The Nitrogen Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

events of Friday evening. Looking for answers? Trying to roll back to the beginning of the shift and do everything differently? Who knew why? But she couldn’t stop rerunning the hour through her mind.
     
    In her marijuana fog, Dana is back at the scene.
    Dana and Tanisha are lounging in the front seats of the ambulance, having a snack. They’re parked in the lot of a strip mall off 1-580 in Oakland, not far from Lake Merritt. Dana is in the driver’s seat.
    “I love all the perks,” Tanisha said. “I swear they think we’re cops.” They were joking about the attention they got in their
black EMT uniforms and rehashing stories about the guys that hit on them regularly.
    “Hey, I need resuscitation,” one cute guy had yelled out his window up to the cab where Dana sat, waiting for a green light. “I’m feeling faint. What’s your phone number?”
    “911,” Dana had yelled back as she roared away, and she and Tanisha had laughed for the next quarter mile.
    Tanisha dug into the bag of chips she’d just received, gratis, from a fast-food place. They talked about the complimentary passes they got at theaters, and the free convenience-store sodas now and then, depending on the neighborhood.
    “Who wouldn’t think we’re cops? The uniform’s the same color, and we have all this stuff hanging on our belts.” Dana jiggled her radio and pager, and Tanisha followed suit. They were having a good time, almost as if they’d just shared some wacky weed. No smoking on the job, though; they were together on that.
    It was a quiet shift so far, and the partners continued bantering, solving the problems of the world, gossiping.
    “What about those missing meds and supplies?” Dana asked. “I’ll bet they try to pin it on EMTs.” She was thinking of an ongoing problem with inventory—pills, drugs, needles—disappearing from local hospitals and convalescent homes.
    Tanisha popped a large potato chip into her mouth and smacked her lips. “Yeah, well, you’d think they’d be going after the big guys instead of trying to track thimblefuls of medicine.” She gave Dana a playful punch. “Wish we had a little thimble full of grass now, don’t you?”
    It was five-forty-five, near the end of the shift, when the call came.
    A little action, finally. “225 responding,” Dana said.
    “Priority 2 out of Golden going to trauma. A GSW vic.” It was the Valley Med radio voice telling them to transport a gunshot-wound victim from Golden State Hospital, off I-580, to the city trauma center in Berkeley.

    Dana and Tanisha straightened up and buckled their seat belts. Dana started the engine. “225 en route,” she said into the radio.
    Golden State Hospital was only about a mile and a half away. Dana eased the ambulance out of the lot, down a divided road, and onto the I-580 freeway. She headed west, not the rush direction, though there was less and less difference these days as the Bay Area added one housing development after another. Dana weaved in and out, able to do seventy without her lights and siren.
    They exited the freeway. Two rights, a left, and they arrived at the hospital.
    “225 on scene,” Dana said into her radio.
    Dana and Tanisha moved their patient—dark skinned, maybe Indian, Dana thought—onto Valley Med’s heavy-duty yellow gurney. No extra backboard for this guy, no scooper. Patient positioning standard. The patient had already been treated in Golden’s ER; he’d been bandaged, but he needed the more appropriate facilities of Berkeley’s trauma center.
    “It never fails,” Tanisha said, shaking her head. “People who drive themselves to the hospital always pick the wrong one.”
    “Right,” Dana said. “They should know they’re going to end up in an ambulance one way or another, so why don’t they just call us to begin with?”
    Tanisha took her place in the back on the gray vinyl seat across from the gurney and flipped through the paperwork from the ER. The patient had his IV drip and