Smoke & Mirrors by Skye Jordan

4

Logan

The woman on the ground in front of me is far too young to die. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s only a few years older than me.

Jake Bryant, one of our volunteers and an off-duty ER nurse, pumps her chest in a steady rhythm as I set up the defibrillator. The sickening scent of burnt flesh mixes with the smoke coming from the apartment where she lives, and my stomach makes a slow roll toward my throat.

“She really pulled a Pryor this time,” Jake says, referencing the alcohol still soaking her T-shirt and the burns on her face, neck, and arms from freebasing crack, the same activity that set the apartment on fire. “At least she was too high to feel much pain.”

I’ve been doing this long enough to know with relative certainty which patients will come back, and which won’t. In this case, I also have the woman’s history—a crack addict who failed out of recovery several times. Crack is a wicked, wicked drug, and after her years of addiction, I don’t see her heart starting again no matter what we do. But despite what I might think, or how many odds are stacked against us, I always, always, always go the extra mile with every patient, just in case their spirit is undecided over which world they want to live in.

“Clear,” I say for the third time. Jake sits back, and I shoot jolts of electricity through the woman’s worn body, but nothing is restarting her heart today.

Jake starts compressions again. “She’s not coming back.”

“I know.” But I stick with protocol and deliver epinephrine, my last-ditch effort to give her a kick start.

Suzy Blunt is a frequent flier. All the paramedics, cops, fire, and emergency room personnel know her. She’s a nice lady, but the drugs had a grip on her she couldn’t shake. I knew there would come a day when I was called to the house and I wouldn’t be able to save her.

Looks like today is that day.

I check my watch. Our most up-to-date field procedures call for twenty minutes of CPR on scene. If the patient’s heart restarts during that time, we transport to the hospital. But today, it looks like I’ll be calling the coroner.

“We’ve got about seven more minutes before we tap out,” I tell Jake. “Want me to take over?”

“Nah, I’ve got this.”

I look toward the house. The fire is out, and Cole, Tucker, Royal, and a handful of volunteers are mopping up the mess. Neighbors have gathered, and local police are holding a perimeter.

“I’m gonna go help the guys,” I tell Jake.

“Yeah.”

If it were anyone else, I’d stay and run out the clock, but the truth is that even after I’ve spent ten years in the field, Jake may be more experienced in emergency medicine than I am.

Royal’s at the engine, coiling hose, so I head inside and help haul it down the stairs and out of the apartment. The place is gutted and blackened. The fire started in the living room, burned across the first floor, through the ceiling, up the stairs.

Royal meets me at the front door and takes the hose. I wander through the remnants of the house. Multiple liquor bottles managed to survive the fire, as did some of the drug paraphernalia. I’ve seen this a lot during my time as a paramedic, but it still strikes me as sad.

I grab an axe and a halligan leaning against the wall and step out of the apartment.

A whimper touches my ear, and my feet stop. The hair on the back of my neck rises.

Tucker exits the front door. “Guess we won’t be coming here every other shift anymore.”

I follow his line of sight and find Jake covering Suzy with a plastic tarp.

“Was she the only one here?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?”

Another whimper comes from somewhere, but it’s so weak, I almost think I’m imagining it.

“Shit.” Tucker’s eyes go wide, and he spins toward the sound. “Where’s that coming from?”

Cole and Royal come into the house talking, and Tucker and I shush them at the same time. Everyone goes quiet.

Cole finally whispers, “What are we—”

Whimper. It’s an animal. Probably a dog.

“The kitchen.” The apartment is small, and it only takes me three steps to get there. Tucker and Cole follow. Everything is smoky and covered in soot. I start opening cabinets, Tucker checks closets, Cole opens the refrigerator. What addicts and mentally ill people do to people and animals is beyond me. A baby in the fridge is—sadly—no stretch. But it’s empty, as are the cabinets and closets.

“Maybe it was just—” I start.

Another whimper makes me swivel toward the trash can. “Motherfucking sonofabitch.” Inside, a small animal lies in the trash, covered in soot and garbage. “What in the fuck was she thinking?”

I start to reach in, and Cole pulls me back by my turnout jacket. “Don’t put your hand in there. It could be something feral.”

The animal scrambles amid the trash, and the sounds identify it as a dog. I snatch it from the garbage can. He’s small, barely double the size of my hand, and weighs maybe a pound or two.

“It’s a puppy, for fuck’s sake.” I brush at the soot on his fur. “People are so goddamned sick.”

“She was higher than a kite,” Tucker says. “She wasn’t thinking about anything but her next hit.”

The dog’s got the shape of a Lab. He’s a mottled mess, but I take his snout in my hand and look at the face. Its eyes are barely open, but they’re bright blue. I’ve never seen a Lab with blue eyes. “I think it’s an Australian shepherd.”

When I look at the guys, I find them staring at me with here-we-go-again expressions. Cole’s got one hand on the countertop, the other at his hip. Tucker’s got his arms crossed.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “You two are narcissists if you don’t care about this pup.”

“You already have two house cats,” Tucker says.

“And this is the sixth animal you’ve wanted to make a pet of this year,” Cole says.

Tucker lifts his fingers and ticks them off. “Rabbit, guinea pig, turtle, iguana.”

The puppy’s breathing is raspy, and it closes its eyes and goes still.

Royal comes in. “What’s going on?”

“Give me your BA,” I tell Royal, using gimme fingers. “Come on.”

“What in the hell are you doing?” Tucker wants to know, his voice dripping with you idiot.

“Fuck you, Ice Man. You let your sister flail for a place to say so you could get laid and now you’re against a defenseless puppy? Just because you have a scarecrow’s heart doesn’t mean the rest of us do. And last time I looked, Cole’s the one with brass on his collar. You want to boss people around, take the fucking test and promote.”

“Wasn’t it the tin man who wanted a heart?” Royal asks, offering his breathing apparatus.

“The scarecrow wanted a brain,” Cole affirms.

I lay the BA over the pup’s head, but he’s so small, the mask covers half his body too. I take off my helmet and put it on the counter upside down, then drag off the soft fabric of my head and neck cover and bunch it in my helmet. I lay the pup on top and cover him with Royal’s BA again.

“Now I’ve seen everything.” Tucker shakes his head. “I need some damned ruby slippers so I can get the hell out of this place.”

“Let the door hit you on the way out,” I tell him. To the puppy, I say, “Yeah, he’s an asshole. You’re lucky I’m the one who found you.”

“That’s a great name,” Royal says. “Lucky.”

“I think we’re going to keep you around, kid,” I tell him.

“Last time I looked,” Tucker parrots dryly, “Cole’s the one with brass on his collar. You want to make decisions, take the fucking test and promote.”

“Asshole.” I collect the helmet, the BA, and the puppy and shoulder my way past Tucker and Cole on my way out. “Seriously, you should find a Narcissists Anonymous.”

Royal’s beside me, enthralled with the dog. “Dude, I think that’s a Dalmatian.”

“How can you tell?”

Outside, I pause, and Royal fluffs the pup’s fur, loosening some of the soot. Sure enough, the fur color is light around at least one very distinct black circle. “They aren’t born with spots, so he has to be older than four or six weeks.”

“You’ve got an eye,” I tell Royal. “We gotta keep him now.”

Outside, we pause to watch the coroner load Suzy into the back of their van.

“Why do you think she put him in the trash?” Royal asks.

“High people do crazy things, including become paranoid and have hallucinations. I can think of half a dozen ways the dog ended up in the trash.”

Still, Dalmatians aren’t the kind of dog you just pick up from a box in front of Walmart. Was she holding it for someone? Did she steal it hoping to sell it for drug money? If so, why was he in the trash? The can was too tall for the pup to get in there himself.

The crowd milling around the edges of the scene would be the perfect group to ask, but that meant I’d risk having someone claim him. Still, it’s the right thing to do.

I approach Dalton Conway, a local cop, who is now dating Emily, my ex, and the reason I put my sex life on hold. Everyone in EMS knows everyone else, regardless of their position. Cops, firefighters, and EMTs cross paths every day. In this case, there are no hard feelings. I was happy to have Emily move on with someone else. It ended the headache she was hell-bent on giving me.

“Hey,” Dalton says. “What have you got there?”

“Dog. He was in the trash can.”

Dalton shakes his head in disgust. “It alive?”

“Yeah. I know you come out here quite a bit,” I say. “Do you know anything about it?”

“No. What the hell would she do with a dog? It would cut into her drug budget.”

To the small crowd, I say, “Does anyone know about Suzy getting a dog?”

I get a lot of shaking heads and murmured nos, then a guy from the back says, “I think she was going to give it to her boyfriend for his birthday.”

“Puppet?” Dalton asks in disbelief. Puppet is a low-life local drug dealer—the worst person on the planet to care for anyone or anything other than himself. “Are you serious?”

The guy shrugs. “I’m just telling you what she told me.”

“Why a Dalmatian?” I ask.

“She said he had one as a kid.”

Dalton looks at me. “Take it if you want it. Or drop it at a shelter. Anywhere is better than here.”

“I’ll hold on to him. If someone comes forward, let me know.”

“Sure thing.”

“Dude,” Tucker says to Cole at the truck, where he’s putting away the fire hose with volunteers. “Nip this in the bud. You know how much trouble puppies are.”

Cole’s gaze swings toward me. He was promoted to captain not that long ago, and I know he constantly finds himself between me and Tucker, his two best friends.

“I’ll take care of him,” I say. “I promise.”

Tucker laughs. “You still sound five years old. ‘Can I keep this racoon, this bird, this snake, this dragonfly, this ladybug, this salamander?’ You’re going to be an animal hoarder when you’re an old man.”

“The racoon was the best,” Cole says. “Remember how he’d get loose and dump over all the garbage cans in the neighborhood, and Logan had to go around and pick them all up again?”

“Bandit,” Tucker says, grinning. “Such an original name.”

“What will you do when someone wants it back?” Cole asks, turning the conversation back to the puppy.

“I’ll cross that bridge if it appears.” I step close and show Cole the fur Royal roughed up. “Look, it’s a Dalmatian.”

Cole sighs. “I don’t care whether or not you keep the dog, but you’re going to have to get it past Sorenson.”

Tucker snorts a laugh and shakes his head. “You’re such an enabler. Always have been. And Sorenson will never go for it." Then to Logan, “If you really want it, keep it as your own.”

“I can’t take care of a dog on my own, not with our schedule.”

The broody sky opens up, dumping rain.

“Let’s get something to eat before we’re called—” Tucker starts.

“Rescue one,” the dispatcher’s voice comes over the radio. “Shortness of breath reported at 622 Waldorf Street.”

I offer my helmet to Royal. “Keep Tucker from getting his hands on the dog.”

“Will do.” Royal scoops the pup from my helmet and climbs in the engine. I head to the rescue, and we all start toward Waldorf Street.