried. Something about it had bothered him all along, so he was glad Luke was finally talking.

“That's the house my mother and brothers lived in right after I moved out.”

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