get on a squad of this caliber in a station this well-equipped. And you come bouncing in here with your long legs and perky boobs and big, bright smile, some volunteer experience and a piece of paper from a four-week rescue course, and not a clue what the women who came before you had to endure just to be considered competent.” Gretchen walked to the window and stared outside. “You bet I’m offended.” Her voice thickened. “Because right now, there’s an overworked, underpaid, highly skilled female medic out there still having to prove every damn day that she’s just as capable as any man, because Gilmore passed over her application to give the final slot to you.”
Ouch. Definitely hadn’t seen that coming. “I wasn’t aware,” Katy murmured, “that states have different training and licensing for volunteers as opposed to full-time paramedics.”
Gretchen turned in surprise. “They don’t,” she snapped. “Schooling doesn’t make a good medic, experience does. So,” she added in a sneer, dropping her gaze to the snacks Katy was still holding, “tell me, bright eyes, just how these campfires are going to help us be better firefighters and medics.”
Katy started to snap back an equally derisive response but stopped when she saw Gretchen rub her chin in Tux’s fur and realized the woman wasn’t nearly as angry as she was threatened. Katy suspected Gretchen had been defending her position to younger, quicker, stronger men and women for so long that she didn’t know how to stop.
Katy smiled. “Thank you.”
Gretchen’s eyes narrowed. “For what?”
“For your backaches and heartaches and lost relationships and all you endured so that when I show up at a scene on the worst day of someone’s life, they don’t look past my shoulder and ask when the paramedic is arriving.”
Gretchen stared at Katy for several heartbeats, hugging Tux a little tighter, then suddenly headed for the door. She stopped in the hall and looked back. “I suggest you bring that bright smile along when you ask the chief to transfer you to one of the other shifts, because, Katy, I only work with people I trust to have my back if a scene turns ugly.”
Like this one just did? Katy listened to the rushed footsteps fading down the hall. Well, she’d asked. And Gretchen had not-so-delicately confirmed what Katy had known even as she’d dropped her application in the mailbox all those months ago, which was that she really had no business being here.
Except she did. Because no way did she take women like Gretchen for granted, knowing full well that without them fighting the big fight, she never would have been able to come bouncing in here with her bright smile and perky boobs and minimal experience. Katy finally lowered the snacks into the canvas bag and decided that, just like Gretchen had been doing for twenty-six years, she would keep right on proving her worth every damn day.
But hopefully without a chip on her shoulder.
“Funny how some people love to dish it out,” Welles drawled as he sauntered into the kitchen grinning like a Cheshire cat, “but they can’t take it.”
Oh, yeah. Russo and Mason and Bean hadn’t liked it when, less than half an hour after they’d left their new medic and intern dangling off the hose tower, they’d walked in the kitchen arguing over who was cooking to find Katy and Welles sitting at the table eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. She hadn’t even gotten to ask the slack-jawed trio what they were having for dinner, since the men had nearly tripped over their own feet rushing back out. Katy and Welles had given each other conspirator’s smiles as they’d heard two sets of footsteps running down the stairs and the squeak of one set of hands sliding down the pole to the first floor. Welles had gone to the window, then relayed the news that all three men were storming the rescue truck, with Mason climbing in to get the SD card from the dashcam.
“Are you still rubbing it in their faces?” Katy asked, trying but failing to give the boy a stern look. She couldn’t help it; it tickled every last funny bone to think of those pranksters finding the video erased. “I told you the real victory is in acting as if you do that sort of thing every day.” She arched her brow higher. “You didn’t tell them how we got down, did you?”
Welles held his hands up in surrender, although he couldn’t stop grinning. “Not even