No Rest for the Weary...

Independence, Missouri
Monday

"My god, I don't think this week is ever going to be over with," Audie grumbled as shuffled back out to the ambulance bay at Independence Memorial Hospital. Glancing at her partner, she shook her head. "And cold Taco Bell, my favorite lunch!"

Working twelve hour shifts -- three one week and four the next -- generally wasn't too grueling, and this week had started out just like any other. As a matter of fact, Sunday had started out kinda slow, and for the first few hours, they had sat on their assigned street corner for nearly six hours before they got a call. In that time, they had been alerted via their on-board computer, about a medical alert, some sort of flu thing, but, like the Bird Flu and H1N1, no one paid much attention. After all, for all the hype those got in the media, neither had panned out to really be anything, and some folks even called them a conspiracies to get people to take vaccinations that were allegedly really some sort of mood control or something.

Audie's take on it all was that it gave a media that was bored with political news something different to yack about, and naturally, they were trying to make it out to be more than it was, since the more casualties there were, the more news there was. Not only that, but the incessant reports got people all agitated, and a simple bout of nausea became a life and death crisis. It was annoying, and tended to double, or even triple their work load.

"Would be nice to have five minutes to choke down something, wouldn't it?" Her partner, Jessie Wright, was a seasoned paramedic, a good mentor to her rookie rank, and was generally even-tempered, but even he was getting frustrated with the non-stop sting of calls they'd been getting. It was nearly eight hours into their shift and the only break they'd had had been a few minutes to grab food at Taco Bell. That had been two calls ago, and no doubt the food was cold and coagulated. "Got to love eating lard!" He unlocked the doors and the pair climbed into the warm interior of the van, hastily closing the doors against the cold day as another ambulance pulled into the bay.

Glancing at the other crew, Audie smiled and nodded. Everyone had been run ragged, she knew, and it was that sense of a common misery that, strangely, kept them going. Wasting no more time, she grabbed the bag of food and fished out a soggy taco. Two bites into it, the pagers went off, and she groaned, glancing at Jesse and rolling her eyes. "Really?"

Medic ten, respond code three, ten oh five Evans, patient vomiting, shortness of breath.

"Really." Jesse downed his burrito in two bites, then fired up the engine. "Duty calls!"

Laughing, Audie fastened her seatbelt, then merely nodded as she worked on finishing the taco as quickly as she could.