Chapter Text
By the time they cut the driver out of the car and strap him to a backboard, Buck is sweating beneath his turnouts. Again.
He pounds on the back door of the ambulance after slamming it shut, then watches the flashing lights reflect off the wet pavement as it drives away. It’s tempting to pull off his helmet and let the January rain pour onto his face and neck. That little bit of relief might be the only thing he’d be grateful to this goddamn, never-ending storm for right now, drought or no drought.
Seems it never rains in Southern California… Yeah, right.
The calls have been non-stop since the start of their shift eighteen hours ago: flooded basements, cars hydroplaning all over the freeway, a massive sinkhole at a shopping plaza. And just when Buck thought they’d be back at the firehouse long enough for a hot shower and a nap, dispatch sent them to a head-on collision on a dark, twisting canyon road.
Beside him, Eddie hunches over, hands on knees. Buck’s deciding whether to risk an encouraging slap on the back when he catches sight of Bobby waving them over.
“Tow truck’s on its way now to clear the road, and Hen and Chim will have the other driver ready to transport in about five minutes,” Bobby tells them after they plod over. “Get ready to move out.”
“I’m ready to move out to the desert if this rain keeps up for another day,” Eddie grumbles, which earns him a tired smile from Bobby.
As they head back to the crumpled SUV for their tools, Buck makes a feeble attempt to lighten the mood. “I guess this is how we pay for all the sunshine, huh?”
He catches Eddie frowning before he turns away, and Buck’s heart withers a little more. Nothing’s been right these past couple weeks. He fucked up again. This time, something priceless might be gone forever, all because he lost his head for a few seconds.
In all fairness, Buck was coming off a particularly shitty Christmas when it happened. After last year’s sad holiday, when Maddie and Chimney were gone and Eddie had announced—on Christmas Day, of all times—that he was leaving the 118, Buck was really hoping for a good one this year. Then his parents decided to visit so they could spend Christmas with Jee-Yun, and it was like they cursed the whole damn week.
Everyone around Buck was out of sorts (or downright miserable). Maddie was stressed and exasperated with their parents; Chimney looked like an animal ready to chew its leg off rather than spend one more minute with his sort-of in-laws; Bobby’s house was inundated with May’s USC friends hoping for a home-cooked meal; Hen’s entire family got the flu; and Eddie insisted on juggling too many things alone while Carla was on vacation.
So maybe Buck got carried away and tried to kiss his best friend one night after Chris had gone to bed? He’d been so down, so unmoored since the holidays. But somehow being alone with Eddie, doing the most mundane kitchen things, had made everything feel right again—maybe even more than right— and well, it just sort of happened.
And Eddie can’t seem to forget it, like Buck told him to.
Buck heaves the jaws off the ground with a tired grunt and circles the vehicle out of habit to check for anything else they’d left lying around. It’s only then that he notices that the rear passenger door isn’t latched. Buck stares at it for a moment, confused. Neither he nor Eddie even attempted to get in that side. The SUV had been pushed too close to the guardrail for them to maneuver easily, so they’d resorted to cutting through the mangled driver’s door instead.
Maybe he’s so tired that he doesn’t remember opening the rear door. Or maybe it popped open on impact. But something in Buck’s gut makes him stop, makes him take a look inside the car. His instincts—the ones he’s learned to listen to over the past five years—are clamoring like alarm bells.
Sure enough, lying on the floor behind the driver’s seat are a woman’s purse and pink quilted jacket. And there’s a small smear of blood on the deflated rear airbag.
“Eddie,” Buck calls out over the downpour and the steady rumble of the 118’s idling engine. “Come look at this.”
Eddie, as usual, doesn’t need Buck to explain the problem after he looks into the back seat. “Shit. Where do you think she went? There isn’t a house around here for a half a mile.”
Buck looks as far up the road as he can, to where the headlights of the 118’s trucks are swallowed by darkness and rain. Nothing. On the far side of the road, a rocky cliff looms over the scene. No possible escape route that way. That only leaves the left side, where the guardrail protects cars from a shallow, tree-lined ravine.
“Hello! Is anyone down there?” Buck calls as he walks along the edge of the road.
Eddie comes up behind him. “LAFD. Can you hear us?”
Just past the end of the guardrail, a faint cry emerges from below. Buck worries he might have imagined it until Eddie’s headlamp catches a figure lying at the bottom of the steep embankment. She’s on her side, clearly injured but still able to wave her arm to get their attention.
“Cap, we just found a second victim from the SUV,” Eddie says urgently into his radio. “Looks like she got out of the car and fell down the hill. She’s conscious, but she might need to be carried up.”
“Copy that, Eddie. How far down is she?”
“Only about fifteen feet, but it’s steep. We’ll need a rope.”
“Okay, you and Buck go down and assess her. Ravi and I will get the basket ready to bring her up, if you need it.” Wearily, Bobby adds, “Cross your fingers it’s just a sprained ankle. The way things are going tonight, it could take a while to get another ambulance out here.”
“Fingers and toes crossed, Cap. We’ll give you an update as soon as we get down there.”
Buck jogs to the engine for rope, then back to Eddie, who has his med kit slung over his shoulder once more. After tying the rope to the guardrail, Eddie eases himself down, hand over hand, digging his toes into the soft soil as he goes. Buck follows quickly, his fatigue forgotten in the face of another rescue.
“We’re gonna get you out in just a minute, ma’am,” Eddie reassures the woman when he reaches her. She’s young, probably in her twenties, with dark hair sticking to her face. Buck notices that the beige trench coat she’s wearing looks like it belongs to someone much bigger than her. “Were you injured at all in the crash? Or when you fell?”
“I… I don’t think so. The airbag hurt my face a little, and then I went down the hill on my butt when I slipped. I’ve been calling out since you guys got here.” Her eyes go wide and she tries to prop herself up on one hand. “The guy driving was my father-in-law. Is he going to be okay?”
Eddie eases her back down, then reaches to take a small flashlight from Buck. “He’s on his way to the hospital now. He was pretty out of it, but his vital signs were nice and strong. Look up at me for a second, so I can check your pupils.”
“Oh, thank God. He was driving me… driving me to—”
She breaks off with a gasp, causing Eddie to shift the light away from her eyes, alarmed.
“Hey, hey, we’ve got you,” Buck says soothingly. He tries to turn her onto her back, but she curls up even more tightly. “Okay, can you tell us where you’re hurt?”
“Not hurt!” the woman almost yells. Panting, she looks up at Eddie with a panicked expression. “In labor. We were driving to the hospital.”
Startled, Buck looks down at the curve of her abdomen beneath the trench coat. “Oh, boy. This is going to complicate things.”
Eddie lays a gentle hand on her belly. “Okay, I can feel the baby moving, so that’s good. How many weeks along are you, and how far apart are your contractions?”
“Thirty-nine weeks, and I haven’t exactly been timing them since I fell into this ditch!”
“What about when you were in the car? Or before you left the house? Do you remember how far apart they were then?”
“Eight minutes apart when we left. I wanted to make sure we gave ourselves extra time to drive through this rain. We were only taking this stupid road because we heard that the 405 was shut down. A truck rolled over, or something.” She lets out a groan and tries to wipe the hair out of her eyes with a muddy hand. “I haven’t even called my husband yet! He works nights.”
“Yeah, this might not have been the best route to take,” Buck says. “It’s supposed to be closed at night. I guess someone forgot to shut the gates in the storm.”
Eddie radios Bobby to fill him in and come up with a plan for getting a very pregnant woman out of a ravine and to the hospital. Meanwhile, Buck tries to comfort their patient, who has introduced herself as Liza. She manages to sit up and breathe through the next contraction while Eddie’s on the radio. It’s 3:05 AM, according to Buck’s watch.
He starts to tell Eddie so that they can time Liza’s contractions, but Eddie holds up a hand to silence him.
“Do you hear that?”
Buck listens for a sound that isn’t the engine or the voices of their team up on the road. He shakes his head at Eddie, but then he thinks he hears something—a steady rushing noise, still distant but deeper than an approaching downpour sounds.
“What is it?” he asks Eddie in a hushed voice.
Liza gives a sudden cry and lifts her hands. “Water! There’s water under me!”
There is. Since they’ve been down here with Liza, the rain-fed stream at the center of the ravine has widened quickly, creeping up over Buck’s boots while he wasn’t looking. He scoops Liza up without thinking.
“Cap, we need to get out of here, now!” Eddie shouts into the radio. “The water is rising fast, all of a sudden. We might have a flash flood situation.”
“Oh, god.” Liza clings more tightly to Buck’s neck with both arms. “How is this night getting worse?”
Buck looks up the embankment. He doesn’t see any headlamps or baskets being lowered. With a start, he realizes that the water has started flowing around his calves with more force.
“There’s no time, Eddie! We’ll have to go up the other side.” Buck jerks his chin to direct Eddie’s gaze that way. “It’s not as steep. We can get away from the water.”
“Okay, yes,” Eddie says quickly. “Hold on, Liza. Change of plans.”
With one hand gripping Buck’s bicep to keep him steady, Eddie guides them across the ravine. The far slope is thick with evergreen oaks and sagebrush, grown as high as their heads. It’s slippery too, especially when you’re carrying someone. Eddie moves behind Buck and keeps a hand on his lower back just in case he loses his footing.
Below, the sound of flowing water increases.
Buck keeps climbing until he reaches a more level spot where he can catch his breath. It’s too dark to see down into the ravine. Even the flashing red lights of the 118’s engine and ambulance are obscured now. As if on cue, Liza stiffens in his arms with another contraction. He sets her down on her feet, but lets her lean against him while she pants through the pain.
3:09 AM. Four minutes since the last one. This baby is definitely coming, and it’s not gonna wait for a hospital bed.
Eddie’s back on the radio. “Bobby, we had to climb up the far side of the ravine. The water was rising too fast.”
“I know. We saw your lights,” Bobby’s voice shouts from Eddie’s chest, where his radio is clipped. It sounds like he’s out of breath. “Keep going up!”
“What’s going on? Cap, what’s happening?” Eddie calls back.
“Just get higher! Go! Now!”
Eddie picks up Liza and Buck follows him upward, between the tall bushes and over dead branches littering the ground. Everything seems to sway in the light of their moving headlamps, like an eerie dance, as they climb, climb, climb.
The rushing sound behind them turns into a roar. And, holy shit, is it loud.
“Where’s all that water coming from?” Liza wails. “How are we going to get back?”
“All the rain falling on these hills is getting funneled into this canyon. There must have been a cloudburst somewhere upstream, too much for the ground to absorb all at once.” Buck takes a few breaths then says, almost as an afterthought, “Or the reservoir overflowed.”
“What reservoir?” Eddie demands.
“There’s a small one further up the road. I’ve gone hiking up here a couple times. Don’t worry—it’s not a big one like Hollywood,” Buck says, trying to sound reassuring. “Probably just a backup reservoir. We’ll be safe up here.”
Abruptly, Eddie comes to a halt and pivots to face Buck. “It’s not us I’m worried about.”
Oh.
How deep is the water down there? Buck’s heart kicks in his chest as he imagines their team trapped between the overflowing ravine and the canyon wall. Trapped with a patient who could have spinal injury or a broken leg or worse.
Buck grips his radio and ducks his chin to speak into it. “Bobby, come in!”
Silence.
“118, come in. Hen! Chimney! Do you copy?”
Again, nothing.
“Don’t even think about going back down there, Buck!” Eddie shouts, just as Liza says, “Contraction!”
Buck looks helplessly between the dark canyon below and Liza’s agonized face. Right. They need to take care of her first. She’s soaking wet, probably cold, and her contractions are only going to get closer together from here on out. With a nod to Eddie, Buck switches the channel on the radio.
“Dispatch, this is Firefighter Buckley, 118.”
“Go ahead, 118.” There’s a pause while Buck struggles against the lump in his throat, causing the dispatcher to prompt, “What do you need, Firefighter Buckley?”
God, where does Buck even begin? He swallows hard.
“We’re at Franklin Canyon Park, responding to a motor vehicle accident. There seems to be a flash flood or maybe a dam break at the upper reservoir. Firefighter Diaz and I got cut off from our team and we’re unable to make radio contact with them.”
“Okay, we’ll locate your team. Let’s get you out of there. I’ve got the engine’s last GPS location. I can direct you to the nearest road—”
“No, no. We can’t hike out!” Buck says urgently. “We have one of the crash victims with us. She’s 39 weeks pregnant, in active labor. About three and a half minutes between contractions.”
Buck waits for a reply, pacing, until a familiar voice says, “Buck? It’s Josh. I’m sending a medevac flight to you, but it might be an hour or more. Lots of calls tonight.”
“No kidding,” Eddie mutters. He has Liza on her feet, with an arm wrapped around her waist to support her.
Josh continues, “Can you give me more information about your location? Any landmarks or signs?”
“We’re on a hillside, dense chaparral, probably a few hundred feet west of the road. Josh, I don’t think we have an hour before the baby comes.”
“I really don’t want to do this here!” Liza lifts her head from Eddie’s shoulder to look imploringly at Buck. “Please.”
“I can talk you through it,” Josh says calmly, making Buck kick the ground with irritation.
“We’ve both delivered babies before! That’s not our biggest concern right now. She’s already been out in the cold rain for too long. We need someplace more sheltered where she can lie down!”
“Okay, hold on. Let me look at the maps. Yes, there’s a trail uphill from you. If you follow it south, you’ll come to a small picnic area with a roof. Tell Mom I know it’s not a birthing suite at UCLA Medical, but it will get her out of the rain.”
“It’ll have to do. What about the 118? We can’t tell from up here if the road is underwater or not.”
“We’re working on it, Buck, I promise. You guys just worry about your patient. We’ll update you about your team and let you know when your ride’s on its way.”
Josh signs off, and the sound of the water pouring through the ravine fills Buck’s ears once again.
Oh, screw it. Buck takes his helmet off and turns his face to the black sky. Forget his bunk—he’d settle for the back seat of the engine right now, windows fogging up from their body heat and his knee knocking against Eddie’s as they ride back to the firehouse. Streets quiet and empty. Everyone safe and sound.
Yeah, that sounds great, actually.
“Buck?”
“Okay,” he sighs and wipes the rain out of his eyes. “Let’s go.”
Liza insists on trying to walk once they get to the trail, in the hopes that it might help with the contractions. They find the shelter easily. There are three picnic tables inside, all in decent condition. Eddie and Buck carry one to the back, which is the only side with a wall and therefore the driest spot.
“We got this,” Eddie whispers to Buck as he pulls latex gloves and the blood pressure cuff from his med kit. “I know we’re both tired, but we just have to get through the next hour or two until medevac gets here.”
Buck glances over at Liza, who’s walking in slow circles around the shelter, then back to Eddie. His brown eyes have some of their old warmth back, and Buck basks in it, soaks it up.
“You’re right. We got this.”