Change Is Hard

By Diane

Johnny grabbed two more eggs from the carton and cracked them—badly—into the frying pan. He fished one piece of shell out with a pinky finger and glared balefully at the other piece. “It can stay there,” he decided, remembering who he was cooking the eggs for.

He threw some more slices of bacon into the pan beside the eggs, and cursed under his breath when the grease splattered onto his hand.

“What was that, Gage?” asked his partner. His NEW partner. His new PERMANENT partner.

“Nothin’,” Johnny muttered.

“I didn’t hear you,” Brice said.

“I SAID ‘DAMMIT’, BRICE, ALRIGHT?”

Brice looked at him calmly and opened his mouth to speak. The other men sitting around the table stopped mid-chew, feeling like they were in a stalled car between two heavily loaded freight trains, barreling towards each other at full speed. All the same, they were human—they wouldn’t be able to look away from the impending disaster.

“You know, Gage, you don’t have to yell at me. I just was curious as to what you had said.”

“If I WANTED you to know, I would have made sure you heard me in the FIRST place!” Johnny snapped.

“Yes, but…”

Cap cleared his throat, but before he could say anything, the klaxon went off: “Station 51, dumpster fire….”

Johnny turned off the fire under the eggs and bacon and motioned to the pan. “Breakfast is served, Brice.” You asshole, he added. Prudently, he kept that thought inside his head.

An hour later, Brice and Johnny were on their back to the station. The silence in the squad was nearly deafening. Brice couldn’t understand Gage’s sullen attitude. It was completely unnecessary, and utterly unprofessional.

“You know, Gage, you didn’t have to cause a scene back there. I was merely asking you to comply with departmental regulations about having the doors locked….”

“I didn’t have to cause a scene?” Johnny repeated, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. “I wasn’t causing a scene! I was merely reminding you that I am the senior paramedic here, and I make the final decisions.”

Brice considered his next words carefully, honestly he did. “Gage, calling me names is out of line, don’t you think? We’re going to have to work together. The things you said back there are certainly not conducive to a good working relationship. I understand you’re upset about DeSoto…”

Johnny shot him such a look of hatred and anger that Brice instantly regretted his words. “You don’t know a damned thing, Brice. Get off my back, and don’t ever mention him again.”

“Captain?” Brice stood in the doorway.

“Come in, Brice. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, we all knew there was going to be some tension, with Gage coming back from his medical leave, and that the realization that DeSoto was—gone—was going to finally really sink in to him, but…”

Hank leaned back and waited for Brice to get to the point.

“Well, sir, what I was wondering was if Gage had been cleared to return to work. Psychologically speaking.”

Hank rubbed the back of his neck. He could feel the muscles bunched there, just ready to snap from the strain. “Yes, Brice, he has been cleared. The department realizes there might still be problems, and will be ready to step in, should the problems—should Johnny—get out of hand. Having said that, I gotta tell you, the man just started back TODAY. You’ve gone on ONE call with him. What did you expect?”

“I expected complete professionalism…”

Hank resisted the urge to throw back his head and laugh hysterically. “From JOHNNY? My God, Brice, are you sure YOU don’t need to talk to the department about your expectations?”

Brice blinked. And actually considered the older man’s words. “I concede the point. My expectations were perhaps too highly placed. I do know Gage is a highly emotional individual, subject to overreacting…”

Again Cap resisted howling with laughter.

“…So, yes, I’ll give him more time.” Brice nodded to himself. “Thank you, sir.”

“My door is always open,” Hank said. When the paramedic was gone, the captain sat back, rubbed his face with his hands and muttered, “Well, Roy, you’ve made your absence felt even more, now, haven’t you?”

“Marco, if the squad isn’t back by dinner, how about pizza?” Chet asked.

Marco looked up from the sports page and shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

From the couch came Mike’s agreement.

“But somebody’s going to have to pony up the cash until Gage comes in,” Chet pointed out. “All I’ve got is a couple of bucks. I didn’t get to the bank yesterday.”

“Ask the Phantom for a loan,” Mike commented, peering over the top of the Sports Illustrated he was reading.

“Ha ha. Funny. How much do you have on you?”

“Your idea. You pay.”

“I guess we starve, then.”

“You could always make dinner yourself,” Marco suggested.

Chet shook his head. “I cooked yesterday…”

“You had latrine yesterday,” Mike reminded him.

“Oh. Well, the last time we worked, I cooked, and frankly, I’m tired of hearing you guys bitch about…”

They heard the squad pulling up in front of the station. “Chet, you’re off the hook,” Marco said with a smile.

“Twenty bucks says Gage has hot dogs with him,” Chet offered.

Mike and Marco looked at him, then at each other, then toward the Captain’s office. “Make it ten, and you got it,” Mike countered.

Marco dug for his wallet and quickly counted the bills inside. “I’ll take ten.”

Johnny was yelling as he was getting out of the truck. “Son of a BITCH! Who honestly gives a flying FIG if I didn’t, Brice? I didn’t hear Brackett or Early complain!”

“I was merely pointing out…”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s all you’re good for today! Pointing out what you think are my mistakes! I could point out that you’ve made one hell of a mistake coming here…”

Cap chose that moment to come out into the garage. “GAGE!”

The dark-haired paramedic turned angrily to face his commanding officer. “WHAT NOW?”

In the other room, Chet, Marco, and Mike quietly wondered if they should make odds on if Johnny was going to live past this day…

Cap closed the door firmly, but quietly. He saw the other men watching the door with obvious fear, curiosity, and regret. He wished he were out there with them.

“John…” He turned to face his rebellious paramedic.

“I’ll apologize to you, but I’m not going to apologize to that son of a bitch!” Johnny snarled. “I’m tired of his attitude! Honest, Cap! He’s going on and on about the damn keys, and keeping the doors locked, and—listen to this! He actually bitched at me about driving 40 in a 35! And this was all before lunch! Then we get on this last call, and I knew Rampart was going to say to give the guy…”

“Johnny. Stop.”

The younger man did, but he was breathing heavily, as if he’d run for miles. “Cap, I can’t work with him!”

Hank Stanley stared at the paramedic—his friend—until Johnny looked down at the floor. “If you want to stay here, John, you’re going to have to work with him.”

“Can’t you just call someone? Get them to reassign him?”

“You know it doesn’t work that way.” The tone was gentle, but the fact was as sharp and nasty as a stiletto.

“Shit,” Johnny finally mumbled.

“You knew Brice would be here,” Cap pointed out. “You said you could handle it.”

Johnny’s shoulders slumped, then straightened as the anger began to burn in his eyes again. “Yeah, I know. But that was before—“

“No one is going to be like Roy,” Cap said quietly. “You’ve got to face that fact.”

Johnny flinched. “Shit, Cap. That hurt.”

Hank knew it would. But he also knew that he couldn’t afford to be gentle with Johnny now. The paramedic was going to make this into a battle that he would never be able to win. “You have to choose, John. Choose to accept Brice, obnoxious, overbearing…” Cap struggled for another word.

“Anal.”

Cap’s lips twitched, and he gestured to allow the addition. “…as he is, or you’re going to get transferred out, willingly or not. Now, I don’t want to lose you. WE don’t want to lose you. Not now.” Not after losing Roy, the implication filled the silence. “But it has to be up to you.”

Johnny stood silently, staring down at his feet. “I have to go make dinner,” he finally mumbled.

Hank sat unmoving for a while, going over the entire conversation in his head. Had he been too direct? Had he been too unsympathetic? “Shit, Roy. What have you brought down on us?”

“You owe me ten bucks,” Mike reminded Chet later as they washed and dried the dishes.

“How do you figure that?” Chet asked him a little too innocently. “We had hot dogs for dinner!”

“Yeah, but Brice had to go out and get them after Johnny FORGOT.”

“A mere technicality,” Chet shrugged. “The point is that we had hot dogs.”

Marco came by to drop another glass in the dishwater. “You owe me ten dollars, Chet,” he said with a glance around to make certain Cap wasn’t standing too near.

“You guys suck,” Chet muttered, seeing Cap’s eyes on them..

“Yeah, well, you still owe us ten bucks a piece,” Mike replied with a grin.

Johnny had eaten dinner quickly, refusing to be drawn into any conversations, then retreated to the dorm. He lay on his bunk, thinking furiously about the day. That led to thinking about the last week, then the week before that, when he had first heard that Brice had been permanently assigned to Roy’s place.

“Why couldn’t it have been Dwyer?” the dark-haired man wondered for the five hundred thousandth time. “I can work with Dwyer.”

Mike suddenly peered around the corner. “Johnny?”

Johnny looked at him, but didn’t respond.

Mike slowly came in and sat down on Roy’s—no, BRICE’S—bunk. “It’s been a rough day.”

“Yeah.”

Mike continued looking at him, and Johnny noticed a directness to the engineer’s gaze that he had never seen before. “I mean, it’s been a rough day for all of us.”

“Hey, Mike, if you’re going to ask me to put up with Brice’s idiotic ideas…”

“No, nothing like that! He’s definitely—wrapped a little too tight. But, Johnny, I just want you to know that, well, we all miss Roy too. No, not as much as you do, I mean, he was your partner for so long, but…” Mike stopped, seeing the sparks ignite in Johnny’s eyes, and sighed in frustration as he tried to think of how to put his thoughts into words. “For so long, it was the six of us, you know? And now…it’s not. It was always you and Roy, and seeing you and Brice today getting out of the squad was kind of a punch in the gut for us, too.”

He was stunned to see tears suddenly well in Johnny’s eyes. “Damn it, Mike, but what am I supposed to DO? It’s BRICE for God’s sake!”

Mike shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know what I would do if I had to ride in a truck with him all day.”

Johnny rolled his eyes.

“But, if you leave now, before you even give it a chance, well, hell, Johnny, what would Roy say?”

The two men stared at each other for a moment, then Mike got up.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think Brice will ever loosen up?”

Mike considered it. Seriously. “With you as a partner, he’ll have to.” He shot Johnny a grin before walking out.

Johnny lay there, still and silent for a moment, then whispered, “Oh, hell, Roy. Now what do I do?”

_________________________

The tones woke them in the middle of the night. A fire at an abandoned warehouse. A big fire, requiring five departments.

Johnny’s heart thumped wildly as they pulled up in front of the building. “Man, look at that thing!”

Brice was similarly impressed. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“There was the one time that we had to fight a fire at a housing development…” Johnny caught himself, and opened his door, seeing Cap already out of the truck and heading for the Chief. “We gotta go.”

Brice was about to warn him about locking the doors, but decided to let it go. This time.

Hours later, hoses were being rerolled and equipment stowed. A heap of black timber and ashes was all that remained of the warehouse. Amazingly enough, there were only two injuries, and both of them were slight—heat stroke for one firefighter, and a broken arm for the other. Brice rode to Rampart with them, leaving Johnny to pack up the truck in peace.

Suddenly, he sensed a presence behind him, and he turned quickly.

“Hey, Junior.”

“Hey, Roy.”

“How’d it go, your first day back?”

Johnny rolled his eyes. “It was about as fun as a train wreck.”

Roy smiled. “Well, you knew it wouldn’t be easy.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think it’d be so hard, either.” Johnny muttered before he thought.

Roy lifted his helmet off of his head and looked intently at it—the helmet that designated him captain of the 15s. “Change is hard.”

“Brice is a bastard.”

Roy chuckled. “It wasn’t easy for me, either, being with him the last three weeks before I left.”

“Three weeks? I’m stuck with him FOREVER.”

“You could always get your own station.”

“Me? Captain?” Johnny shook his head. “I’m not ready for that yet.”

“Hey, Cap!” An unfamiliar voice called.

Roy turned. “Yeah, Suarez?”

“Jenkins says we’re ready to go.”

Roy waved in acknowledgement, then turned back to Johnny. “Well, I guess I’d better go.”

Johnny nodded. “Yeah. I gotta go pick up Brice at Rampart. Lucky me.”

Roy chuckled. Suddenly he reached out and grabbed Johnny’s shoulder. “You’re going to make it, Junior. We’ll get you through this.”

“Huh. You owe me big for leaving me, you know.”

“I’ll never hear the end of it, will I?’

“How about taking me out for steak Friday?”

“Jennifer’s dance recital.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

“Don’t forget, you promised to come.”

“I know. The auditorium at the middle school, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, Cap!” The tone was impatient.

Johnny smiled his first honest smile that day. “You’d better get going, Captain DeSoto.”

Roy lightly smacked him in the arm. “Take care, Junior.”

“You too, Pally.” Johnny watched Roy get into the 15s engine. With a sigh, he stowed the last box in the squad. Then with a last look around, he got into the squad and started it up. He had to go get his new partner, after all.

The End