From Blood & Ashes

Disclaimer: I do not own HSM.

Chapter Ten

"Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses." –Anna Landers

A week and a half later and Gabriella was back in the midst of a six day shift schedule. With Ryan back in night classes and a few firefighters taking turns being out with the flu, the regular schedule had been substituted with a new one that ensured each person had enough time off, but that all the shifts were covered properly. Gabriella had worked three twelve hour day shifts and one twelve hour night shift. Now on her second night, she knew that the lack of sleep was catching up to her.

After the balcony collapse, she had been required to take a couple days off. She had slept then. It had been a medicated sleep, but it had been dream free. The sleeping pills made her feel groggy though, so she refused to take them when she was on the shift schedule. The dreams returned and with it, restless and unsuccessful sleep. Circles were smudged beneath her eyes and caffeine made her nerves hum.

The calls she had and Chad had responded to had been routine. Broken bones, heart attacks, fender bender car accidents. The most extensive call had been when a mother of two had cut off a finger tip while making dinner and passed out at the sight of blood. Her six year old had called 911. She was barely registering Chad's chatter from the driver's seat as they drove back to the firehouse. He had finally gotten up the nerve to ask Ryan's sister, Sharpay, out for coffee and all he could talk about was how difficult their schedules were to match up.

"I'm sorry, what?" she asked, finally focusing on what he was saying. "You're talking her to Dunkin' Donuts?" Gabriella laughed skeptically. "Good luck winning her over with that one."

"I asked her to coffee. They serve coffee." Chad looked slightly uncertain. "It's at the hospital. I asked her out to coffee and we don't have a day off together for like a week. I didn't want to drag it out."

"So bring her coffee," Gabriella suggested. "Pick a time that you are off and bring decent, artfully crafted coffee to her. You won't look cheap and you win points by being romantic and flirty."

"What if she's busy?" He asked, looking over at her for a moment and then back at the road. "Or she doesn't like what I bring her?"

"You call her beforehand," Gabriella said slowly, "And you tell her you were thinking of bringing her a treat, when is she on break and what does she like in her coffee. Have you never asked a girl out before?"

"Of course I ask girls out," Chad scoffed, with an uneasy laugh. "She's just a little more high maintenance than they are."

"Yeah," Gabriella agreed, leaning her head back on the headrest and watching the city go by as they neared the station. "Because she doesn't take your homeboy crap."

The conversation came to a halt as they parked in the garage bay and hopped down from their seats. The next few minutes were spent reloading supplies and arguing over who would complete the paperwork. When Gabriella's scissors lost to Chad's rock, she accepted the clipboard of papers and forms and sat in the open end of the ambulance to finish off the necessary questions and information from patients they had done back to back runs on. Chad waved at her arrogantly as he left her in the garage to seek out a snack in the kitchen. The sound of laughter and joking wafted through the open door as he pulled it open and disappeared as it slammed shut.

The positive side to Gabriella's third night shift in a row was that she was paired with Troy to prepare dinner. Although most of the fire guys had mastered basic cooking skills in order to not bring havoc and mockery down upon them when they were assigned to the duty, Gabriella had grown tired of pot roast and potatoes, pork chops and potatoes, or chicken and potatoes. Whether she was on night shift or day shift, the meals never seemed to change in the weeks since she had joined East House. Tonight she had convinced Troy to change that.

"You about done with the meat?" she asked Troy, leaning around his elbow to get a glimpse of the strips of chicken and beef in the skillet on the stove. He flipped and stir fried like a pro with a smile on his face. Reaching over to turn down the element, he used a spatula to flip over some of the more stubborn pieces.

"Yeah, just about. You put the tortillas in the oven to warm?" he asked, moving past her to drain the juices from the skillet and then dump the steaming meat in a warming dish. Gabriella covered it in tinfoil.

"Yup. And the vegetables are staying warm as well. The cheese and salsa are on the table already." She inhaled the scent of spiced meat and warm salsa. "Smells good."

"It smells delicious," Troy corrected, slipping on an oven mitt and pulling a pan of warm tortillas from the oven. "This was a great idea."

"Just changing things up. I couldn't handle looking at another potato." Gabriella shrugged and set about placing spoons next to bowls on the table. "I was thinking that for next week, if we plan early enough, we could put together a pot of chili. It would be easy and it can slow cook all shift, even if we get called out." She accepted a dish from Troy and put it in its spot.

"That's actually smart. Kelsi does that once in awhile too; make soup so that we have it no matter what time of night we get in. You ready to call everyone in?" Troy wiped down the countertop and began pulling down plates.

"Yeah, we should before we get a call." Gabriella walked through the doorway to softly tell those watching television to get a move on and to call the others. Returning to the kitchen, she pulled open the fridge and grabbed the pitcher of water, placing it on the table. She caught the end of Troy's question. "Sorry?"

"Worst call as a rookie. It's a game we play with transfers. We never asked you. So, worst call as a rookie." Troy leaned back against the stove, waiting for an answer. He was interrupted by the others piling loudly into the room and demanding food.

Gabriella listened as her colleagues laughed and yelled, scrambling for helpings of fajitas and salad. She nodded as they praised her idea and the taste. She refilled bowls as they emptied and when they had settled down, she picked up a plate to make her own. Her mind had shifted though and while she was still in East House, another scene tugged at the edges of her mind. Her fingers were clumsy as she filled her tortilla.

The chatter had changed, individual conversations merging to become one loud discussion regarding the football picks announced by the University of Albuquerque. Gabriella focused on that instead of the memories that had nothing to do with the current space or Troy's earlier question. Her worst call as a rookie had been fairly common. She hadn't realized how deep in thought she was until Troy called her name and the discussion halted.

"So, Gabs, what was it?" Chad asked, his mouth full of fajitas and rice. "Mine was that condominium project downtown, the first four floors caved in."

"I remember that," Zeke added, shaking his head. "That was bad. My worst rookie call though wasn't to there. It was to the bridge over the river. A minivan with a family of four left the road and went over the edge. We got called to help with survivors. We stood on the bank for like 20 minutes and for some reason, I was still waiting to jump into action even though I knew it was impossible. No one made it out."

"Toddler overdose," Gabriella finally shared. "I had been working out of a Los Angeles rescue house for nearly six months. I had been on more than a dozen calls regarding overdoses since starting, and when the call came in, I just rolled my eyes and thought 'Another one. Great'. The information had just said a possible meth overdose. I was expecting a junky or a teenage girl who tried to be a rebel. Instead, my partner and I get inside the apartment building and we climb six flights to where a woman is screaming and crying." Gabriella set her mouth in a grim line. "She was holding her daughter and you could tell it was bad. Apparently the mother had left the baby with the next door neighbor's high school kid to babysit. Somehow the baby found the Meth the kid had bought for a party later."

"That is shitty," Jason mumbled, picking at his food. "Did it turn out okay?"

"I don't know," Gabriella answered. "When we called to follow up a few days later, we learned there was a lot of severe damage. I don't know the end result." She paused and then sought an escape from the looks Troy was giving her. "What about you?" She asked Jason. "Worst call as a fire guy?"

"That's easy," Jason told her. "Train derailment about 20 minutes outside the city. They called for whoever could be spared. I was coming off shift and volunteered. The odd thing was, there were only a handful of casualties, but they were all employees and no one seemed to know how many people should have been onboard so we had to lift everything. I kept waiting to find people."

"Mine was the forest fire a few years back. As a rookie I got the job of making sure people evacuated and then stayed evacuated. At first I thought it was because the senior guys didn't trust me, but afterwards, I realized it was because they all hated the look on peoples' faces," Troy offered.

Dinner continued slightly more subdued but still with bursts of chatter and laughter. From her spot beside Troy by the counter, Gabriella ate and served until it was clear that everyone was full. Putting her own plate away first, she began packing up the leftovers and piling them in the fridge. Behind her, Jason and Kelsi had begun gathering up dishes and filling the sink with suds and hot water. The others cleared the table and helped before leaving the kitchen to complete their hourly equipment checks. Gabriella scanned the kitchen and satisfied that she had nothing left to do, she poured herself a cup of coffee and left to find some quiet space. Troy watched her leave from his place against the doorway where he leaned, sipping at his own coffee.

The sun was starting to sink below the taller buildings of the city, casting shadows, but the air was still warm enough for Gabriella to feel comfortable in her longsleeved uniform shirt. Sinking down onto the picnic table outside the back entrance of East House, she sipped at her coffee and pulled her phone from her pocket. Fingers skimming against the touch screen, she tapped and dialed a familiar number. Taking another sip, she swallowed quickly when someone picked up.

"Hey, Isaac," she answered his greeting. A small smile lit her face as his voice joked on the other line. "I have a favour to ask you." She paused before continuing. "The regional director for MSF called me. They want to run some of Tay's photos from the camp in Sierra Leone on their marketing stuff for the current fundraising campaign. They need someone to give permission and I told them it wasn't my place. I gave her your number."

"Do you know which photos?" Isaac asked her, his voice losing the joking tone and turning into the brisk voice of a lawyer who was thinking a hundred things at once. "Have they been published before?"

"Not that I know of. I think she took them for MSF in the first place, but I'm not sure." Gabriella closed her eyes and swallowed. "She's going to call you. My favour isn't actually that though."

"What is it, El?" he asked. She could picture him rubbing the bridge of his nose. He did it a lot the weekend that they had packed up Taylor's things in Gabriella's apartment.

"If you decide to let them use them, I want to see them first." Gabriella held her breath.

"Are you sure?" Isaac asked. "You've made it clear to them you don't want to participate in the organization anymore."

"I don't," Gabriella shot back. Her eyes followed Chad as he left the fire house and walked to get something from his vehicle in the lot. Lowering her voice, she watched to see if Chad could hear her. "But I think I have a right to know if any of the pictures have me in them. I would prefer not to be blindsided by pictures of myself surrounded by machine guns and machetes."

"Okay, El, I get it," Isaac responded calmly. "I will let you know. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Yeah, actually. If I give you a name of a former patient, can you find out what happened to her?" Gabriella asked.

"Maybe. Do you have a name and date of birth?" Isaac paused, waiting for her to share the details.

"I do. I don't want to do it right now. Maybe later. I'm just curious." She was babbling. She needed get off the phone. "I'll let you know."

"Okay. El, I have to go. Call me if you need anything." Isaac sounded concerned through the phone but Gabriella ignored it.

"I'm fine, Isaac." Her coffee was cold and she dumped it in the grass.

"I know, El. I'm just putting it out there. Call me." He hung up when she didn't answer and Gabriella clung to the phone for a moment.

"I'm fine," she whispered. She wasn't though, and she knew it. Closing her eyes, Gabriella gave in to the movie that constantly played under her eyelids no matter how she denied it. It was always there. Never in order, never a hundred percent accurate, but there. Flashes and clips of people and voices and scenery.

The first time she held a gun, it wasn't aimed at anyone. She had simply picked it up from the ground where its former owned had dropped it, and placed it safely in a locker in the medical tent. It was surprisingly light. Lighter than she had been expecting. It made sense since they were held most frequently by children. Her hand had slid awkwardly over the barrel and her finger made sure not to grip the trigger. Someone in the camp would surely know how to turn the safety on.

With the gun in her hand, the sounds coming from the jungle brush behind her seemed twice as loud. Her spine was rigid and her breathing barely discernible. She stood then, bringing the gun with her to rest against her thigh. It was when she was almost back to her tent at camp that something sounded extremely close. When she turned around, she could see the open backed trucks leaving the dense jungle brush behind for the open road of the country side.

Looking back down at the gun, at the blood on her hands that was turning black in the sun...

The alarm sounded in East House, the loud speaker calling for Gabriella's ambulance and the Troy's Rescue Squad. Shoving her phone away and hurrying inside to get rid of her cup, Gabriella shook the images away and concentrated on zipping her jacket up over her uniform, and climbing in the front seat of the truck. Chad climbed in the driver's seat and pulled out of the garage ahead of the fire trucks. Turning up the radio, Gabriella listened to the dispatcher repeat the address of the emergency call.

"I spend way too much time at East High for someone who graduated years ago," Chad griped, making a hairpin turn. "And I definitely never spent time in the auditorium."

Gabriella laughed, watching for anyone not moving out of their way. "It can't be pretty if they are requesting the rescue unit."

"My guess is something went wrong with the set crew," Chad suggested, pulling onto the proper street. "You get a bunch of teenage guys with tools and egos, it's a recipe for disaster."

Chad wasn't that far off the mark. Two students met them at the door and led them to the stage of the auditorium where three teachers were frantically trying to keep students away from the male student on the stage. Another teacher and a student were talking to him calmly but one look at their faces and Gabriella knew to expect something grisly. Troy and Jason hurried ahead of the group, jumping to the stage and gesturing for everyone to step back. Gabriella swallowed at the tight look on Troy's face.

"It's nasty," he warned softly when she reached his side, gloved fingers wrapping a pressure cuff around the student's upper arm. His other arm was jammed between the half built set, the floor of the stage and the saw that had bit into both the floor, a two-by-four, and his wrist. "What can you see?"

Flesh and bone, nerves and muscles. Arms and shoulders strengthened by years of backbreaking work ending in neatly severed stumps...

"Bone," she replied, angling a flashlight to give her a proper look. Chad was busy setting up an IV and monitoring the student. "What's your name, Bud?"

"Connor," he told her, sweat rolling down his face.

A bloodied stump of wood, notches carved into it so that the surface was pitted and splintered. Old blood made the dust and the dirt look black. Grass had been rubbed away by knees bent in submission and combat boots of rebels...

"Okay, Connor," she replied, looking over at Chad. "My partner here is going to give you something for the pain while we figure out the best way to get you out, okay?" He nodded and Gabriella and Troy continued to examine the mess. With a crook of her finger, Gabriella motioned for Troy and Jason to follow her out of ear shot.

"I'm not worried about the set wood," Troy told her, "We can cut that and take it with us. The floor though is different. If we pry the saw blade out of the floor, what's the worst case scenario you can think of?"

"I'm not sure his hand is still attached," Gabriella admitted. "I can't tell if the blade is all the way through or not. We may have to pry it out, stem the bleeding and hope the surgeons can save it."

"What if it is attached and we make it worse?" Jason asked. "The kid could lose his hand."

"And the kid could bleed out here on the stage if we don't do something quick," Gabriella retorted.

"But if we can save it-," Jason looked unconvinced. "He's just a kid. He can't go through life with one hand."

"Thousands of people function without one or both hands everyday," Gabriella hissed. "Right now, we don't have an option. We can't take the floor with us. We get him out and the surgeons salvage what they can."

The roughly constructed camp that sprawled with more inhabitants every year. People of all ages milling about, chatting, working. The youngest are intact, able and free to be ignorant. The older, although not much older, remember and bear the scars. They live their lives with pieces missing...

"Do you have everything you need to control blood loss if we do this now?" Troy asked, interrupting the argument. "I'm with Montez. He needs a hospital. Do you need a surgeon on the radio before we do this?"

"No," Gabriella said, her voice hard. "I've done this before. Just go quick. It will be better for everyone. He's in shock. We need to hurry."

The shock that never goes away each time someone new makes it to the fringe of the camp. The long trek through the woods. The roughly patched up wounds. The fear that tingles through their bodies and leaks from their eyes. Gabriella reaches to caress the handless wrist of a young man whose skin is dark as espresso...

They worked quickly, removing pieces of the set from their way and loosening the saw from the floor. Gabriella and Chad worked together to keep blood loss to a minimum, but even Chad would admit that most of the directions came from Gabriella and her knowledge of tissue and nerves and muscles as they worked was more extensive than his. Chad had a chilling reminder of her first days on the job. He also recognized the blank look on her face as she struggled to keep her emotions at bay. The ride in the ambulance was fast and filled with Gabriella relaying vitals over her radio to the team of trauma doctors waiting at the hospital. When they arrived at the emergency room doors, Gabriella continued to relay information as they wheeled Connor into a room. Chad stopped watching Gabriella and began watching the doctors.

When they were finished, Chad went to the supply room to restock on materials. Gabriella offered to grab them coffee. It was creeping towards 9 o'clock and dinner seemed as though it had been hours ago. When he was finished, Chad went looking for Gabriella. Thinking she meant to meet him at the ambulance, he pushed their freshly made gurney through the bay doors and looked around for her. He found her on the curb, out of the way. Her elbows rested on her knees and she held her head in her hands. He didn't see coffee.

"Montez?" Chad called, his footsteps cautious and light.

"I just—," She swallowed and her voice went higher than usual. "I just need a minute. I'm sorry. I can't—I just need a moment."

The shouting and the yelling. The sound of rifles being loaded and bullets being fired. The sound of machetes in the jungle and screams of those who didn't run fast enough...

"Okay," Chad responded. Stepping closer, he sat down beside her. They weren't touching but she would know he was there. "We can wait. Just take some time."

Taylor's palm opening like petals on a flower to reveal her prize. The rough, ugly, brownish stone that resembles nothing like the stones in the windows of boutiques in upscale Los Angeles. The click of her camera as she captures the horrors on film and writes for those who can't...

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I keep doing this to you and it's not fair."

"Hey, you were great tonight. You kept the kid calm, got him here alive. You directed the fire guys and came up with a game plan," Chad scratched his head. "Tell me what you keep doing that you need to apologize for. You do the job, Gabriella. You do the job well. We all have moments when we need to catch our breath."

Gabriella opened her mouth and then shut it. Staring at her hands, she nodded, inhaling deeply and letting it out slowly. Beside her, Chad waited quietly. She was about to speak when the alarm on the ambulance radio sounded requesting them to re-enter service to help at a vehicle accident two blocks over. Chad stood first and turned, offering her a hand. Accepting it, she let him haul her to her feet before letting go. Quickly, they repacked their ambulance and climbed in. Gabriella flicked on the sirens as they pulled away from the hospital.