Trapp #2
She straightened in her seat, spine lengthening, her dark brows remaining together.
Trapp recognized the look on her face. She was about to correct him, correct him with the confidence of someone who had already studied the test material front to back, entirely certain she was right.
That was another reason he had pursued her in school.
When she thought she was right, which was always, her confidence was unshakable.
There was nothing that could make her falter from her course, with a dogged steadfastness that made sense for a coyote, and there were few things in the world more attractive.
“We shouldn’t be forming preconceived notions about our patients before arrival. How can you give the same quality of care if you’re already disparaging them for calling?”
Trapp chuckled, shaking his head, but said nothing.
From the back, Oleg snorted. “You’ll see, Doc.”
The house was in the flex developments. The patient was standing at his front door, as they knew he would be, as he was every single time he called EMS, several times a month, always claiming some grievous injury.
“Five dollars he stubbed his toe this time,” Trapp muttered, leaning over his shoulder to the back of the ambulance where Oleg was already climbing down. “You got this one. Shout if he’s actually hurt.”
From the passenger seat, Adriana glowered, shaking her head in disgust before shoving open the heavy door, sliding from the rig determinedly, hand curled around her trauma pack. He snorted. Fine. Have fun playing doctor.
Only a minute or two passed before he heard raised voices, his head snapping up. Seriously? Trapp stepped from the ambulance to find the familiar mothman on his porch clutching his elbow with one hand and jabbing a long finger in Adriana and Oleg’s direction with the other.
“I want her off my property immediately! She’s the one who told me there was nothing wrong with me! I’m probably going to lose my arm now!” The moth was gesticulating wildly with the same arm he would allegedly be losing, momentarily forgetting to hold it. “Gone! I want her gone!”
“You bumped your funny bone!” Her voice was incredulous and indignant. “There was no clinical diagnosis for—”
“Back in the rig, Doctor,” Trapp interrupted, keeping his voice stern, swallowing his laughter. “Oleg, why don’t you finish up with the patient?”
She was fuming by the time he climbed back into the driver’s seat. “There was nothing wrong with his arm! And if there is now, it’s a completely new injury that he obtained after—”
“There’s nothing wrong with his arm now.
Just like there was nothing wrong with his hip last month, or his eye the month before that,” Trapp cut in.
“But we can’t deny him care. If we were to stop coming out every time he bumps his elbow on the door and thinks he’s dying, we’d be liable when eventually something is wrong.
Like I said — a frequent flyer. I know this might be hard for you to believe, Adi, but patient care actually is my priority. ”
Her cheeks flushed red, like delicate rose petals, full lips pressing together in a tight line as she sat back against the seat. Rose petals? What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re going to be waxing poetic about her hair being like a raven’s wing next.
“I thought you were a firefighter,” she demanded at the next red light.
“And where did you hear that?” Trapp turned, taking advantage of the light to glower at her, unable to help himself. “Let me guess? When you were running your mouth at the coffee shop?”
The dull spread of crimson up to the tips of her ears told him he was right. The smell of her was driving him crazy, especially now that she had relaxed a bit, the bitter taste of tension in the air ebbing away, leaving nothing but her.
They were too close to the moon to be confined like this, and it was impossible not to smell the heat just beginning to warm her core, the sweet taste of her making his mouth flood.
Just a few more days and her blood would be simmering with it, despite the chemical taste of her suppressant, which his nose could also pick out.
He forced himself to keep his hands at ten and two, a death grip on the wheel, when all he wanted to do was bury his face between her thighs and coat his nose in her slick.
“It’s not like I said anything that wasn’t true,” she spat.
From the back of the rig, Oleg laughed nervously. “Come on now. We got a long shift ahead of us.”
The tone dropped with almost comical timing, radio crackling to life, saving them from whatever he might have said next. Collision on the highway, several injuries reported, noncritical. Trapp swallowed hard. Good. This would at least eat up an hour or two of their shift.
When they arrived on scene, the first thing he — and it was clear, Adriana — noticed was the sylvan teenager sitting in one of the wrecked cars, door open, her legs in the road, bleeding from a head wound. Adriana had her door open the instant the ambulance rolled to a complete stop.
“Wait!”
She didn’t listen; she and her trauma pack hopping down from the rig and striding toward the patient, emergency department instinct kicking in without a single thought for field triage.
“Adi, wait!”
Her arm was reaching for the crumpled car door, aiming to pull it open fully by the time he reached her. Trapp swung an arm around her middle, dragging her back several paces, flattening her against the side of the rescue vehicle.
The nearness almost undid his composure.
He felt her gasp against him, her hands going to his arm, tightening for the briefest instant, scorching his skin, before she was pushing him off.
He wanted to kiss the sneer off her face, and then get into a fistfight with himself for even thinking that in the first place.
C’mon, get your head in the fucking game!
“BSI! Look at your hands! Look at the ground!” He gestured to the shattered glass littering the scene, the motor oil streaking across the wet, rain-soaked pavement.
“This isn’t a sterile triage! We can’t just rush in without ensuring the scene is secure.
We don’t touch the patient until we protect our skin.
And you don’t touch the patient at all!”
Her chest was heaving as he pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from his own kit.
He expected her to argue. He expected her to straighten up, for that familiar look to cross her face.
Instead, she nodded jerkily, fingertips grazing his wrist the briefest instant as she took the gloves.
It was an electric shock, stiffening his spine. Not just your spine.
“Copy that . . . Thanks.”
He was standing too close. That was why her hand brushed his forearm as she put on the gloves; a heavy, dragging friction that felt like a brand against his skin, a vibration that moved straight to the tip of his cock.
You’re going to come in your pants. That’s what’s going to be on the evening news stream.
Paramedic ejaculates on the side of I-12 instead of helping bleeding teenagers, more on our CrowdJournal page.
“I’ll stay out of the way,” she muttered, her face crimson as she ducked around him. “You can get back to work.”
After that call, the rest of the day became a silent, watchful dance.
Trapp found his eyes constantly dragging toward the passenger seat, every time she moved, her thick braid shifting over her shoulder or her white hands tightening around the strap of the trauma kit.
She was watching him, too. He could feel the weight of her gaze resting on him every time his eyes focused on the road, her glance turning away each time he moved his head, the flush up her creamy neck the only indication she’d been watching him at all.
With each successive call — a satyr fainting at the gas station, two successive trips to the senior care facility, another highway accident — Adriana crept nearer and nearer, shadowing him until his hands were trembling from the smell of her.
At one point, Trapp turned quickly, not expecting her to be right there, his erection scraping against her trauma pack, leaving him wheezing.
After that particular incident, she sat in a huddled ball in the passenger seat, turned slightly away from him, head down.
“I’m gonna die if I don’t eat something,” Oleg moaned from the back.
Adriana’s head lifted, listening as Trapp and the troll debated whether it was worth making the trip back to the station to eat.
“I don’t trust Margus’s cooking,” Trapp argued when Oleg questioned who was on kitchen duty.
“Plus, we’re halfway to Bridgeton right now.
By the time we get back to the station, we’re only going to have to leave again. ”
Trapp pulled out his phone, thumbing open the app for a mom-and-pop pizzeria he liked, his mother’s favorite, the place they’d always ordered from growing up. “You’re doing great out there today, kid. Dinner’s on me tonight.”
Her dark eyebrows came together once they’d arrived and Trapp had returned to the rig, pizza box in hand with paper plates and napkins.
“There’s nowhere to sit in there,” he grumbled, shaking the rain from his hair. “I didn’t get triple anchovy, if that’s what you were hoping for, Oleg. Help yourselves.”
Adriana scrambled to fish a little wristlet out of the backpack at her feet. “How-how much do I owe you?”
He wanted to snidely tell her to get her own food.
Wanted to direct her back out into the rain, towards the pizzeria’s doors, or else find herself something else in the vicinity, but nothing in his upbringing would have allowed it.
Trapp was certain his mother would have felt the shiver run down her spine from across town if he did, and besides, it wouldn’t have made him feel good, and he didn’t want her to go hungry.
“Nothing. That’s not the way this works.”