The Firefighter's Vow

by Amie Denman

  “We’ll pull up, Ethan will hook a hydrant, we’ll get a charged line. Be ready, and whatever you do, breathe slowly. You may have to conserve your air and energy so you can save my butt,” Charlie said, grinning.

  When the truck stopped, everything happened so fast Laura thought about that one thing: breathing slowly. She took hold of a charged line, and Tony turned on her tank as he yelled, “Neighbors don’t know if anyone’s home, but there’s a car in the driveway.” He tapped her helmet. “Go.”

  Tony was sending her into the fire. It was her chance to save someone as Adam could not be saved. A direct chance to right the past. And it was the one thing Tony could do to prove he loved her. Was that why he chose her to pair up with Charlie and put on the air packs?

  What mattered now was her training, her partner and the chance that her actions could mean the difference between life or death for another human being. She followed Charlie and they did a quick sweep of the downstairs. Crouching low under the smoke, their visibility was poor, but they didn’t see anyone in the kitchen, living room, dining room or bathroom. Charlie tapped her shoulder and pointed up.

  Bedrooms. There weren’t any on the first floor, but given the size of the home there could be at least three bedrooms upstairs. It was evening, too early for bedtime, so she hoped the bedrooms would be empty. She followed Charlie up the stairs, taking her share of the weight of the hose. Framed photos hung along the wall on the way up the staircase, but Laura couldn’t make out the pictures through the smoke. A pair of firefighters behind them on the first floor was already knocking down the flames they found downstairs. Laura couldn’t tell who they were, but she knew her mission wasn’t to put out flames. She and Charlie had been sent in to find any entrapped victims.

  They were on the landing when Laura heard radio traffic from the mic on her shoulder. She tried to listen. Was the voice saying no entrapped victims? Charlie motioned in front of him, indicating they were going on. Maybe Laura hadn’t heard correctly. On their knees, Charlie and Laura pushed open a bedroom door and looked inside. It was a nursery with a crib under the window. They moved fast across the room and looked into the crib. Empty. She saw Charlie shake his head and point toward the door, and then she heard Tony’s voice on the radio, distinctly this time, saying the home was unoccupied according to a neighbor who saw a car leave earlier.

  Charlie must have heard the same thing because he moved toward the door and turned back toward the staircase, ignoring the other rooms on the second floor. Laura started to follow him, and then she saw something that changed her mind.

  A diaper bag. On the floor next to the crib. She stared at it for a moment, trying to match thoughts up in her head. Doesn’t a mom always haul the diaper bag with her if she’s taking the baby somewhere? She’d helped Jane lug hers around, and she’d done plenty of babysitting as a teenager.

  If the bag was still there...

  Laura tugged at Charlie’s coat, and when he turned around she pointed to the bag on the floor. The smoke and his mask obscured his features, but his next action told her he understood what she was saying. He entered the room and swept it, looking in the closet first. He started to move rapidly and Laura kept up. They continued down the upstairs hall that they had nearly abandoned.

  The next room was a bathroom. Laura was first through the door and right in front of her was a woman sitting on the floor by the bathtub holding a wet towel over a baby’s face. The woman’s knees were up to her chest and she huddled against the tub as if she thought there was no hope. When she saw Laura and Charlie, Laura thought her own heart would explode at the look of absolute relief on the mother’s face. Laura held out her hands for the baby out of instinct. It was a girl, dressed in a pink sleeper. She had dark hair, but her face was red from crying.

  Laura soaked a towel with the bathtub faucet and wrapped the baby. She opened the front of her coat and tucked the baby inside. She heard Charlie asking the mother if anyone else was home and saw her shake her head. Charlie said something over the radio, and he picked up the mother and carried her out of the bathroom. Laura was right behind him, the baby clutched inside her coat.

  There was no time to be careful, no time to care about keeping track of the hose or anything else. She was racing the clock and the flames to get the baby down the stairs and through the front door.

  Two firefighters waited at the bottom of the stairs, a hose in hand, but Charlie hurried past them and Laura followed, sheltering the baby inside her coat and turning her back to the heat and smoke. They burst through the front doors and Laura breathed again. She dropped to her knees on the front lawn and opened her coat.

  Charlie lowered the mother to the ground in the grass, and two more firefighters came over with oxygen and a stretcher. A firefighter held out his hands for the baby, and Laura carefully gave the shrieking infant to him. As she laid the baby in his hands, she looked up and saw Tony’s face. He looked dumbfounded, as if she had just produced a miracle from the front of her coat.

  Laura heard a bell ringing and remembered the sound from their training. It indicated low air in a breathing tank. Tony handed the baby to Tyler, and then he reached up and disconnected Laura’s air hose. He loosened the strap on her helmet and helped her ease it off along with her mask.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Are the mother and baby okay?”

  He glanced over. “They’re both crying, and that’s not a bad sign. Where did you find them? The neighbor said he saw a car leave an hour ago, but obviously the whole family wasn’t in it.”

  “Bathroom. We were going to give up searching when you radioed, but then I saw the diaper bag. Made me think the baby was somewhere in the house.”

  Tony smiled. “Can’t leave home without that.”

  Laura sat back on her heels and shivered. Now that the adrenaline surge had rushed through her and she was away from the heat, she felt gooseflesh all over her body. Everything had happened so quickly, and the downstairs was still burning. She knew two firefighters were inside, and there were at least six more all around the fire scene, manning the pump, setting up a ladder and taking care of the victims she and Charlie had pulled from the fire.

  Tony stood up and spoke into his radio. It was an active fire scene, and he was in charge, responsible for everyone. Laura got to her feet and went over to the ambulance where the mother and baby were tucked inside.

  “Okay?” Laura asked.

  “Are you the one who carried—” the mother asked. She couldn’t even articulate the words through her tears, but Laura knew what she was asking. She nodded. “What’s her name?”

  The mother almost smiled. “Melanie.”

  Laura stepped into the ambulance and took a quick look at the little girl, who appeared to be only a few months old. So young, and already a survivor.

  “Going with us?” Tyler asked.

  Laura shook her head. “No. You go.” She shot the mother an encouraging smile and backed quickly out of the ambulance. It sped away, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Nicole rushed down the street and barreled into Laura, hugging her so tight Laura realized she had seriously underestimated her sister’s strength.

  “That wasn’t you in there,” she said. “Or Kevin?”

  “No. It was a mother and baby who were trapped in the fire.”

  Nicole clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God. Are they—?”

  “They’re okay,” Laura said. “We saved them.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Charlie. I got to carry the baby out.”

  Nicole put her arms around her. “My sister the hero. I’m so proud of you. But you need a shower. Come home with me.”

  “Not yet,” Laura said. “We’re not done yet.”

  A car careened down the street and a man got out and ran flat out at Olympic speed for the front door of the house without paying attention to everyone w
ho was shouting at him to stop. Tony stepped in his way and held his ground. The man crashed into him and they both fell back against the front wall of the house. Tony picked the man up and held him at arm’s length. Laura watched, flabbergasted, as Tony turned the man around and physically marched him over to Laura and Nicole.

  “Tell him his wife and baby are okay,” Tony said.

  Laura briefly explained what had happened, leaving out the scary details.

  “I’m going to the hospital right now,” he said, his eyes wild and his breath ragged.

  Nicole stopped him. “I’ll drive you,” she said.

  “I don’t even know you,” the man said.

  “My husband is a firefighter,” she said, pointing out Kevin who was on a ladder over the porch roof. “More importantly, my sister is the one who saved your wife and baby. I think you can trust me.”

  Hearing the pride and approval in Nicole’s voice made Laura believe without a doubt that she had found where she belonged. She picked up her fire helmet and put it back on. Gavin was getting a tall ladder off the side of one of the pumpers and Laura went over to help him lift it down and carry it. It felt good to be doing something useful, and their work was far from over. She held the bottom of the ladder as Gavin climbed it and fed him hose to put through a second story window.

  Later, after the fire was out, she helped load equipment back on the trucks to be cleaned and inspected back at the station. Tony came over and stood next to her in the dark shadows of the truck.

  “I keep wondering what would have happened if I’d sent someone else in to search for victims,” he said, his voice soft and serious. “Would someone else have noticed that one little detail that ended up saving two lives?”

  Laura swallowed the lump in her throat. She did not want to have this conversation with Tony now. No one could see them where they were on the back side of a fire truck in the dark. Many of the trucks had already left, and the floodlights were being turned off one by one as the scene wound down.

  “Everyone is well trained and incredibly dedicated,” she said. “I think anyone would have done what I did.”

  Tony shook his head, his fire helmet exaggerating the movement. “We’ll never know, but I do know it’s a damn good thing you let me have it after the last fire, or I might not have chosen you to go in. That decision might have meant...”

  Laura put both hands on Tony’s shoulders. “Everything turned out fine,” she said.

  Tony took one of her hands, held it for a moment in his and then kissed the back of her hand.

  “Almost,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “YOU’RE IN THE PAPER,” Nicole said when she came over the next afternoon. “You’ve got to see this picture.”

  Laura had just gotten home from her job at the beach and she wanted to shower off the sunscreen and sand. She loved the beach, but each passing day reminded her that she really needed to get a grown-up job if she was planning to stay in Cape Pursuit.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Laura said. “I have a plan to run past you, and I know you well enough to know that you’ll be brutally honest with me if you hate it.”

  “Aren’t you going to look at the article?” Nicole said. She got two cans of soda out of the fridge and opened the kitchen door to the back porch.

  “Fine,” Laura said. She sat in one of the chairs on the back deck and opened the newspaper. “Okay,” she said. “Wow. I guess I see what you’re talking about, but I don’t even remember anyone taking this picture.”

  “You were busy saving babies,” Nicole said.

  “Just one.”

  The picture was of the moment Laura had knelt on the ground outside the burning house and opened the front of her coat to reveal a baby wrapped in a towel. The caption below gave Laura’s name and stated she was a new member of the department.

  “Poor baby Melanie,” Laura said. “I hope she doesn’t remember any of this.”

  “She won’t. But her family will never forget it.”

  The sisters were silent for a few minutes as they watched the bird feeder and drank their soda on the quiet late afternoon day.

  “Adam would be proud,” Nicole said.

  Laura fought tears. Despite the incredible emotion of the night before and the chatter about her heroism all day long at work, she had kept her feelings in check and tried not to think about what could have happened. What did happen to someone her family loved very much.

  “Don’t make me cry,” Laura said.

  Nicole sat back in her chair and put her feet up on the deck railing. “I talked to Mom and Dad today,” she said. Laura felt her heart sink. “I told them what happened last night. They got online and saw the picture and article on the newspaper website while we were still on the phone together. Of course there was a lot of swearing because dad has a new laptop and he says he can’t get used to it, but I eventually got them to the front-page story in the Cape Pursuit News.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said you were a hero, they accepted your decision to be a firefighter and they wanted grandchildren,” Nicole said.

  “What?”

  “That last part was for me since I’ve been married a week and a half now, but I think the picture of the baby inspired it.”

  Laura wanted to laugh, but she knew there would never be a better time to tell her sister what had been on her mind for two long years. “It’s my fault Adam is dead.”

  Nicole’s mouth opened in shock for a moment and then she shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”

  “I was the one who told him about that summer job. I was helping him with his final paper at the end of the semester. I sent him a picture of the flyer I’d seen downtown advertising the summer firefighting job.”

  Laura waited for her sister’s anger, but it didn’t come.

  “I know,” Nicole said. “Adam told me. And Mom and Dad.”

  “He did?” Laura couldn’t believe that what she had considered her secret guilt was no secret, and her family had never said a word of blame to her.

  Nicole nodded. “I assumed you knew that. And it doesn’t make you any more responsible than the rest of us. None of us tried to stop him.”

  A heavy slice of guilt fell away from Laura, even though the pain of losing her brother would always be part of her.

  “Is that partly why you’ve...struggled so much?” Nicole asked. “And maybe why being a firefighter is so important to you now?”

  “Part. But not all. I really love knowing I can help someone and whenever I do, I think of Adam and wish there had been someone to rescue him.”

  “Me, too,” Nicole said. “But I’m glad you’re out there doing what you can.”

  Laura sipped her soda for a moment and decided it was time. “So, if I enrolled in a professional firefighting course and decided to make it my full-time job, I would have my family’s full support?”

  Nicole grinned. “You’re totally taking advantage of good timing, but yes, you would.”

  “I’m going to,” Laura said. “I’d been thinking about it, but I needed to be tested first, needed to prove myself.”

  “To who?”

  “To me,” Laura admitted. “And I passed the test.”

  “Heck, yes, you did,” Nicole said, clinking her can against her sister’s. “Have you told Tony yet?”

  “No. I’ll ask him for a letter of recommendation when I get the application for fire school.”

  “Is that really how you’re going to handle this?” Nicole asked. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you feel about him.”

  Laura shrugged, knowing there was no point her denying her sister’s intuition. “I don’t have any better ideas.” She’d tried to read into his behavior at the fire scene. He’d treated her just like any other firefighter on the way to the scene, had sent her in witho
ut—to her knowledge—a second thought. But she highly doubted he kissed the hands of any of the other firefighters when the fire was over. She sure hoped not.

  She’d challenged him to prove his love by letting her do what she needed to do. And he’d done exactly that. Did that mean he loved her or that he was letting her go?

  “I have a better idea,” her sister said. “Everyone in the county thinks you’re the bravest person alive, so you should go prove it.”

  “How?”

  “By telling him that you love him,” Nicole said. “I’d fake a 911 call to get him over here, but it wouldn’t look very good if the wife and sister of a firefighter did that.”

  “I’ll handle this,” Laura said. “If only to keep you out of trouble.”

  * * *

  TONY HAD JUST finished the fire reports from the night before and hit Save on the desktop in his office when his cell phone pinged. Laura. He’d been thinking about her all night and all day. He was well aware he could have been filling out a double fatality report instead of the far better news of the total loss of a home but no loss of life. Laura’s instinct and quick thinking had made all the difference. She had to be happy. But did that happiness include him?

  The message on his phone had only one word. Boardwalk?

  She didn’t need to explain any further. He vividly remembered their walk the night of the wedding and how sadly it had ended. He’d told her he cared, and she’d told him he wasn’t allowed to.

  That hadn’t stopped him.

  Did she want to reopen that conversation or simply reiterate what she’d said before? Had last night’s fire changed things between them for better or for worse? He had to know.

  Five minutes?

  Okay.

  Tony closed his office door, popped his head into the bunk room where three on-duty guys were watching the evening news and said, “I’m taking off for the night.”

  He got in his truck and drove to the beach boardwalk, thoughts of Laura swirling through his mind. Was he foolish for getting his hopes up? When he parked his truck, he hardly remembered taking the keys out of the ignition. He took two steps away, then went back to deposit his phone and radio on the seat. He was off duty, for once.