A Foul Mood
Chapter 2
“Ahhhh!” Maria cooed, as she let the warm water cascade down her body. It felt so good to relax.
Calmly getting out of her shower, Maria mentally planned a day of leisure and fun with just her and her Harley. Having spent twenty out of twenty four hours on duty, for the last 4 nights, she was exhausted. The life of a paramedic was tough at times. After a few nice cozy hours at what she called home, she decided it was time to get moving. She flipped the light on in her loft kitchen, and as she dried her short, chocolate, barely neck length hair in nothing but her shorts and her towel, she suddenly jumped as her phone shrieked to life.
“Dammit! Who the hell is calling me on my day off?” She ran to her cell and grabbed it just after the first ring.
“Maria Torres here. Oh hey, Chief”
“Maria, a fire has broken out at 14th Street! Get there, and hurry!”
With a slight high pitched notch in her voice, she said “Huh? Why are you calling me? I’m off duty!”
“Everyone else is already out right now!" The Chief growled. "Stop complaining and go!”
Exasperated, Maria said, “Fine but I better see a bonus next payday!”
She quickly threw on whatever clothes were close by, and opened her door. That door, also served as a garage door. She lived in a small loft that most would just call a storage garage. Which was what it was. But to Maria, who was very frugal, decided, “What the heck? I can blow all that extra cash on my Harley! Screw rent!”
And she did.
Quickly grabbing her keys, and the small supply bag she always kept while off duty, she jumped onto her bike and full throttled it all the way.
“Hell ya!” She screamed. Haha! C’mon people outta my way! C’mon move!”
“This is the life” She thought to herself
“Even if my weekend did end up being screwed…”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Maria arrived on scene of the accident, she stared in awe at the frantic scene in front of her. The structure was engulfed in flames, and the thought of someone being stuck in there at this point gave her the chills, despite the heat from the flames.
“C’mon, Maria. Let’s do this!” She thought to herself
Parking her Harley next to the Resurgam ambulance, she quickly made her way to one of the paramedics on scene.
The fire reaches Maria's nose and eyes, and both water in the smoke. This isn't the controlled fire in Maria's home; this is the real deal. The house is on fire, covering every inch of flammable surface. Flames leap and dance, threatening Maria to come closer.
"Hey, you!" Maria yells. "Has everybody been rescued?"
The paramedic Maria had been shouting to looks up from his stretcher. "Who the—" he starts, but never gets to finish.
"I'm with Resurgam First Care!" Maria yells. "Tell me what's going on!"
"A fire broke out in the power facility!" the paramedic groans. He's heard of a rampaging woman wearing a yellow and green coat, one who always loses her temper. "It's being contained…"
Suddenly, a loud bang echoes from within the house. Maria doesn't hesitate and jumps to the nose, ignoring the paramedic's shouts to stop her.
"What happened?" she asks, once she's reached the source of the explosion.
"We had a backdraft!" a paramedic answers. "Two of the people inside were hit by it!"
"They need immediate treatment!" Maria shouts. "Move them over here if you can!"
The paramedic follows her orders. Maybe they aren't dumbasses after all, Maria muses, and out loud, says, "All right! Beginning treatment!"
"Okay, Maria. The first moments are the most critical here....." She chided herself.
“Ignore the idiot, and focus!” “Alright, here goes nothing…”
She looked down at the first patient in front of her, and instantly turned into an unstoppable incarnation of perseverance. She let her eyes wander the body on the ground, and the first thing she saw, was the massive bloodstain on the man’s sternum.
“All right, first things first, I gotta get this blood cleaned up so I can see.” She quickly wiped the blood of using her gauze strips, and placed her bandages over them. Quickly taping them on, she moved onto the next procedure.
“All right. Blood pools treated, onto the abdomen next.”
“Crap! There’s some serious burns here! I’m gonna have to anesthetize them with the antibiotic gel”
“Now gauze…” She said to herself, her movements getting quicker and quicker.
“Now to tape it up. She quickly pulled her scissors from her bag, and snipped away at the tape.
“Let’s look at his left arm now.” She moved back and repositioned herself by his left arm.
“More burns… YIKES! His arm is in bad shape. Let’s redo that same procedure.” As she continued on, his body suddenly started to feel chilly, and his muscles went limp.
“Dammit! I gotta stay on top of his vitals! He’s losing conscienceness!” She quickly took the stabilizer from her bag, and gave him a dose or two of it and decided he was stable for now. On the spur of the moment she decided to go ahead and insert an IV with a canulla into his intravenous pass to keep his vitals high.
The second victim was moved closer to her by the younger fireman she saw earlier, and she decided that as since this patient was stable, she would check in on the other one.
She quickly switched victims, and saw the massive burns on her throat and chest.
“Damn, this is bad!”She continued to work on the woman as she suddenly noticed something strange. Something she had never seen before.
A huge black bruise was spreading before her eyes. It went all the way from the left collarbone to the right side of her neck, and down to her sternum.
“Wha-! What the hell is that?!” She quickly regathered herself and came back to the procedure at hand.
“I gotta finish this!” Just then, Maria almost lost her balance. The woman began convulsing. Fast, heart slamming convulsions.
Cardiac Arrest came shortly after.
“Dammit! NO! You get back here!” She began to pound on the woman’s chest and after a full two minutes of hammering away, she finally received her reward.
The woman began to breathe again. A sweaty, thankful Maria quickly began to work on the woman’s airways, securing a breathing bar to keep the trachea from closing. The last thing she needed was another arrest.
“Stable as its getting!” Exasperated, she stood and yelled to one paramedic, “Any others! Did we get ‘em all?”
He responded, “Yes all treated and ready for transfer!
A sigh of relief escaped her mouth. “Geez, praise the saints.”
“What can I say, I’m good!” She smiled and did a little self congratulating. “And, on my day off!”
Straddling her bike, and about to rush off to Resurgam, she suddenly heard something annoyingingly loud.
"Hey! You!" a paramedic yells at her.
"Huh?" Maria replies. "Oh, are you guys done here too?"
"Who do you think you are, barking out orders like that?" the paramedic demands. "Disasters require strict adherence to the chain of command! If you disrupt the team's coordination, you're hurting us!"
Anger quickly surges over Maria's body. "What. Did. You. Just. Say?" She begins to quiver in anger. "I was called here because you obviously couldn't handle—"
Her words are cut short by something wavering behind the paramedic, whose next words are drowned out in fright. A purple mass stares right at Maria, like a ghost out of place. Maria blinks, trying to clear away the hallucination, but it only turns the purple, oily thing into… a girl.
Maria's eyes widen at the sight of the little girl in a white dress. White hair, pink eyes, mouth open in words she cannot hear.
A silent warning.
She looked up. “Huh?!”
And in a moment, a flash, the ambulance drove by, blocking her view. When it receded, the image was gone. She blinked, very confused.
This isn't natural. This is something done by causes Maria doesn't know what. A ghost? An illusion? A simple hallucination brought on by the recent fire? Maria shakes her head to clear it and focuses back on the paramedic.
The fireman continued to ramble “Oh I get it, you must be Maria Torres from Resurgam. I’ve heard about you, you hotheaded… Hey! Are you even listening? Are you spacing out or what?!”
"Hey, have you heard a single word I've been saying?" the paramedic spits. "You're not helping… you're a nuisance!"
"Shut up!" Maria bares her teeth in anger, and as her fist met his jaw, he slouched to the ground. The only audible sound was Marias heavy breathing, and his painful thud.. "Damn right I'll order you around!" she yells. "I'm the best one here! If cooperating is so important to you, then do what I say! Later, asshole!"
Maria hops on her motorcycle and revs her engine, leaving the paramedic sprawled on the ground, and shaking away the last few images of the mysterious girl… somewhere in Maria's subconscious, the girl calls to her, but those quiet murmurs are lost quickly in the roar of the engine.
“Oh and you’re welcome!” She yelled over her shoulder as she sped off.