Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 90721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90721 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 454(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Being a paramedic, I’d learned that it was best to eat, because if you waited, it was very possible you wouldn’t have the opportunity to for hours. Therefore, I’d practically sucked every single bit of chilidog down, finished off half my coke, and then wiped my hands with a baby wipe all in the three minutes it took Winter to drive to the patient’s house.
We arrived on scene to find the local PD, and engine three already on scene, which was good because it meant that the scene was secure and we could proceed inside without waiting for the okay to enter.
“I’ll grab the cot.” Winter said as she headed to the back of the medic.
I grabbed the bag and followed behind Winter as she entered the house.
The house itself was on the outskirts of Kilgore, just barely in the city limits. It was located off the Whispering Pines Golf course, and I could clearly see why someone would want to break in; the house was a fucking gold mine.
A young police officer met us at the house front of the house and his sunny smile made him look to be about the cutest thing I’d ever seen. I hadn’t actually seen this one before, but since I’d only been working a short while, there were always new people to meet.
“Officer Jones,” Winter said, nodding her head at him.
“Winter,” He said, nodding back. “Who’s this lovely young lady?”
Oh man, the young Officer Jones was a charmer. “I would be Baylee Roberts. Nice to meet you Officer Jones.”
His smile widened at my no-nonsense-tolerated tone. “Nice to meet you, too. Did you hear what you’d be responding to?”
Winter answered. “Gunshot wound. One victim. Why?”
“It wasn’t the home owner, but the burglar. Owner, a twenty nine year old female shot him in the stomach, chest, both legs, and foot.” Officer Jones explained.
“Wow!” I exclaimed. “Did she unload the whole clip?”
“Almost, more like the entire revolver. She has young kids in the house. She feared for her children’s life.” Officer Jones explained with a smile on his face.
Good for her. Home invasions were all the too real. I should know. I’d had one nearly kill my mother when I was fifteen. My mom had been in the kitchen at the time, and would’ve died if the dog hadn’t killed the burglar before he could shoot her.
My father was currently the Chief of Police in Casper, but, at the time, he’d just been a uniformed K-9 officer.
Drone, our family pet, was a retired K-9 officer. The year I turned fifteen, Drone had been a victim of a knife wound. The knife wielder had been aiming for my father, but the dog had jumped in front of my father, protecting his partner. He’d sustained injuries, and although he’d healed, they’d thought it best to retire him. So he’d come home to the Roberts’ family homestead after his recovery, and stayed.
The night we’d had our home invaded, it was because the thief had seen my father’s new TV box out by the trash. At the time, we didn’t have an alarm, and since my father had been on his way home, my mother had the front door open waiting for him to arrive home. In turn, it made the burglar’s entry exceptionally easy. When he’d arrived in the kitchen, he’d leveled his gun at my mother, but didn’t see Drone until it was too late.
He’d died of trauma to his throat, bleeding out before the ambulance could arrive to offer assistance.
“How bad is he?” Winter asked, bringing me out of my own childhood nightmare.
“Oh, he’s dead. Just need the confirmation.” Officer Jones explained.
“Well, that should be easy.” I muttered.
The City of Kilgore had a new policy in place that required an EKG to be performed due to a lawsuit two years prior. The woman who’d been presumed dead had revived over an hour after her wounds were deemed ‘incompatible with life’ by a paramedic. Although the woman hadn’t had a pulse, and the lower half of her body was missing, she’d somehow revived without medical intervention, recovered, and then sued due to delayed medical care.
She’d won the suit, and the new law of an EKG being performed became a new protocol. Hence why Winter and I were called to perform said task, and then transport.
“All right, where do we go?” Winter asked.
Officer Jones pointed us in the correct direction, and we arrived to find the dead man on his back, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. A dead person gave off a particular stare paramedics liked to call the ‘thousand yard stare;’ where the dead person in question stared off into the distance, with none of the animation that alive people have.
The man that’d been shot was doing that very thing. When I’d seen my first dead person, the woman had had that same blank stare as well. Hundreds of dead people later, and the look had never changed.
Police officers had cordoned off the area, and the crime scene techs were waiting off at the side of the kitchen, waiting for the removal of the body.
My brother stood in the hallway, halfway in the kitchen, and halfway in the living room, keeping an eye on the scene. Luke didn’t normally fool with crimes such as this; it was a surprise to see Luke’s half smile directed towards me.
Disregarding my brother, I dropped down to my haunches, snapped gloves into place over my hands, and checked for a pulse on the victim. Finding none, I started hooking up the EKG while Winter dropped the cot to the lowest position, and turned on the monitor.
The EKG showed no electrical activity, so I called time of death. “Time of death, 0810 hours.”
Two of the firefighters on scene, Dillon and Bowe, helped Winter and me load the body onto the cot. From there, Winter walked out with the body, Dillon and Bowe. She waved at Luke as she went.
Dillon and Bowe were firefighter/paramedics that worked with us at station three. Dillon was the oldest person at station three at the age of thirty-six. He was of Irish decent, tall and blonde with arms the size of tree trunks. He was the FAO, or the fire truck operator, for truck three, and a stickler for the rules.