Chapter Text
Grenade
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The 9-1-1 call had been vague at best.
Eddie had felt a chill down his spine when he’d realized this was some guy with a sick obsession with war; his own feelings about it were conflicted. On the one hand, collections like his were historic. A way to remember war. On the other, they made him feel ill.
“It’s part of my ‘nam collection,” Charles had said.
An entire collection within a collection dedicated to Vietnam. Combine that with Buck having a dick-measuring contest about the damn streets of LA, and Eddie was not in the mood for games.
Eddie lurched over their patient, glancing at the injury. That was when he realized. “Oh, come on! Hold on,” he grabbed Charlie by the shoulders. “I thought you said this was a practice round.”
Panic gripped his stomach as he explained the situation to both Buck and their patient. “Gold caps are live.”
He demanded they stop and call the bomb squad, mind racing as he realized he was the only first responder in their vicinity at the moment qualified to remove the round. When the bomb squad arrived, a wave of relief poured down his spine, only for him to shiver again as he realized they still had to figure out how to get this thing out of Charles’s leg.
Jim, the captain of the bomb squad, held up a tablet with an X-ray. “Yup, there she is,” he griped.
Incredulous, Bobby couldn’t help but state the obvious. “He’s got a live round embedded in his thigh.”
“Uh, I thought this thing already went off,” Buck stuttered.
Eddie couldn’t help but jump in with an explanation. “The launch grenade has two components: gunpowder, which makes it travel, and an explosive charge that…makes it go boom.”
Buck’s voice belied his disdain for Eddie. “Okay, so why didn’t this one ‘go boom’?”
“It’s fitted with a proximity fuse,” Eddie informed them, staring at Buck, challenging the younger man. “It’s a little smart sensor that tells the cap it’s traveled a safe enough distance from the shooter to explode. From his hand to his leg probably wasn’t far enough.”
“Well, we can’t bring him inside a hospital full of people, not with that still stuck inside him.” Bobby declared—again, Captain Obvious, Eddie thought.
“We called the military for help,” Jim stated plainly.
“The military?” Buck laughed a bit. “Uh, can’t you do it? You’re the bomb squad.”
Eddie would never admit he agreed with Buck, even if he knew the answer.
Jim sniffed. “You can’t diffuse a grenade. We need to find someone who knows how to pull that thing out of him without setting it off. They’re sending someone up from Pendleton.” Eddie’s heart dropped. “Should be here within the hour.”
Buck said what all the firefighters knew. “He doesn’t have an hour.”
Eddie knew what he was about was what Hen or Chimney would call Bucking it up, but he had no choice. He was the only person anywhere near qualified for the job. “I can do it.”
And then, from Buck: “I’m in.”