Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

" I 'm hungry," Eric announced as he dropped down on the couch near her, well, more like practically fell on top of her. He threw his arm around her shoulders as he leaned back against 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 murmured absently as she flicked through the channels of the station's large flatscreen television. It figured that the one time that she had sole control of the remote that there was nothing on.

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

Normally, she would have stolen it back on principle alone, 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 and thanks to three bang-outs, they'd been going all day without a break and only got back to the station a half-hour ago.

After cleaning out the truck and restocking it, she'd somehow managed to drag herself into the station and dropped down on the couch, where she'd been counting down the minutes until she could go home, order a pizza, take a shower, and do a load of laundry before she crashed for the night, knowing that she had to get up early tomorrow morning to do it all over again. Just as she was imagining how good it would feel to crawl into her bed, the phone rang, shattering her fantasy.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Eric said, groaning as he got to his feet and made his way to the phone by the old desk and dropped down on the chair being held together by duct tape and a few prayers. With a resigned sigh, he picked up the phone as he reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose while Joe sat there, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth.

Dispatch wouldn't screw them over again, would they? When she saw Eric's jaw clench, she got her answer. Yes, yes, they would, in fact, screw them over, happily so, it seems.

"We were supposed to be off four hours ago. Yeah, I know we're short-staffed, but we've been going all day," Eric said as he stood up and began pacing around the room as far as the tangled phone cord would allow. "We have no problem covering 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 cleaned ambulance, knowing that 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, violently rocking the ambulance.

"This is fucking ridiculous," Eric 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 was probably necessary.

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

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

"If I insist about what?" Joe asked as she quickly double-checked the restraints to make sure that they had enough.

"On making me spaghetti for dinner," Eric said with a heartfelt sigh as he jumped out of the back of the ambulance, hoping that she'd just give in and do it. He was a starving man, after all.

Joe snorted as they pushed the stretcher towards Nicholson House, the shithole 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 fucked-up nursing homes that had no fucking clue what they were doing. They'd dealt with nursing homes that had no idea that one of their residents had been dead for two days or that one of their patient's bed sores had turned into five-inch craters on their backs and legs because they couldn't be bothered to roll them over. They'd also seen patients left tied to chairs in the middle of the hallway for days at a time 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 companies that were more concerned with milking the insurance for every dime that they could get their hands on instead of their staff's safety. Dangerous work conditions, flax rules, shit wages, and piss poor treatment caused high turnovers in most of the residential programs they'd come across. It was just common sense that if you constantly fucked over your employees that you were going to eventually be left with the employees who had no fucking clue what they were doing and really didn't fucking care.

Nicholson House was a prime example of a fucked-up residential program. Twelve years ago, when they'd started out as EMTs, Nicholson House had been ruled with an iron fist. The seasoned staff had been well-trained and didn't take any 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, they didn't hesitate to bring them back in line and get them to focus on their 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 might make it a point to know exactly where they were and what they were doing. At the very least, he would damn well make sure that all the sharp objects in the house were locked up.

Eric bit back a curse as they pulled the stretcher up the cracked walkway of the dimly lit yard and passed a group of employees smoking. One of the employees acknowledged them with a small wave, but other than that, they were pretty much ignored.

"Hold on," Eric said as Joe raised her hand to knock on the door. "I have a bad feeling about something," he said, stepping past her and opened the unlocked door.

He shoved the stretcher to the side of the walkway, not wanting to leave it unsupervised in the house or scare the hell out of the residents with it. The sight of their stretcher had set off more than one fight in programs like this in the past. Since the patients with violent tendencies were usually the last to find out that they were being transferred to another psychiatric facility, they usually got paranoid when they saw a stretcher suddenly appear. Since he liked to avoid helping restrain a patient that wasn't his, they'd leave the stretcher outside until they needed it.

They walked into the large house and closed the door behind them. Joe gestured to a sign above the alarm that read, Door must remain locked and armed at all times. No excuses!

"Nice," Eric said, sighing heavily as they walked past a large living room where three patients were playing a video game.

A young guy the size of a linebacker suddenly stood up, glaring at them. "You better hope you're not here for me!" he bit out, taking a menacing step towards Joe.

"Take another step towards my partner and I will be," Eric promised as he smoothly stepped in front of Joe, who muttered an exasperated, "Really?" since she rarely took threats from patients seriously, which really pissed him off most of the time. Kind of like now.

The man hesitated before shifting nervously. Not that Eric could blame him. He'd hate having no fucking say in his life, never mind being the last one to find out a major life decision had been made for him without his input. Not that he didn't understand the reasoning behind it.

As the person who usually had the misfortune of being the bearer of the Section 12, he knew the reasoning behind not telling the patient the bad news until the last minute. Some patients didn't take it well, he sure as hell wouldn't, and they went through several predictable stages, denial, acceptance, outrage, and violence. Then again, a large percentage of the patients accepted their fate without taking it out on the messenger. He knew that it wasn't always easy to tell how a person would react to a Section 12, and for shit pay, he'd probably pass the buck off onto someone else too. Then again, he wasn't a pussy and didn't believe in bullshitting people.

"Oh, thank God, you're here!" a man announced a little too dramatically for Eric's comfort.

With a bad feeling, Eric turned around to see the newcomer and had to bite back a curse when the guy pressed his hand against his chest. He was at least four inches shorter than Joe and was basically skin and bone. Eric quickly glanced back at the guy who could easily pass as a linebacker for the Raiders and then back to the guy who was being paid to keep him in line.

Right...

"Are they here for me, Donny?" the linebacker demanded.

The twig named Donny noticeably swallowed and stepped back as he tried to wave it off. "No, they're not here for you, John." The linebacker glared at Donny for another moment before nodding firmly and returning to his game.

"What's going on today?" Joe asked.

Donny bit his lip nervously. "We're having problems getting one of our patients to take his medication tonight," he admitted.

Eric shared a look with Joe as he ran a frustrated hand through his short hair. "Has the patient attacked anyone? Threatened to hurt himself or been requested by his doctor to be removed from the property?" Eric asked with a frustrated sigh, telling himself that they really weren't being held over for this bullshit.

Donny sighed dramatically. "We're hoping your presence will scare him into taking his pills."

"You called 911 to scare a resident?" Joe choked out in disbelief.

"The pills are important," Donny said, frowning as though this should be obvious. "If he doesn't take his pills, he becomes violent and then we have to call you. So, we're just saving you the trouble now."

Eric felt like pointing out that they didn't have to call 911 if a patient became violent because it was his job to keep the patient under control, not theirs.

"Where is he now?" Joe asked on a resigned sigh.

Donny gestured lazily towards the stairs that led to the second floor. "Oh, he's asleep."

"You called 911 for a patient who's sleeping? A patient that posed absolutely no threat to anyone at the moment because he refused to take his pills?" Eric snapped.

Donny shifted nervously as he took a step away from them as though they were crazy.

"Sir, do you realize that when you call 911 for a nonemergency that you're taking away resources that might be needed elsewhere?" Joe asked in that polite tone that let him know just fucking pissed she really was. Eric wouldn't have bothered with the niceties. He would have just called the guy a fucking moron and accepted the write-up.

"It's an emergency," Donny muttered pathetically.

"Actually, we're not sure whether he took his pills or not," a woman said as she joined them.

Joe and Eric looked past Donny to find a middle-aged woman walking towards them carrying a thick black binder and several prescription bottles.

Donny huffed at the woman. "I know that he didn't take his pills tonight."

The woman held up the binder. "Tom marked the sheet that he gave him the pills tonight."

"No, he didn't because he left five hours before the pills were due, so he obviously messed up," Donny snapped at the woman, whose face turned bright red.

"The pill count doesn't add up either," she mumbled quietly.

Donny rolled his eyes. "You're new here. You still don't know how this works."

She looked like she was about to cry, and really, if they didn't get the hell out of here soon so that he could go home, then he'd probably cry, too. "Do you mind if I take a look?" Eric asked, gesturing to the binder in her arms.

She nodded as she handed him the binder with her thumb bookmarking a section. "That's for Adam. He's supposed to take three pills, three times a day, but when I counted the pills, there were twenty too many in each bottle. I don't think he's been taking them."

"Let me see those," Donny snapped, grabbing the bottles and quickly counted the pills in the first bottle. After the first count, he counted again, only to go pale as soon as he was done. "This can't be right."

Great, so they had no fucking clue when the guy took his last pill.

"Police," a familiar voice announced with a loud knock at the door. A few seconds later, Tyler, a cop they'd run into from time to time, stepped into the house.

"Hey, Tyler," Joe said with a warm smile.

"Hi, Joe."

Call him crazy, but Eric really didn't think the smile Tyler was sending Joe was something that a happily engaged man should be doing. It was certainly doing a great job of pissing him off. Then again, he was already pissed about this bullshit call and having a cop devour Joe with his eyes wasn't exactly helping.

"They want us to play boogie man and scare a patient into taking his meds," Eric drawled, drawing Tyler's attention back to him.

Tyler frowned. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Not even a little bit," Joe said, biting back a yawn.

"He's, um, he's very dangerous without his meds," Donny stammered defensively.

"Considering no one seems to know the last time he took his pills, maybe you should have called his doctor instead of 911," Eric pointed out.

Donny opened his mouth to argue but sighed instead. "You're right. I'm really sorry about this, but could you please give us a hand since you're here?" he asked, sounding close to crying. When Eric and Joe shared a look with Tyler, Donny quickly added. "Adam's upstairs right now if you want to talk to him."

Joe opened her mouth to say something only to be cut off by the linebacker now gawking at them. "You're here for Adam?" he asked in disbelief. "Good luck with that. That guy's fucking crazy!" as the rest of the patients quickly nodded in agreement.

Oh, that couldn't be good…

Apparently, Joe agreed if the glare she sent him was any indication. "You are so buying me dinner tonight. Don't even think about arguing," she said in the same tone she used one week every month when she couldn't get enough chocolate and everything he did seemed to piss her off. Was it the twenty-third already, Eric idly wondered. Nah, he still had another two weeks before he had to live in fear.

"Fine, but I hope you like ordering your meal through a clown's mouth," Eric snapped back.

Shaking her head in disgust, Joe gestured for Donny to show them to the patient. After a pregnant pause, the man reluctantly started up the stairs, followed by Joe and him at eye level with her perfectly rounded ass, forcing him to bite back a groan.

"You're buying me a steak dinner," Joe hissed softly over her shoulder.

He snorted. "The only steak dinner you'll get out of me tonight is a burnt hamburger patty covered in canned gravy."

"You cheap bastard!" she hissed, making him grin. That is until the bastard trailing after them that he'd forgotten about opened his big fucking mouth.

"I'd be more than happy to make this call up to you with a steak dinner, Joe," Tyler announced.

Without pausing, Joe looked back at Tyler and gave him a warm smile. "Aw, you're so sweet, Tyler," she whispered as she turned to watch where she was going, but not before she stuck her tongue out at him.

Eric glared over his shoulder at Tyler and hissed, "You betraying bastard!"

Tyler grinned hugely as he mouthed, "I know."