Annoyance All Around
Cats in trees. Old man hoarders who built mazes in their homes. Huge pile ups blocking the freeway. Hell, even lightning strikes they could deal with. They have dealt with, but this? Man this was way out of everyone's depth.
…
“Alright everybody let’s do this, just a nice and easy extraction,” His voice washed over the group “Buck, Eddie your on jaws. Chimney, Hen be on standby ready to check the patient. I”ll go check with Sargent Grant and see if I can get any info on our patient.”
As the group dispersed to attend to the accident, Bobby Nash made his way over to the officer as she ducked under the police tape. Athena Grant, sergeant, mother, badass, his wife. She smiles at him and suddenly he feels like he could take on the world. These days the only thing he has to take on is Buck’s daily whining but her smile alone pushes that to the back of his head.
“Captain Nash.” she smirks lightly.
“Sergeant,” he nods, “what can you tell me about our patient.”
They walk together to the scene as she fills him in. Montana Swartzer, only 20 and already owns a phd. She was coming from work when her car just flipped. They weren't sure what caused it at the moment as there was no one else on the road and it had just been evened out the week before.
“Huh hey cap, you might want to check this out.” Chimney called from the passenger side. Montana was safely on a gurney and seemed to be in stable condition. They all gathered around as he held up what looked like it could be a flash drive except it was glowing and appeared to be glowing more and more as time went on.
“What is that?” Buck questioned snatching it out of Chimney’s hand. He twists it around and spots a small button on the back. The smart thing to do would be to leave it alone and put it back. The smart thing to do would be to not press the button of a glowing object belonging to a 20 year old prodigy working at NASA on a top secret project but unfortunately for everyone, Evan Buckley wasn't the smartest. Eddie swore loudly as Buck pressed it and his body itched as a sharp vibration went through the air.
…
Henriette Wilson blinks and suddenly she’s no longer standing near the banged up Prius. There’s no patient, no caution tape, and definitely no shattered glass laying around her feet. Instead she’s standing right in front of the place she left not even an hour ago. The 118 firehouse is quiet as she peers in. The firetrucks and paramedic trucks are there looking like they hadn’t even been moved for the day yet. She jumped high in the air as a loud sneeze sounded to the right of her. She glances over and sighs in relief as she sees her team with her. Buck, Eddie, Chimney, Bobby and even Athena are all standing with her. She watches as Chimney grimances and swallows thickly as if he's swallowing bile. She can't blame him though as she feels a slight nauseated feeling in the pit of her own stomach.
“What just happened?” Eddie basically reads her thoughts.
“Uhhh I don’t know. I only know that I seriosuly need to barf.” Buck sucks in a breath and lets out a light cough. He runs into the station and positions himself over a trash can and lets his lunch out. The rest follow him in and take a quick glance around.
Bobby takes a quick mental assessment. They were at the scene of an automobile accident and now they’re at the station. Did something happen at the scene and they just don’t remember? Though there’s no way something happened and not one of them remembers. Group amnesia only really ever happens when there’s monoxide poisoning and as far as he remembers his fire station didn't have a leak and there’s no way it could have happened at an outside car accident. Plus this station looked a little too sloppy to be his. Chimney and Buckley both prided themselves on how clean they kept the station. He gestures to the group to follow him as he makes his way deeper into the station. He glances around at the sloppy cubbies and the gym that had unracked weights scattered around.
Yea this definitely was not his station.
A loud laugh rang through the firehouse startling the group. Eddie nodded towards the stairs and they started making their way over. One by one they slowly walked up the stairs until they finally reached the top. There, a group of firefighters sat enjoying what appeared to be lasagna. While Bobby prided himself in being known for having one of the most diverse teams on his side of LA, this team seemed to mainly consist of women. Women of many races, different builds, ethnicities. Not one woman looked like another. Hen smiled slightly and Buck let out a soft breath.
“Hi there,” one of the women stood up and approached them. “Can I help you guys with something?”
She stood around 5 foot 6 inches and her black hair was pulled back into a slight messy bun. The firefighter uniform was slightly baggy and the word captain was sewed into the left side of her shirt. She smiled lightly at them and the exhaustion was clear on her face.
“Uh hi,” Bobby stepped forward and shook the woman’s outstretched hand. Her hands were calloused and torn cuticles stood out around her white polished nails. “I see that you’re the captain of this station.”
“Well they don't just give anyone captain shirts these days.”
“Yea, unless you’re Gerard.” Buck muttered under his breath and winced as Eddie elbowed him in the side.
“You got me there.” the lady chuckled tiredly.
“Sorry about him,” Bobby cut a sharp glance at Buck. “Well I was wondering if we could talk. We were on a call of our own and it appears something strange happened”
“Yea, of course.” she set the cloth napkin in her hand on the table and squeezed past them “Let's talk in my office. It has less prying ears around.”
…
She sighed loudly as she took a seat across from the group that wandered into her fire station. Luckily the day has been rarely slow with only minor calls that haven’t warranted any major traumas. Cats in trees, lonely old women, parking disputes, nothing too hard. Nothing too hard but not a slow day even by a little bit. As soon as they were pulling into the station, they were pulling out right back to another call. She tried her best not to let her annoyance show on her face. She had just sat down to eat lunch and did not like to be interrupted during meal time. She may be a captain but that didn't mean just anyone could cut into her time when she wasn't on a call. Plus she skipped breakfast and was starving.
“I don’t mean to rush you along but we only have so much time to eat before the alarm goes off.”
“Right,” Bobby was not a huge fan of her attitude towards helping them even if they had interrupted her lunch “well I guess I’ll just jump straight into it.”
As she listened to them all drone on and constantly cut each other off she could feel her annoyance grow bigger and bigger. Here these people are wasting her precious lunch time with some silly story that made them sound crazy. She did not have the time nor that patience to deal with this right now. She had a hot plate of food waiting for her. She was a fire captain though and while this story was absolutely bonkers she still had a duty to help them and so she decided to give the best possible advice she could give to a crazy story such as that. Crazy situation for a crazy team.
“Well that is very strange indeed,” she turned to the filing cabinet behind her to not only grab a folder out of it but also to roll her eyes so far back into her head she swore she could see her brain. “And while I would love to help, I am still on shift and won’t be able to give you my full attention so I will give you the information to our A-shift captain who is on temporary leave with his team after a disastrous call that wrecked them pretty badly. Usually I'd feel bad bothering them while they are recovering but it's been 2 weeks and I know they're climbing the walls wanting to get back to the station.”
She cracked open the file and carefully wrote the name and address for her crazy counterpart on a sticky note and handed it over to the greying man. She stood up and started escorting them to the exit of the fire house.
“He won't mind you giving his personal home address to a group of strangers” Athena, herself was getting annoyed. While it did make sense that this fire captain couldn’t give her full attention to help, she barely even gave a sliver of it to begin with.
“SHE won’t mind at all. Like I said it's been two weeks since they were put on leave and if I find another one of them on a scene again I’ll have to go to the fire chief and I really like that team so I’d like to avoid that at all cost” she sighed lightly “and while she won’t mind I can't say the same about her husband so good luck.”
They watched as she basically dragged herself back inside and up the stairs. What a funky captain buck thought.
“What’s the name of the captain, cap?” Eddie questioned, trying to peek around his shoulder. Bobby glanced at it and sucked in a sharp breath.
“It’s…huh…Bobby Nash.”