At 5:03 a.m., right on schedule, the charge desk phone rang. I happened to be passing by, so I answered it.
"Metro General ER, this is Jimmy."
"Hi, this is Sandra from Sunset Gardens. We're calling EMS, but I just wanted to give you report. We've got an 82-year-old female, ground-level fall, found down by her bed about twenty minutes ago. She's alert and oriented but complaining of hip pain..."
I took the report, hung up, and then turned to Chloe. "And there it is. 5 a.m. Right on time."
"What?"
"Someone just went to check on grandma and found herdown on the floor. Gravity. It's not just a good idea, it's the law."
Chloe looked confused. "Is that... normal?"
"Like clockwork. The 5 a.m. nursing home calls are as predictable as the sunrise. Poor lady probably got up to use the bathroom, got a little dizzy, down she went. We'll get her sorted out."
As the ambulance pulled up outside, I felt the familiar satisfaction of another night shift drawing to a close. We'd handled gunshot wounds disguised as construction accidents, embarrassing injuries that required delicate care, and now we'd help an elderly woman who'd had an unlucky encounter with gravity.
This was the job: meeting people in their worst moments and somehow making them better, one patient at a time. No judgment, no questions they didn't want to answer, just care.
And in a few hours, day shift would take over, and we'd do it all again tomorrow night.
chapter
five
The first dayoff after a forty-eight-hour shift was always a disorienting limbo. My body, still humming with the ghost vibrations of the engine and the phantom shrill of alarm tones, didn't know what to do with stillness. My apartment, a small but meticulously clean one-bedroom in a quiet part of the city, felt like an alien planet compared to the controlled chaos of Station 2. Here, there were no checklists, no urgent calls, no crew to manage. There was only me.
I spent the first few hours in a ritual of decontamination, both physical and mental. My dirty station uniform went straight into the washing machine on the sanitary cycle, a habit ingrained so deeply it was second nature. I stood under the spray of a scalding hot shower for a solid twenty minutes, methodically scrubbing away the grime and the lingering smell of smoke that seemed to seep into my pores. It wasn't just about being clean; it was about washing away the shift, shedding the skin of Lieutenant Delgado to find the woman underneath.
The woman underneath, I reflected as I pulled on a pair of worn-out sweatpants and a threadbare academy t-shirt, was a lot less sure of herself.
At the station, I was in command. My orders werefollowed without question because my crew trusted my judgment. My world was a series of problems with tactical solutions: a fire required water, an entrapment required hydraulics, a medical emergency required a clear protocol. I knew the steps. I knew the rules.
Here, in the quiet of my own living room, the problems were messier. There was the ever-growing stack of paperwork for my Captain's promotion exam, a mountain of policies and procedures I had to memorize. And, of course, the low-grade hum of anxiety about BC Evans and the political games being played by Lieutenant Santoro.
The car incident still burned, three months later. Not because of what happened (which was objectivelyhilarious), but because of how Santoro had weaponized it.
I'd dealt with Santoro's brand of bullshit before. The way he'd talk over me in officer meetings. The backhanded compliments—"Pretty good stop for a crew your size" or "Impressive you got that line stretched so fast, considering." The jokes that weren't quite jokes, delivered with a smile that dared you to take offense. Deniable. Always deniable.
But that had been generic asshole behavior. The ambient misogyny of a guy who resented sharing space with women but knew better than to say it out loud. The car incident had made it personal. Like a bully who'd always been looking for an excuse, and now he had one.Look what you made me do.
It had been a nothing call. Automatic fire alarm at a dentist's office, probably a contractor setting off dust. But when the tones dropped, Santoro's pristine white Dodge Charger was parked directly in front of Engine 18's bay door. He'd been at Station 2 for some battalion meeting, supposedly "just running in for a minute."
I'd gone looking for him. Day room, empty. Kitchen, empty. I was checking the back hallway when I heard the diesel engine fire up behind me.
By the time I got back to the apparatus bay, the Charger wassitting on the grass strip next to the parking lot, and Engine 18 was rolling out. Thompson was climbing into his seat with the expression of a man who had done nothing wrong and would swear to it in court. Benny's face was carefully neutral, which was how I knew he'd helped.
I didn't order it. I didn't do it. But God help me, I laughed my ass off.
Santoro emerged from the bathroom ninety seconds later, still tucking in his shirt, to find his car decorating the lawn like a misplaced garden ornament. By the time we got back from the false alarm, he’d already been on the phone with someone — I never found out who.
If Thompson's crew had done that to Martinez's Honda, it would've been a legend. They'd still be telling the story at retirement parties twenty years from now. But when my crew did it to Santoro's Charger, suddenly it was "evidence of a hostile work environment" and "questions about Lieutenant Delgado's command presence."
Evans had called me into his office the next week. "Look, I know Santoro can be... particular," he'd said, not meeting my eyes. "But you've got to keep your guys in line. This kind of thing doesn't look good for someone up for promotion."
"My guys cleared an obstructed bay door so we could respond to a call," I'd said. "They didn't damage anything. They didn't touch him. They moved a car that shouldn't have been there."
"I know, I know. But perception matters, Delgado. You've got to think about how things look."
