Sudden Response (EMS 1)

"I'm sorry...didn't mean to," Sean said, panting softly.

"Don't worry about it," Joe said, knowing Eric was beyond speaking at the moment. He threw the bag over his shoulder and grabbed Sean's other arm.

"Time to do the shuffle," Eric said as he avoided her eyes. It was a good thing too because she knew one look from him and the damn would burst open.

Chapter 8

"I'm hungry," Eric announced as he plopped down heavily on the couch near Joe, well more like practically fell on her. He threw his arm around her shoulders as he leaned back against the faded material of 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 said absently as she flicked through the channels of the station's large flat screen television. It figured the one time the station was empty and she had control of the remote there would be nothing on.

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

Normally she would steal it back on principal, 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. Also, thanks to three bang outs, people calling in sick, they'd been going all day and hadn't had a chance to grab food. In fact, they'd just got back to the station a half hour ago. After cleaning out the truck and replacing supplies she crashed on the couch, counting down the minutes until she could go home, order a pizza, shower, get her laundry done and hopefully crash early for the night, knowing she would be back here bright and early tomorrow morning.

Just as she was picturing her big comfortable bed and imagining how good that first moment when her head touched the pillow would feel the station phone rang, shattering her little fantasy.

Eric groaned as he got to his feet and made his way, unhappily, to the phone on the old rickety desk everyone was supposed to use to write up their reports, but didn't. With a resigned sigh he picked up the phone and leaned against the desk.

"Hello," he said as dread filled Joe.

Dispatch wouldn't screw them over again, would they? When she saw Eric's jaw clench she knew her answer. Yes, yes they would.

Eric rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to reason with dispatch. "We were supposed to be off four hours ago.....Yeah, I know you guys are short staffed, but we've been going all day." He stood up and began pacing around the area as far as the long tangled chord would allow. "We don't mind doing 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 stocked and cleaned ambulance, knowing 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, rocking the ambulance violently.

"This f**king sucks," he 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 necessary.

She gave a noncommittal "uh huh" as she started to fill in the paperwork with their information, knowing that by the next time dispatch asked them to fill in they'd be over this bullshit call.

*********

Eric sighed dramatically as he tossed the soft restraints out the back of the ambulance onto the stretcher. "Fine, if you insist," he said, sounding put out.

Joe quickly looked over the restraints as she frowned. "If I insist about what?"

He jumped out the back of the ambulance and closed the doors as Joe took the front position on the stretcher. "On making me spaghetti for dinner," he said innocently, hoping she'd just give in and do it. He was a starving man after all.

Joe snorted as she guided them to the front door of Nicholson House, the shit hole 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 f**ked up nursing homes that hadn't known when one of their residents had been dead for two days, bed sores that turned into five inch craters on patients' backs and legs, patients left tied to chairs in the middle of a hall for days with huge puddles of piss and shit around their feet, but residential programs in his mind were the absolute winners in the incompetency category.

Most residential programs were run by bleeding hearts, at least in his opinion. They were more concerned about the patient's "feelings" then they were about their staff's safety and well-being. Dangerous work conditions, flax rules, and piss poor treatment caused high turnovers in most of the residential programs he'd come across. It was just common sense that if you always took the patient's side on everything without question and f**ked over your employee for doing his job that you're going to piss off a lot of good employees and be left with the ones who could care less, and more often than not didn't bother to do their jobs.

Nicholson House in his opinion was a prime example of a f**ked up residential program. Twelve years ago when they started out as EMT's, Nicholson House had been ruled with an iron fist. The seasoned staff was well trained and took no 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 there wasn't any hesitation to bring them back into the 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'd make it a point to know exactly where they were and what they were doing and damn well make sure all the sharp objects in the house were locked up.