by Ella Roane
I chuckle to myself as I think about what got me here, what made me into who I am, then I take my first step forward.
Much of the house has collapsed, but I should still be able to find a way through the wreckage. Just so long as I don’t make a wrong move and bring the rest of it down on me.
The space I step through isn’t so much a doorway as the outline of a doorway. It’s outlined in black smoke that hugs the door frame as it pours out. When I step inside, it’s darkness. Not the kind of darkness you get when you turn your lights off at night. No, this is a solid wall of darkness. An unforgiving darkness. One without respite. One without nuance. There are no shadows. There is no glimmer of light.
I don’t bother to use my flashlight. It wouldn’t do any good. Not here. Not yet.
I push forward into the void. My mind does a rundown of what I know about the home. There’s a basement, but it’s only under the back two-thirds of the structure. According to what I learned from the owner at the start of this battle, the front of the house is an add-on, completed years after the initial build. That means the floor probably won’t collapse under my feet. Not here. And if it does, the drop won’t be far. The depth of a crawl space, that’s it.
I push forward. I’m inside. Nobody’s stopping me now.
I reach a thickly gloved hand for my radio transmitter and lift it to my mouth.
“What is Thompson’s last known location?”
A string of curse words spews from my helmet’s audio in reply, followed by the bark of the same order given before.
“Bowman, stand down! Get out!”
Get out and leave Thompson inside.
Leave Thompson’s wife a widow.
Leave his children without a father.
It’s not going to happen. I’m leaving with him—or I’m not going to leave.
The situation’s dire, not funny at all, but I chuckle again at the lunacy of the reasoning leading up to this day. My younger brother got me into this mess. It’s a family thing.
My dad died when I was young. My mom cleaned houses, waited tables, and any other job she could find, her schedule always changing.
I had a job, too. One job only, and it was important. Take care of my brother.
With mom always out working or at home exhausted, my little brother and I were the constant in each other’s lives. We were there for each other. He skinned his knee—I bandaged it. He lost a tooth—I played the tooth fairy. He needed a little extra money to go on a school trip—I mowed the next-door neighbor’s yard and cleaned out their gutters while he sat at the edge of the yard doing his homework.
We were there for each other.
I was there for him.
Nothing about that changed when we got older and the little shit decided to join the Fire Department.
He wanted to be a firefighter. He wanted to save lives.
Too bad he wasn’t so good at saving his own. But I was...
I was there because I became a firefighter, too. I had to. I had a job to do—taking care of my little brother. Becoming a grown man doesn’t make him not my little brother. It just makes him a grown man and the hoops I gotta jump through a little harder.
We were on a call at a tall apartment block when my little brother proved he wasn’t so good at saving his own life. I was better at it, but not perfect. I didn’t make it to him before searing hot, black, toxic smoke filtered in through his cracked helmet visor.
He’s okay now. He’s recovered, but his firefighting days are done. Now he’s this big deal fire science professor at the university.
And me? Well, I’m still going into burning buildings to save other people’s little brothers—or sisters. Equal opportunity and all that. The fire doesn’t care. But I do. So here I am, dropping to my knees to crawl across the home’s hardwood floors. If they’d been carpeted, this path would’ve already been lost to me. But old, thick natural wood—that’s good stuff. The fire will have to work at convincing it to catch.
The blackness isn’t solid down here, so I turn on the flashlight that’s strapped to my helmet. My breath is loud in my ears as I breathe through the respirator that attaches to the bottom of my face mask. I sound like Darth Vader.
Crawling forward on my knees and elbows moves me down a hallway with soot-covered walls. A lick of flame sprouts from the wall then disappears just as fast. It comes back a second later, this time joined by a second flame sprout. I don’t have long.
I glance up. A river of flame is flowing over the ceiling. The sound within the old house sinks bone deep within me, but I still manage to catch parts of what comes in over my helmet’s speaker. I hear Thompson’s name but miss the rest.
I grab my radio transmitter. It’ll be a miracle if I’m heard, but I’ve got to try.
“Thompson’s location,” I yell after compressing the hand radio’s side button. A voice sounds within my helmet, and I hear what it says this time.
“Last known location was on his way forward from the left rear quadrant of the ground floor!”
I recognize the chief’s voice above the crackling din. He might fire me when—if—I get out, but at least he’s no longer fighting me.
Left rear quadrant...I imagine the path forward that Thompson probably took. I picture it in my head, then do my best to follow it backward.
I stay low, hugging the floor as I crawl. Each turn leads me into a deeper hell. One with walls that bubble, bulge, and sometimes even melt. The temperature inside my suit rises as I move through the living, breathing furnace which the house has become. It’s a metamorphosis, a violent transformation, one that won’t last long. It’s intense, temporary and horrifyingly beguiling—and I want out. But not alone.
Thud.
I feel it more than hear it.
Thud. Thud.
A rhythm.
That’s not the house. That’s man made. It’s coming from...
No. It can’t be.
Thud.
It is! It’s coming from inside the wall!
“Thompson!” I yell, but I know that the sound is muffled by my mask and drowned out by the fury of the fire.
I’ve got equipment all over my uniform, some obvious, some not. I pull a small ax from where it fits close to my body below my fire jacket. I pound on the wall with its blunted butt. Thud, thud, thud.
The response is immediate—three answering thuds.
I can’t believe it. Thompson’s in the damn wall. Part of it must have collapsed behind him and left him trapped.
My ax is small. It won’t give me much torque or leverage, but I’ll get him out.
I raise myself from my prone position onto my feet, then groan as the heat intensifies inside my suit. I’ve got to make this fast. I’m not sure how much time either Thompson or I have left in this space.
I slam the sharp edge of my ax into the wall. Its paint is blistering. A loud, high pitched cry comes from the house itself, but its not because of what I’m doing to its wall. The ceiling further down the hallway is sinking like the bottom of a bowl. It cracks and steam spurts out. A water pipe has busted.
I slam my ax into the wall again. It still manages to hold tight.
“Come on, you fucking bastard!” I growl through gritted teeth. “Give!”
A section of the over-baked plaster breaks away. I put the ax back beneath my suit and rip at the wall with my heavily gloved hands. The first section rips away easily, but the second won’t budge.
I widen my stance and bend my knees to change my center of gravity. With my fingers curled around the plaster wall’s edge, I ready myself to yank again. I plan on putting the whole of my body into it, but the fingers of a gloved hand slapping themselves over mine freezes me. They are the fingers of a hand located inside the wall!
“Thompson!” I yell, but I’m sure he can’t hear. I yank on the wall. It doesn’t budge. I yank again.
Nothing.
Time to change tactics. I release the wall and step back. Thompson’s hand grips the spot o
f the wall my hand has just abandoned.
“I’m not going anywhere, buddy. Not without you!” I scream my rage as I slam the heel of my boot into the wall a few inches to the right of the hole the ax had broken free.
A crack that’s like the San Andreas fault winds its way toward the ceiling. The wall itself then starts to thump and shift as if alive. But it’s not alive. Thompson is. And he’s fighting to get out.
Again, I kick, and again.
Sections of the wall fall away. Thompson breaks the whole upper half open from the inside.
Triumph fills me, but then the floor gives way.
I fall into an oven of pitch-black darkness.
Chapter 3
Stella
It’s been a little over an hour since Marcus and I left Chuck at the hospital. I can’t believe I’m gracing its halls again so soon. But here I am, fighting to save yet another life.
“Come on! You can make it, Mr. Henderson!” I say through gritted teeth. Mr. Henderson’s on a gurney being wheeled down a long corridor. I’m on top of him, straddling his torso with my hands crisscrossed over his chest. “Don’t give up!”
I press down in controlled compressions, doing for his heart what it can’t do for itself. But I barely see him. My mind’s eye is filled with the sixty-nine-year-old’s teary-eyed wife who begged me not to let him die.
The gurney turns a sharp corner and gets wheeled into a tight room, stuffed in every corner with equipment.
“We’ve got him,” says a tall black man with sharp eyes and silver at his temples.
I hop off Mr. Henderson and back my way toward the door as the doctor and his team take over.
It’s hard for me to leave. I want to stay. I want to remind Mr. Henderson of all the reasons he has to live. But just like the doc said, they’ve got him. My job is done.
I say a silent prayer to whoever might be listening, then step through the doorway and turn away. I’ve done all I can. Now I must move forward to do something else.
With every step I take away from the room, the adrenaline that had been fueling me slips away to leave exhaustion in its place. I had felt charged up, powerful, and invigorated. Now I feel empty. Depleted.
When did I eat last? I try to remember.
I know the work I do has its highs and lows, and correctly identifying what caused them is key to avoiding burnout, not to mention life-costing mistakes. Self-care isn’t just important. It’s crucial.
It’s been just over an hour since I left the burning house. Somehow the measure of time has become that which came before and that which came after. Tomorrow will be one day since the burning house, and next week will be one week. But the burning house isn’t really what I see when I think of that pivotal moment. Of course, it’s there, but it’s in the background... behind the handsome man with the smoky eyes.
My own eyes sting with the memory of him because I’m sure that a memory is all that’s left.
Why’d he have to go back inside that damn fire?
I turn the corner that puts me back in the main thoroughfare leading to the hospital’s emergency entrance. My gait stumbles when I spot the line of uniform-clad and heavily booted firefighters sitting in the waiting room just to the side of the entryway.
They’re tired. Some have black soot on their cheeks. Their hair is mussed with recently dried sweat. But none of them are hurt. I don’t even have to look at them closely to know that. They’re not sitting there because any of them need medical attention. They’re sitting there because someone else—one of their own—hasn’t been so lucky. They’re sitting there because one of their own is fighting for their life.
Oh, God! I want to crumble. I feel weak. But I can’t fall apart.
Bowman’s alive, but... but...
Oh, God…
Those firefighters, they’re a hearty bunch. They’re tough. They wouldn’t be lined up in a row, sitting and waiting, if Bowman had a simple splinter in his thumb. No, them being here, it’s a sign that something far, far worse has happened to him.
A tear streaks a path down my cheek unchecked. I don’t swipe it away. I don’t want to draw attention to it. Instead, I force my gaze to stay forward. I don’t allow myself to look at the line of firefighters as my feet and legs function on automatic to get me outside the hospital and back into the night.
The nippy air is startlingly cold against my flushed skin. It helps to keep me present in the here and now. I’m not in some other time, watching someone walk away to his destruction. I’m standing outside a hospital, on concrete, looking out onto a starry night.
It takes a willful focus, but the effort pays off. I feel a tiny bit better. Still, when I take a deep breath, it comes in ragged.
“Pull it together,” I tell myself.
I only spent a minute with the firefighter with the smoky eyes. It was nothing.
Then why does it hurt so much? That’s what my mind demands to know.
There’s a hard, angry knot in my stomach. I could double over. I could cry for days. Instead, I struggle to breathe in the night air. I’m projecting emotions onto the guy, feelings that don’t exist. I’m delusional. We don’t share some ageless love to be written about in the stars. Mr. Smoky-Eyes means nothing to me—and I mean nothing to him.
“Get a grip,” I hoarsely whisper into the darkness of the night. I pound my fist into my chest as I say it, needing to feel, needing to anchor myself.
I need to get back to the ambulance. I know that Marcus will have taken it to the hospital’s quick-access parking lot.
I walk a good twenty feet from the hospital’s entrance, but every step takes me further away from whatever personal hell my smoky-eyed firefighter is suffering through. It feels like I’m pulling against fishhooks in my skin that are anchored to him.
It’s not real! I tell myself. My connection to him doesn’t exist. But knowing that doesn’t change how I feel.
I need a moment of privacy. I need to let myself fall apart so that I can get on with putting myself back together again. I spot just the place. Twin columns that are part of the building itself stick out from the wall creating a shadowed nook. They stand wide enough apart for me to slip comfortably between, and I do just that.
There, I lean against the pockmarked red brick of the hospital wall and close my eyes. But, I pop them back open just as quickly.
Bowman was waiting for me in my memory, looking back at me. His eyes, a swirling, troubled gray. They’ve captured my heart—and I want it back! Still, the intense urge to reach for his face and kiss his lips is so strong. My hands actually reach for him—reach for nothing.
My heart aches as if being squeezed. It hurts. I want to break down in great wailful sobs.
“What’s wrong with me?” I lament, close to tears.
I care about all my patients. Everyone I help, I give them everything I’ve got. But when it’s time to walk away, I walk. Just like with Mr. Henderson. I let go. Why can’t I let go?
Bowman isn’t even my patient.
I hang my head and cover my face with my hands. I consider sliding down the wall to sit on the unforgiving and uncaring ground, but the muted thud of steps heading my way freezes me.
I go still. I slam a steel trapdoor over my runaway anguish. I don’t want to be seen. Not right now. Not when I’m so raw.
With a slight tilt of my head, I can see past the corner of one of the built-in columns I’m standing between. When the figure moving with a sure and steady gait passes from shadow to soft lamplight, I gasp and slam my back against the wall.
Tears flood my eyes, and I cover my mouth with both hands. I can’t have seen what I just saw. It’s the smoky-eyed Bowman.
My imagination has jumped out of my head to torture my reality!
Chapter 4
Brad
“Go get her, son,” the chief had said in his low, craggy voice.
It was all the encouragement I had needed to leave the hospital’s waiting area to go after the woman who is already min
e... but who just doesn’t know it yet.
Getting out of the burning house had been hard. Hard and incredibly lucky. I’d thought I was done for when the floor gave way. But it was instead the best thing that could’ve happened. The structural integrity of the wall encasing Thompson fractured when the floor gave way. That allowed Thompson to break through it. When he did that, more of the floor fell away, and he landed in the basement with me. From there, I smashed a ground-level window and helped him crawl through with me close behind.
The guy was lucky. Hell, we were both lucky. Angels had to have been watching over me because I was at a point of having severe doubts about ever making it out of that fiery deathtrap.
But we did. I came through it just fine, but Thompson wasn’t so lucky. His oxygen ran low in his tank, but he hadn’t been able to risk taking off his mask. His lungs would’ve been seared from the heat, and the black smoke would have been toxic. So, he’d left his mask on, drifting in and out of consciousness as his air got used up.
Now he’s inside with the docs. There are layers of concerns, from hypoxia and heatstroke to a fractured femur, but he should live. They think he’ll recover enough to be able to go home to his family. Whether he’ll make it back to the job, well, that’s more iffy.
The chief tore me down like a tree shredder after Christmas once Thompson was safely on his way to the hospital.
Reckless endangerment.
Disobeying orders.
Possible suspension.
Should’ve known better than to take me on his crew.
The litany went on, but when done, he took off his Chief’s hat. That’s when he shook my hand. All the other guys rewarded me with hard slaps on the shoulder.
All that was great. It was. But nothing compared to seeing Thompson’s wife’s face—one kid balanced on her hip and the other standing next to her, his tiny hand in hers—being told by a doctor that her husband was stable. She wasn’t going to be a widow. That’s why I did it. I’d do it again. And again. And again.