Chapter 6
Six
JOE
M y heart is still hammering in my chest as I stare at the closed ER doors. I hear Jackie’s question at a distance, like she’s talking to me underwater. I know that she said something about the situation, but when I look at her, my mind goes completely blank. It’s awful when my work has something to do with kids. A newborn baby is the absolute worst.
The baby’s oxygen levels kept plummeting, and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to make the journey all the way to Walnut Bend. Jackie was remarkably calm in the face of the pressure. If I could find my words, I would tell her that. But I still can’t seem to put two thoughts together. I blink at her, and she seems concerned.
John, our driver tonight, comes up to where Jackie and I are standing. “How are you guys doing?” he asks.
I just look at him, but Jackie shakes her head. “I’m still trembling,” she says, holding out a trembling hand. “I don’t usually go for the ride-alongs. I don’t know how you guys handle the pressure.”
John gives her a rueful smile. “It’s not something that you get used to. We just do the job that’s in front of us.”
“Well, I’m sure impressed,” Jackie says, smiling back at him.
If I didn’t know better, I would say that the two of them are flirting with each other. It’s not like I would care if they were, but I decide that I must be reading the situation wrong, since I’ve been so shaken up by the ride. I grunt as some kind of contribution to the conversation. Neither John nor Jackie look at me. Suddenly, I feel a wave of irritation roll over me. That must be my reaction to having to deal with such a traumatic event. Now I’m coming back to myself.
“I’m just exhausted,” I say.
John and Jackie look at me like they forgot I’m here with them. Clearly they are indeed flirting. I feel another flash of irritation. I’m seriously way more tired than I usually am after a ride. We rotate through the various positions at the firehouse. I’m not sure if every station does it this way, but it works in Cranberry Creek, so who am I to question it? It does help us from getting bored. At the moment, however, I’m not sure that I want to have another EMT rotation any time soon.
As I am standing there thinking about my exhaustion and irritation, I finally take a good look at Jackie. I notice how pale she looks at the moment. All thoughts of my own annoyance flee my mind, and I take a step toward her.
“Hey, Jackie? Are you okay?” I ask just as she sways on her feet. John and I both step toward her at the same time.
Jackie holds up her hand. “I’m okay,” she says. “Just exhausted. That took a lot more out of me than I realized. I think I need something to eat. I don’t remember when the last time I had food was.”
“Let’s take a break,” John suggests. “We can get something to eat in the cafeteria. Then we’ll head back to Cranberry Creek. How does that sound?”
Part of me just wants to say that we should head back now, but Jackie is already nodding, so I’m outnumbered, before I even speak. So I nod, too. It isn’t a terrible idea actually. Food will help us regain some strength, and the break will help us refocus. I don’t know about Jackie, but John and I have to head back to work for another ten hours or so of our shift. I assume she has to go back to work as well.
“I hope the cafeteria here has better food than we have at Cranberry Creek,” Jackie says as we head toward the ER doors.
John laughs like Jackie just said the funniest thing ever. She gives him a strange look, like she can’t figure out his response. Honestly, I’m not sure how to react to his response either. But the thing about the moment that strikes me the most, is that I realize that I don’t know this version of Jackie at all. She’s an adult. The last time I saw her, she was really just a kid. Okay, a teenager, but to me she was just Maia’s kid sister. This version of Jackie, who is flirting with my coworker, makes me feel odd… and protective, like I’m not sure if John is even good enough for her.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I say, my tone coming out harder than I intended it. Neither one seems to notice, though.
Jackie pauses and studies the hospital directory posted on the wall. “It seems like the cafeteria is on this floor toward the back.”
“Well, let’s go,” John says, offering Jackie his arm. She giggles and takes it. The two of them head off down the corridor with me trailing behind.
I take a deep breath, needing to clear my head. My thoughts keep going back to the baby’s tiny face, nearly swallowed up by the oxygen mask that we kept having to adjust. I’m sure that the baby will still need to have some help with his breathing. There were a couple of moments when his coloring faded to a sickish gray color, with the little lips turning a blueish tint. I honestly didn’t know if he would make it.
Jackie and I managed to keep him alive, though. We delivered him into the capable hands of the nurses here. This is what they’re trained for and specialize in. So even though the whole drive here was one big ball of stress, we did our jobs. A baby has a chance at life tonight because of what we did. I need to remind myself of that, so I can move past this. That’s one of the tricks that I’ve learned over the years: how to compartmentalize each traumatic event that I’ve been through. I give myself a chance to be upset, to “feel my feelings” as my therapist would say, but then I lock my emotions down and put them away, focusing forward on the good.
Therapy wasn’t ever something that I wanted to do in my life. I had a fairly serious girlfriend six years ago, who insisted we go to therapy, both together and individually. Our relationship didn’t last, but I did keep seeing my therapist for a full year after we broke up. I think the therapy visits helped me to deal with some of the things that I saw on my tours of duty and the stress of being a wildfire firefighter. I can still use the techniques for stressors now. Hey, what can I say? I’m enlightened.
The cafeteria is a standard issue hospital cafeteria, although it’s decorated better than most I’ve been in. It also smells better than most hospital cafeterias. My stomach growls in anticipation. Jackie must have heard, because she glances over her shoulder and smirks at me. Even back when I was tight with the Morettis, my stomach was infamous for loudly asserting itself. I arch an eyebrow back at her. I swear that she blushes before turning back around. That’s another new thing about Jackie. She would never have backed down when we were younger. She accepted a challenge like it was second nature to her. Feisty and always ready to share her mind. I always appreciated that about her, but it also got her into plenty of spats with her older sisters.
“What do you think you’re going to order?” John asks Jackie, apparently oblivious to the interaction we just had.
“Probably just a grilled cheese and tomato soup,” she says. “Comfort food that’s hard to ruin.”
“Hmmm,” John says in a way that makes it sound like he’s somehow disappointed in her answer. That pisses me off. I don’t know John well at all. He’s one of the part-time guys at the fire station.
“I think that’s what I’ll get, too,” I say, stepping up closer to them.
Jackie gives me a grateful smile, conveying to me that she thought the same thing I did about his tone. John shrugs. “Okay, you’ve convinced me,” he says. “That’s what I’ll get, too.”
The smile that Jackie gives John actually makes me jealous, which makes no sense at all. Jackie can smile at anyone she wants to, and if John is nice to her, who am I to stop them? It honestly feels like I’m in big brother mode. Jackie always hated it when I acted that way when we were younger. She would tell me that she was mad at me because she “didn’t need a dumb ol’ big brother”. She already had three older sisters, and that was enough, thank you very much.
We get our meals and find an empty table in the back corner of the cafeteria where it’s quieter. I feel like we can catch our breath back here. We all dive into our food, and silence reigns at our table for a few minutes as we eat. No doubt about it, trauma makes me hungry. Grilled cheese and tomato soup was definitely the right choice. Who doesn’t love a good comfort food meal? I can’t think of the last time I ate grilled cheese and tomato soup, but the meal evokes numerous childhood moments of hanging out with the Moretti sisters. Their mom made this meal for me more times than I can count. Now I get why Jackie chose this particular meal.
“This is surprisingly good,” John says, with a puzzled look on his face.
Jackie grins at him. “I told you so.”
The way she says it evokes even more memories with the sisters. How many times did Jackie say that to me when I did something stupid? Probably at least one million over the span of my life, because I did a lot of stupid things growing up. Jumping off my garage roof into the pool a few too many times comes to mind. I broke arms, legs, even my collarbone once. The worst was when I broke my jaw and had to have my mouth wired shut for two full months. I could only drink things through a straw. Jackie had the good grace not to tell me she told me so after the jaw breaking. But most of the other times she said that or something similar.
“Indeed you did,” John says smiling back at her.
I suddenly feel like a third wheel. I don’t know why I care, but it might have something to do with the fact that it feels like my old life in Cranberry Creek and my new life in Cranberry Creek are colliding. Which is stupid, because it’s also Jackie’s life in Cranberry Creek and John’s life and so forth. It’s stupid. I need to get over myself.
“Remember when your mom used to make this lunch for us every day during the summers?” I ask.
Jackie raises her eyebrows and gives me another smirk. “Remember the summer you broke your jaw jumping into the pool from the garage? Remember how we tried to blend the grilled cheese with the tomato soup so you could drink it through a straw?”
I can feel John looking at me with mild surprise. I guess he hadn’t caught on that Jackie and I knew each other in another lifetime. “It wasn’t half bad,” I say.
Jackie makes a gagging noise. “How can you even say that?”
“Grilled cheese and tomato soup go well together. It wasn’t bad blended. Better than the spaghetti and meatballs,” I say with a laugh.
Jackie’s face actually turns a pale shade of green. John glances between the two of us. It’s clear to me that despite all the time and space that have elapsed over the past ten years, Jackie and I still have the same kind of connection that we had when we were growing up. And since we do, I have to imagine that Maia and I would have the same kind of connection that we had back then, too.
Spending time with Jackie will inevitably lead me to spending time with Maia as well. I mean, I hope that I’ll be able to spend time with the rest of the Moretti family. It’s not unscrupulous of me to want to spend time with Maia, and that I hope to get there by spending time with Jackie… right?
We finish our meal and head back to the ambulance. Jackie says she’s going to head up to the NICU to check on our patient before we leave. I say, “I’ll go with you.”
“I’ll pull the ambulance around front,” John says, sounding a little deflated.
I wait in the hallway while Jackie heads into the unit to talk to the charge nurse on duty about the little boy we brought in. I admire the way she is concerned about the baby. She clearly takes her job seriously. I decide that I’ll suggest we take a run together some time. That should be an easy way to break the ice. And once the ice is broken, I’ll ask about hanging out with all of her sisters together. It seems like a fool proof plan. What could possibly go wrong?