“Blood?” The girl’s eyes narrowed. “What blood? Do you make people bleed?”
Mack coughed but didn’t quite muffle his laughter.
A few adults grinned.
The girl’s father—uncle?—shushed her. “Emily, let him speak. Sorry.”
“No problem.” Reggie mentally thanked the guy. “Well, we as firefighters in the awesome city of Seattle have to do a lot more than put out fires. As you probably know, there are thirty-four stations in the city, including Harbor View Medical Center. All of them run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
Mack changed the slides, showing the layout.
“We have five battalions, and each battalion has a chief.”
One boy raised his hand. Not the intense Emily, thank goodness.
“Yes?” Reggie said.
“Do you mean battalions like the Army? My dad is in the Army.”
“Are you in the Army?” Emily asked. Without raising her hand.
“Actually, I was in the Navy. Mack was in the Air Force, and two of our crew who aren’t here were in the Marines.”
“Semper Fi,” a woman said from the back of the room.
Semper Fi—always faithful, the Marine Corps motto.
Reggie grinned. “I’ll tell them you said that. But you know, we live with an always-faithful mindset when we work too. Firefighting is a lot more than using a hose with water to put out a fire. Does anyone know what ‘lifesaving’ is?”
A little boy in the back answered, “Saving a person so he doesn’t die.”
“That’s a great answer.”
The boy beamed.
“Every firefighter in Seattle must first be an EMT—an emergency medical technician. We do something called basic life support. That’s like taking your pulse or listening to your heart. We can splint your arm if it’s broken and take you to the hospital to get fixed. Has anyone ever seen an ambulance?”
Mack clicked the slide to show them an ambulance, and everyone’s hands raised.
“That’s what we drive when we’re not in the fire truck. Actually, most of what we do is help people get better. We help them in our ambulance, what we call an aid vehicle, and let them go see their own doctor when they want. But if they’re really bad off, we might take them to the hospital.”
“Do you wrap them like mummies?” a little boy wearing a superhero shirt and cape asked.
“No, not like mummies.” Reggie wanted the kids to understand. “The ones who take the really hurt people to the hospital are called paramedics. They do advanced life support. So, if you had a heart attack or got shot or had a really bad break and were bleeding all over the place, the paramedic might treat you in the back of the ambulance. And you know what?”
“What?” asked a girl wearing blue frames with thick lenses. Her eyes looked huge behind them.
“We don’t really have that many paramedics, which is kind of weird, if you think about it. We have paramedics in our fire stations, but we only have seven medic units in all of the city. The medic unit is what the paramedics drive. Remember, I said that we EMTs use aid vehicles, like the ambulances. The medic vehicles look like ours but inside, the paramedics do the fancy stuff, like give IVs, intubate, and handle acute sickness and trauma. They go to a special school for that.”
“Did you go to school?” Emily asked, her powerful gaze burning a hole through him.
“I did.”
“Do you shoot people?”
“Ah, no.”
“Do you stab them?” a boy sitting next to her asked. “So, you make them bleed then you patch them up?”
“No.” The boy’s identical twin shook his head. “He doesn’t make them bleed. The paramedic does.”
Reggie bit back a groan. “No, the paramedic doesn’t make anyone bleed.”
“Does he stab them with a sword?” another child asked.
“No, we don’t stab or shoot anyone.”
“Do you have a gun?” another child asked.
Mack’s face had turned red with his effort to hold back laughter.
And the class went downhill from there.
By the end of the lecture, Reggie had regained control, only barely, but enough to answer questions from the adults as well. He and Mack showed everyone slides of the inside of an engine truck, explained how the different stations had different equipment, and how their SCBA (self-contained breathing apparatus) gear worked. They’d brought a clean one for a live demonstration, and the children had a lot of fun looking through the mask and trying on a helmet.
The class turned out to be informative and entertaining.
Even though Emily continued to try to stare into Reggie’s soul.
She walked up to him at the very end despite her parent trying his best to get her to leave. The man held up his hands in defeat. “I give up.”
Reggie noticed that she carried a stuffed brown bear, a cute and furry little grizzly with an ax strapped to its back. Apt that she carried a stuffed predator considering the girl’s ferocity with questions.
She looked from her bear to him. “You use an ax like Brownie. And you’re brown like Brownie.”
Reggie nodded. “I am.”
“I think you’re pretty.”
He blinked.
Mack guffawed behind him.
“Ah, thank you. I think you’re pretty too.”
“P-R-E-T-T-Y. I’m a good speller.”
“I see that.”
“I wish I had teeth and claws so when Marty Binker hits me, I could carve him up.” She curled her fingers and pretended to claw his arm. “After the fight, you could heal me by doing BLS and I wouldn’t have to go to the hospital.” She leaned closer to whisper in a loud voice, “Uncle Doug had to go to the hospital because he was pooping a lot.”
The man with Emily, Doug apparently, turned bright red. “Okay, Emily, we need to get you back to your mom.” In a lower but still audible voice, Doug added, “She owes me big for this.”
Emily continued, “But then they gave him ivy and he had more fluid and got better.”
“Ivy?” Mack asked.
“I think she means an IV.” Reggie stared at the little girl who said ivy and fluid in the same sentence. “It must have been pretty serious if Uncle Doug needed an IV. I’m glad he’s better.”
She nodded, solemn, and Reggie was struck by how cute she was when not grilling him. She reminded him of Rachel, a little girl he’d been doing his level best not to think about while surrounded by so many children. The sadness that had never left him returned, though he refused to let it show.