Chapter 1

It was yet another hot day in the Sacramento Valley, the late August sun driving the temperature to 90 degrees by 10:00 that morning, to 104 by 2:00 that afternoon. The same atmospheric conditions that made it so hot - namely a high-pressure system sitting directly over the northern half of California - also served to trap the stale air inside of the valley. The pollutants from the factories, automobile exhaust from cars, dust from the agricultural region, and the smoke from several grass fires in the metropolitan area combined with ozone to make the air an ugly shade of hazy brown. You could almost taste the particles as you inhaled on days like this.

"Christ it's hot," Jim Hartman complained to his partner, Sydney Redding, as they sat beneath a tree in a municipal park. Sweat was dampening his forehead and staining the T-shirt beneath his uniform shirt. The air conditioner in the rig was turned to high as they idled, the vents blowing a gust of air that reduced the air temperature in the cab a full 15 degrees, to about 89 or so. "Who the hell decided to build a city in this place anyway? I mean really, what's attractive about it? We get Africa heat in the summer, enough pollen in the spring to choke you to death, and during the winter, if it's not socked in with fog, it's fucking flooding. I think our founding fathers were a bunch of morons."

"They were here to rape the land, remember?" Sydney replied from the driver's seat. She had her checkbook open and a stack of bills on her lap. She had unbuttoned her blue uniform shirt and pulled it open, revealing the sweaty white cotton T-shirt beneath it. This was a violation of company rules of course but she didn't think that the supervisor was going to be pulling his lazy ass out of the air-conditioned office to come check on anyone. "They didn't give a damn about the weather. There was money to be made, Indians to kill, species' to make endangered, all that shit. What you should be asking yourself is why your parents decided to move to this miserable place and why they decided to raise you here."

Jim scoffed, picking up a large bottle of spring water from the drink holder between their seats. "My parents were morons too," he said. He unscrewed the lid and took a large drink of the lukewarm water.

Sydney smiled. "Hell," she said, "I could've told you that. Anyone who votes straight ticket Republican year after year has got to be a little fucked in the head."

"You got that shit right," said Jim, who preferred to think of himself as apathetic when it came to politics. He hadn't voted for anything since he was nineteen years old.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Sydney continuing to scratch out payments for her electric bill, her car loan, and her various credit card bills. As Jim watched her frowning over the process he was reminded of something that he had wanted to discuss with her.

"You wanna hear something strange?" he asked.

"What's that?"

"I haven't got any mail in the past six days."

She looked over at him. "You haven't got any mail?" she asked incredulously, knowing that her partner was continually inundated by multiple credit card bills - the legacy of his marriage to a methamphetamine addict.

Though the nightmare of the marriage was over, the nightmare of life after the marriage was still going quite strongly for him. When the assets and liabilities were divided up between he and Debbie during the divorce it was determined that they had less than ten thousand dollars on the plus side (most of that being the value of the two cars they had owned) and more than fifty thousand dollars in liability. Fifty thousand dollars his wife had managed to charge and borrow over the years. The vast majority of this debt consisted of credit card bills. She had managed to open more than sixteen different high interest accounts, all of which she had charged up to the maximum limit or beyond. She had charged everything from television sets to microwave ovens to complete computer systems and she had sold all of it for less than ten cents on the dollar to a variety of fences in order to finance her expensive habit. Jim's lawyer had argued vehemently that since Jim had been unaware of these debts and had not signed any of the applications - although his name had been forged very neatly on a few of them - that he should not be responsible for any of them. The judge commiserated with Jim's plight but did not quite see things the same way as the lawyer. He ordered the assets be divided equally, with each party getting one of the automobiles and that the debts similarly be divided equally. With a tap of the gavel Jim had found himself with one car, a few furnishings, and more than twenty-five thousand in high interest debt.

Debbie had quickly sold her car, undoubtedly using the money for her favorite pastime. Since she was not terribly concerned with how good of a credit rating she maintained she simply ignored her half of the debt and the companies eventually wrote it off. Jim on the other hand, did have to worry about his credit rating. He had hopes of someday establishing a somewhat normal life for himself and his daughter so he had no choice but to try and pay off what he was responsible for. Every month, in addition to the alimony and the rent and the childcare expenses that he paid he had to put out more than six hundred dollars in credit card payments. And this was barely enough to keep ahead of the interest. The principal never seemed to get any smaller.

But so far he had never been late on anything and had never had his credit rating dinged in any way. He just didn't have any disposable income for savings or enjoyment or food beyond hotdogs and bologna sandwiches. It was however, extremely unusual for even a day to go by without any mail appearing in his box to let him know when his next payment was due.

"It's kind of starting to scare me a little," he admitted to Sydney now. "I know for a fact that two of the credit cards are due in a few days and those fuckers never forget to send the statement. And then there's the childcare bill. Julie over at Day and Night Care..."

"That cooch," Sydney said distastefully. Julie Langhorn, who ran a rather lucrative daycare business that catered to emergency services workers and their strange hours, was the wife of Ron Langhorn, a night shift paramedic at WLS. Neither one of them were particularly well liked by their clients or their co-workers.

"Well, she's the only daycare in town that stays open after 6:00," he said, with a what-can-you-do shrug. "Anyway, she told me she mailed out the bills last week and I haven't got that one yet either."

"That is kinda strange," Sydney told him. "I can pretty much guarantee that Julie didn't lie about sending out the bill. That bitch likes money too much."

"Julie's not really the problem though," he said. "I'm sure she'll be happy to tell me how much I owe her. Those credit card places though... the payment amount changes every month and there's so many of them that I have a hard time keeping track of which one is due when. If those bills don't show up pretty soon, I'm gonna end up not paying one and the next thing you know, my credit rating goes all to hell."

"I was you, I'd start looking into it," she suggested. "Call the post office and find out if there's a problem or anything. Have other people in your complex been getting their mail?"

"I've seen them coming and going from the box with mail in their hands," he said. "I'm just wondering if..."

The beeping of their computer terminal interrupted him. A call had just popped up.

"All right then," Sydney said, quickly stuffing her bills and her checkbook into her open backpack. "Let's go fight some death, shall we?"

"Right on," Jim said unenthusiastically. He turned the screen towards him and pushed the acknowledgment button. He then read what their latest cry for help was about. "2314 Jergens," he said. "Unconscious 30 year old. No further info."

"No further info," Sydney grunted. "You gotta love that. Where the hell is Jergens at?"

Jim looked the address up in the mapbook and told her how to get there. She pulled out onto the street, flipping on the siren and the emergency lights at the first intersection. A four-minute drive brought them to a semi-rundown working class neighborhood on the border of Lemon Hill and Whispering Oaks. The houses here were mostly rentals, many of the yards sporting chain-link, that curious symbol of a declining residential tract.

2314 Jergens was a single story house located on the corner of two streets. It appeared that it was in the process of renovation. A ladder stood against the garage roof and the majority of the wooden shingles had been ripped off the roof and tossed into an untidy pile on the front lawn. Scattered among this pile were more than a few beer cans. The fire engine that had been dispatched had just pulled up as well and the fire crew was exiting the cab. A fat blonde woman with large, jiggling breasts and a cigarette stuck in her mouth rushed up to the captain and was talking excitedly. She pointed upward to the roof and Jim saw that there was a man lying up there, just near the peak.

"The asshole's on the roof," he said disgustedly. "Goddamn it! I don't ever remember them telling me when I got hired here that I'd have to climb up on someone's freaking roof in 104 degree heat."

"I don't even remember them telling me that I'd have to work when it's hot," Sydney put in as she set the parking brake and undid her seatbelt. "Where does it say that in our contract?"

Still grumbling, they stepped out of the cab and into the blast furnace that was the outside air. They pulled the gurney and all of their equipment out of the back of the rig and wheeled it across to where the captain and his crew were still talking to the blonde woman.

"Hi Jim," the captain greeted. "It looks like your patient is up there on the roof."

"So I see," Jim said, glancing up at him. "What's the story?"

"He's been up there pulling shingles all day for a roof job," the captain said. "His wife here came out a little while ago and saw him lying down. She's been yelling up at him but he won't respond to her."

"How long has he been up there?" Jim asked her.

"About three hours," she said. "I told him not to go up there in this heat but he didn't listen to me. He never listens to me. There was this one time that he wanted to go to..."

While she explained how he she told him not to ride the Matterhorn at Disneyland because he was too drunk but that he insisted on doing it anyway and subsequently vomited all over the crowd waiting in line, Jim looked over at the beer cans on the ground, taking a quick inventory and seeing six of them in plain sight. "And has he been drinking anything besides beer up there?" he interrupted.

"Nope," she said. "All he ever drinks is beer. He was telling me that his stomach was cramping a little bit ago but all he did about it was drink another can. I told him he shouldn't drink so much, but does he listen to me? No, it's like the time he wanted to drive home after this party and I..."

Jim and the captain shared a look with each other as she launched into her next story. "Heat stroke?" the captain asked.

"I'm thinking," Jim agreed. "We'd better get up there and have a look. Can we use his ladder or do you want to use one of yours?"

The captain looked over the man's ladder for a moment and then shook his head. "It looks a little flimsy," he said. "Why don't we use one of ours?"

They pulled one of their extension ladders off of their engine and set it up in place of their patient's. While the engineer held it in place, the firefighter, then the captain went up. Jim grabbed their blue equipment bag from their gurney and tossed it up to them. He then mounted the ladder himself and followed them to the shaky roof. The temperature up there seemed to increase by about ten degrees.

"I can't believe he was up here for three hours in this heat," the firefighter muttered as they walked up the fifty-degree slope.

"No shit," Jim said. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's a dead motherfucker."

It turned out that he was not a dead motherfucker, just a very sick one. His skin was reddened and hot to the touch, without so much of a drop of sweat on it. He was breathing rapidly and shallow, his tongue dry as a bone and his lips cracked. His pulse was rapid and thready, barely palpable at the wrist. He groaned a little when Jim shook him but otherwise made no response.

"Yeah, he's in a bad way," Jim confirmed. He looked at the captain. "We need to get him cooled off and rehydrated like yesterday. How are we gonna get him down?"

The captain looked around for a moment, trying to think it through. "How about a backboard?" he suggested. "We strap him to it nice and tight and then angle the ladder to 45 degrees or so. That way we can just kind of slide him down."

"Let's do it," Jim agreed. He walked back to the edge, where Sydney, the engineer, and the wife were all waiting. "Grab us a backboard and pass it up," he told his partner. "We're gonna strap him to it and slide him down the ladder."

The process took about fifteen minutes to complete. Sydney handed up a board while the engineer extended the ladder to its full length and brought back the foot of it to the end of the driveway. Jim rolled the nearly comatose man up onto his side and the firefighter shoved the board beneath him. They rolled him back down and used the Velcro straps to secure him tightly to it. They then pulled him down the roof to the point where the ladder met the rain gutter. The firefighter climbed out onto the ladder and went down a few rungs while Jim and the captain lifted the board and placed it on the handrails, feet towards the ground. Very carefully, the firefighter backed down the ladder, his hands holding tightly to the bottom of the backboard. Jim, holding onto the head portion, helped ease it down from his end and then mounted the ladder behind it. When they got close enough to the ground, Sydney grabbed hold of the sides to keep it steady. At last they were safely back on the cement. They placed the backboard on their gurney and strapped the man in.

"Go turn on the garden hose," Jim told Sydney as he picked up the cardiac monitor. "Let it run until it's cold and then bring it over here."

"Right," she said, heading off.

Jim pulled out the EKG patches and began applying them. The wife hovered over his shoulder the whole time, explaining how she had told him that he shouldn't be up on that roof, how she had told him that he shouldn't be drinking that much beer, how she had told him that he should hire a contractor to do the roof.

"Let's see what we got here," Jim said, turning the machine on. When the display popped up he saw huge peaks in the repolarization cycle of the complexes. This indicated a significant chemical imbalance in the body chemistry. "Jesus," he said, "he probably doesn't have any sodium or potassium left. It's amazing his heart's still firing at all."

"Is he going to be all right?" the wife finally thought to ask.

"We'll do what we can," he told her, trying to sound hopeful. "We need to get his temperature down and some fluids in him. I can put back some of the salt he lost but he's gonna have to wait until he gets to the hospital for the potassium."

Sydney came over with the green garden hose in her hands. "Wet him down?" she asked.

"Everywhere," he confirmed. "Drench him."

By the time they loaded him into the back of the ambulance he was dripping wet. Jim turned the back air conditioner on high and aimed the vents directly at his wet skin. As they drove to the hospital he started an IV in the man's arm with the largest needle that he carried and opened it up wide. As the fluid ran into his vein he taped ice packs to the tubing, cooling it. The trip to Valley Medical Center took about ten minutes and by that time he'd managed to run a liter and a half into his patient. He still didn't wake up.

His temperature turned out to be 106 degrees rectally, very close to what would cause permanent brain damage. The hospital staff immediately began a series of radical cooling measures such as ice water enemas and a cooling blanket borrowed from the cardiac wing. They also began running potassium directly into his veins as fast as it would go.

"Think he'll be all right?" Jim asked Doctor Harling, a crusty twenty-year veteran of emergency medicine.

Harling shrugged. "Time will tell," he said. "So he was actually drinking beer up on his roof in this heat?"

"That's right doc," Jim confirmed.

The doctor shook his head. "I don't think the gene pool would suffer too much if this gentleman didn't get to contribute to it," he suggested flippantly.

Jim gave a dutiful laugh and then made his way over to the registration area to inform the clerks of their arrival. Robin - the clerk that he had taken out to The Faraway Club the previous weekend - was pulling the duty behind her desk. She was dealing with an irate person on the other side of the bulletproof glass when he entered, explaining to her that in the emergency room people were seen in the order of the severity of their complaint, not in the order that they arrived.

"Don't you be givin' me that shit," the woman said angrily, pointing an accusatory finger. "My momma been here for four hours now and all kinds of people been going in before her that ain't nearly as sick."

"Ma'am," Robin said patiently, "there's really not a lot I can do. I can..."

"My momma is sick, you hear me?" she demanded. "She's had that cough for almost two weeks now!"

"Like I said, I can get the charge nurse to talk to you if you want, but that's about all that I can do. Would you like to talk to her?"

"Yeah," the woman said righteously, "bring her on or I'll be takin' my momma somewhere else an' shit!"

"Just go wait over by that door and I'll have her paged over," Robin said.

"She better hurry her ass up," the woman said before stomping off towards the access door.

Robin sighed a little and then picked up the phone to have the charge nurse placate her. When she finished, she turned around and saw Jim standing there. She gave him her smile. "Hi Jimmy," she greeted. "What did you bring us?"

Jim was no longer awkward around Robin as he had been the first few days after their date. It turned out that his fears of her claiming rape or wanting to engage in a long-term relationship with him were groundless. She had not even mentioned the night to him afterwards except to tell him that she'd had a good time and to hint that she might be open to another such date. Other than that, everything about her was unchanged. She was the same smiling, flirting, panty flashing bimbo that she'd always been.

He told her what he knew about his heat-stroke patient (which wasn't much, he hadn't paused to get the man's name or date of birth or anything else) and she thanked him professionally. Just as he was about to head out to the ambulance bay to get the clipboard and the call times, she grabbed his sleeve.