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Well. Today’s decision was going to go down in the 118’s History of “Things Buck Is To Be Yelled At For Forever.”
It was another day, another risky rescue. Something that he could practically do in his sleep. Climb up the potentially dangerous and absolutely going to crumble structure, grab the little girl holding on for dear life off the edge of a third floor abandoned building, put her in a harness, and rappel down. If step four couldn’t be completed safely, then he just needed to jump onto the rescue cushion that the others were quickly inflating beneath them.
Which of course meant that at least one thing had to go wrong.
As it turns out, the young girl had managed to get tangled up in barbed wire, which the owner of the property had lined around all the windows simply so that no one would attempt breaking in.
But peer pressure with seven-year-olds was a powerful thing, and she’d crawled under it, only to try to leave and get caught.
Buck did what he could from the end of the ladder to free her, but it wasn’t going to be easy. So, he carefully shielded the girl and broke the glass of the window above her, so that he could try to cut her free from the other side.
The barbed wire had managed to get tangled tight around her, but by some miracle, she hadn’t been cut yet. She was just hopelessly caught. Buck had to get close to carefully cut free every piece, which ended up being a lot.
Once the last piece freed her, she immediately tried to scramble away. “Please don’t arrest me!” she yelled, before pushing Buck back and tearing down the dilapidated stairs (that really shouldn’t be standing, because seriously, they were in bad shape). Buck had stumbled back and managed to fall through the other open window in the room, because of course there were two, and of course it was still covered in barbed wire.
“Buck!”
See, hanging suspended from a window with only his rappelling kit and barbed wire keeping him from falling was not exactly a good time.
Because he was Buck and had his luck, everything was going wrong at once. The winch got jammed when he fell, and apparently the rope was tangled up, so no one could pull him back. On top of that disaster, he could feel the barbs digging more and more into his arms, thanks to the wire having to hold up his weight suspended from the ground, which was more significant than a small child’s.
Quickly Buck made a decision. “Get the cushion under me, I’m gonna cut myself free!” “Buck, don’t. Eddie’s nearly got it-”
“Bobby, I can’t wait that long, it’s cutting deep!”
He was just able to reach his knife and started hacking at the few pieces of barbed wire that were keeping him suspended. With each slash, he nicked himself, but he was ignoring the slight pain in an effort to just get free.
And free he was. One minute he was hacking away, the next he was falling directly down onto the air cushion. It took him a second to register that he wasn’t still hanging from the sky. Instead, he was staring at it.
Sound came rushing back, shouts of his name reaching his ears. Hands grabbed him and pulled him to the edge of the deflating cushion, which placed him right in the arms of his team, who were not happy with him.
“Sorry? It hurt a lot.”
Eddie leveled him a glare that probably could have peeled paint. “When you get released from the emergency room, remind me to smack you.”
Buck sighed. Well, at least Maddie didn’t know what happened. Not yet, anyway.