7Emergency! ~ "Weird Wednesday: The Missing Rescue"
by Dash O'Pepper
Author's Notes: Based on the first season episode (#1.08) "Weird Wednesday" by Daryl Henry.
• The inspiration for this story was suggested by a friend during one of our many conversations about bizarre crossovers. Special thanks to her for allowing me to use her idea in the creation of this vignette.
• This work was originally posted under another pseudonym for a 500-word challenge on the TwoChickies website.
• This story may also be found on AO3.
This hadn't been the day from hell. It had just been…weird. If someone asked John Gage for one word to sum up all that happened so far, weird would definitely be it. And things hadn't improved any since their first run that morning.
In its own bizarre way, weirdness had followed him his whole life—from a kid on the reservation in South Dakota to the battlefields of 'Nam to being a paramedic in the Los Angeles County Fire Department; he always seemed to be a strangeness magnet.
On days like this, John remembered the talks he'd had with Douglas Knife, his tribal community's shaman and town sheriff. Knife always seemed to be trying to keep him out of trouble, from winding up like all too many of the other teens—JDs or junkies. For a long time, he'd just thought the sheriff was hassling him—the half-breed kid who never could seem to do anything right. Turned out, it wasn't the sheriff, but the shaman who was keeping a watch on him.
It didn't matter his genetics. According to Knife, Johnny had a rare gift: the ability to sense things others couldn't. And the shaman tried his damnedest to get him to focus it in a positive way.
To this day, John wasn't certain he really possessed the latent talent the shaman saw in him—his own beliefs were such a mix of Catholic missionaries, Native shamanism, and LA Eastern mysticism. All he could say for certain was that when the alarm clock went off this Wednesday morning, he knew it was going to be a weird day.
He hadn't been disappointed.
As LA County Squad 51 raced to their rescue, it was, to quote Yogi Berra, déjà vu all over again. The dispatcher was sending them on a nearly identical run—almost the exact same location—as one they had this morning. Well, that lady skydiver did say she'd be going up again. He just didn't think it would be quite this soon, and to tell the truth, he really wasn't in the mood to deal with her arrogance.
Approaching the site, John couldn't miss the white object tangled amongst the tree's upper branches. She really must be caught in the 'chute this time, he thought. He couldn't even see the orange of her jumpsuit.
"Looks like she's really done it," said his partner Roy DeSoto, as he stopped the squad a safe distance from the tree.
As John began to grunt his reply, Roy's sudden shout of surprise stopped what he planned to say. "I don't believe it!"
Hanging on for dear life at the top of the tree was a young nun, her white habit torn and dirty, but she appeared to be in otherwise decent shape. Looking around them, it was clear that there was no way humanly possible she could have got where she was…or was there?
Roy looked at his partner, "She couldn't have flown?"
Johnny just smiled. Weird? Nah, it's just my life.
~ Finis ~
© 2015 Dash O'Pepper
Disclaimers: Emergency! is a registered trademark of NBC/Universal and Jack Webb's Mark VII Productions. All rights reserved. This work of fanfiction is not meant in any way to infringe on copyrights already held by these companies, their subsidiaries, and/or their estates. The original characters and plot of this fanfiction are the property of its author.