Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

  Twelve

  SETTLING IN AT the station was both easier and harder than I’d expected.

  Over the next few shifts, I noticed a few important things about the crew.

  One: They insisted on treating me like a lady. Sort of. To the extent that they could remember to.

  In a way, this was a good thing. It wasn’t the blistering hatred that Captain Harris had led me to expect. It was still a problem, though. They wouldn’t curse in front of me, for example. I’d walk into a room just as Tiny was saying, “What the fuck?” and he’d duck his head, guilty, and change it to “frick.”

  “You can say ‘fuck,’ Tiny,” I’d say.

  But then he’d scold me. “Watch your mouth.”

  “Stop treating me like a girl!”

  “You are a girl.”

  I couldn’t shift anyone’s thinking. Curse words were not for females. Same for bawdy conversations, bodily functions, and jokes in general. Case wouldn’t even say the word “fart” in front of me. He’d just glance my way and say “toot.” If I was in the room, they held everything back that wasn’t PG. Over and over, I’d walk into the kitchen and watch them all fall silent.

  “What?” I’d demand.

  “Not for your ears,” Case would say. “Scram.”

  I don’t think they were actually trying to exclude me—not consciously, anyway. It was a type of chivalry, I think. They were trying to be polite, and possibly respectful. But their idea of what it meant to be female was off, and I couldn’t seem to recalibrate it.

  I was, for example, a huge fan of cursing. The power of it, the rule-breaking shock of it. The year my mother left, I cursed incessantly—in front of my dad, in fact. With my dad. And he was too heartbroken and angry and disoriented to stop me. I’d fix him a drink or two, and fix myself one that was “virgin” (though it wasn’t), and we’d sit at the kitchen table eating Pop-Tarts and complaining about everything we could think of. Especially women.

  “Women,” my dad would say scornfully.

  “Preaching to the choir, buddy,” I’d say, only half joking. “Women are the worst.”

  Later, when my dad married Carol, we both had to stop cursing. She didn’t like it. If we wanted to curse, she sent us to the garage.

  So now, being the reason the guys at the house had to use limp substitutes like “frig” and “heck” and “dang” kind of made me feel like my stepmother.

  “Guys,” I kept trying to tell them, “I like cursing. It’s one of my favorite hobbies.”

  But the captain shook his head. “Not appropriate.”

  They also kept making the assumption I was weak, which really struck me as odd. Hadn’t they all watched me do nine one-arm pull-ups on the first day? I’d bet a thousand dollars that Case couldn’t even do one pull-up using both arms and a leg. And yet they opened doors for me. They reached things on high shelves. They’d take heavy equipment from me and say, “I’ve got it.”

  In itself, this wasn’t bad. I took it in the spirit it was meant. They were being kind. They were helping. It was more than I’d dared to hope for on my drive up from Texas, when I’d feared they were just going to glare at me all the time.

  But there was a downside to it: the assumption that I couldn’t do those things myself. The guys weren’t holding doors for each other, or helping each other carry equipment. If they had to carry the hundred-pound roof saw for me, I was the last person they were going to hand it to when it was time to use it.

  It’s easy to fixate on the size difference between men and women, but there are actually plenty of ways that being smaller can benefit you in a fire. You’re lighter. You’re lower to the ground and more nimble. You can squeeze through spots no big guy can navigate.

  Remember that valor award I got in Austin for rescuing a school bus full of kids? That bus had slid off an icy road into a ravine and crumpled like an accordion. I’d been the only one small enough to wedge myself in. I was the one who pried all those kids out because I was the only one who could fit.

  We all have our different upsides.

  But that’s not how the guys saw it.

  I didn’t want to reject the kindness when one of the guys tried to carry the hose for me—but I did want to reject the notion that I couldn’t do it myself. I finally settled on a phrase for every time one of the guys started to do something for me: “I’ve got it,” I started saying. “Keeps me strong.”

  Half the time, they’d do it anyway.

  It was kindly meant. And limiting. Both.

  The other thing the guys kept insisting was that women had no sense of humor. Where did this idea come from? Over and over in those early weeks, I’d crack jokes that nobody laughed at. Jokes I knew would’ve been funny in Austin.

  I guess it makes sense, in a way. Part of thinking something is funny is expecting it to be funny. So if you’ve already decided that women aren’t funny, then it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  Firefighters are, on average, very funny people. All the sorrow you absorb in that job makes you funnier. You have to balance out the pain somehow, and joking around is one of the best things about the job. There’s so much death in that world, but laughter is life.

  You need it.

  It left me thinking a lot about how much what you think you’re going to think matters. If you expect something to be funny, it will seem funnier. And if it seems funnier, it is funnier—by definition.

  The only person who laughed at my jokes was the rookie. Of course, he laughed at everything. He was just that kind of guy. Another likable quality that I resented like hell.

  So that was my life at the new station. No cursing. No comedy.

  And then there was basketball.

  In the afternoons, after the dishes were done, and the trucks had been washed, and all the chores were complete, the guys liked to play basketball out back. Shirts versus skins. And they wouldn’t let me play.

  “You’ll get hurt,” the captain said.

  “You’ll get destroyed,” Tiny said.

  I suspected they all assumed I’d be bad at it. Even though I’d told them that my dad was a high school basketball coach and I’d spent my weekends shooting hoops with him since infancy. Even though I stood on the sidelines and explained—loudly—that I’d played varsity basketball in high school for four years and been the captain of the team.

  “I am actually really good,” I kept saying.

  But I was only five foot five. And a “lady.”

  I finally decided to throw some money at the problem.

  One afternoon, just as a game was starting up, I planted myself in front of the hoop, held up a fan of cash, and challenged them to a shooting competition.

  The guys all laughed. That was funny, I guess.

  I lifted the money higher and waved it at them. “I can crush all of you, if you like, or we can save time: You pick your best guy and I’ll just crush him.”

  More laughter.

  At six foot five—a full foot taller than me—Tiny was a shoo-in. They didn’t even have to nominate him.

  He just stepped toward me, bowed a little as he gestured toward the hoop, and said, “Ladies first.”

  I shook my head. “Balls before beauty.”

  Tiny gave me a little smile and walked to the free-throw line, which was really just a crack in the pavement.

  He didn’t even have to try. He made the first ten shots without moving anything but his hand at the wrist, and they swished through the net in perfect arches. The guys counted out loud for him as he went. “Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.”

  Finally, at his fifteenth shot, he pushed just the tiniest bit too hard with his pinkie finger and the ball’s trajectory shifted off to the left. I knew the minute it left his hand that he was going to miss. And he did. The ball hit the rim and bounced off to the side.

  The guys all high-fived him, like he was impressive.

  Tiny lifted his eyebrows at me, like, Beat that, little girl.

  Now it was my turn.
I took my place at the free-throw crack, but before I lifted the ball, I said, “When I beat Tiny, you guys have to let me play.”

  “Safe bet,” Six-Pack said.

  “No one beats Tiny,” Case said.

  “What if you don’t beat him?” Six-Pack asked.

  I shrugged. “I’ll take bathroom duty for a month.”

  The guys all high-fived like this was their lucky day. All except the rookie, who had his arms crossed and was studying me like he suspected they were all getting played.

  “Deal?” I confirmed.

  “Deal.”

  Of course, I knew I was going to beat Tiny. I’d been raised by a lonely, divorced basketball-coach father who had no idea how to talk about his feelings. Shooting hoops in the driveway was our only means of communication. For a while there, my ability to shoot hoops in our driveway was my dad’s only reason to live. Possibly mine, too.

  I was fucking fluent in basketball.

  I dribbled for a second, which made the guys laugh.

  Then I lifted the ball on my middle finger and made it spin, Globetrotter style, and watched them stop laughing.

  Then I started shooting, and I just didn’t stop. Perfect arc after perfect arc. Five. Ten. Fifteen.

  After a while, I shifted to using the backboard, aiming it smack in the middle of the faded square every time, and hitting the spot in a satisfying ka-swish, ka-swish, ka-swish. Twenty. Twenty-five. Then I busted out some tricks. I stood on one leg and shot. I shot with my left hand. I kneed the ball in. I head-butted it. I was at thirty-seven with no misses—not even near-misses—when the tones went off in the station for a call.

  I turned around and threw my last shot backwards, and without even waiting to see if it made it, I walked back toward the station.

  The rookie saw me coming and held the door open. As I closed the gap, he shook his head in admiration. “You’re my hero.”

  “Did it go in?” I whispered as I passed.

  “Nothing but net,” he said.

  I high-fived him without even breaking stride, and I never looked back.

  * * *

  DESTASIO SHOULD HAVE ridden with us to the call, but his back was giving him trouble, so the rookie came instead.

  Firefighters don’t talk about “pain.” They don’t admit that things “hurt.” The most you’ll ever hear them admit to is “discomfort.” DeStasio had fallen during a roof collapse and been injured so badly that for a few days it was unclear if he would walk again. But he did walk again—part of his legend. Everybody knew he was in constant pain, but all anybody ever said was that his back was “giving him trouble.”

  Basically, DeStasio suffered in silence every day, and the crew admired the hell out of him for it.

  And on bad days, he got a pass and snoozed in the Barcalounger by the big-screen TV.

  The fire call turned out to be for an “eight-year-old female, not breathing”—which sent us all into extra-high gear.

  We were loaded up in forty seconds.

  The rookie and I rode in the back as we ran full lights-and-sirens—pushing through intersections, veering around parked cars—to make it to the scene in under eight minutes.

  Fast, but probably not fast enough.

  Brain damage sets in after one minute without oxygen, and it’s irreversible at five. But “not breathing” could mean more things than you’d think, and with kids especially, you never give up hope until you have to.

  Kids always break your heart.

  There’s nothing anyone in the service wouldn’t do for a kid.

  One of the first runs I’d ever made in Austin had been for a drowned girl about this same age, and I’d never forgotten her. We’d done CPR on her for thirty minutes—all the way from the scene to the hospital—without even thinking of giving up.

  We never got her back, though.

  With kids, it doesn’t matter. You try beyond hope, no matter what.

  We entered the neighborhood and found the street. School was out for the day by now, and kids just home from school stopped on their front walks to watch us go by.

  At the location, a tiny grandmother stood in her driveway. She waved her arms like semaphores. I knew even from the street that her eyes would have that look eyes always get when the souls behind them are recoiling into shock.

  “This way,” she said, leading us into the house.

  We followed, steeped in that sensation of focused attention that accompanies every call. You never habituate to it. You never tire of it. No matter how many calls you go out on. No matter how many unspeakable, hilarious, tragic, ridiculous, heartbreaking, disgusting things you see. That moment of anticipation, as everything in the world disappears except for the one life-or-death task in front of you, is always exquisitely the same.

  There’s not a name for that feeling. But it’s really something.

  “Over here,” the old lady said, turning the corner into a living room. The TV was on too loud. In a recliner up ahead, an old man was fast asleep with a cup of coffee beside him.

  I frowned. “Him?” He was geriatric, not pediatric.

  She didn’t break stride, urging us past the chair. “No.”

  Behind him, on the floor near the kitchen, lay a pile of bath mats, and on top of the pile, unconscious and unresponsive, was a Chihuahua.

  “Here,” the old lady said, the expression on her face urgent.

  But it didn’t compute for me. I was looking for an eight-year-old child. “Where?”

  “Here,” she repeated, gesturing at the dog.

  The four of us looked down: brown-and-white Chihuahua. Dead as a doornail.

  We looked back at the old lady.

  She gestured at the dog. “My baby,” she said, and her voice broke into a genuine sob.

  Eight-year-old female.

  Six-Pack and Case looked at each other, then turned right around to walk back out the front door without a word. Only the rookie and I stayed.

  My heart, which had clenched in preparation for a child, relaxed. I felt a wash of relief. Compared to the drowned girl, whose wet eyelashes I still saw sometimes when I closed my eyes, a dead Chihuahua seemed almost delightful.

  I took a step back, then let out a long breath that I expected to be a sigh—but it came out instead as a laugh.

  The old lady’s eyes questioned mine, like, You think my dead dog is funny?

  And I tried to make mine say back, Sorry! Not funny. Just—funnier than a dead child.

  That’s when the rookie made attempts at comfort, saying things like, “It was just her time. She’s in a better place now.”

  But the old lady’s voice flooded with grief. “No,” she said. “Please.”

  The job hardens you, there’s no question about it. That’s the only way to survive. You take in too much. One horror after another soaks through your skin, swirls in your lungs, echoes in your ears. You can’t think too hard about what it means, or how anybody feels, least of all you. You can’t help them if you become them—and the only reason you’re there is to help.

  Of course, my laughing hadn’t exactly helped.

  The job hardens you, but it shouldn’t make you cruel. Her baby.

  So I decided, for my own sake as much as hers, to pretend to try to save her dog.

  Even though that’s not what 911 is for.

  It was hopeless, of course.

  I took another look at the dog. Still dead.

  I knelt down anyway. I opened the medical kit and pulled out the oxygen tank and a flexible pediatric mask, curling it into a cone shape around the pup’s snout. The rookie followed my lead, dropping to his knees and starting chest compressions with his fingertips.

  And that’s how we—paid, professional firefighters for the esteemed city of Lillian, Massachusetts—wound up doing CPR on a Chihuahua.

  I gave the rookie a look, like, You are never telling anybody about this.

  And he gave me a look back, like, Oh, I am telling everybody about this.

  The
rookie pumped the chest, and I administered the oxygen, and the old lady wiped shaky tears from her cheeks with knobby fingers, watching us like nothing else would ever matter in the world.

  I’ll give it three minutes, I thought.

  Then I gave it seven.

  Finally, I sat back and flipped off the oxygen.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, meeting the old lady’s eyes. And I was.

  The rookie and I bowed our heads for a moment of pseudo-respectful silence, and that’s when—I swear to God—that crazy Chihuahua gave a snort as loud as a backfiring car, flipped up onto its pointy little paws, and blinked at us.

  I gasped and dropped the mask.

  The rookie jumped back. “Holy shit!”

  “I don’t like that language,” the old lady said, like a reflex.

  Then we all stared as the dog bent low and clenched every single abdominal muscle as tight as stone until a pile of dog-food-smelling vomit flopped out of her mouth with a splat. Next, she shifted position, and a metal thimble came flying out of her face like it had been launched by a slingshot.

  It hit the window with a clank and rolled to a stop next to the still-sleeping old man.

  We looked back and forth between the dog and the thimble, which seemed to have a circumference wider than the dog’s own throat.

  Then the dog looked at us for a second, like she couldn’t imagine what we were doing there, before peeing on the floor and then trotting off through the doggie door to get on with her day.

  Next thing I knew, the old lady—surprisingly strong—had clamped us into a group hug, and my face was in the crook of the rookie’s neck, my cheek registering some sandpapery stubble and my brain registering panic over being so close to him. The old lady held us there a minute, snuffling tears of relief and saying, “Thank you, thank you,” before grabbing both our hands and leading us to a broom closet in the kitchen.

  Inside, down on the floor, was a box full of fat, squirmy puppies.

  “Take some,” she said, urging us down toward them.

  She wanted to give us puppies? “No thank you, ma’am,” I said. “We can’t accept—”

  I was going to say “gifts,” but as I watched the rookie bend right down and pick up and cradle one of those little squirmers in his arms, I finished with “puppies.”