Thirty and Two
By W.D. James
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters belong to the mind of the author, W. D. James. Any similarity with real persons, living or deceased is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Similarity with current events is also purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All rights reserved. Except, as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the express written consent of the author, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
Copyright 2012 W. D. James
Cover art and photos Copyright 2012 Deb Moran.
Thirty and Two
Bobby Morris felt the sting of the sweat in his eyes. He leaned into his bicep and wiped his face with an already-soaked shirtsleeve.
“Fifteen and sixteen and seventeen,” he counted out loud to the rhythm of the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” that was blasting in his head, just like his instructor suggested.
The young woman under the heels of his hands was a former Girl Scout, one of a group he spoke to on a regular basis as part of the department mentoring program.
Morris remembered a Senior Girl Scouts presentation he gave a couple of years ago. The girls were in the ninth and tenth grade and at an age where a little guidance went a long way.
“Girls, what do you do if you’re at a party and someone gives you a drink?” Several hands went up.
“Alicia?” Morris picked a girl with long, straight blonde hair in the front row.
“If I don’t know the guy, I should say, “No thanks!” and get my own drink.”
“Good. And what should you do if you’re at a party, you set your drink down and it’s out of your sight for a couple of minutes, Alicia?”
“Get a new one, Officer Morris. Someone might have put something bad in it.”
“Good,” Morris said. “Girls, personal safety is all about common sense. You can do a lot to protect yourself. I worked the case of a young woman who was at a party the night before I met her. She had been sexually assaulted but she remembered nothing about the assault.”
“We determined she was probably given something called “Ketamine,” also known as the date rape drug. The bad guy had slipped the drug into her drink when she left her drink unattended and that’s when the trouble began.”
“There are several street names for Ketamine, including “Special K.” The date rape drug is odorless and colorless and that means you won’t taste it in your drink if someone puts it in there.”
“Ketamine will make you forget whatever happens for a few hours after you take it and once you remember what happens, Ketamine has already left the body, making testing for this drug nearly impossible.”
The girls looked at each other, seemingly shocked about Ketamine and the thought that someone could do such a thing.
“Girls, if you ingest Ketamine, someone could rape you and the only way you might know is by the physical reminders. You would have no memories of the attack.” Morris explained.
That got their attention. “Eeewwwwweeee, boys are such pigs!” and “I think my cousin had that happen,” echoed through the room as the girls erupted in hushed conversation.
Morris smiled inwardly at the comments. He knew he had made his point.
“Twelve and thirteen and fourteen…” Morris was back in the moment, doing compressions, desperately wishing the paramedics would show.
The smell of gasoline from the wreck was overpowering and even though he heard the accident and began CPR within a minute, he knew traumatic arrests usually died.
Sirens screamed in the distance as Morris pumped on the girl’s chest. Alicia’s chest.
“And thirty. Phhhhhh. Phhhhhh. And one and two,” Morris finished the compressions, gave two breaths and started another round of compressions, the taste of grape lip balm turning his stomach.
Morris had been sitting at the MagicDonut, enjoying his favorite Hazlenut coffee, black, with a big, fresh cruller, when a loud crash snapped his attention to the intersection a half a block down from the coffee shop.
An old, white Buick four door number had hit a parked car, flipped and landed belly-up, tires spinning in the breeze. Morris grabbed his phone and hit 9-1-1.
“This is emergency services. Where is your emergency?” the operator asked.
“This is Sierra five. One car rollover, West Main and Duncan, unknown injuries, fluids down, send a bus,” Morris demanded.
“One car rollover, West Main and Duncan, sending EMS, Sarg,” the operator responded as Morris slammed the phone shut.
Morris ran to the car, checking inside for victims. He was momentarily struck by the silence, broken only by the ticking of the cooling engine. Not a good sign. Morris saw a pink, high-top Converse sneaker at the back of the car. He scurried around the fender and found a young girl, maybe seventeen, blonde, she was…
“Oh, God damn it! No!” Morris thought as he rushed to her side. “Alicia, one of my kids!”
Morris always thought of the kids he worked with as “his” kids. Not all of them but quite a few would come up and talk to him, even call him or stop by the station when they had problems.
To the kids, Morris was an adult they could trust, in a world where someone you could trust was nearly impossible to find. To Morris, his kids had become a large part of why he wore his badge.
Morris made a split-second decision to move the injured girl. Gas was seeping from the ruptured tank and spreading nearer to her every second. One spark could incinerate the scene instantly.
Morris cradled the girl’s head in his forearms, protecting her spine as much as possible. He grabbed the flimsy top she was wearing, at the shoulders.
Morris pulled Alicia behind a car and checked her for signs of life. There were none. Ice gripped Morris’ heart. He cleared her airway and gave her two rescue breaths, breaking the rules.
Morris didn’t even think about how his instructors drummed into his head, “always use a breathing barrier.” The nasty grape lip balm reminded him of that but he didn’t have one and there was no way he was letting this girl die. Morris would sooner die himself than lose a child.
The breaths went in. Morris started compressions.
Bobby Morris had been on the job for four years before making Sergeant, filling the spot left open when his life-long best friend, Roger Mackay, was promoted to Lieutenant and became a detective.
Rog, just about everyone called him Rog, was all cop. About the only non-police thoughts that filled his mind were about Ford Mavericks and his wife, Genny.
Rog had the instinct. Rog could look at a crime scene and pick out the details others missed. Working with Rog made Morris a better cop because he learned something new from him every day. But Morris would never admit that to Rog.
Rog had talked Morris into joining the force. Maybe “talked” was too strong. Rog “convinced” him to do something he dreamed about but never thought he would do.
“Bobby, my Mom said something funny the other day,” Rog had said to him one night. “She said, “If Mrs. McKenna’s daughter can be a Sergeant, so can you. I laughed but then she said, “Then again, even Bobby Morris could be a cop. Well, maybe not Morris.”
“I laughed at Mom but I think I’m gonna do it and I want you to come work with me.”
Morris cuffed Rog for the smart-assed remark. “She didn’t say that, Rog. Your Mom likes me! Geez, Mrs. McKenna’s daughter, Katherine, she’s dumb as a brick! My feelings are hurt!”
“Yeah, Morris, that’s what she said.” Rog confirmed. “I think she knew I’d say something to yo
u and she thought you’d see it as a challenge. Well, do you see it as a challenge?”
Morris growled and bitched but when Rog signed up for the civil service test, Morris was right beside him, pen in hand. He didn’t get in on the first list but two years later, he was at the academy.
“Seventeeen, eighteen, nineteen…” Morris kept the compressions up, down almost two inches, release and compress, again and again and again.
“Where the fuck are the paramedics?” Morris growled, the fear of losing this girl tearing at his mind. He’d had to do notifications before. Adults weren’t easy but kids were the toughest.
Morris thought it was a little easier to tell the family of someone who’s had time to live their life that they died. Morris never told the parent of kid he knew before and he didn’t want to start today.
In the Academy, Morris got through without any real problems, other than the hazmat class. Morris thought that was scary stuff and he decided Hazmat was a perfect job for the guys with the red trucks. He’d stay clear of that mess.
Soon, he found the men and women he worked with trusted him to be there for them and to Morris, there was no larger compliment.
Morris also found he really liked helping people. It was the perfect line of work for him.
Morris liked the sheep, sheepdogs and wolves analogy in police work. He saw the public as sheep, happy to go about their lives, while the police are the sheepdogs, mediating disputes and helping the sheep. The bad guys are the wolves, the mortal enemies of the sheepdog.
Morris was a sheepdog and God bless the wolves who messed with his sheep.
Right now, the sheep were gathering around the wreck, and to him, it looked like the flock was grazing in a field, watching the farmer do his work. Typical of sheep, no one was stepping forward to offer to help.
Sheep got nervous in emergencies. Through a lack of training, stage fright or even fear of being sued (Morris thought this was the most asinine reason), the sheep didn’t get involved.
Hell, it was more likely that a wolf would come upon the wreck and steal the victim’s purse or worse, while she lay dying on the ground. Every day Morris was on the job, he became less surprised by the depths of depravity wolves reached.
As he compressed Alicia’s heart and gave her breaths through the overpowering grape lip balm, Morris thought of the last time he did CPR. It was on an older male, the victim of a fire.
The Coroner later found the man’s lungs were seared to uselessness. The man had sucked in super-heated gasses and had no chance for survival.
Just thinking of the old man and Morris could smell the charred skin odor the body gave off as he and a fireman tried desperately to save a life already lost.
Morris mourned the man but he was eighty-one- he had an opportunity to live his life. This girl was, no, is, seventeen “andthatstooyoungtodie!” Morris’ brain screamed in his head. It was her chance to live and that life was in his hands.
As Morris reached the thirtieth compression in this round, he saw boots running through the broken windows of the upturned car. Two paramedics swarmed over the girl.
“Unrestrained seventeen year old female, has been moved due to an unsafe scene,” Morris said, giving the paramedics a rundown. “No signs of life on arrival. She was down for maybe a minute before CPR began. No medical history, no SAMPLE available. I’ll take the head. Guys, she’s one of my kids.”
The paramedics, Glenn Ramos and Charlie Cox, were professionals who had been through this type of scene hundreds of times before. “We’ll do our best, Morris,” Ramos said.
Ramos handed Morris a bag valve mask, a device that fits over the patient’s mouth and nose and has a bag that the rescuer squeezes to provide breaths for the patient.
Ramos attached a tube to provide one hundred percent oxygen to the bag. Morris put the mask on Alicia, gripping the mask and, using his knees, held her head in-line with her body to protect her spine.
Ramos gave the bag two squeezes as Morris held the mask in place. Ramos then started compressions. “One and two and three,” he said, out loud as he compressed the girl’s chest.
Cox set the heart monitor leads while Ramos continued the compressions. Cox yelled “Clear” and both Morris and Ramos backed up. “V-fib,” Cox said. “I’m shocking.”
Cox pressed the paddles to bare skin and shocked Alicia once. No conversion, no steady heartbeat.
Cox hit the charge button and, at the beep, shocked her again.
Conversion. They had an effective heartbeat.
Morris grabbed the head and held it tight. Cox started an IV and pumped meds as Ramos jockeyed with Morris to get a tube down Alicia’s trachea to help maintain her airway. Cox connected the bag to the tube and checked for breath signs while squeezing the bag in a slow rhythm.
With a heartbeat and the breathing tube established, the paramedics put a neck brace on Alicia to hold her neck steady in case of spinal damage. Ramons got a backboard and on Morris’ count, they rolled Alicia, careful to keep her head and neck inline. Cox slid the board under Alicia and they gently rolled her onto the board.
Alicia was strapped securely to the board and lifted onto a gurney for the trip to the hospital. En route, Cox called in a report and the trauma team was waiting for them at the door to the emergency room.
Morris stood at the entrance to the ER, shaking and staring straight ahead, the taste of grape lip balm burning his lips. Fifteen minutes ago, he was enjoying a coffee and a donut. Now, he waited to see if Alicia would live.
“Morris, Hey, Bobby? You’re next.” Rog’s voice startled Morris. “Give me a couple of seconds to clean the mannequin. I think Perez put lipstick on it. Geez, that guy would hump a chicken if he could catch one.”
“Ahhummmpphhh. Ok.” Morris said, realizing he was daydreaming or daymaring. Morris could feel the sweat pooling on his back, the fear of losing the girl as fresh as the minutes after the accident.
Morris’ mind slipped back to the hospital, remembering the longest forty-five minutes of his life, spent alternately sitting and pacing, jumping up whenever a nurse walked by.
Then, Doc Yesta, the on-call neurologist, was walking toward him. Morris remembered feeling like he was going to puke, trying to gleen the outcome from Yesta’s blank expression as he neared.
“I think she’s gonna be ok,” Doc Yesta said, as he got closer. “She’s sedated and her lower left leg is broken in several places. I sent her up for a CAT scan but she started to regain consciousness in the trauma bay.”
“I think she had an undiagnosed problem with her heart and that caused it to flutter. She passed out and that probably caused the accident. We’re having a cardiac specialist consult with us.”
“I thought her heart was stopped by the accident.” Morris said.
“If it did, Bobby,” Yesta said, “she would be dead now. Almost nobody survives traumatic cardiac arrest. I’d be very surprised if this isn’t a pre-existing condition that would have killed her if you weren’t there at just the right moment in time to help her.”
“But because you were there at the moment when she needed you, because you started CPR and got EMS rolling so quickly, Alicia is being treated, instead of being autopsied.”
Yesta looked directly at Morris. “Bobby, you saved that girl’s life”
Big, tough Morris started to cry. “Aw, Doc, look what you made me do. She’s one of my kids, you know. One of the kids I mentor.”
Yesta reached out and put his hand on Morris’ shoulder. Yesta whispered, “You did good today, Bobby. You did real good.”
Bobby Morris fought back the tears and said, “Thanks, Doc. I guess I picked the right moment to take a coffee break.”
Yesta laughed. “I’d say so. Well, I’ve got to get back to work. Bobby, you joined the club. You saved a life today. I’m damn proud of you.”
Morris shook Yesta’s outstretched hand. Yesta turned and walked back into the emergency room.
Rog’s voice brought M
orris back to the present.
“Morris, you had a rescue about six months ago,” Rog said. Would you like to share the moment with the class?
Morris stood up and said, “Guys, Rog tells us we only save five in one hundred of the people that need CPR. All I want to say is, I saved one of the five and fuck the other ninety-five.”
“I looked into her mother’s eyes and said, “Your seventeen year-old daughter had an accident. She’s going to be fine.” I didn’t have to say, “Your daughter’s dead.” What more can I say?”
The room erupted in applause and slaps on the back for Morris. When things calmed down, Morris said, “Now, you shitheads, sit back and watch an expert! I’ll show you pussies how it’s done right! One and two and…”
Rog Mackay smiled. Cops almost never hear how the victims make out but today, he had a surprise of his own for Morris.
The door opened behind Morris as he showed the guys “How to do it right” and Alicia Burke quietly hobbled in on crutches, her leg casted from the latest operation to fix the damage from the accident.
“Morris, are you sure you’re doing it right?” Rog said.
“Eighteen, nineteen,” Morris said, breaking into the chorus from the familiar Bee Gees song used to keep the CPR rhythm as he pumped away on the Rescue Annie mannequin. “See Rog, I can do CPR and sing, too. Look out Karaoke night at Hal’s. There’s a new champ in town!”
“Rog, I think he knows what he’s doing.” Alicia said.
Morris stopped, turned and broke into a smile. “Alica!”
Rog said, “Morris, I think you passed this year’s recertification.”
Morris turned to the class and said, “Guys, come on up and meet Alicia! When you find a person down, remember her. I know I’ll never forget her.”
Turn the page for a preview of
In Another Life
The first Detective Roger Mackay novel by W.D. James