This afternoon was headed the same way as the unsettled June weather. Stormy. Again. “What’s the holdup?” her partner groused from the other end of the stretcher straddling their patient’s threshold. She motioned with her chin for him to pull the stretcher holding the elderly gentleman back into the small bungalow. “I think we have company.” She’d closed the ambulance’s door, but in this quiet retiree neighborhood, locking it hadn’t seemed necessary. Before her partner could ask more questions, she whispered a quick prayer for protection, slipped out and padded toward the rig. Protocol demanded that a paramedic call the police if she feared for her safety, a practice she’d been a stickler about ever since her former partner had gotten himself killed, but the last thing she needed on her record was a nuisance cry-wolf call if it turned out to be nothing more than a curious kid inside. Maybe one of the neighbors’ grandkids.
