Chapter Text
Mike Stoker finished his third cup of coffee of the morning, and nodded to Jim Bradley, C-shift’s engineer, as he came into the day room.
“What’s up, Stoker?”
“Nothin'. We got really lucky—only one run for the engine last night, and it turned out to be nothing.”
“Excellent! Man, there’s nothing like a day off when the shift wasn’t actually a bitch. Got any plans?”
“I'm gonna hit the beach.”
“Good day for it,” said Bradley. “You goin’ on your own?”
“No, actually. Gage just got his cast off, but he still can’t drive, and so he’s pretty much going bat-shit crazy. We're all trying to get him out of his apartment whenever we can. So I'm picking him up after I get out of here.”
“How much longer is he supposed to be out?”
Mike shook his head. “Couple months, still. That leg was real bad. He'll have to recertify and everything before he can come back.”
“Well, if anyone could do it, it’s him.”
“I suppose so.” Mike pushed his chair back, washed his mug, and set it in the dish drainer. “Well, I guess I'll head out.”
“Say hi to Gage from me, will ya?”
“Sure. Have a safe shift.”
Mike went into the locker room, and changed into his swim trunks and a t-shirt. He stopped at the phone in the day room before leaving the station, and dialed Johnny’s number.
“Hello?”
“Hey—it’s Stoker. I'm on my way.”
“Great! I'm ready, and as usual, I can’t wait to get out. I'll start working on getting myself out the door, and down all my stairs, and maybe I'll even be at the bottom by the time you get here. In fact, let’s see if I can beat you.”
Mike frowned. “Now don’t you get stupid and kill yourself. If you fall down the stairs just because—”
Johnny’s chuckling interrupted him. “Damn, it’s easy to get you riled up if you know how. Don’t worry, Stoker. I know it’s not a race. And contrary to popular belief, I do know how to be careful. See you in a bit.”
Seven minutes later, Mike was parked in a visitor’s spot right at the bottom of the two flights of stairs that led up to the outdoor corridor that Johnny’s apartment opened onto. The stairs had been a major issue for Johnny in terms of getting out of the hospital—stairs, when you're stuck in a long-leg cast from toes to mid-thigh, are a difficult feat. But with his usual grit and determination, he worked his way up to being able to ascend and descend stairs to the satisfaction of his physical therapist, and was able to get home after two weeks in the hospital.
Mike was just starting up the stairs when he saw movement at the end of the third-floor covered outdoor corridor where Johnny’s apartment door was. He got to the top of the stairs just as Johnny arrived, aluminum crutches clunking.
“Howdy, Mike!”
“Hey. Can I take your stuff?” Mike gestured to Johnny’s backpack.
“Nah, that’s all right, I can—” Johnny caught Mike’s glare, and laughed. “By which I mean to say, sure, thank you.” He leaned on the railing of the balcony, took off his backpack, and handed it to Mike. “And now for the stairs. I tell ya, it’s a lot easier now that the cast is off and I can bend my leg a little bit.”
They didn’t talk on the way down, as Johnny concentrated on his feet.
“See? No problem.”
Mike opened the passenger-side door and threw Johnny’s backpack in the narrow back seat of the small pickup truck. He waited for Johnny to get in, and then put his crutches in the back as well. He started up the engine, and off they went.
“Man, I can’t thank you enough for getting me out. Again.”
“You're welcome. We always have a good time, anyhow. And it’s not like I’ve got much to do.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. That was something they'd learned to appreciate about each other—that the silence wasn’t awkward.
“Do you have a beach in mind,” Johnny asked, as Mike pulled onto the highway, “or should we just go for close?”
“Close is fine. I’ve got a favorite spot, but it’s way up by my place. So whatever place you know around here is fine.”
“Okay—just head straight west, and we'll be there in ten minutes. Where do you go, up by your place?”
Mike named a recreation area, and Johnny nodded.
“Yeah—that’s a good one. You go there a lot?”
“Uh huh. I'll often go there after a shift, before I even go home. Nothin’ like having the beach all to yourself, in the morning, in the middle of the week. It’s not too hot yet, and there aren’t that many people at eight thirty in the morning on a weekday.”
“Ah, so that’s why you always have such a good tan,” Johnny said.
Mike felt his ears turning red. He was sure Johnny didn’t mean anything by that statement other than that yeah, Mike tended to be on the brown side for a white fireman.
They chatted about this and that the rest of the way to the beach. Mike filled Johnny in on everything interesting that had happened during the last few shifts since they'd seen each other, which wasn’t actually very much. Johnny had of course heard from Roy about the fresh, green paramedic who had been assigned to the team while Johnny was out, partly to fill the gap, and partly so Roy could train the new man up a bit more, but it was interesting to hear Mike’s perspective as well.
“Yeah, Rick Phillips. Lucky for him Roy has his head on straight, and knows not to expect him to be you. But even I'm starting to have my doubts about whether he can make it or not. I mean, you know how I am with the medical stuff—just flies right past me. But from the number of times I’ve heard Roy tell him the same thing, if it’s starting to stick with me, Phillips really oughta be retaining it a bit better.”
Johnny nodded. “That’s about what I’ve heard from Roy, too. And to be honest, if Roy can’t get him ready to be independent, nobody can.”
“Here we are,” Mike said after a few more minutes.
They reversed their entry into the vehicle, and Mike carried all their things down to the sand while Johnny hobbled on his crutches.
“How about here?” Mike said.
“Suits me.”
They laid out their towels, well above the high-tide line in the sand.
“Tide'll be in after another hour or so,” Johnny said.
“How can you tell from looking whether it’s coming in or going out?” Mike asked.
“Uh, because I looked at the tide tables in the paper this morning?” Johnny said. “Nothing mystical. I don’t do mystical.”
Mike laughed. “No, you're about the least mystical person I know. Besides myself, that is. I just thought there was, I don’t know, some trick.”
“Nope. L.A. Times, is all.” Johnny flexed his toes back and forth. “I think I'm gonna take a little bit of a hobble.”
“You're allowed to walk without the crutches?”
“Encouraged, actually. If I'm not in a hurry, I can walk safely. Just not fast, and I have to really think about it. And I can only go so far at this point. But watch!”
Mike watched. He saw Johnny get to his feet in a way that Mike had never been able to manage, as if gravity somehow didn’t work the same for Johnny as it did for the rest of the people in the world. Walking looked like hard work, and Johnny limped to minimize the amount of time he was supporting his weight on the injured leg. Mike was thrilled, though, to see that not only was walking possible, but Johnny seemed to be feeling positive about it.
“That’s great!” Mike said.
“I'm just gonna go over to the lifeguard station, and back again.”
“All right.”
Mike tried hard not to watch too much. But it was fascinating to see that even with a pronounced limp, and obvious pain and weakness, Johnny still managed to move with the grace and fluidity that was his hallmark. Mike finally pulled his eyes away, just before Johnny turned around to head back. Johnny had said “watch,” but there was watching, and then there was watching. And watching, in the way he was increasingly, maddeningly finding himself wanting to, was off limits. He sighed, and pulled a book out of his backpack. Never gonna happen, Stoker, so don’t even think it, he thought.
A few minutes later, Johnny returned. “Man, that was tough.”
“Looked like it,” Mike said.
“But you know what? When the cast first came off, I couldn’t go across the room without the crutches. So it’s a lot better already. Damned sore, though. Seems like muscles and tendons and stuff, though. The bones really don’t hurt all that much.”
“That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. The docs say that by now the bones should be stronger in the places that they broke than anywhere else. It’s a little hard to believe, since the whole thing feels like, I don’t know, that flimsy wood they make model airplanes out of.”
“Balsa wood. It'll get better, though. It already is.”
“Yep. And the nerve damage—did I tell you about that in the hospital?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, it seems like it was temporary. No more tingling and numbness. My ankle is still weak, but the docs and I are all optimistic that it’s just disuse.”
“Just think what you'll be doing in a week,” Mike said.
“No marathons, but maybe I'll at least be able to drive by then. Okay, maybe two weeks. That'll be great, to really be able to fend for myself again.”
“I bet.”
Johnny rummaged in his pack, and brought out a magazine. They both read for a while, as the sun rose higher and the day started to heat up. Mike stripped off his shirt, and tossed it in his backpack.
“Check that out,” Johnny said, looking up from his magazine.
“What?” Mike asked.
“Those two girls over there. The ones with the striped umbrella. No, don’t look, you moron. They're checkin’ us out,” Johnny announced confidently. “In a second you can look. But not yet. That'd be too obvious.”
“You did say 'check that out,'” Mike grumbled, “which does kind of mean 'look.'”
“Yeah, okay I guess I did. All right. Now you can look.”
Mike rolled his eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses, at whatever Johnny’s rules were for the situation. He did in fact check out the women, who were sitting about twenty yards up the beach. It would've been weird not to, he thought.
“Hmm. Very nice looking, but not really my type,” Mike said. “But I think you're right—they're definitely checking us out. So they're all yours, Gage. Go for it.”
Johnny looked over at the two women. One of them looked right back at him, and said something to the other, who laughed and looked as well. “Nah.”
Mike raised his eyebrows and lowered his book. “Did I just hear you say you're not going to go talk to those lovely young ladies?”
Johnny laughed. “You sound like my grandmother. But yeah, that’s what I meant.”
“You're not worried about the crutches, are you? Because it seems like that could be a draw. You know, they could, I don’t know, take care of you or something. Women like that shit, right?”
“I guess.”
Mike folded down the corner of the page in his paperback and pushed his sunglasses on top of his head. He squinted at Johnny.
“Seems like there’s more to it than that. What gives?”
Johnny considered the question, and his answer, for a few seconds. “Man, you can read me like a large print book. I guess it’s just that I'm sick of always getting dumped.”
“You must do the dumping sometimes,” Mike said.
“Not very damned often,” Johnny said, looking away. “I guess I kinda tend to bark up the wrong tree a lot.”
“Well, to extend that metaphor, you can’t always really know what’s in the tree you're barking up, till it whatever it is comes down, right? Twenty-twenty hindsight. Monday morning quarterbacking. Whatever you want to call it. If you think like that too much, you'll just drive yourself crazy.” Even though Johnny knew Mike was working with a psychiatrist, Mike decided not to mention that those words of advice had come straight from last week’s session.
“Yeah,” said Johnny, “but I guess it seems like I oughta be able to figure out what’s up the tree before I start backing at it. So I guess what I really meant was …”
“Was what?” Mike asked, intrigued with their botanical discussion.
“Nah, never mind.” Johnny changed the subject slightly. “But anyhow. Those girls aren’t your type, huh. So what is your type, then? It wasn’t that nurse who had a crush on you when I was at Rampart, and it’s not either of those two chicks over there, who are completely different from each other, and from that nurse. Seems like we’re running out of types.”
Mike gritted his teeth. He really didn’t want to be having this discussion with Gage. Again. “C’mon, Gage. You know I said I just got out of a relationship.”
“Yeah, but it was three months ago when you said that, and at the time, you said it was a couple months ago that it happened. Plus, I'm not tryin’ to fix you up with anyone; I'm just curious what your type is, is all. For instance, what did your ex look like?”
Mike sighed. “I really don’t want to be talking about this.”
Johnny clapped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, sorry. I'm doing it again. Sorry. You said it before, that you don’t wanna talk about it. It’s just …”
“Just what?” Mike said, and then regretted it.
“It’s just, that’s the kind of thing friends talk about, right? And I thought we'd gotten to be pretty good friends.”
“We are good friends. But ask yourself this: do you talk about that stuff with Roy?”
“That’s different. He’s married. He doesn’t do all that stuff.”
“But you can still be friends with him, and not talk about your type, and his type, and whatnot?”
“Sure. Okay. I get it. The topic is officially off limits. Starting …” Johnny looked at his nonexistent watch. “… now!”
“Thanks,” Mike said. “Sorry I'm such a jerk about that stuff. But everybody’s got their things, right? And talking about my love life is one of my things.” Like you wouldn’t believe, pal.
“No problem. I’ve sure got my things I don’t talk about, so we're even.” Johnny sat up on his beach towel, and worked his ankle back and forth. “Hey, can you pass me my bag?”
“Sure.”
Johnny pulled out his canteen, and a prescription pill bottle. “New stuff called Motrin. Great for pain and inflammation, and it’s not a narcotic, so it doesn’t make you stupid.” He downed two tablets, and rubbed his shin and calf.
Mike took the opportunity to really look at Johnny’s bad leg, which he'd avoided examining before. Compared to Johnny’s left leg, his right leg was pale, skinny, and knobby-kneed. The scars from the open fracture and the surgery to relieve the pressure from swelling inside one of the muscles were still red, especially against the pale, zombie-like skin.
“I think it’s time for a little hobble towards the water. You comin’ in?”
“You go ahead.”