A Firefighter in Her Stocking

Jude.

“Sarah?”

“I...um...sorry. I’m feeling a little light-headed. I’m going to grab that drink, Shelley. Be back in a few.”

Sarah slid into the break room and leaned against the doorway. Breathing hurt.

Everything inside her hurt.

She couldn’t think the worst. Jude might not have been in that building. Even if he was, he could be just fine. She had to pull herself together. She had patients to see, had to get through the night no matter what happened.

She needed to get back out there because she could hear nearing ambulance sirens wailing. Grabbing a cup, she filled it to the brim from the water dispenser, then downed it.

She needed something much stronger, but that would have to do.

She had this. Whatever the night brought. She had this.

Only when the doors opened and an elderly woman and a badly burned couple were rushed in, Sarah had to mentally brace herself.

The Millers and Betty Kingston.

No Jude.

Which probably meant that he was fine. He’d rescued them and was still there, fighting the fire.

Only Sarah’s inside hurt and couldn’t let go of the fear inside her.

Sarah and two other docs examined the new patients, taking over their care. Sarah had just gotten Mr. Miller ready to admit when there was another commotion as a group rushed in.

A group of firefighters carrying an unconscious Jude.

Sarah rushed over to the group, trying to get close enough to examine the man they carried.

“Bring him in here,” she insisted, thanking God that the transport crew had just come and emptied the room minutes before.

Shelley was there, wiping down the bed and throwing a clean sheet over it even as the men set Jude down.

Immediately, Sarah had oxygen on him, helped Shelley undress him to get telemetry hooked up. She flinched at the deep purplish bruises across his ribs, across his shoulder, but said a silent little thank you at the strong beep that filled the room with its reassuring sound.

“He insisted the three ambulances at the scene take the others, rather than him, that he’d wait until another showed up,” one of the men she’d met at the fire hall said.

“When he lost consciousness, we decided there wasn’t time to wait for another ambulance to show,” Roger said, his gaze focusing in on what Sarah was doing and helping her get Jude situated on the bed as she cleaned a spot to start an intraosseous line. “So we loaded him up and brought him in the fire truck.”

“Got him here faster than another ambulance could have gotten to us,” another of the crew Sarah had met at the fire hall party piped up. “Much less have gotten him here.”

Even while she listened to his crew tell about how Jude had gone rogue to rescue the Millers and had them almost out when another section of the building had caved in, she, Shelley and another nurse worked on him. They started the intraosseous line and got only a grunt from Jude.

That grunt was priceless, though, because it meant he had felt pain, that he was in there.

“He managed to clear a path to get them out by holding up a beam for the Millers to crawl beneath. After the couple had cleared the building, they were that close, he tried to clear himself of the beam to get out, but triggered another cave-in that trapped him beneath rubble.”

“Roger there had tried to go back in the moment he had the Kingston woman out, but Command restrained him. There was no restraining any of us when the Millers came out and we realized he was trapped twenty feet or so from an exit.”

Thank God Roger and whoever else of Jude’s crew had gone back in.

His blood pressure was low, his pulse slightly elevated. His oxygen was lower than it should be but not dangerously so. Yet.

Sarah gave another order to Shelley, preparing to establish an airway. She needed to get Jude stable, to be prepared for any scenario, so they could get scans to check for internal injuries in case of hemorrhage.