The Vampire and The Paramedic

By

Copyright © 2015 by Jamie Davis. All rights
reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to
actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is
purely coincidental.

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To the first one hundred readers - my most
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James could not believe he was in the
position in which he currently found himself. The paramedic
kneeling next to him on the street was applying a tourniquet to his
partner and second in command, Rudolph, as she attempted to stem
the flow of blood from his mangled arm. The burning wreckage of the
car in which they had been traveling lit the scene with a
flickering orange glow. This was the first time he had ever dialed
911. Hell, it was the first time he had reached out and contacted
human authorities for help ever in his 1,674 years of life, or
unlife. It was something he never thought he would do, yet here he
was, helping the human paramedic he had called treat his colleague
in the street.

“Keep him talking and awake, James. We’ve got
to keep him coherent, or he’ll start to shift and I’ll never get
this bleeding stopped.” James knew Brynne Garvey was an experienced
paramedic with the Elk City Fire Department. She was part of a new
pilot program called “Station U” that reached out to provide
emergency medical services to a previously underserved part of the
community, the Unusuals.

James had only known her for a few short
weeks. He had been skeptical about the intentions of the elderly ER
physician Doctor Spirelli when he approached James about providing
some community medical services for his subjects in the Elk City
region. He called it a community paramedic pilot project that, if
successful, could be used to serve Unusuals in other parts of the
country. Key members of the local human leadership at all levels
knew of the presence of Unusuals. They were aware of the creatures
of myth, legend, and sometimes nightmare, living alongside the
human populations in most parts of the world.

For the last hundred and fifty years or so,
there had been an uneasy truce of sorts and an effort to integrate
Unusuals, albeit in secret, into society. They weren’t living in
the open yet. He was sure the humans weren’t ready for that step
yet. The average person would soil their pants at the knowledge
that the creatures of myth and legend, long used to scare children
at bedtime, were real and lived next door. The literal witch hunts
and monster-killing rampages of the middle ages were gone, but the
cultural memories of short-lived creatures like humans were
tenacious.

And yet, he had reason to hope. He had lost
many friends to the hunts over the years, and he had to admit that
in the early days, Unusuals returned the favor, by hunting and
killing humans. But in the last century there had dawned a time of
hopeful enlightenment. He had seen many prejudices shrugged aside
by civilized societies in recent years. Certainly there had been
some growing pains in those societies. Slavery had ended in most of
the world over a hundred years ago, but the underlying prejudices
still lurked under the surface in some places and with some
portions of the world and national community. Could humans, as a
whole, rid themselves of the prejudices of their cultural
nightmares, ingrained into their very myth and, in some cases,
religious beliefs?

Some humans had found ways to coexist
alongside Unusuals. Some had been able to live and let live. He had
come to know many of them over the years. There had been a need
from time to time to act in an official capacity to work against
Unusuals who didn’t subscribe to the policy to stay out of human
conflicts and wars. It had been difficult to stay neutral during
the conflict in Europe 70 years before. The Nazi push to eliminate
the Jews had been hard to stomach because so many of the Jews had
been accepting of living peacefully alongside Unusuals over the
years. Eventually, the enlistment of some particularly nasty
shapeshifter tribes into certain SS battalions shifted the balance,
and the Unusual community stepped up to join the world cause
against fascism. In hindsight, it had taken them too long to come
into the war and take sides. Too many innocents had died as a
result of their complacency. But, it had inadvertently solved
another problem.

The Unusuals were accepted by the leadership
of most countries now. They didn’t come “out” to the general public
but became integrated as a sort of shadow government was formed to
work alongside the human leadership to promote cooperation for the
common good. There were Unusuals serving in various official jobs
including the human military special forces units, and things were
looking up. All of which had led one aged human ER physician to
reach out and seek a way to provide medical services to the
Unusuals living in his community. He had known of the Unusuals from
his prior military service and wanted to find a way to serve
them.

Doc Spirelli assembled a team of other ER
physicians, nurses, paramedics and police leaders to integrate the
Unusuals’ population into their 911 system. They arranged to
provide specially trained personnel at all steps along the way to
provide care from the street to the hospital. There would always be
members of the ER staff on duty who knew about Unusuals in the
community. There was also a dedicated emergency medical services
unit set up with paramedics in SUVs to respond to medical problems.
James had wondered how it would all work out. The answer had been a
resounding success. His subjects in the Unusual population had
responded with cautious interest in openly getting access to human
health care services. In the past few weeks and months, there had
been many opportunities for them to make use of the ER or 911
services and most cases had been resolved without even requiring
hospitalization. Some of that was due to most Unusuals’ heightened
healing abilities. In other instances, it was still an issue of
trust in the human officials, and the patients had refused
transport to the hospital. They were treated as well as possible on
the scene of the incident, and the paramedics went on their way.
Overall, he supposed he would call it a success.

Still, he had never expected to have to
utilize those services himself until that truck had barreled
through the red light into the intersection and smashed into his
small red sports car. Even with his heightened reflexes and
strength James had been unable to avoid the collision and in the
end all he could do was brace himself for the impact. His
passenger, Rudolph, had been talking at the time while flipping
through his smartphone and had not gotten that much warning. It was
why he was injured so severely. James had recovered quickly,
realized he smelled gasoline, and pulled his friend from the
wreckage. Unfortunately, Rudy’s arm had been pinned between the
sports car and the side of the truck.

There was no time to try and pry it out
gracefully. There had been no choice. He had just pulled to get
away from the fire, one of the few things of which he was truly
afraid. Burns didn’t heal in a vampire. The human truck driver
climbed from the cab, surprisingly unhurt and had looked around
then ran off. The breeze wafted the faint hint of alcohol towards
the sidewalk where James had dragged his companion. He thought
about running in pursuit and exacting some revenge, but the sudden
heat of the fiery explosion from the wreck distracted him and then
all he could think of was his friend. As a Lycan or werewolf, Rudy
would probably heal in full if he survived the initial injury, but
the bleeding wouldn’t stop. James was sure if he couldn’t get the
bleeding to stop Rudy wouldn’t survive long enough to heal. He
reached into his pocket and removed his cell phone, staring at it
in his pale palm for a few seconds before swiping to engage the
keypad on the device and dial 911. Time to see if the system works.
They should have his phone number in the computer-aided dispatch
system, and it would key him as an Unusual so they would send the
right crews to the scene. He had to get help here.

“911, state the nature of your emergency,”
said the woman’s voice on the other end of the phone.

“My friend and I have been in a car
accident,” James said. “I’m ok but my friend is unconscious and
bleeding, and I can’t get it to stop.”

“I see you’re on a cell phone, can you give
me your location, address or a cross-street?”

“Yes, I’m at the corner of Route 40 and
Landing Lane in Elk City. Please hurry up!” James looked around
trying to decide if he should just pick Rudy up and try and run to
the ER. He decided it would take him ten to fifteen minutes to get
there even at his best super-human speed. He put the phone on
speaker and continued to answer the dispatcher’s questions while he
followed the instructions she gave to continue to apply pressure to
the wound. It was difficult because the wound was a whole series of
ragged tears to Rudy’s arm from his mangled hand, all the way up to
the elbow.

“We have a paramedic unit and an ambulance on
the way, and police officers are responding as well. Please stay on
the line with me until they get there,” the woman said over the
speaker.

“Ok, I will.” James listened to her while he
also picked up the sound of approaching sirens far in the distance.
He guessed they were still several miles away - too far for a human
to hear them yet. It was late, and there was no traffic on the road
and no bystanders had come. That was good because he was afraid
that Rudy would wake up and start to shift to his wolf form. He was
not sure what he would do if that were to happen. Rudy groaned, and
his eyes fluttered open.

“What, what happened?” Rudy asked.

“Just lay still, Rudy. There was a car
accident, and your arm is torn up. I’m trying to stop the
bleeding.” James pushed at the werewolf’s chest with a bloody hand
as he tried to sit up. “I called for help and paramedics are on the
way.” As he said that, a white SUV with flashing red and white LED
lights and a blaring siren turned the corner and drove the 200
yards up the road to their location at the next intersection. A
diminutive young woman in a white short-sleeved uniform shirt and
navy blue cargo pants climbed out of the driver’s side of the SUV.
She walked quickly to the rear lift gate and opened it, pulling out
a large duffle bag and grabbed the handle of a heart monitor before
coming over to where James sat on the curb with Rudy. James noticed
the special ink stamped on that back of her right hand that
signified, to his ultraviolet spectrum vision, she was a member of
the specialized Station U paramedic team.

“I’m Brynne Garvey from Station U. Is it just
the two of you?” she asked as she looked around for other patients.
Her brown hair pulled up in a ponytail swung around her shoulder as
she did. She turned back to them and looked at James. “Are you ok,
sir?”

“Uh, yes,” James stammered. “I am fine. I’m
James, and this is Rudy. There was another person driving that
truck, but he got himself out and ran off in that direction.” He
nodded down the street. “I pulled my friend here out of the car
before it caught fire, but I can’t stop the bleeding.”

The paramedic pursed her lips as she quickly
took in the scene, then reached into a side pocket of her cargo
pants and pulled out a black roll of webbing. He heard the Velcro
rip open as she opened the tourniquet and applied it to his
friend’s arm midway between the elbow and armpit. The webbing had
Velcro along its length and a stick of some kind attached in the
middle. After applying the strap, she began to twist the stick,
tightening the tourniquet on Rudy’s arm.

“Ouch!” Rudy shouted, reaching up to
forcefully push her away.

She dodged the arm and looked at James. “I
don’t know how strong he is or how strong you are, but you have to
keep that arm down and out of my face while I tighten this. It’s
going to hurt a lot worse before I’m done.”

James grabbed Rudy’s flailing arm and pulled
it back down to his side. His friend and he had always jested about
who was the strongest. James was surprised to find that his friend
had not been kidding about possibly being able to take him in a
stand-up fight. He let go of the injured arm and used both hands to
hold Rudy’s free arm in place. Rudy was starting to growl.