One of the most satisfying moments in a long-running urban fantasy series is the chapter that lets a hero exhale. Chapter 1 of The Paramedic’s Witch is that chapter — and Jamie Davis earns it by making the exhale land on the most perfectly absurd possible note: a baby werewolf having a febrile seizure in her crib.

Dean Flynn is back on shift at Station U after one of the most surreal experiences of his life: rescuing his kidnapped Eldara girlfriend Ashley, only to watch her slip back to the heavenly realm to recover from her injuries. Along the way he discovered that his future daughter — a fifteen-year-old witch named Joanna, or Jo — traveled back in time from twenty years ahead to help him. Oh, and the demon hunter Jaz Errington, who saved his life in book four, is apparently Jo’s mother. Which means Dean and Jaz are going to end up together, even though they have barely spoken.

Why readers love the “impossible family situation played straight” trope

Book 5 opens by treating all of that backstory as settled fact and moving immediately into a werewolf baby call, which is exactly the right tone. The comedic juxtaposition — Dean processing the most emotionally complicated week of his life while helping his partner give an intramuscular Midazolam injection to a snarling infant lycan — is the kind of tonal balance that keeps long-running urban fantasy series from getting too heavy. Readers who enjoy series that trust their audience to track the emotional weight without underlining it will find this opening beautifully calibrated.

Barry Winston is coming into his own

A quieter but satisfying development in this chapter is Barry’s growing competence. When Dean asks what the correct drug protocol is for an actively seizing infant, Barry answers immediately and correctly — Midazolam IM or IN — without hesitation. For readers who love watching a series track its secondary characters’ growth alongside the protagonist’s, Barry’s clean answer is one of those small, rewarding moments that distinguish a carefully built series from one that treats its supporting cast as furniture.

The best line in the chapter

“This job is all about new and exciting experiences,” Dean tells the bewildered lycan father, chuckling as he packs up his equipment. It is the line of a man who has made peace, at least temporarily, with the strangeness of his life. For readers five books into this series, it is also a line that carries the accumulated weight of every werewolf, genie, Djinn, vampire, and demon that has come before it. That kind of earned lightness is what keeps readers coming back to a long-running series even as the individual plots get darker.

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CHAPTER TEXT

The Paramedic’s Witch — Chapter 1

The baby werewolf tried to bite him while he worked on his assessment. “How long has she been like this?” Paramedic Dean Flynn asked the concerned parents standing in the doorway of the baby’s bedroom.

“We heard the growls coming from her room about 15 minutes ago,” the mother said. “When we saw her we called 911 right away.”

Dean was glad to be back on the job at Station U after the events of the past few weeks. He had rescued his kidnapped girlfriend Ashley, an actual angel from heaven, only to have her slip away as a result of her injuries during the ordeal. She wasn’t dead, but it would be years before she could manifest again in person on earth. Along the way to rescuing Ashley, he had teamed up with a female demon hunter named Jaz Errington and a witch named Joanna. The surprises and complications continued when he and Jaz found out that Jo was their daughter, returned from the future to assist in their quest to rescue the angel.

So managing the snarling werewolf baby in the crib in front of him was a welcome change of pace back to his normal life of treating his special type of emergency patients. Those patients were the creatures of myth and legend, called Unusuals, who lived alongside their unknowing human neighbors. Dean, his partner Barry, and the other paramedics of Elk City’s Station U were tasked with helping these underserved members of the city’s community.

“I thought that Lycans didn’t start changing until they reached adolescence?” Barry asked, trying to hold the baby without getting bitten by the were-child. “What do you think is going on, Dean?”

“My guess is that the baby is having a seizure of some kind that is causing it to shift and change sooner than expected,” Dean surmised. He turned to look at the concerned parents standing nearby. “Has she been sick lately, had a cold or flu bug, or anything?”

The mother answered. “She has not been sleeping well and had a fever last night when I put her to bed. I didn’t think anything of it. Did I let this happen? Is it my fault? I’ve never heard of one of us shifting form so young before. Is she going to be alright?”

“I think she is going to be fine,” Dean reassured her. He wasn’t sure, but he thought the baby was having a febrile seizure. It was a common enough occurrence in some infants when they spiked a high fever suddenly. It kind of caused the brain to reset. That might be what happened here. The seizure must have triggered the change to werewolf.

“You’re thinking febrile seizure?” Barry asked.

Dean nodded. “So what do we do?” The paramedic asked his probationary partner, testing him.

“Actively seizing infant, we give Midazolam IM or IN,” Barry replied. He meant give the drug commonly known as Versed by injection or aerosolized spray up the nose. It was a sedative that would break the seizure and hopefully, the baby would return to human form. Hopefully.

Dean nodded in the affirmative and took over securing the snarling infant, avoiding the snapping teeth. Barry crouched down to draw up the medication in a syringe while his partner secured the patient. The new guy was coming along alright, Dean thought. He wasn’t a new paramedic, which helped. He was just new to the knowledge that some of his patients were creatures like werewolves, even werewolf babies.

Barry stood back up with his syringe and supplies and Dean turned the baby on her side so Barry could give the injection. Barry used an alcohol prep to swab the little hairy butt and then gave the intramuscular injection. It would take a few moments to begin to work so Barry took over holding the struggling and snarling infant from his partner after putting the needle and syringe in the sharps box in the side of their med bag.

“Now we just need to wait and see if the drug we just gave her does the trick,” Dean told the concerned parents. “In the meantime, while a febrile seizure is usually an isolated incident, given the startling change that occurred, we should probably take her in to the hospital to get checked out. Okay?”

“Are you sure she’ll be alright?” the mother asked.

“Look,” Barry said. He had let go of the child. The snarling had stopped and as Dean and parents leaned over the crib to look at the baby, they saw the tiny werewolf shift back into a normal baby girl. Her clothes were a little shredded from the previous struggles, but she was sleeping comfortably and looked none-the-worse for the experience.

“See,” Dean said. “She seems to be just fine. Like I said, it’s probably an isolated incident but I’d like to have you come with us while we take her into the hospital and get checked out. It may never happen again. Still, it’s better to be safe.”

“We can go to the hospital if that’s what you recommend,” the father said. “Thank you so much for helping us. I come from a long line of Lycans and I have never heard of that happening before.”

“It’s new to me, too,” Dean said. “Still, this job is all about new and exciting experiences.” He chuckled and started helping to get things ready to transport the family to the hospital.

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