Fair Trade (Bold Brew #7) - Cate Ashwood Page 0,18

passenger’s seat. “Guess you’re driving?”

The question was met with an unimpressed glare.

“Dispatch has already tagged us with a call.”

I jumped in, and Callum had his foot on the gas pedal before I’d even closed my door. I buckled up as we pulled out of the station, and with a quick flip of a couple of switches, the lights and sirens kicked on, louder and brighter than I remembered. I made a mental note of where they were in case Callum didn’t go over it again.

The very last thing I wanted was for him to think I was an idiot. It was a weird position to be in. He was my preceptor—my superior in every sense of the word. He was responsible not only for the remainder of my education, but for my start in the ambulance service in Laurelsburg.

The other side of that coin was that forty-eight hours ago, he’d been on his hands and knees, hands behind his back, with my tongue buried in his ass.

I very much doubted that this situation had ever presented itself before, but I wasn’t afraid of a little trailblazing.

“The CAD shows all the information from dispatch. That’s all we’ve got to go on,” Callum yelled over the scream of the siren. He tapped on the screen mounted in the dashboard.

2846 E. Franklin St. - alleyway behind business

Code 3

MPDS: 32D01 (Life Status Questionable)

Person at Scene

Calling party states unknown male, 40s, unconscious, laying on pavement. Caller not willing to approach but cannot see breathing.

The drive to the scene only took us a few minutes. Callum parked the ambulance in the alleyway behind the address, leaving the lights on but flicking off the siren.

“Grab your kit,” Callum commanded. “Ninety percent chance this is Chad Dyer, and we’re gonna need the Narcan.”

“How do you know?”

“Mr. Dyer and I are old friends.” Callum scowled.

“Okay, then.”

I followed Callum across the pavement, and a few feet away, I saw the body. A woman, no older than twenty, hurried toward us, her dog trotting patiently at the end of the leash, watching the whole thing go down.

“He’s over here,” she said, clearly shaken as she walked beside me toward the man prone by a dumpster. “Is he dead?”

“No, he’s going to be just fine,” Callum said.

“I didn’t want to leave him, but I couldn’t remember how to do CPR and he wasn’t breathing much but his chest was moving and so I just stayed…”

Callum placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. “You did great. We got it from here. Thank you.”

She nodded, clearly still unsettled.

“Okay, Brawley. You’re up.”

There was a note of challenge in his voice, like he thought I was going to get two seconds into this call and fall flat on my face, but I refused to let that happen. This guy was down, and I was going to do everything in my power to save him.

“ABCs first.”

“I know,” I said as I kneeled beside the patient.

He was breathing but appeared to be cyanotic. Opening the kit, I attached the pulse ox and took a radial pulse. It was definitely there, and he was definitely alive, but he didn’t look good. Callum watched on, observing me intently as I attempted to wake him. Even with pain stimulus, he didn’t stir.

“I need oxygen and a BVM,” I said.

“You want an airway?”

“Yeah. Yellow OPA.”

Callum handed it to me, the challenging look he’d worn earlier gone. Now, he was all business. As I tried to insert it, I prayed my hands wouldn’t shake. I could feel the adrenaline from running the call start to amp me up.

I was responsible for whether this man lived or died.

His life was in my hands.

The OPA slipped into his throat, and I started assisting vents. Callum checked the pulse ox again.

“SPO2’s coming up,” he said.

“Time to draw up the Narcan?”

Callum nodded. “Dosage?”

“Point eight milligrams.”

“Route?”

“IM.”

“Good. Give it.”

I double-checked everything before inserting the needle and pushing the meds. It wasn’t the first overdose I’d seen. It likely wouldn’t be the last one we attended that block. Hell, we’d be lucky if we didn’t have another one that shift, the way things had been going across the country. This was one protocol I knew backward and forward.

Moments later, the patient was fighting the airway.

“That’s it, Chad,” Callum called from beside me. “Pull it out.”

He was disoriented, but awake, and managed to remove the OPA.

“Welcome back, Chad.” I put my hand on his shoulder, hoping to ground him. I knew most patients woke up confused and sometimes angry.

“Get your