Chapter Text
“24-David, I have four heat signatures inside the room.”
“Okay, prepare to breach.” Hondo nodded to the bunch of them who was on the outside of the door, Street placed the explosives ready to breach. Then Hondo clicked his mic, “20-David, breaching in 5-4-3…”
The explosives detonated when he would have gotten to zero, and the team moved in a short second later.
Deacon and Chris broke through the skylight windows and rappelled down, before placing themselves by the human sized door, and the truck sized sliding door.
“ON THE GROUND! ON THE GROUND!” The whole team were shouting at the four gangsters. “HANDS ON YOUR HEAD! ON THE GROUND!”
Street traced the right wall. Hondo and Tan went straight forward, towards a big truck they planned on tracing each side of. Luca went along the left side.
Luca stood by a big block of steel, which oddly looked like a bomb-shelter door. It could be useful to press himself behind if the four guys decided to open fire instead of following their instructions.
“ON THE GROUND!”
Three of the guys knelt down and went into the position the SWAT team demanded, the last guy looked like he was about to chance on it.
“DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!” Hondo barked, the entire team had their scopes trained on the guy.
The guy reached to his back before raising his arm with what looked like a gun in hand.
But he never got that far.
At first it sounded like a train was going to run right through the building,
“Earthquake!” Street called out, just before the real shaking started.
It was bad enough to toss them around a good bit. None of them were left standing.
Chris and the guy who had contemplated making a run for it were the first two to recover. The guy dove for the gun he had lost, but ended up with a bullet piercing through his leg.
“STAY DOWN!” she barked, still holding her gun pointed towards the man.
The rumbling started to die down, and was replaced by all the other sounds. Like structures creaking, car alarms going off outside, and… whimpering?
“Are everyone okay?” Hondo called out,
Protocol would have them reply in the order of their callsigns. First one to answer would be Luca, then Chris, then Tan, Street and finally Deacon.
But Luca didn’t start off that train, so Chris didn’t follow.
“Luca, are you alright?” Hondo called out, his attention shifting from the four guys in the middle of the room, towards the left side of the building, “SHIT! Chris, Street, keep an eye on those guys. Tan, Deac, left wall with me!”
The team members followed the orders.
“This is 20-David, we have an officer down. Requesting a firetruck and an ambulance to our location. 13408 Saticoy Street.”
He confirmed when the person repeated his information, and gave the briefest of brief explanation on what was happening on scene and who it was that was hurt, before he also knelt down by Luca.
It didn’t take long before he got the news that truck 118 and ambulance 118 was on their way.
“Hey, stay still, stay still…” Deacon was in the middle of trying to force Luca to focus on him.
“Get it off of me…” Luca’s voice was a lot more frail and broken than what it usually was. Tears were running down the sides of his face, causing a wet trail which led into his hair.
“Trust me, it’s not going to be any less painful if you keep squirming like this.”
“I’ve gotta see.” He barely managed to say it between sobs.
“No. That can wait.” Deacon declared, pressing a firm hand down on Luca’s shoulder before the man had a chance to try to sit up.
“Luca, you left leg is trapped under a steel door.” Hondo explained, “I have to put a tourniquet around your thigh in case it starts bleeding a lot when the firefighters get here to lift this steel door off of you. It will probably hurt when I try to slide it under your knee, just know I’m sorry that it’s hurting you. Alright?”
“Let me see..”
“How about I snap a picture and you can see it when you get to the hospital?” Tan offered.
“Does it look bad?”
“It looks like you’ve got your leg trapped by a big steel door.” Deacon explained, “Tan, just take the picture so he can look, later.”
Luca squeezed his eyes shut, “It’s bad…”
“We don’t know how bad, or not bad, it is yet.” Deacon tried to calm Luca down, “But seeing it won’t make it any better right now, okay?”
Luca barely nodded, wiping at his eyes.
“Can’t you just,” he had to try to hide a sob, “lift it off?”
“It’s too heavy for us to lift.” Tan sighed, “Maybe we could get it up an inch or two, but chances are we would only drop it back down. Causing more damage…”
“Even with a weight pole thing?”
“That is if we used a lever to lift it…” Tan shrugged apologetically.
“We better just wait for the fire fighters to get here with the air cushions.” Hondo added, “Alright Luca, I’m going to slide this under your knee now. Take a deep breath.”
Luca pulled a deep breath, and Hondo slid the tourniquet under Luca’s knee.
It was most certainly not a painless affair, and it left Luca a sobbing and whimpering wreck after the first few seconds of howling out in pain had passed.
“How are you doing over there?” Christina’s voice came from the other side of the building.
“He’s got his lower left leg pinned under a bomb shelter door.” Hondo called back, not adding any graphic details, “He’s awake and in pain!”
“Do you need any help?” Street called afterwards.
“Right now, all we can do is stabilize.” Hondo called back, “Just keep an eye on those four guys.”
Hondo sat back for a short moment, before he clicked his mic, “Copy that.”
“The earthquake caused a lot of structural damage all across town. Fire and ambulance has trouble getting here by car. They let off three from the crew with the most essential stuff. They’re coming here on foot while the rest of the crew are trying to get here with the vehicles.” Hondo relayed to the rest of the team.
“It hurts…”
“I know it does buddy…” Deacon rubbed Luca’s shoulder, “Just hold on…”
SWATSWATSWAT
None of them really knew how much time had passed before someone slammed on the door. “Fire and Rescue!”
Tan got up to let them in.
A few moments later he was back by Luca’s side.
“Hey, I’m Henrietta, you can call me Hen. I’m going to place an IV catheter in your arm, so that I can give you something for the pain, while my coworkers Eddie and Buck will prepare to lift this door off your leg.”
“I hate needles.” Luca blinked through tears.
“Trust me, you’re going to love this one in a little while.” Hen winked as she took her kit and started prepping Luca’s arm for the venous catheter. “You’ve got really nice veins by the way.”
Luca was hit by another wave of pain and was too busy groaning through it to focus on what Hen was doing to his arm.
“There, done. You really have nice and easy veins.” She declared, “Now, you’re going to get 5 milligrams of morphine, we’ll see how you react to that. I’ve got another 5 for you if that’s not enough to keep you comfortable.”
Luca nodded slightly.
“Alright, you’ll start feeling a bit better real soon.” Hen winked as she hooked the morphine syringe up to the IV catheter.
SWATSWATSWAT
“Buck, are you alright?” Eddie asked glancing over at Buck, “You look a little pale there.”
Buck blinked a couple of times, before he nodded. “I’m good.”
“You sure?” Eddie asked as he placed a second air cushion in the sloth between the concrete floor and the steel door. “This one’s hitting a bit close to home, right?”
Buck nodded a little, and rubbed his ankle.
“If you need to get some air…”
Buck shook his head as he connected the air cushions to the portable compressor they had carried over there, “No, I’ve got this.”
“Hitting close to home?” Hondo glanced over at the two men.
“Yeah, remember that firetruck accident a few years back?” Eddie asked, “He was the one who was pinned under it.”
“Yeah, we got called in on that situation. FBI was already on the scene. Your captain did a lot to solve that whole bomber situation as I recall.”
Eddie nodded.
“Well, I try not to remember it…” Buck shrugged.
“Wait, “ Luca gasped, a lot more relaxed now that he had gotten a bolus of morphine, “That was you?”
Buck paused and looked over at him, then nodded, “Yeah. That was me.”
“But you’re all better now? Back to work and all…” Luca winced.
Buck nodded, “Let’s hope you’re just as lucky, alright?”
Luca nodded.
“Sodium Bicarbonate is in…” Hen added.
“Now, we’re going to pump up these air cushions, and it’ll raise the door that’s trapping you.” Buck swallowed, “Now, it’s going to hurt like HELL when we do, so if you think you might need it, ask Hen for some more of that morphine before we start…”
Luca closed his eyes and breathed in and out a few times before he nodded, “A little more maybe, knowing you’ve got personal experience with this.”
Buck nodded, and Hen pushed another 2,5 milligrams of morphine. “Alright? Ready to try?”
Luca nodded.
Then the freight train like sound started up again, soon followed by the forceful shaking.
“Start the compressor!” Buck shouted, and Eddie hit the switch while the world shook around all of them.
The whirring and rattling from the compressor was entirely lost in the rumble of the aftershock, but the air cushions started to fill up all the same.
SWATSWATSWAT
“Everyone okay?” Hondo asked once it died down again.
“Peachy.” Luca growled, his face knotted in a grimace.
“Good thinking starting the compressor when the quake was starting…” Hen directed at Buck as she saw how much the steel door had moved up Luca’s leg, the only thing stopping it from crushing more of his leg was the two air cushions which were lifting it on one side.
Buck nodded, looking down at Luca. “Alright tough guy, let’s get you out from under there.”
Luca gave a half-assed nod in return.
“Alright. Let’s pull him out and get a safe distance between him and that door. Then we can stabilize his leg and prepare to transfer him.” Hen said, looking at Buck and Eddie to make sure they had understood her. They nodded.
“Anything we can do to help?” Hondo asked.
“One of you can go see if the rest of our team is nearby.” She shrugged, “And if one of you help pull him out, Eddie can help stabilize his leg as soon as it’s clear. Other than that… Try to comfort him.”
Hondo nodded, “Tan, you go outside. See if you can find the rest of 118.”
Tan nodded.
“I’ll help pull him out.” Hondo added, looking at Deacon who nodded to signal that he had understood his role.
“Okay, we do this in one smooth motion.” Buck instructed as he grabbed a hold of one shoulder of Luca’s tac-vest, “If it feels like he’s stuck, we stop and see if we can reposition one of the air cushions so that he’s not stuck anymore, understood?”
“Stop pulling if he’s stuck, yes.” Hondo nodded.
“On three.” Buck waited for Hondo to nod again, “One. Two. Three!”
They pulled, and slowly but surely Luca’s leg emerged from under the door. The 7,5 milligrams of I.V. morphine seemed just enough to keep him from screaming, instead he let out a low guttural growl.
“How is his knee looking?” Eddie asked, looking up at Hen as soon at Luca’s foot was out.
Hen shrugged, “Luca, I’m going to cut open your pant leg. Okay?”
He made a short approving sound, before the regular growling continued.
She started snipping away at the pants, revealing more and more of his mangled leg. “Can you try to undo his shoe, Eddie?”
“Yeah.”
Having his shoe removed was obviously way more painful than being slid a couple of yards.
She finally reached Luca’s knee and studied it. At first glance it looked perfectly normal, until she realized that by the way his thigh was positioned, the outside calf muscle should have been the upper point, not the inner calf muscle.
“How’s his pulse?”
“Still working the shoe and sock off…” Eddie replied.
“Alright, just let me know when you get there.”
“Sure.”
She could hear the silverfox looking SWAT member trying to calm Luca down, but she almost doubted that the words got through to him.
“Luca, hey… Luca, I can give you 2,5 more milligrams before I need to consult with a doctor again.”
“Please.”
“That’s a ‘yes’, right?”
Luca nodded.
“Okay, let’s hope this is enough to keep you somewhat comfortable.” she said as she prepared to inject the rest of her second syringe of morphine.
Luca nodded again.
Not long after she had injected the rest of the morphine and flushed the line with saline, Eddie whistled at her. “Hey, the boot is off. Can you undo the tourniquet so I can check his pulse?”
She nodded and started releasing it, fully prepared for an arterial bleed to start pulsing somewhere. But it didn’t. Luca’s leg did start bleeding more though.
“Difficult to find, but the pulse is palpable.” Eddie nodded.
“Better than nothing.” Hen shot back before re-applying the tourniquet. Even though Luca wasn’t gushing blood from the wounds along his lower leg, it didn’t mean that there weren’t problematic bleeding under the skin.
“So, how’s his knee looking?” Eddie followed up, remembering that he had asked that earlier. The way Luca’s foot was angled would complicate the process to stabilize his leg.
“Looks rotated.” Hen looked over at Eddie.
“Dimple sign?”
Hen shook her head, “No.”
Eddie lifted his gaze and looked past where Hen’s hands were placing sterile dressings over the worst gashes. He saw what she meant and nodded.
“Cavalry’s here…” Tan called out as he re-entered through the same door he had exited, with the rest of 118 in tow.
SWATSWATSWAT
“Alright. Luca is on his way to the hospital. Chris and Street have delivered our four gangsters to some patrol cars.” Hondo grabbed his vest and found that energy saving stance, “I know we all just want to go straight to the hospital to be there for our boy, but a major earthquake just hit, and there are lots of people who needs our help.”
He took a deep breath, shook his head a little, sighed.
“Tan, you take the wheel. We’re meeting 50 squad back at HQ. We’re going to pack up four rubber rafts and we’re on tsunami rescue duty once that hits.” Hondo checked his watch, “ETA on the first wave is 75 minutes.”
The rest nodded. All of them a little rattled from what had just happened to Luca.
SWATSWATSWAT
It was five minutes to midnight when they finally could consider themselves off-duty.
The entire day felt like a spin-cycle in a washing machine filled with bricks.
The others had said their good nights and headed towards the parking lot, anxious to get some sleep, but he wasn’t ready to go home to his family. Not after the day they had at work. It wouldn’t be right to Annie if he brought all of this crap home.
Since the day had felt like Armageddon and the apocalypse combined, he had a frail hope that she would still be in her office.
“Wendy, do you have time?” Deacon asked as soon as she looked up after he had knocked on the doorframe.
“Always.” she nodded, “Come in. Sit down.”
Deacon nodded and closed the door behind him.