A Firefighter in Her Stocking

by Janice Lynn

  But she believed wrong.

  He had loved Nina. In some ways, he still loved her and always would. But he wasn’t in love with her. When he’d stopped and the guilt over their argument, over the strain on his relationship with Charles, had taken over, he wasn’t sure. Years ago. Perhaps even before she’d died, although he’d not realized it at the time because he’d been so hurt, so caught up in the idea of being in love with Nina that he’d not let himself see the truth.

  Until Sarah had forced him to see the truth.

  In such a short time she’d come into his life and turned his whole world upside down.

  Made everything brighter, clearer, better.

  “Man, watch what you are doing,” Roger warned, when Jude reached for a doorway without checking it first with the thermal imaging camera. “Don’t open that until we know what’s behind it.”

  Yeah, he knew that.

  He also knew he needed to get his brain in gear until they got out of this death trap. Being distracted wasn’t doing Roger or him any favors.

  He checked the door for heat, determined that the hallway was passable so they could get to the known trapped elderly couple and check for any additional trapped victims. Getting low, he opened the door and they made their way into the smoke-filled hallway.

  Knowing which apartment the elderly couple had called in to the emergency communication center from, Jude and Roger made their way there as quickly as possible. Their door was unlocked, but the woman had wisely stuffed towels around the floor, which helped keep the smoke out of their apartment, but made opening the door more difficult.

  Time was of the essence.

  Jude used his shoulder, and shoved hard against the door. It gave and he went flying into the room. Quickly, they located the elderly couple hunched in a bathtub and cleared a path to them.

  The man had fallen and injured his leg while trying to get them out. Unwilling to leave him, his wife had managed to drag him back into the apartment on a sheet, pulled him into the bathroom, and somehow gotten him into the tub. She’d pushed towels up around the doorway, trying to keep the smoke out, and they’d huddled together, thinking they were probably going to burn alive.

  A hellish feeling for sure.

  Thank God, they’d found them.

  Roger called for back-up and to check the accessibility of the stairwell they’d come up. It was still open and help to get the Johnsons out of the building was on its way.

  Unfortunately, Clara Johnson said there were more people trapped on their floor.

  “Betty Kingston lives two doors down. I called her earlier, when I got Ed back to the bathroom,” the woman fretted, looking as if she might drop from stress and exhaustion any moment. “She said part of her ceiling had collapsed in front of her door. I told her we were in the tub and that’s where she was going, too. To her tub.”

  Two doors down.

  “There’s another couple who live in the corner apartment. Stanley and Estelle Miller,” Mrs. Johnson continued. “Betty said they have to be trapped, too, because the part of her ceiling that caved in knocked part of the wall down with it and would have blocked them in, too, if they weren’t already out.” The woman gave Jude a horrified look. “What if they aren’t out?”

  Jude glanced at Roger.

  “On it,” his best friend said, calling down to Command to see if a Betty Kingston or the Miller couple had been located.

  As they’d feared, neither had.

  Jude grabbed Mr. Johnson, having the man hold on around his neck. Roger took hold of Mrs. Johnson.

  “This is quite embarrassing, you know,” Mr. Johnson mumbled.

  “I bet you’ve experienced worse.” Despite the severity of the situation, Jude grinned as they made their way back into the hallway. Smoke billowed thickly, so he got low, having Mr. Johnson hold onto his back as he hunkered down and moved them as quickly as possibly down the hallway and toward the emergency stairwell.

  “Yeah, when that blasted woman of mine dragged me into the bathroom and refused to leave me, despite me begging her to go save herself.”

  “Helluva woman you got there.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know it.”

  The man coughed so fiercely Jude feared he was going to have to stop moving and beat on the man’s back.

  “Sixty-one years and I’m grateful for every day of her stubbornness driving me crazy.”

  “I understand.”

  “You got a stubborn woman, too?”

  “Oh, yeah. Stubborn and smart. Sarah’s a doctor. Works in the emergency room at Manhattan Mercy so you may meet her to get that leg checked before the night is up.”

  Before they got out of the hallway, the heat had intensified, as had the smoke.

  Finally, they made their way to the stairwell and carried the couple down the flights until they met up with other crew.

  Other crew who wanted to go the rest of the way up and get out the other missing people.

  “We already know the layout of the apartments and where the one woman is hiding. Take the Johnsons down, get them to safety. We’ll get the others.”

  At least the ones on that floor. Others from their crew and from several stations around that section of Manhattan were working other floors in the building, fighting the fire, trying to keep it contained and from spreading to the cracker box apartment buildings that were all around. This fire could easily get out of control and take out the entire block. Or worse.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Johnson said as he transferred to the other firefighter. “You want me to put in a good word for you if I run across your Sarah?”

  “Yeah, if you run across Dr. Sarah Grayson, you do that. Tell her I’m sorry and that I’m crazy about her, while you’re at it,” Jude called, as he took back off up the stairwell, Roger close on his heels.

  Jude and Roger made their way back to the floor, back down the smoke-filled hallway, and had to bust into Betty Kingston’s apartment using their axes.

  Fortunately, they rescued the terrified frail little woman from right where Clara Johnson had said they’d find her. Her tub. She’d inhaled a lot of smoke and was slightly asphyxiated, but otherwise appeared okay.

  Except that she was too weak to make her way out of the apartment. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except Ms. Kingston wasn’t the only victim still on the floor.

  “The Millers,” the woman said, amidst a hacking coughing spell.

  They needed to get her out, but get to the other couple, too. The other couple they weren’t even for sure were there, but who might be trapped in the apartment next to Ms. Kingston’s. The woman certainly was convinced they were in the apartment.

  “Let’s get her to the stairwell,” Roger said. “We’ll hand her over to back-up, then go back for the Millers.”

  As they made their way out into the floor hallway, they heard a crash from one of the apartments a few doors down from where they were. Not the apartment where the couple might be but close.

  Just then the fire truck’s horn blare could be heard above the fire. Once. Twice. Again.

  Roger turned back, his gaze meeting Jude’s. “Not this time, man. We’ve got to get out of here, and you know it. I’ve a bad feeling. This building is about to go.”

  Jude cursed.

  “You’re right,” he said, knowing there was no time to waste. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Roger’s look of relief that Jude wasn’t insisting they clear the other apartment was almost palpable.

  Roger loaded up the woman and they made their way to the stairwell.

  They were leaving a couple to die. A couple they were in fairly close proximity to.

  Someone’s family.

  Someone’s father, mother, sister, brother, cousin.

  Cousin. Jude needed to apolog
ize to his cousin.

  To tell Charles he was sorry he’d shut him out of his life despite multiple efforts on Charles’s part to heal whatever rift that had come between them.

  Despite Nina’s efforts to heal the rift.

  Of course, Charles had never understood Jude’s distancing himself. How could he have when he’d never known how Jude had felt about Nina?

  Yeah, he needed to apologize to his cousin.

  And to Sarah.

  He needed to tell Sarah how he felt about her.

  Sarah. Beautiful, sweet Sarah.

  She might think their conversation was over, but he knew better, had known better when he’d left her apartment. If it took him the rest of his life, he’d make tonight up to her, would prove to her that he was a better man than the one he’d shown her at Charles and Grace’s party.

  He was a better man.

  He was a man who did the right thing.

  The right thing wasn’t leaving a trapped elderly couple to burn alive.

  Jude stopped, waited to make sure his partner made it to the stairwell, then saluted his friend, who had realized Jude wasn’t immediately behind him and was shaking his head and mouthing all kinds of foul words.

  Jude turned back to get the Millers.

  A risky, foolish move. You didn’t go off on your own in a burning building. You stayed with your partner for the safety of both of you.

  His partner would do the right thing, too, would get Betty Kingston down those stairs and to safety. Roger would be all right. If all went as planned, Jude would have the Millers busted free and would be down those stairs with them before Roger had time to attempt coming back for him.

  If Jude died in the process of making an exit for the Millers, then so be it.

  There were worse things than laying your life down for others.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “EARLIER I MEANT to tell you how fabulous you looked, but now you look as tired as I feel after being here all day. You okay?”

  Sarah glanced at Shelley. Fabulous wasn’t how she’d have described herself at any point that evening. Well, prior to Jude and her arriving at the engagement party Sarah had felt a bit like a belle on her way to a ball. As if she’d been the star of the evening, shining for Jude.

  Ha. If so, that star had burned out and now there was a painful gaping black hole where hope had once shone.

  “Even before I got here, it had been a long night,” she admitted, squirting hand sanitizer on her hands and rubbing them together as she readied to go to the next patient. “But I’m fine.”

  “It’s just getting started. Sorry you got called away from Charles and Grace’s party. Especially with as glam as you looked when you got here.”

  “I was in scrubs when I got here,” she reminded her.

  “Yeah, scrubs and make-up and a fancy hairdo. You looked like a movie star doctor.”

  “That’s funny.” But neither Sarah nor Shelley were laughing. Or dallying to talk as they quickly moved from one patient to the next.

  “Hot date?”

  Her date had been hot. He’d also been a jerk. And admitted he was in love with another woman. No biggie.

  “I went out with my neighbor, but it wasn’t a big deal. We’re not dating.”

  Not anymore.

  But for the past few weeks she’d felt...alive. Wonderfully, femininely alive.

  The night before she’d felt amazingly alive in Jude’s arms. Then, poof, he’d transformed into someone totally inconsistent with who she’d believed him to be.

  Because he’d gotten what he’d wanted and was ready to move on?

  He was usually a one-night-stand man, but maybe he’d given her a few weeks because she’d been a virgin?

  He probably had treated her more delicately because of her inexperience, but she believed his reasons for his bad behavior. He’d been in love with Nina and had shut off a part of himself when she’d died, had shut himself off from his family.

  On autopilot, Sarah treated another patient, deeming the young man’s severe abdominal pain to be a renal stone.

  Sending over a prescription to manage his pain until he could be seen by Nephrology in clinic, Sarah typed in discharge orders and stepped out of the bay.

  The emergency department was crazily busy. People, both patients and hospital personnel, were everywhere. In addition to the usual influx of patients, an apartment building filled mainly with low-income elderly had caught fire. Two people were confirmed dead. Dozens more had been rescued and brought in for smoke inhalation and minor burns. The hospital was still on standby as more were trapped inside the building.

  Last she’d heard the fire was running rampant and out of control.

  Was Jude there?

  Of course he was.

  That had to be the emergency call he’d gotten right before he’d left her apartment.

  He was there. Probably inside that burning building, risking everything for strangers.

  Because that’s what he did.

  Risked everything for strangers.

  That’s why he had the steady flow of different women.

  Because he wouldn’t let anyone get close.

  Why he had invested more time with her than he generally gave, she wasn’t sure. No doubt he regretted having done so, regretted having admitted the truth.

  Not that he had to worry that she’d tell Charles. Jude’s secret was safe with her. It wasn’t her place to try to heal the rift between the two cousins, or to try to get Jude the counseling he so obviously needed that he couldn’t let go of a dead woman’s memory.

  He’d put Sarah in her place tonight.

  Her place wasn’t to interfere in his life in any shape, form, or fashion.

  He didn’t let anyone interfere in his life, not friends or family or women. He kept them all at a distance and preferred it that way.

  “You okay?”

  Sarah blinked at her nurse. “Fine.”

  “You zoned out on me for a few seconds. You’ve been running since you got here. You need a short break or a drink or something?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Sorry. Got lost in my thoughts, but I’m fine. Who’s next?”

  Every bay was full of smoke inhalation victims. Some with burns, some not. Every respiratory therapist in the hospital was administering oxygen and nebulizer treatments and whatever else was needed to keep airways open. Fortunately, so far only a few had had to be intubated, but from the calls they were getting from EMS, more victims were on their way.

  Other hospital personnel were talking to family members and less critical patients who they’d stuck in the waiting area, offering drinks, blankets, and just a comforting pat on the hand in some cases.

  All the acutely critical had been seen to and were being appropriately cared for. Now Sarah and the other providers would start chipping away at the overflow of minor injuries and other anomalies that had sent folks into the emergency room on a Saturday night.

  Or so she’d thought.

  At that moment, a gurney came rushing in, with another close on its heels. An elderly man and an elderly woman.

  Paul was the paramedic with the elderly man who appeared to be in worse shape than the woman on the second gurney. Both wore oxygen masks, but the woman kept taking hers off to talk to the paramedic pushing her.

  They had no empty bay to put either of the new patients, but hopefully the kidney stone patient would be out of his room soon. Plus, the transport crew was on their way to admit another patient up to the medical floor. Goodness knew the emergency room was giving them a workout with so many more than normal admissions thanks to the smoke inhalation victims needing respiratory observation at least overnight.

  Sarah rushed over to meet Paul since the elderly man appeared to
be more critically injured. “There’s not an empty bay. Let’s pull him over this way so he’s not in the direct line of traffic and you can give me report while I do my assessment.”

  “Ed Johnson and his wife, Clara...” Paul gestured over to the other gurney “...were trapped in their apartment bathroom. Like almost everyone brought in tonight, Ed is suffering from smoke inhalation, but his main injury is from a fall that occurred when he and his wife were trying to get out of the building.”

  “Tripped over my own two feet,” the man said between coughs, his words muffled by his oxygen mask.

  “His wife is a retired nurse and took a rolled-up bed sheet, put it under his arms, and dragged him back into their apartment. She blocked their doors with wet towels, and barricaded them in their bathroom where she called 911 and begged for help.”

  For a brief moment Sarah tried to imagine the pure terror the couple had to have felt. She shuddered.

  “Thank God someone got to them.”

  Paul nodded, then a light dawned on his face. “Actually, it was my buddy, the one you met with the little girl a couple of weeks ago, who pulled them out.”

  “Jude?”

  “That’s him.” Paul grinned. “Figured you’d remember him. He’s that kind of guy.”

  Jude had rescued the couple, had saved their lives.

  “Were they the last of the victims?” she asked, hopeful.

  Paul’s smile faded and he shook his head. “There were still others trapped. They’d called for everyone to evacuate the building as we loaded the ambulance with the Johnsons.”

  “Jude was out then?” she asked, praying that he’d heeded the warning.

  Paul shook his head. “I don’t think so. Like I told you before, that man is first one in and last one out.” Paul finished giving report, then took off to get back to the fire scene, ready for the next load.

  “Good man,” her patient said through his oxygen mask after Paul had left.

  “Paul? I only know him from coming into contact with him here, but, yes, he seems to be.”

  Mr. Johnson shook his head. “Didn’t mean him.”