Authors note: This story was written in response to a challenge issued by Todd F who is laid up after having surgery on his PCL. I guess misery loves company.

Weasels, Raffles and Puddles -- Oh My!

By Jane Woods

Fireman Chet Kelly opened the station’s bay doors and went out to take his turn at raising the flag. When this was done he stretched and looked around enjoying the beautiful California morning. Everything seemed peaceful and right with the world as he looked north but when he turned and looked south he saw something that made him go suddenly pale. There was a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach which immobilized him with fear for a moment. Then he snapped out of it and ran toward the station as fast as he could. He had to warn the others before it was too late.

He ran through the apparatus bay and into the day room. He skidded into the table where the engine crew was enjoying one last cup of coffee. “It’s Weasel,” he panted fearfully. “Weasel is coming.

Captain Stanley grabbed his cup and headed for his office, closing and locking the door behind him. Mike made a beeline for the washroom climbing into the shower and closing the door.

Chet and Marco tripped over each other as they both climbed into the storage closet in the apparatus bay.

Roy DeSoto was in the middle of the morning equipment check with Rampart. He couldn’t move without possibly ruining the test. He glared at the disappearing engine crew who had just left the paramedics to fall pray to Weasel. Johnny was on the creeper under the squad checking for a problem with the muffler that C-shift had reported. He hadn’t seen all the activity as the other guys took cover. There was nothing else either of them could do. Roy looked toward the open bay door and prepared to meet his fate.

It was a short wait. The redheaded eight year old skidded his banana seat bike to a halt next to the squad. “Hi Roy,” he greeted him with a predatory smile that a used care salesman would envy.

“Hello Weasel.” Roy was far less enthusiastic.

“Where’s Johnny?”

Roy pointed to the legs protruding from underneath the squad.

Weasel leaned his bike up against the squad, walked around to the other side and crawled under the squad so he was close to Johnny’s head. “Hiya Johnny!”

“Hi Weasel.” Johnny was a bit distant.

“Have I got a deal for you! You can’t lose!”

“That’s what you said last time. And the time before that,” Johnny reminded him.

“But, Johnny, this time it’s a sure thing,” Weasel assured him.

“I don’t know Weasel,” Johnny said seriously as he worked. He’d found the problem with the muffler. It looked like it had been knocked loose so Johnny was tightening up the bracket that held it in place. He hadn’t found any other damage but neither Dwyer nor Carlson was much of a mechanic.

“Come on, Johnny, it’s for a good cause,” Weasel pleaded, trying to sound like a sweet, innocent kid.

“What is it this time?” Johnny sighed. He was pretty sure he was about to be taken once again by this kid.

“The PTA is having a raffle. The money goes to get some new playground equipment. You know to keep kids like me off the streets and out of fire stations.”

“If that’s the case, he’s right, Johnny. We can’t lose,” Roy declared as he put the equipment away in the bay of the squad. “That ought to be worth one ticket anyway. Okay, I’ll buy one.”

“Not so fast, Roy,” Johnny said, crawling out from under the squad. “We don’t even know what they’re raffling off yet.”

Weasel had gotten out from under the squad quicker than Johnny had and had raced over to the other side where Johnny was, so fast that Johnny was startled to see him waiting for him as he got up from the creeper. “Thought you’d never ask,” he said triumphantly, knowing he had Johnny in the palm of his hand. Ceremoniously he took a folded color brochure out of his pocket and handed it to Johnny.

A whistle of admiration escaped Johnny’s lips. “That’s a beauty! You sure this is the prize?”

“Yep. A kid in my class’s father owns an appliance store. He donated it. It’s a tax write off for him and the chance of a lifetime for you. How many firemen do you know that own a large screen projection TV? You’d be the envy of the department. It’ll impress all the other guys,” Weasel laid on thick. “The drawing is tonight but you don’t have to be there to win. They’ll call you here at the station.” The kid knew Johnny was hooked. He managed to hustle him for $10 worth of raffle tickets. “Thanks, Johnny. I just know you’re going to win this time,” Weasel promised.

“I hope so,” Johnny mused still looking longingly at the picture. “Oh here. Don’t you want this back?”

“Naw, you can keep it. I don’t have any more tickets to sell anyway,” Weasel said. “I better get going. Don’t want to be late for school today. We’re going on a field trip to the LeBrea tar pits!”

Roy just shook his head in disbelief but happily put his own wallet away and wondered what the chances were of Weasel somehow slipping into the tar pits. He supposed that that was about as likely as Johnny actually winning the raffle.

Weasel got back on his bike and rode to the rear of the bay. He banged on the door of the storage closet. “You guy can come out now,” he hollered then spun around and raced out the open door and out of sight.

“How’d he know we were in there?” Chet wondered as he and the rest of the engine crew emerged from their hiding places.

“How does he always know when it’s the day after payday? That’s what I’d like to know,” Captain Stanley stated.

“How much did he sucker you out of this time, Gage?” Chet asked Johnny.

“None of your business. Besides, you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face when I win this.” Johnny flashed the TV brochure in front of Chet’s face. “This is going to be a real chick magnet, Chet, ma boy, and I can think of several young ladies I’d like to invite up to my apartment to help me break this little number in,” Johnny said smugly.

“Not that your love life doesn’t need all the help it can get but first you gotta win it, Pal,” Chet scoffed.

“Don’t you worry. I’m gonna win it. I feel it in my bones,” Johnny insisted.

“That’s what you said last time,” Marco reminded him as they all headed back into the day room.

“And the time before that,” Mike agreed.

“Yeah, well it’s different this time,” Johnny argued as the rest of the crew, including Roy turned their backs on him and left the bay. He looked back at the brochure for a minute then folded it up and put it in his pocket. He wondered which girl he should invite first as he followed the other guys into the day room.

He was surprised to see Roy over by the pay phone thumbing through the yellow pages. “What’re ya looking for?”

“A plumber,” Roy mumbled in a distracted manner.

“What for?”

“Kitchen sink leaks. Joanne is getting sick of mopping up puddles”

“Oh hey, wait a minute there, Roy,” Chet began with an evil glint in his eye. “If you’re having major plumbing problems, I think the former owner might be legally liable. You’ve been in that house less than a year, haven’t you?”

“Little over a year but I don’t see ----”

“Didn’t you buy that house from Gage?” Chet asked innocently as he poured the last of the coffee into his cup.

“Now wait a minute, Chet. I never actually owned that house.” Johnny took the bait hook, line and sinker.

“That’s not the way I remember it. Weren’t you supposedly helping your good pal Roy look for a house and then when you found a perfect one, didn’t you buy it out from under him?” Chet cross-examined him with Perry Mason-like skill.

“Hey, it wasn’t my fault he took so long making up his mind. It gave me the chance to realize how much I really liked the place, is all.” Johnny argued.

“Then didn’t you try and sell it to him for a profit?” Mr Mason continued.

“Well, I couldn’t let him have it for what I paid -- could I? You’re supposed to make a profit on real estate.” Johnny flared.

“Some friend,” Chet snorted.

“Knock it off, Chet.” Roy stepped in. “Thanks to Joanne’s negotiating skills we were able to come to a fair and equitable agreement about the whole thing.”

“Oh yeah? What was it?” Chet asked as he reached for a doughnut from the box in the center of the table.

“Joanne said that Johnny was entitled to a finders’ fee since he was the one that found the house so we paid him $10 over what he paid and he has a standing invitation to dinner every year on the anniversary of the closing,” Roy told him.

“And it’s worked out just fine so just keep your mouth shut, Chet,” Johnny said snidely.

“Yeah up till now. Now the place is starting to fall apart. First the plumbing, who knows what it’ll be next. Not that plumbing alone isn’t expensive enough.” Chet just loved to stir things up.

“Shut up, Chet,” Johnny, Roy and Marco said in unison.

“I’m just trying to help,” Chet said innocently.

Roy just shook his head and went back to flipping through the yellow pages.

“You know,” Johnny said to him quietly. “The jerk is right about one thing, plumbers are expensive. I bet you and I could fix the leak ourselves tomorrow on our day off.”

“You think so?” Roy asked hopefully.

“Sure,” Johnny scoffed, taking the phone book out of Roy’s hands. He put it back in its place under the pay phone. Then he steered Roy to the table. Those doughnuts Chet was eating looked good and he could use another cup of coffee. “I mean how complicated could it be. Plumbing is fairly straight forward. We just find the place where it’s leaking and tighten it up or push come to shove we replace a pipe or a fitting. Problem solved --- hey who drank all the coffee?”

Chet scurried out of Johnny’s reach. He wouldn’t put it past him to throw the empty pot at him. When he felt safe he laughed. “Gage and DeSoto, master plumbers. Sounds like a bad sitcom idea. What the heck do you two know about plumbing?”

“It can’t be as complicated as say the human body and we know quite a bit about that as trained paramedics,” Johnny shot back at him.

“Well you couldn’t do much without your equipment. Does either of you have plumbing tools? A pipe wrench, even soldering tools? By the time you buy all the stuff you need, you’d spend almost as much as you would on a plumber and not get his expertise,” Chet insisted.

“I have a pipe wrench,” Roy told him.

“And I have soldering tools and I know how to use them,” Johnny said as he sat down at the table and reached for a doughnut to go with the glass of milk he’d poured himself. “I’ll bring it over tomorrow morning and we can---”

He was interrupted by the loud sound of a thick phone book being slammed down on the table between them. “Call a plumber,” the cap said in a curt tone of voice.

“But Cap,” Johnny began, once he got over his initial shock.

“No, Gage, we’ve been through this kind of thing with you two before. For the sake of your friendship and Roy’s marriage to say nothing of the peace and quiet of this station, I am ordering you to forget the do it yourself stuff right now and call in a professional. Roy, it’ll be a lot cheaper to do in now than after you and Gage screw things up even more. Trust me on this,” Captain Stanley commanded.

Johnny looked like he still wanted to argue but Roy just nodded and went back over to the phone book. The cap stood there with his hands on his hips until he heard Roy make arrangements with a plumber to come and fix the leak in his kitchen sink. Then he relaxed, assigned everyone a task and went back to his office to attack his paperwork. It was not his favorite task but he was feeling too good to let it get him down. Soon Joanne DeSoto could stop mopping up puddles and not even have to feel tempted to kill her husband and his partner. He’d stopped a Johnny Gage harebrained scheme in its tracks, one which could well have wrecked Roy’s marriage knowing the way things often got out of hand with Johnny’s bright ideas. And maybe best of all they’d seen the last of Weasel for a while. Or so he thought until around 1 o’clock that afternoon when they answered the call for assistance at a Motor vehicle accident.....

When they pulled up to the scene Captain Stanley’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of an overturned tanker that appeared to be leaking. He shoved open his door and called to Vince Howard, the officer who was in charge of the scene. “Are we going to need to call for Haz Mat, Vince?” he asked pointed to the tanker.

“Naw, I don’t think so -- unless you guys call milk a hazardous material. It is starting to stink though so I’d say getting it washed away would be job one. No one seems to be badly hurt from what I can see,” Vince reported.

“Okay, Roy, John, you go check out all the victims. The rest of you hose down that spill,” he ordered. He was amazed that there were no serious injuries as he could count four vehicles, in addition to the tanker truck that looked to have very recent damage to them and two others that were parked helter skelter on the roadway as if they had skidded in the spilled milk. “Don’t even think about saying it, Chet,” he told Chet nipping all the puns in the bud. “Looks like we lucked out this time, Vince,” he commented.

“Luckily no one was going very fast and most of them were wearing seatbelts. Maybe all those PSA’s the department’s doing about them is starting to pay off,” Vince told him.

“This sure could have been a lot worse,” Captain Stanley agreed.

Roy and Johnny were also thankful that the injuries were no worse than they were. It took very little time to sort out the various minor lacerations and contusions. Everyone had gotten themselves out of their cars and were walking around surveying the damage and exchanging insurance information.

Johnny was applying a Band-Aid to one woman’s forehead while Roy tried to cope with the case of hysterical hiccups that her husband was experiencing. “Do you believe this?!” she asked Johnny as he worked.

“I’d say everybody was pretty lucky,” he said.

“Yeah but I still have to tell you that I saw my whole life flash before me when the car started to spin. Just like on TV. That ever happen to you, John?”

“Can’t say it has, ma’am.”

“Well, I sure don’t ever want it to happen to me again. I mean one minute I was looking at the school bus in the rear view mirror the next minute it was like the Ice Capades or something,” she babbled on.

Johnny had not been paying too much attention to what she said but he suddenly tuned in. School bus in the rear view mirror? If there was a bus behind their car, where did it go? There was no way it could have gotten around the accident and gone on as the overturned tanker was blocking off the road in both directions. “Did you say school bus?”

“Yes, it was right behind us. Wonder where they went? I don’t think they had enough room to turn around, do you?”

Johnny didn’t. The ground sloped down steeply away from the road on each side. Nothing the size of a school bus could have turned around. That only left one sickening alternative. “Roy, if you’re about done there, I think the cap wants us,” he said to Roy, not wanting to further upset Roy’s patient who had finally stopped hiccuping.

As they walked away from the couple who were the last ones they’d found requiring any treatment, Roy shot Johnny a curious glance. Chet and Marco certainly didn’t need any help with the milk so what could the cap have wanted with them. They arrived at the cap’s side before Roy could ask.

“Cap,” Johnny began nervously. “The woman I was treating says that there was a school bus right behind them. Since I don’t see any sign of one, I thought we ought to check around a little in the gulleys along the road just in case she was right.”

“Go ahead but those are a little deep to be called gulleys I think. And, John, just look. Call out if you find anything. Don’t go wandering off,” the cap warned.

They each took one side of the road and walked back away from the wreck. There were no guard rails and tall, yellowed grass grew along side the road. There were no tell tale skid marks on the pavement that either of them could see. They each hoped that the bus had turned off onto a side road long before the place where the tanker had jackknifed and overturned and the woman had been mistaken about seeing it right before they spun out.

Suddenly Johnny noticed that some of the grass on his side of the road had been recently flattened. Not a good sign. He called Roy over to get his opinion. Roy looked down at the grass where he was pointing and then up at Johnny with a worried look on his face. They had been working together long enough that sometimes verbal communications weren’t necessary. Johnny knew that Roy thought the same thing as he did. He walked closer to the drop off. It wasn’t steep but there, about 30 feet away, he did see a school bus. It had come to a stop in a small pool of water that was being fed from a culvert that ran under the road. Even though it was sunny where they were, it may have been raining in the higher elevations and the run off went down to the LA Basin. The water level was just over the large bus tires but it was slowly rising. They were too far away to see if there was any activity on the bus.

Johnny looked at Roy. He was strangely quiet. He even looked a little pale. “You okay, Roy?”

“Yeah. It’s just that well my kids ride a school bus,” Roy said quietly.

“Roy, it’s not even 2 o’clock yet. Your kids are still in school. This bus is probably empty. The driver was probably headed for his assigned school to get the kids for the afternoon run,” Johnny reasoned.

“You’re probably right, Junior,” Roy said brightening. “But we still gotta go get the driver out. He may not want to open the door for fear of flooding the bus. Let’s go report to the cap and get this rescue under way!”

“You go. I’ll just --”

“You’ll just wait for orders from the cap,” Roy said in his senior partner voice. Johnny had just belayed his fears about his kids, he wasn’t ready to start worrying about Johnny and whatever daredevil plan he had in mind. It was only about seven or eight feet down the slope to the flatter area where the bus was and it wasn’t especially steep or rocky but Johnny often did find a way to get hurt or at least to make him think he was going to. Sometimes he was worse than a kid when it came to making him lose his hair with worry.

Roy returned with the cap and Mike just as Johnny was about to go down to the bus on his own. Chet and Marco arrived a few minutes later with ropes and climbing gear.

“Any sign of movement down there, John?” the cap asked him.

“Don’t see any, Cap. We need to get closer,” Johnny told him.

The cap sized up the situation for a minute. “Okay, go ahead. Stand by with the ropes for now till we see what we’ve got.”

Johnny carefully made his way down the incline. The earth was soft under the dry grass and he dug his heels in as he went down. Roy was right behind him and he was using the depressions Johnny’s heels made to get down to the flatter area where the bus was. They both approached the edge of the pond. They were facing the rear of the bus but the shadow of the higher ground made the bus appear to be dark inside.

Johnny was about to holler to see if anyone was inside when one of the windows slid open. “Hiya Roy, Johnny. We just had the coolest ride!”

Roy and Johnny were of two minds. They were overjoyed to see some sign of life on the bus but why did it have to be Weasel of all people? Johnny found his voice first. “Hi Weasel. Is everyone alright in there?”

“Yeah sure. Tommy Wilson puked but what else is new? Wow! Look at all that water? Ya s’pose there’s any alligators in there?” Weasel was his usual enthusiastic, annoying self.

“Alligators aren’t native to California,” Roy told him.

“You sure? You outta see all the cool bones of monsters they have at the La Brea tarpits. There was monsters here once!”

“That was a long, long time ago,” Roy assured him.

“Too bad.” Weasel was crestfallen.

“You tell everyone to just stay calm. We’re going to get you out of there in a minute,” Johnny assured him.

Just then the rear emergency door of the bus opened. A middle aged, balding man stood there. He was carrying a bag of kitty litter in one hand and a stiff hand brush in the other. “This is a sweet mess isn’t it? The damn --” He was interrupted by a chorus of gasps and giggles from inside the bus. “That is the darned brakes locked up when we hit the wet spot. The only way I could avoid a crash was to steer the thing so that we ended up down here. It was a dry creek bed last time I was through here though.” He looked up at the culvert which was still spilling water into the pool they were sitting in. “Must be raining somewhere. Anyway, the engine is flooded so I can’t just back out. This water’ll be a little deep for some of these kids,” he told them.

Roy and Johnny waded into the knee deep cold water and joined the driver at the door. “What’s the cat litter for?” Roy asked completely puzzled.

“Tommy Wilson’s weak stomach,” the driver laughed. “You boys might want to step aside while I brush this out of the bus. The smell is enough to make the other kids sick too.” The litter soon absorbed the mess and the driver expertly brushed the whole thing outside and into the water.

By this time the cap and the others had arrived so Johnny and Roy waded back through the water to confer with him. Weasel also greeted the rest of the crew by name.

“Weasel twice in one day,” the cap muttered. “Oh well, we knew the Fire Service was dangerous when we joined. What you got there, John?”

“Nobody is hurt but the driver thinks that the water is too deep for the kids and it’s rising,” Johnny reported.

“If we put a ladder through that rear door the kids could walk on that instead of jumping into the water,” the cap thought out loud. “How many kids are there?”

“I’ll go ask,” Johnny said wading into the rising water once more. When he got up to the driver he asked how many were on the bus.

“Thirty two kids, one teacher and me. No moms, thank God. They tend to panic when anything out of the ordinary happens then the kids go wild. Also, I just looked at my watch and the possibility of getting a replacement bus at this time of day are about nil so I suggest you take the teacher out first so she can control them after you get them out. It might be a while.”

“Hey Johnny, is Mike gonna use the rig to pull the bus back up onto the road? That would be a real killer ride, man!”

“I’d like to leave that trouble maker here on the bus till they sent a replacement but knowing him, he’d sell the damn thing behind my back. You don’t know him,” the driver confided in Johnny.

“Fraid I do,” Johnny said sympathetically. He agreed with the driver about Weasel. He’d have to warn Mike to keep his eye on the engine around Weasel so he didn’t sell that.

“Well is he, Johnny? Is he?” Weasel would not be ignored.

“No, Weasel, we’re just going to get everyone out of this one. They’ll send another bus for you,” Johnny explained as he climbed into the bus.

“What about this one? They aren’t gonna just leave it here, are they? If so, can I have it?”

“No you can’t!” Johnny was becoming exasperated.

Suddenly the teacher stood up and walked toward him. Wow! Teachers didn’t look like that in his day.

“I’ll be right back, Tommy,” she assured the boy who was laying on one of the seats. “Hello, I’m Miss Simmons. Russell, you just sit down in your seat and behave and let the firemen do their job.” She spoke to Weasel in a no nonsense voice that he actually obeyed.

“Hello er Miss Simmons,” Johnny said with a wide grin. “I’m Johnny Gage. I’m pleased to meet you.”

“I feel like I already know you. Russell has told us so many stories about you and the other men at your station. We even took a field trip there couple of months ago but you and your partner were away from the station at the time.”

Johnny could have kicked himself. He and Roy had purposely hid out at Rampart when they knew that Weasel’s class was coming on a field trip. What the heck had he been thinking?!

“The children had a wonderful time.” She continued on in a quiet, confidential tone of voice, much to Johnny’s delight . “So did I, of course,” she laughed. “If I had never come to the station I would have never met Mike.”

“Mike? You mean Stoker?” Johnny was suddenly confused.

“Yes we’ve been dating ever since. Of course, the children don’t know so please keep it to yourself,” she whispered.

“You’re that Laurie he has done nothing but talk about?!” Johnny gasped in shock.

She blushed in response. Stoker, Johnny groaned to himself. Some guys had all the luck. Why’d I let Roy talk me into hiding out at Rampart?

“Johnny,” Roy called from the doorway of the bus.

“What?” Johnny snarled angrily.

“Wanna help me secure this ladder?” Roy was surprised at his attitude.

“Might as well,” Johnny muttered. He walked back to the door and jumped back into the water which was now nearly up to his thighs.

“What’s with you?” Roy demanded in a stage whisper.

“That cute teacher,” Johnny grumbled.

“I don’t believe you. You tried to hit on the teacher already?!”

Johnny just glared at him.

“Even you must see how ridiculous that was,” Roy insisted.

“Sure was. She’s dating Stoker. Do you believe that? Stoker. Met him on the day the class came to the station on a field trip. The day you dragged me off to Rampart to hide on Weasel,” Johnny accused.

“Wait a minute, Junior, that was your idea, if you recall.”

“You didn’t have to agree to it. You’re the senior partner, remember? I should have been there so I had a shot at her,” Johnny grumbled.

Roy just reached down to the waist high water and splashed Johnny who looked shocked. “As senior partner I’m now saying keep your mind on the job, Partner,” he growled.

Johnny wondered what the heck bit him.

Once they got the ladder secured Miss Simmons and Tommy were the first to leave the bus. The driver had everything under control on the bus and Miss Simmons handled the kids once they were out. However, after the first eight or nine were out the staging area at the edge of the water started getting a little crowded so the cap suggested Miss Simmons take the class up to the roadway and Fireman Mike would show them the engine.

“Fireman Mike,” Johnny muttered under his breath but soon he had another problem to worry about. A girl stood at the emergency exit door and stared down at the water that she could see rising and she froze with fear.

“Come on, honey,” Roy said kindly. He could see that this could be scary for a kid. “I’ll hold your hand the whole way. You’ll be fine.”

“No! No I can’t,” she burst into tears. Miss Simmons was up by the engine and the girl was inconsolable.

“Sure you can,” Roy tried to assure her.

“I can’t swim,” she admitted miserably.

“You won’t have to. You just step on the ladder one rung at a time.”

“Th-the water...it’s too scary,” she sobbed.

“Don’t look down,” Roy urged her on.

“I have to or I won’t know where to put my feet and I’ll fall into the water and get drownded.”

“Okay, Okay we’ll think of something. Do you want to step aside and let someone else come out first?”

“So you can leave me here all by myself for the rest of my life?!” She was getting hysterical now.

“If Missy’s not going -- none of us are going,” the other kids rallied around her. Only the driver’s experience as a Marine averted a full scale riot.

Marco waded out to see what was going on when the kids stopped getting off the bus. Roy gave him a quick explanation and he said he had an idea and he waded out of the water, spoke to the cap and went up to the roadway. They had just gotten the kids calmed down when he returned. He was carrying some six foot long 1x4 boards. He took them out to the bus and laid them down on the ladder forming a kind of ramp.

“I noticed one of the trucks on the other side of the tanker was a lumber truck so I borrowed these. Now you don’t have to look down at all,” he told the little girl with a smile.

“Will you hold my hand while I go down, Fireman Lopez?” she asked around a sob.

“It would be my great honor,” he told her with a formal bow.

Roy and Johnny exchanged puzzled looks but Marco’s Latin charm did the trick and soon they were getting kids off the bus again.

“Just like walking the plank!” Weasel shouted enthusiastically. “You sure there’s no alligators here? If you listen real hard you can almost hear that clock ticking.”

They decided that Weasel should be the next one off so they didn’t have another panic. Johnny thought even Weasel would be a refreshing change from all the eight years old girls who were now giggling about what a hunk Marco was.

Once Weasel was out of their hair things started going even more smoothly although it only took a few minutes before they heard the sound of the rig’s airhorn blasting which indicated to Johnny that Fireman Mike had his hands full with Weasel. The thought warmed his heart as he and Roy helped the last two kids off the bus. They walked them the whole way down the ladder. Johnny was in front with a girl while Roy took the last boy. He was a heavy-set kid who was obviously as scared as Missy had been but didn’t want to let the other kids know. It was why he’d waited until last to get off the bus.

The cap took the girl from Johnny and carried her the rest of the way to the shore. The water had risen enough that the shore was now a good foot from the end of the ladder. If it hadn’t been propped on a rock it would have been under the water at this end.

Johnny still stood in the water since they still had to retrieve the ladder. He promised himself a nice warm shower when they got back to the station. He turned his head to look back toward the bus. He could see the driver standing in the doorway waiting until the last kid was clear before he came down the make shift ramp. The water was deep enough now that he didn’t want to take a chance of knocking any of the kids in.

What he didn’t see was that Roy had to really urge the kid to jump off the end of the ladder to the shore line. This kid was too big to carry if they didn’t have to. So he finally made a mighty leap to make it to the shore. When he did, he dislodged one of the boards and it spun off the ladder with a pretty hefty force.

Since Johnny’s attention was elsewhere he didn’t see the plank of wood that was heading right for his knee but he sure felt it when it hit. He screamed as hot shockwaves of searing pain exploded in his knee. He grabbed it and immediately lost his balance. He fell over backwards and disappeared under the water.

Roy climbed over the ladder and made his way toward him as fast as he could. Which was not very fast in the now waist deep water. The driver leapt into the water from the bus and swam to Johnny’s aid also.

They reached him at the same time and after a few tries were able to yank him our of the water. He was coughing up water and it was having trouble breathing for a minute or so but when he got his breath back he also got his voice back “God damn! Son of a Bitch. Shit shit shit!!” he yelled in pain.

“Marco,” the cap said as he looked at the wide-eyed kids still with them. “Take the rest of the kids topside and bring back the equipment from the squad and a stokes. Have Stoker call in a Code-I and get an ambulance rolling. Help him, Chet.” He waded out into the cold water to help them with Johnny who was unable to support his own weight.

“Make sure you bring a padded splint and blankets,” Roy hollered after them. He wasn’t sure how badly Johnny was hurt but he’d seen that board hit him and it had hit hard. It could have shattered his knee cap. Judging from Johnny’s language, he was in severe pain.

When they got him to dry land they laid him on the ground. Roy cut his pantleg away. The knee was already swelling. A deep red mark indicated where the board had made contact with his knee. He really hoped the patella had dodged the bullet. Johnny screamed in agony every time he tried to palpate it so he gave up on the idea. He'd have to just treat it as he would a fracture and hope for the best.

Johnny was very pale. His eyes were closed tight and he was muttering “damn, damn, damn,” to himself softly. He was also shivering but then so were Roy and the driver. That water had been cold. And brackish and who knew how much of it Johnny had managed to swallow. Where the heck were those guys with the equipment?

“Hang in there, Pal,” Roy tried to be encouraging but he could tell his partner was in agony. He’d be glad when they were at Rampart where an orthopedist could take care of Johnny’s knee.

It was over twenty minutes later that Roy got his wish. He’d explained what had happened to Brackett over the biophone and he had a top orthopedist waiting in Treatment Room Four when they arrived. Roy soon found himself escorted out of the room and down to the lounge where the rest of the Engine company waited. He told them what he knew which wasn’t much and they filled him in on what happened at the accident scene after he left.

“You’ll never guess how they got the kids out of there and back to school,” Chet said conversationally.

“How?” Roy asked. He wanted to divert his mind from what was happening in Treatment Room Four. The more he thought about it the more horrible scenarios he came up with all of which could have been avoided if he had just carried the heavy kid to the shore instead of encouraging him to jump for it.

“There was no buses available and the kids were getting antsy so Vince called for a couple of paddy wagons to take them back to school. The teacher managed to convince them it was all part of the field trip but Vince said, and we all agreed, that Weasel should get used to riding in them anyway,” Chet laughed although his heart wasn’t really in it.

They continued to make small talk but their eyes kept straying to the clock. It was over an hour before Brackett came into the room to give them any news. They all pounced on him with questions before he could even pour himself a cup of coffee.

“Okay, okay one at a time,” Brackett protested.

“Suppose you just tell us what’s going on, Doc. Then we’ll ask our questions,” the cap suggested.

"Well the good news is there are no fractures but Johnny has suffered massive damage to his PCL," Dr. Brackett reported.

“What’s that in English, Doc?” Chet demanded.

“It’s a ligament, which is a fibrous band of tissue that, in this case, connects the tibia and the femur. There is one on either side of the knee -- anterior and posterior.”

“Will he need surgery?” Roy asked nervously.

“No. Not at this time anyway. Dr Nolan and I agree that it would be better to take a more conservative approach. With any luck the use of a brace and a regiment of physical therapy should do the trick.”

“Then he’ll be laid up for a while?” the cap asked.

“A couple of weeks anyway but we all know that Johnny is a fast healer. We’re sending him up to a room but he’s too medicated at the moment to know if he’s afoot or horseback so I suggest that you all come back tomorrow afternoon to visit him,” Brackett said standing up to leave. “And can the long faces. He was really quite lucky; that injury could have been a worse. A lot worse.”

The next afternoon Captain Stanley joined the others in Johnny’s room at Rampart. They were reading the cards and letters sent to Johnny by Miss Simmons' class. It seemed that most of the kids thought the bus accident was a lot more fun that the actual trip to the the tar pits but the thing that really impressed them was the fact that Fireman Johnny knew even more swear words that Busdriver Bill.

The cap knew Johnny well enough to be able to tell that he was putting on a false face for the others and was pretending to be a whole lot more chipper than he actually felt but he had some news that might just change that.

“Sorry I’m late, John. Right before I left the house I got a phone call from Joe Donaldson from B-shift,” he began but was quickly interupted by Chet.

“Captain Donaldson, what did he want? What did we forget to do?” Chet asked. Working at the same station as Captain Hook for a few years had caused him to be very suspicious of messages from captains of other shifts.

“Nothing. It seems that Johnny got a call, is all. A call from a Mrs Beatrice Battersley."

“Who?” Johnny asked in confusion.

“Don’t tell me you’re dating married women now, Gage,” Chet laughed.

“Dry up, Chet,” Johnny snarled and then turned back to the cap. “I don’t know anyone by that name, Cap.”

“Well, it seems she is the president of the Parker Street Elementary School PTA and she had been unable to reach your home number so she tried the alternate one she had which was the station.” The cap was dramatically building up the suspense but Gage didn’t seem to be getting the idea at all.

“What did she want?” Johnny was completely perplexed.

“Remember the raffle tickets you bought from Weasel? You won, ya twit. They want to know when you can take delivery of your new big screen projection TV.”

Johnny was in complete shock but the other guys made enough noise congratulating him that a grumpy nurse looked in to see what was going on.

“I won?” Johnny asked in disbelief.

“How about that, Junior? Now you’ll have a new toy to play with while your knee mends,” Roy said sounding as encouraging as possible.

“How bout that, is right,” Johnny grinned. “See I told you guys I was going to win!” Suddenly all was right with the world again. He now had a chick magnet and an injury to play on the sympathies of those chicks with. He didn’t mind being off work for a while now. He’d be too busy to work for the next few weeks anyway. Let Stoker have that teacher. He had bigger fish to fry. He remembered that the physical therapist here at Rampart was pretty cute. She’d probably like to make a house call and watch his new TV................................

Captain Stanley could almost see the wheels turning in Johnny's head. The grin he wore gave his thoughts away. Some things never changed, he thought with a shake of his head. Looking around the room he could tell that the other guys were thinking the same thing. It didn't take Chet long to invite the whole crew over to Johnny's to watch the upcoming Lakers game. Not that Johnny heard a word anyone said, he was too busy making other plans.

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