Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

  When Diana and Josie had crochet club, I made myself go sit near them.

  They wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened at the fire. They wanted to figure out why a seasoned guy like DeStasio would have put us all in danger like that—and why he would lie about it afterward. They pieced clues together and analyzed details and floated theories. I participated, but in a strange, detached way—talking, and answering questions, and providing clues, but only halfheartedly, as if I were in shock. It all mattered, I supposed, but nothing really mattered until I knew Owen was okay.

  Still, we now had a pretty good theory on who my stalker had been. I just didn’t exactly have the energy to care.

  It was all I could do to stay away from the hospital.

  * * *

  A WEEK WENT by.

  I stayed home. I updated my charts on Owen’s health. I waited for texts. I slept late and stayed up late, worrying too hard to fall asleep.

  Then, on Friday, my mom had a doctor’s appointment. A checkup.

  And she insisted she needed me to go with her.

  “I can’t,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You can,” she said. “And you will.”

  I hadn’t showered in a week. “I’m useless.”

  “Look,” she said, “if you don’t drive me, I’m not going.”

  Well played.

  I drove her. It was time for Diana to get a scan to see how she was doing, and Diana resented it like hell. “There’s no point,” she said in the waiting room.

  “We have to know your status,” I said. “We need to know what’s going on.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Why do we need to know that?”

  Why did anybody need to know anything? “Because we do.”

  “This is a waste of a whole morning,” she said.

  “It’s going to give us critical information about what’s going on with you.”

  “Critical, how? Is there even a possibility that we’ll do anything differently?”

  There was a possibility, I figured. It was possible that hearing how much the tumor had grown would inspire her to consent to experimental treatments. A little fear could be very motivational. And then it would also be possible that one of those treatments might buy her some time.

  I couldn’t help but root for that, now, after spending all these months with her. Was it wrong to want a little more time, even if there were downsides? Maybe it was selfish. She had chosen quality of life over quantity with no hesitation. In theory, it made sense. In practice, I just wanted her to hang on as long as she could.

  “They bought all those big fancy machines,” she said, “and now they have to find a way to pay for them.”

  “Are you really arguing against CT scans? They’re a miracle of modern technology. They save lives all the time.”

  “Not mine,” she said.

  All in all, adding up drive time to the little outpatient center, waiting room time, and time for the scan, it took about two hours before the radiologist called us in to give us some information.

  My mother had all her clothes back on by then, and she was so eager to get home that she almost left without waiting for the report.

  When it came, the report was not at all what we’d expected.

  The doc, who was about my mother’s age, shook her head in wonder as she showed us the films. “You’re not going to believe this,” the doctor said. “I don’t believe it myself.” She brought up two side-by-side scan images on a screen and gestured between them. “There has been no growth at all since your last scan,” she said.

  Diana and I blinked at the screen.

  “When was your last scan?” I finally asked my mom.

  “Just before I called you in Austin,” Diana said.

  “There’s been no growth in all that time?” I asked.

  “Not that we can measure.”

  I looked at the doctor. “I don’t understand. A ‘very malignant’ tumor just stopped growing?”

  “Sometimes this happens, but it’s highly uncommon,” the doc said.

  “Sometimes what happens?” I asked.

  “An aggressive tumor like this will just sort of take a break.”

  “For how long?” I asked.

  She shook her head, like there was no way of knowing. “It’s so rare, we don’t have much data. Only anecdotal accounts.”

  I looked over at Diana and her blue floral eye patch. If you didn’t know her, you’d think she was just impassively listening, taking in the information. But I could tell from something about the crinkles at the edge of her one good eye that she was pleased.

  “You can’t take credit for this,” I said on the drive back. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I can take credit for it, and I will.”

  “Doesn’t that seem a little cocky?” I asked. “To think that you can just personally tell a malignant tumor what to do?”

  She touched her fingers to the car window. “I think it’s the opposite of cocky. I am humbled by the wisdom of the body to take care of itself.”

  “We don’t even know what caused the pause,” I said.

  “That’s right, we don’t,” she said. “So that leaves me free to choose an explanation.”

  “Maybe you’re just very, very lucky.”

  “I am definitely very, very lucky.”

  The doctor had given Diana a new prescription for some super-strong painkillers, not believing that she hadn’t even dipped into the first bottle. While we drove, she folded the paper into an origami bird.

  When I noticed what she was doing, I said, “You might need that, you know.”

  “Nah,” she said. “This stuff’ll kill ya.”

  “So will a brain tumor.”

  She gave me a look. “I read up on these pills. Nasty stuff. You get hooked, even if you follow all the rules. Then you get angry. You start lying. Your whole personality changes.”

  “I know,” I said, nodding. We’d had to study it all for paramedic certification. She wasn’t wrong. “Even people who know better get addicted.”

  She nodded, like wasn’t it a shame, but I suddenly found myself sitting very still—looking straight ahead at the answer to a question I didn’t even know I was asking. Even people who knew better got addicted.

  Maybe DeStasio was addicted to painkillers.

  It wasn’t all that uncommon with firefighters, given all their on-the-job injuries. DeStasio’s back pain was legendary—and so was his ability to endure it. Add to that the loss of his son, his problem drinking, his wife leaving—and the pieces seemed to fit together. Possibly.

  I felt a strange twinge of worry. Not that DeStasio deserved it.

  “It just hit me, right now, that DeStasio might be addicted to painkillers,” I said then, out loud.

  My mom looked over. “Why?”

  I walked her through my thinking.

  “That’s a pretty good list,” she said.

  “Maybe I should go check on him this afternoon,” I said.

  “You want to go check on the guy who stalked you, lied about you, and ended your career?” she said.

  “I’d been planning to go over there anyway,” I said, nodding at the turn of events. “But the plan was to yell at him.”

  “Maybe you could bring him some soup instead.”

  Safe to say, I had a lot of mixed emotions toward DeStasio at that moment. But I knew him too well to just decide he was evil and leave it at that. It was unequivocally not okay that he was taking it all out on me, but I could know that and also know that he was in pain. Both could be true at the same time.

  I wasn’t sure if he deserved my compassion, but I did know I wanted to be the kind of person who would offer it. It’s not the easy moments that define who we are. It’s the hard ones.

  DeStasio was clearly at the end of his rope. The addiction, the losses. There was nothing left of his life but smoldering rubble. I tried to imagine being him—being in that situation—and then having somebody like me show
up at the department to break apart the last bricks in the foundation.

  In his shoes, I might have made some bad choices, too.

  Though probably not that bad.

  “I think,” I said carefully, “that I’ve got a workable plan. First I’ll go over and punch him in the jaw. Then I’ll force him to stand face-to-face with his cruel, stupid behavior and hold him accountable. Then I’ll give him some homemade soup. Just to cover all the bases.”

  “You’re forgetting something,” Diana said.

  I glanced over and shook my head.

  “What are you going to do after you yell at him—before you give him the soup?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I think you do know,” Diana said, setting her little bird on the dashboard. Then she reached over, put a hand on mine, and said, “You’re going to forgive him.”

  I shook my head. “I’m still bad at forgiveness,” I said.

  “Well, then,” she said. “This is a great chance to practice.”

  Twenty-eight

  DESTASIO DID NOT answer his door.

  I stood on his porch with a massive thermos of beef-and-vegetable soup on my hip, and I knocked and knocked.

  Something didn’t feel right. His sedan was parked carefully in the driveway.

  I set the soup down on the steps and went to the window to peer in.

  The inside was dark. The place was a mess—papers everywhere, trash, several meals’ worth of old plates of food on the dining table. Suspicions about DeStasio’s quality of life confirmed: He was not doing well.

  That’s when I spotted him at the far end of the living room, laying back in a recliner.

  He wasn’t just ignoring me. He was unconscious. The skin around his lips was blue.

  When you’ve seen it enough times, you just know.

  He’d OD’d.

  I ran to grab the trauma kit in my car, and then, before I broke out the window, I went ahead and tried the front door. It was unlocked. Something a firefighter would do—make it easy for the medics when they discovered the body.

  I got to him in seconds, and he was bluer up close than he had seemed from the window. There was a note on the table next to him with two words on it: I’m sorry.

  I started an IV push of Narcan, which is an antidote to opiates. It’s amazing stuff, really. Seconds after you give it, the patient wakes up—a little groggy, but completely fine. If you give it in time.

  That’s what happened with DeStasio.

  He opened his eyes. Blinked a second. Took a few deep breaths.

  It was that easy.

  Then he looked at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving your life,” I said. “Apparently.”

  I picked up his note and showed it to him. If I’d had my mother’s origami skills, I might have made it into a bird.

  “That’s private,” DeStasio said.

  Underneath the note was a sealed envelope addressed to Captain Jerry Murphy. I stared at it for a second as I took note of his handwriting: The T in “Captain” looked like an X.

  It was one thing to have guessed it, but quite another to know for sure. I felt a spark of anger burn through me. It had been him. All along.

  I held it up. “Is this private, too?”

  He studied my face. He could tell I knew. “Get out of my house,” DeStasio said.

  “I just saved you. Do you have any idea how lucky you are that I showed up when I did? Another hour and there’d have been no bringing you back.”

  “I didn’t want to be saved.”

  “Too fucking bad.”

  DeStasio looked over at the wall and kept his eyes there.

  “You don’t want to be saved? You think you can just take a pass on all your consequences? You almost killed us all. The rookie’s still in the ICU—in a coma.”

  “I’ve seen the texts.”

  “And then you lied about it. You lied about me, and everybody believed you. The guys believed you. The rookie’s parents believed you, and now I can’t even get into the hospital to see how he’s doing. The captain believed you, and now I’m suspended, and my career’s probably over, and they’ve told me to get a lawyer. But we both know the truth, don’t we?”

  “Get out of my house, or I’m calling the cops. You want an arrest on your record, too?”

  “Call the cops! I’ve got nothing to lose! What’ll you tell them? ‘A mean lady just saved my useless life’?”

  DeStasio closed his eyes.

  I waved the envelope for the captain at him. “Is this your confession?”

  “You wish.”

  “But that’s not all. It wasn’t just one bad day. You’ve been stalking me for weeks. Messing with my locker. Slashing my tires.” I pointed at the T on the envelope. “This is terrible stalking. Your handwriting’s totally obvious. I could have done a better job of stalking me than you did. This is Stalking 101! Cut the letters out of newspaper headlines!” I said it like, Duh.

  DeStasio wouldn’t look at me.

  I leaned closer. “You stood outside my dying mother’s house and threw a brick through her window.”

  “I didn’t know she was dying.”

  “What is wrong with you, man?” I shook my head. “Firefighters are supposed to be the good guys.”

  DeStasio was quiet for so long, I was starting to think he was about to share something honest about what he’d been going through the past years. Instead, he went with anger and blame. “The department is the only thing I have,” he said. “And you took it from me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to take it from you,” I said.

  “But you did.”

  So he wanted to make it all my fault. “Why couldn’t we share it?”

  “Just by coming here, you changed things. The station I loved disappeared.”

  I gave him a look. “That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

  “You walked in, all ladylike—”

  Now I was offended. “I am hardly ladylike.”

  “And you changed everything.”

  “Um,” I said, counting off on my fingers, “the building was still there, the people were still there. Even the porn was still there.”

  He pointed at me. “But it was hidden. We never had to hide the porn before.”

  “That’s what drove you to the dark side, man? Because you had to hide your porn?”

  “Not just that!” he said. “I’ve been here thirty-eight years. I’ve been at this station—day in and day out—longer than you’ve been alive.”

  “So you’ve said,” I said. “Many times.”

  “I was proud to go there. I was proud to be part of that brotherhood.”

  I sighed. “Why can’t the brotherhood have a sister?”

  “Because it can’t.”

  “Think you might need to check some of that sexism, buddy.”

  “It’s not the same with a woman around,” he insisted.

  I sighed again.

  As weird as it sounds, I actually did know what he meant.

  A station that had women working at it could not possibly be a guy-fest in that old-school way. It did have to be something different. It could still be great—I’d seen that in Austin. Better, even. Stronger, as everybody contributed their own personal and gender-based gifts. But he wasn’t wrong. It would be different. “I hear you,” I said. “I probably slightly altered the vibe of the station.”

  My empathy just pissed him off. “Damn right, you altered it! And I want it back the way it was!”

  Now he sounded like a child. My empathy disappeared. “There are lots of things I want that I can’t have,” I said, making my voice infuriatingly calm. “But I don’t go around terrorizing people and lying.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Give yourself time.”

  “Maybe. Maybe when I’m your age I’ll be a bitter old liar. But I hope not. I’m going to fight like hell not to let that happen.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Maybe you need to
find something new to add to your life, instead of just clutching so hard to the past that you strangle it.”

  “I didn’t strangle the past,” he said, not looking my way. “I strangled you.”

  “You strangled yourself,” I said. “You let your grief make you bitter. You let your suffering make you cruel. Want to know what that makes you? A villain. That’s every comic book villain ever! They suffer, and then they inflict suffering on others. Good guys do the opposite. Good guys suffer, too—but they respond by helping. I know you started out a good guy. You wouldn’t have joined up otherwise. But you gave it all up the minute you broke into my locker with that Sharpie.”

  DeStasio wouldn’t look at me. He kept his eyes pointed at the window.

  The sight of him like that, so defiant, so unwilling to acknowledge his own role, made me want to push him into a state of empathy. It felt vital not to waste the moment. Before I even realized what I was doing, I said, “That wasn’t the first time somebody wrote that word in a locker of mine, you know. Some girls at my high school beat you to it by like ten years. You’re like a sad knockoff of a mean girl.”

  DeStasio didn’t respond.

  “Are you wondering why kids at school would be that vicious toward another kid?” I went on. “Or maybe that doesn’t surprise you. Maybe when you look back on your life, all you see is cruelty. But I’ll tell you something. It still shocks the hell out of me. I see that sixteen-year-old I used to be, and she’s so young. So tragically unprotected.”

  I let my gaze drift away from DeStasio. I really could see her.

  “That’s what I see when I look back. It’s her sixteenth birthday, a Saturday, and her mother is leaving town that day—that same day—to move across the country. Her mother is leaving her dad for someone else, and that’s the day she picks to leave, because of ‘scheduling,’ she says. Hell of a birthday present.

  “Can you imagine how angry this girl is? How gutted? When her mother tried to bake her a cake and give her presents the night before, apologizing again and again that ‘the timing isn’t great, honey,’ she wouldn’t touch either. She will never open those gifts, or taste that cake. They will sit on the kitchen table for at least a week, maybe longer, before the girl shoves every item on that tabletop into the kitchen trash.