It's a Wonderful Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novella (The Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel)

by Jennifer Bernard

  Lizzie nodded numbly. They clattered down the three flights of stairs. Of course she did. She needed action. She needed to find out if she could help. She needed to be close, the same way she needed oxygen right now. She dragged more air into her lungs, and it helped. By the time they reached the parking garage, she had herself under control.

  “Did my mother say anything else?”

  “She said to call Captain Brody on his cell if you want to know more. He’s monitoring the situation. Everyone else is busy with the fire.”

  Lizzie knew what a kindness that was. Firefighters didn’t have time to update family members while they were battling a fully involved fire. She dialed Brody’s number while Stacy drove them across town. With a chill, she realized the smoke she’d seen earlier was almost certainly from the Under the Mistletoe fire.

  “Hi, Lizzie.” Brody’s calm voice instantly made her feel better.

  “Is he . . . what’s . . .” She couldn’t manage to finish a sentence.

  “We’re not sure how he is, because we haven’t heard from him yet. He probably got knocked out in the fall.”

  “What about . . . fire?”

  “We’re getting the fire under control. He vented the roof before he fell through so he prevented a flashover. More smoke got released when the façade collapsed. One thinks she heard his PASS device sounding—she has the best ears. That means he hasn’t moved. He may be unconscious, or he may be trapped. We don’t know. Our main concern is getting him out now. The façade collapse blocked the entrance entirely. They’re working on another way in through the back.”

  “How long . . . how long has he been in there?”

  “Only about ten minutes, give or take. We’ll get him out, Lizzie.”

  “Sure.” Of course they’d get him out. But Brody didn’t mention anything about getting him out alive. Captain Brody never made promises he couldn’t keep.

  DARKNESS. REDNESS. THE in and out of harsh breathing. His own? Pain. Pain of many different varieties. Burning. Stabbing. Aching.

  He’d fallen. Memory returned like water seeping into a basement. He’d been on the roof, and then he’d fallen through, and now he was . . . here. His PASS device was sounding in a high-decibel shriek, and its strobe light flashed, giving him quick, garish glimpses of his surroundings.

  Mulligan looked around cautiously. The collapse must have put out much of the fire, because he saw only a few remnants of flames flickering listlessly on the far end of the space. Every surface was blackened and charred except for one corner, in which he spotted blurry flashes of gold and red and green.

  He squinted and blinked his stinging eyes, trying to get them to focus. Finally the glimpse of gold formed itself into a display of dangling ball-shaped ornaments. He gawked at them. What were those things made from? How had they managed to survive the fire? He sought out the red and squinted at it through his face mask. A Santa suit, that’s what it was, with great, blackened holes in the sleeves. It was propped on a rocking chair, which looked quite scorched. Mulligan wondered if a mannequin or something had been wearing the suit. If so, it was long gone. Next to the chair stood half of a plastic Christmas tree. One side had melted into black goo, while the other side looked pretty good.

  Where am I? He formed the words with his mouth, though no sound came out. And it came back to him. Under the Mistletoe. He’d been about to die inside a Christmas store. But he hadn’t. So far.

  He tried to sit up, but something was pinning him down. Taking careful inventory, he realized that he lay on his left side, his tank pressing uncomfortably against his back, his left arm immobilized beneath him. What was on top of him? He craned his neck, feeling his face mask press against his chest. A tree. A freaking Christmas tree. Fully decorated and only slightly charred. It was enormous, at least ten feet high, its trunk a good foot in diameter. At its tip, an angel in a gold pleated skirt dangled precariously, as if she wanted to leap to the floor but couldn’t summon the nerve. Steel brackets hung from the tree’s trunk; it must have been mounted somewhere, maybe on a balcony or something. A few twisted ironwork bars confirmed that theory.

  How the hell had a Christmas tree survived the inferno in here? It was wood! Granted, it was still a live tree, and its trunk and needles held plenty of sap. And fires were always unpredictable. The one thing you could be sure of was that they’d surprise you. Maybe the balcony had been protected somehow.

  He moved his body, trying to shift the tree, but it was extremely heavy and he was pinned so flat he had no leverage. He spotted his radio a few feet away. It must have been knocked out of his pouch. Underneath the horrible, insistent whine of his PASS device, he heard the murmuring chatter of communication on the radio. If he could get a finger on it, he could hit his emergency trigger and switch to channel six, the Mayday channel. His left arm was useless, but he could try with his right. But when he moved it, pain ripped through his shoulder.

  Hell. Well, he could at least shut off the freaking PASS device. If a rapid intervention team made it in here, he’d yell for them. But no way could he stand listening to that sound for the next whatever-amount-of-time it took. Gritting his teeth against the agony, he reached for the device at the front of his turnout, then hit the button. The strobe light stopped and sudden silence descended, though his ears still rang. While he was at it, he checked the gauge that indicated how much air he had left in his tank. Ten minutes. He must have been in here for some time, sucking up air, since it was a thirty-minute tank.

  A croak issued from his throat. “I’m in hell. No surprise.”

  Water. He needed water.

  “I can’t give you any water,” a bright female voice said. For some reason, he had the impression that the angel on the tip of the Christmas tree had spoken. So he answered her back.

  “Of course you can’t. Because I’m in hell. They don’t exactly hand out water bottles in hell.”

  “Who said you’re in hell?”

  Even though he watched the angel’s lips closely, he didn’t see them move. So it must not be her speaking. Besides, the voice seemed to be coming from behind him. “I figured it out all by myself.”

  Amazingly, he had no more trouble with his throat. Maybe he wasn’t really speaking aloud. Maybe he was having this bizarre conversation with his own imagination. That theory was confirmed when a girl’s shapely calves stepped into his field of vision. She wore red silk stockings the exact color of holly berries. She wore nothing else on her feet, which had a very familiar shape.

  Lizzie.

  His gaze traveled upward, along the swell of her calves. The stockings stopped just above her knees, where they were fastened by a red velvet bow. “Christmas stockings,” he murmured.

  “I told you.”

  “All right. I was wrong. Maybe it’s heaven after all. Come here.” He wanted to hold her close. His heart wanted to burst with joy that she was here with him, that he wasn’t alone. That he wasn’t going to die without seeing Lizzie again.

  “I can’t. There’s a tree on top of you,” she said in a teasing voice. “Either that, or you’re very happy to see me.”

  “Oh, you noticed that? You can move it, can’t you? Either you’re an angel and have magical powers, or you’re real and you can push it off me.”

  She laughed. A real Lizzie laugh, starting as a giggle and swooping up the register until it became a whoop. “Do you really think an angel would dress like this?”

  “Hmm, good point. What are you wearing besides those stockings? I can’t even see. At least step closer so I can see.”

  “Fine.” A blur of holly red, and then she perched on the pile of beams and concrete that blocked the east end of his world. In addition to the red stockings, she wore a red velvet teddy and a green peaked hat, which sat at an angle on her flowing dark hair. Talk about a “hot elf” look.

  “Whoa. How’d you do that?”

  “You did it.”

  “I did it?” How could he do it? He was incapacitated. Couldn’t even m
ove a finger. Well, maybe he could move a finger. He gave it a shot, wiggling the fingers on both hands. At least he wasn’t paralyzed.

  But he did seem to be mentally unstable. “I’m hallucinating, aren’t I?”

  “Bingo.”

  “That’s why you’re dressed so sexy. You never dress sexy.”

  Her eyes shot sparks at him. “I dress sexy when I want to. I’m usually too busy to bother with that stuff. Have you forgotten the night we first got together? I dressed sexy then.”

  “I could never forget that night.” He shut his eyes halfway, wanting to get lost in that memory, but not wanting to lose sight of red-velvet hot-elf Lizzie. “I gotta say, I’m pretty happy with my imagination. This is some damn good hallucinating I’m doing right now.”

  She gave a loud, disdainful sniff, sounding just like Real Lizzie. “You’re an idiot.”

  “You got that right.” Not only was he an idiot for all the usual reasons, but also because, beneath the tree, he had some wood of his own happening.

  Well, if he was going to die, might as well die stiff. A stiff with a stiffie. A stiffie with his Lizzie. Even if she was just a dream.

  HE MUST HAVE drifted away for a time, because when things came back into focus, Dream Lizzie was crouched next to him, her hair brushing against his padded jacket. Even though at least an inch of fire-retardant material separated him from the outside world, he thought he felt the stroke of her hair.

  “Shhh,” he told her, even though she hadn’t said anything. “Have you heard anything from outside? Are they trying to rescue me?”

  “What do you think?” Her big brown eyes caught a glow from the flickering flames in the corner. If only she would kiss him. Real Lizzie would kiss him. She loved to kiss him. How many hours had they spent making out on his couch, on her couch, in his car, in the bathtub that time . . .

  But he had his face mask on. How could she kiss him? His face mask, he knew with a quick flash of lucidity, had kept him alive so far, kept him breathing. If he was alive. Maybe he’d ascended to some middle plane between life and death, where everything smelled like smoke and the girls dressed like hot elves.

  Dream Lizzie shoved his shoulder lightly. A stab of pain shot through it. In the next second, he realized Lizzie hadn’t shoved him. A glass ornament had slipped off a tree branch and glanced off his shoulder.

  Of course, because there was no Lizzie. Lizzie was at home or at school or at the hospital, or with her family or her friends or any number of the normal, lovely places she inhabited with her normal, lovely self.

  “Well,” she demanded, and he forgot that Dream Lizzie didn’t really exist. “Do you think they’re trying to rescue you?”

  “Oh. I . . . um . . . maybe. They’re good guys, so they’ll probably try to pull me out.”

  “Probably?”

  “Well, like I said, they’re good guys. And it’s their job.”

  She shook her head roughly, as if he’d just said the most irritating thing a guy could say. “Why are you such a moron?”

  “Hey!” That didn’t seem like a nice thing to say to a man who might be in hell, or, in fact, dead.

  “You think they’re trying to rescue you because it’s their job. Don’t you think they care about you?”

  “I guess.” He tried to shrug, but couldn’t really move his shoulders. His tone of voice had to do the shrugging for him.

  “Oh my God. I can’t even believe we have to have this conversation.”

  “What conversation?” Maybe Lizzie really was here. She sure sounded just as annoyed with him as she did in real life.

  “Let’s put it this way. Why do you think I’m here?”

  His gaze traveled across the creamy skin set off by that smoking-hot crimson velvet bra. God, he wanted to gobble her up like Christmas candy. “Well, first of all, you’re not really here. I’m hallucinating you.”

  She flicked her hair over her bare shoulders. “Fine. Be overly literal.”

  “Look, Dream Lizzie, I have no idea why you’re here. Maybe because I’m disoriented from the fall. Or maybe because I can’t ever get you out of my mind. I can tell you this because you’re not real, but I don’t think I’ve gone an hour without some thought of you since I first saw you.”

  “You mean at the softball game.”

  “No. That’s where we first talked. But I saw you way before that. You came to pick Freddie up to go skiing. You wore a purple wool hat with a pom-pom on top, and you came skipping through the station like a runaway train.”

  Her lips curved into that uniquely Lizzie smile, one corner up and the other corner down. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

  “Don’t insult me. I may not deserve you, but I remember every moment of you. I think that’s why you’re here. So I can spend my last minutes remembering something good.”

  Her jaw clenched and her face went pink. “Ohhhh, you. Oh! Sometimes I just want to strangle you. How can you say such a thing?”

  “What? That I want to remember something good? You find that offensive?”

  She whacked him on the helmet. “What I find offensive is that you think you don’t deserve me.”

  His jaw dropped behind his face mask. “That offends you? But it’s so fucking obvious. Why would someone like me deserve a girl like you? Look at you. You’re all hot and sexy, but that’s not even the point. You’re kind and compassionate and brave and you care about people and work your sexy little butt off for them.”

  “And? Are you saying you aren’t those things?”

  “I’m a burnout. I have no heart left in here.” He indicated his chest with his chin, since he couldn’t move his arms without pain. “Whatever’s there belongs to you. But it ain’t much, I’ll tell you that. And you deserve more.”

  “Okay, that’s it.” Looking furious, she rose to her feet. Her red-velvet sexiness took his breath away. Then again, the tree on his chest could have done that. “Maybe I am here so you can relive good memories. But I have a say in this too. Since I’m here, I’m going to teach you a lesson.”

  “Oh, baby.” He was getting hard again. “Are you going to tinsel-whip me?”

  “If I did, you’d deserve it. But no. No whipping. Just a little trip into an alternate reality.”

  He let out a long laugh. “I’m pretty sure we’re already in an alternate reality here. I’m talking to a hallucination.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Mulligan, do you like Christmas movies?”

  “What do you think?” he growled.

  “I think you don’t. Too bad, because we’re about to do a remake of one of the classics.”

  “You’re crazy. No, I’m crazy. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” His head was pounding, and darkness was closing in around the edges.

  “It’s a Wonderful Life. Ever seen it?”

  He didn’t answer, though of course he’d seen it. Who hadn’t? Sappy, sentimental Christmas crap, but he didn’t want to tell Lizzie that. She loved Christmas.

  “Poor James Stewart thinks nobody would miss him. An angel named Clarence tries to make him see what an idiot he is. That he has made a difference in the world. That he deserves his loving family.”

  “Whatever.” What did any of this have to do with him? “Can we just stick with the part where I stare at your hotness and you comfort me in my dying moments?”

  “No. We’re doing this, Mulligan. I’ll play the role of Clarence. All you have to do is lie there. Hang on. I suppose this would work better if . . .” She snapped her fingers and suddenly he was far, far away, in another place, another time, in his own ten-year-old body.

  Chapter Three

  HE HUDDLED IN the corner of a work shed belonging to Mr. Garrett, the patriarch of his fourth foster family. The Garretts ran one of those way station foster homes where kids waited in limbo for a long-term placement. Mulligan’s mother was in rehab again and his stepfather wouldn’t take him, so he’d ended up here until she got out.

  The
bare skin of his back burned where Garrett had whipped him with a studded leather belt. He rested his forehead on the dirt floor, his knees folded under him. His view contained a few scattered nails, an old lighter, and a dead potato bug.

  Panicked, he asked, “Lizzie? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here.” She sounded far away, which probably explained why he couldn’t see her anymore.

  “I don’t like this. I’d rather be back at Under the Mistletoe.”

  “This won’t take long. Do you remember what happens next?”

  “No.” He didn’t want to remember anything about this time in his life.

  “Shhh. Here we go.”

  Soft footsteps entered the shed, and he felt something cool and wet on his back.

  “Shhh,” a girl whispered when he nearly jumped out of his skin. “Someone might hear.”

  “Franny?” Memory returned in a rush. Franny Lux had also lived at the Garretts’ for a while. She was eight, and she smelled like a thrift store. She sucked her hair and never let go of her stuffed koala. Everyone liked her because she was cute and pure and innocent. It made Mulligan crazy with fear that someone would take advantage of her.

  “What are you putting on my back?”

  “Wet toilet paper. I was going to get a washcloth but they’re all dirty.”

  He struggled away from her touch. “You’re putting wet toilet paper on my back?”

  “At least it won’t give you an infection.” At the defensive note in her voice, he forced himself to relax. Hell, he could always pick the sodden paper out of his cuts after she left.

  “Okay,” he’d grudgingly agreed. “But it’s kind of gross.”

  “You know what’s gross? Getting whipped all the time. Can’t you just be quiet once in a while?”

  “What, like you? No.” Harsh as that answer was, it was the truth. He could never shut up and be quiet like Franny. It wasn’t in his nature.

  “But I didn’t mind if he took my koala. Not too much.”

  “I minded. That’s your koala. You’re supposed to get presents on Christmas, not lose them.”