“I can stay here at home myself,” Samantha volunteered. “Really, it’s fine.”
Ben smiled down at her kindly. “Yah, I know you can. But it’s against regulations for us. We have to call child protective services to watch you. It’s the law, don’tcha know.”
“Right now we’re ten-six, which means out of service unless we get a call,” Roxie added. Roxie usually walked with a large phone clipped to her belt. At this moment, the phone squawked and then let out some musical notes. “Which we’re getting now,” she exclaimed, holding the phone to her face and speaking to it.
For some reason we all ran back to Roxie’s car. I liked how big it was, but I preferred Ben’s because he could roll down the windows.
“Okay, you’re coming with us, Sammie! Climb in the back with Ripley and strap yourself in and hold on to him,” Ben instructed in a terse voice. Roxie’s expression was skeptical. We all halted at the back of her car. “What else can we do, Roxie?” Ben demanded. “We can’t abandon her.”
Roxie grinned. “You are so going to owe me Twins tickets,” she replied. “No, Vikings tickets!”
Samantha jumped into the back and reached for me and Ben handed me up. Then the two of us were strapped into the back of Roxie’s car while she and Ben sat up front and the air was split with the now familiar wail.
“What’ve we got?” Ben asked Roxie.
Her return expression was grim. “Code blue.”
Ben gazed at her for a solemn moment. “Oofda.” Then he glanced back at us. “How’re you doing back there, Sammie?”
“It’s just a little room,” Samantha responded in a firm voice. “That’s all it is.”
“Atta girl,” Ben praised her with a grin.
“What’s code blue?” Samantha inquired, curious.
Ben’s grin faded. “Heart’s stopped. So when we get there, Sammie, it’s important you and Ripley stay in the back, all right? You can watch out the windows.”
“So, Ben,” Roxie asked, “what’s your plan for when we load the patient in the back here? You think everyone’s going to be okay with Samantha and Ripley being along for the ride?”
There was a brief silence. “Yah, well, I already told the captain about Ripley. And Samantha’s Ripley’s trainer,” Ben said after a while.
“Oh, I cannot wait to see you try to get out of this.” Roxie smirked.
Ben didn’t smile back. “Yah, I guess I’m in a bit of a pickle here.”
“I guess you are. Or as you’d say, ‘Oofda, for sure.’”
“You’re getting it,” Ben told her with a grin. “Now say, ‘Ope! You betcha!’”
“I am never saying that.”
We pulled up in front of a building with many windows. A woman much older than Mom stood in the front yard and waved at us. She was short and very wrinkly. Ben and Roxie left their doors open as they jumped out. Roxie opened the back door, reached in, and grabbed a big box by its handle. “Stay,” she whispered to me.
It was a word I’d heard before but didn’t associate with anything important. I had no idea why people like to say it so much.
Samantha grabbed hold of my collar so I couldn’t jump out of the car and go meet this woman and see if she had any treats.
“Ma’am, did you call nine-one-one?” Ben asked.
“Yes, I did,” the woman replied. She was standing up straight and seemed pleased with herself. “You sure got here in a hurry.”
“Where’s the patient?” Roxie demanded.
“I’m the patient.”
I watched curiously as Ben and Roxie frowned.
“Sorry, what? This was called in as a heart attack with no pulse,” Roxie objected, frowning.
I shifted uneasily in Samantha’s grasp. Ben and Roxie did not look pleased, and they’d obviously be happier if they had a dog with them.
“That’s right,” the woman agreed.
“Ma’am, are you having chest pains? Shortness of breath?” Ben asked her.
“None of that,” the woman responded.
Roxie and Ben glanced at each other.
“I don’t understand,” Ben confessed.
“I need a ride to the hospital for my appointment, and when I explained it was for my carpal tunnel treatments, they wouldn’t send anyone. So I figured a heart attack would get their attention,” the woman explained. She seemed prouder than ever, as if she’d just done Sit right and was expecting the treat that always came after that.
Ben and Roxie both relaxed. I glanced up and wagged hopefully because Samantha had a small smile on her lips. Then she pulled her phone out of her pocket and held it with one hand, looking at it while she kept the other hand on my collar.
“Yah, well, we’re not a taxi service. We’re for emergencies only, don’tcha know,” Ben told her.
The woman shook her head. “Don’t I pay my taxes like anybody? Don’t my taxes pay for your shiny new ambulance? Your salaries? Least you can do is give me a ride.”
Ben turned and left the woman standing there. He came back to Roxie’s car and I wagged. He climbed into the back with us, leaving the doors open. “Oofda,” he offered with a grin. “She figured we’d be quicker than Uber. Have you heard from your aunt, Sammie?”
“She texted me. She’s home now.”
Ben leaned out. “Roxie! Let’s go.”
Roxie drove at a much calmer pace back to our house.
“You have got to be the luckiest man alive,” Roxie marveled. “Anybody else and the fire truck would have been there, except they’re changing the tires and it’s ten-seven. So no one saw you bring a child and a puppy to the call.”
“You betcha. Just meant to be,” Ben agreed.
“Next shift I’m bringing my son’s three cats,” Roxie warned.
Ben laughed.
Roxie twisted in her seat to speak to me. “Ben talked Captain Bee into a new policy. Instead of running the truck on every nine-one-one call, we send car five forty—Rescue—by itself if it looks like a routine ambulance. But Lieutenant Hutchins disagrees. And the captain is out sick today, so Hutch is in charge, which means the truck would have rolled with us. But they’re changing tires on the truck at the moment, so they’re ten-seven, which means out of service. Otherwise Ben would have to explain to everyone why he brought a child and a dog along on a code blue.”
“Which was fun,” Ben assured Samantha. “Glad to have you with us.”
Ben walked us to the front door, and a woman I had never met before opened it. She reached out and clutched Samantha. “I’m so sorry, Samantha,” the woman murmured. “That must have been awful.”
“Thank you for coming, Aunt Emily,” Samantha muttered into the woman’s shoulder.
“Of course,” Aunt Emily replied simply.
I would learn eventually that her name was Aunt Emily and that she was a nice lady, very much like Mrs. Middleton, except that she liked to talk on the phone a lot.
They were still hugging, but Aunt Emily was eyeing Ben with her eyebrows raised and a slight, puzzled smile on her face.
“I’m Ben Gustafson,” he introduced himself, “from the rescue squad, fire department station five. My partner in the rescue car is Roxanne Sabin.”
“I’m Emily,” she responded, and they touched hands briefly.
“I’m sorry this happened,” Samantha said mournfully, her voice muffled by the folds of the woman’s clothing.
The woman petted Samantha the way Samantha sometimes petted me. “I didn’t realize that Samantha would be coming home in an ambulance,” she said to Ben, a question in her voice.
Ben smiled. “Yah, well, the county’s trying to compete with the ride-sharing services, raise a little extra cash,” he responded with a chuckle. “We can charge more if we take people around in an ambulance, don’tcha know.”
“Really?”
Ben’s grin faded. “Ope. No, it was a joke. Sorry. No, I’m a friend of the family. That’s Ripley. He’s my dog. He’s going to be working at the fire department soon, but right now Samantha and Lizzy are training him. He’s about six months—still a puppy.” Ben glanced over his shoulder. “Well, I need to get back to work. Samantha, I’ll bring your mom home tomorrow. They’d like to keep her overnight because she hit her head.”
“She hit her head?” Samantha gasped.
Ben held up a hand. “Your mom says it’s nothing, but they have a protocol, rules they have to follow for something like this. I promise you, she’ll be okay.”
The woman appeared surprised. “You’ll be bringing Lizzy home?”
“In the ambulance?” Samantha added.
“Oh, no.” Ben laughed. “I’ll drive my own car. I do have one. So I’ll see you tomorrow, Samantha?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s okay for you to take Ripley?”
“Oh, yes.”
I heard my name and looked up, but no one said anything more and nobody had any treats.
Ben left, the way he often did, and I followed Samantha and Aunt Emily into the kitchen. A marvelous smell of chicken wafted through the air from a bucket on the counter. Without even saying anything, Aunt Emily fed a small piece of chicken skin to me, and I instantly loved her.
It was one of those nights where I slept with Samantha in her bed. Aunt Emily slept downstairs in Mom’s bed. I was a bit concerned. Had Mom left the family? Was Aunt Emily now going to take over preparing our meals? I appreciated the chicken, but I wasn’t quite ready to see my life reorganized like that.
I shouldn’t have worried. Ben and Mom were back at the house the next morning. We had just finished breakfast (Aunt Emily gave me eggs!) and Mom was the first in through the front door. She carried two sticks, one under each arm, and her one leg was wearing a stiff, white, impractical-looking boot that encased her from her ankle to her upper thigh.
“Mom,” Samantha cried shrilly. She ran up to Mom but stopped just short of hugging her, though in the room it felt as if a hug was taking place anyway. “I’m so sorry.”
Mom shook her head kindly. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry about, Samantha. I was the one who fell off the ladder. It was my fault.”
Ben helped Mom get comfortable in the living room. Aunt Emily sat on the couch across from her and Samantha plopped down on the floor cross-legged to be with me.
“I’ll be right back. Just going to duck down the hall for a second,” Ben said.
I heard him go into the small room at the end of the hall and close the door.
“Does it hurt?” Samantha asked.
Mom shook her head. “No. They gave me something for the pain.”
“Who,” Aunt Emily interrupted in a low voice, “is Ben?”
I heard Ben’s name so I looked at Aunt Emily, noticing that her eyes were bright and she was looking at Mom with interest.
“He’s a friend,” Mom replied in similar quiet tones.
“Is he single?” Aunt Emily pressed.
“Come on, Emily.”
Samantha’s eyes widened, and she turned to regard her mother as if seeing something she’d never noticed before.
Aunt Emily leaned forward. “He’s handsome, he’s a firefighter, and he’s got an adorable dog.” Aunt Emily looked at Samantha. “What do you think?”
Samantha frowned. “About what?”
Aunt Emily laughed.
“Just let it go, Emily,” Mom requested, with a warning in her voice.
“Sure.” As she stood up, Aunt Emily leaned forward. “Ben’s a catch,” she whispered. “Make your move, sis.” With a wave of her fingers, Aunt Emily left through the front door.
Ben came out from the room down the hall, smiling. His hands were damp and smelled of soap. “Well, what can I do for you before I go to work? Need me to clean the gutters? Or would you rather break your other leg?”
Mom smiled and shook her head. “Maybe a little too soon for broken leg jokes?”
“Ope. For sure. Sorry,” Ben agreed with an easy smile.
“And about work,” Mom continued. She gestured to her leg. “Obviously, I can’t train Ripley with my leg in this cast.”
“Oh,” Ben looked surprised. “I didn’t think about that, but I guess you’re right.”
“Especially,” Mom added, “with what you want me to do with socialization. I can’t very well take Ripley with me to shops and other places. I obviously won’t be going anywhere myself, for a while. We’ll get delivery for groceries.”
“Nonsense.” Ben frowned. “I can shop for you. But I see your point about Ripley. From what I’ve read about border collies, they really need to get accustomed to people, especially in groups. Their instinct is to herd animals. If you wait too long to train it out of them, they see any gathering of individuals as a bunch of sheep that need to be rounded up and steered into a pen.”
“At what age does that need to happen?” Mom asked. “This wasn’t covered in the dog training manual I ghostwrote.”
“Honestly? I talked to my friend Robin last night and he said we should have started already,” Ben confessed.
“Not good,” Mom murmured.
“I’ll do it,” Samantha blurted.