by Shawn Grady
Tones.
Kat gunned it down Mill to the freeway. Butcher zipped up his turnout coat. Piceous smoke surged from the overpass, sunlight coruscating off an overturned semi.
Lowell cinched on his air pack. I pulled on my mask, ready to go on air from the moment we got out. Kat swung around the northbound on-ramp for 395. The ladder truck ran not far behind us.
All the cars sat frozen, like an electric racetrack when the power goes out. At least half a dozen vehicles were twisted at odd angles around an overturned fuel truck, one pickup so severely damaged that the driver sat trapped inside. The semi’s undercarriage pointed toward us, the cylindrical trailer atop the center dividing wall. Fire rolled from the area of the hitch and around the tractor.
Butcher got on the PA. “Pull to the right. Pull to the right.”
Kat squeezed along with inches to spare. “There’s nobody in some of these vehicles.”
Our siren seemed excessive for the crawling pace, like a dog barking for something out of its reach. People ran down the freeway, abandoning their cars, doors left ajar, kids in arm. A wrecked car’s horn blared incessantly.
Kat moved her head out her side window. “This is as far as I can get.” The smell of burnt tar blew inside the cab. She snapped the air brake.
I grabbed a Halligan and met Lowell at the sideboard. We did an alley pull. Lowell took off for the front with a loop and the nozzle, his bottle breaking a sedan side mirror. I knocked one inward as I made toward the tailboard. With the line flaked out, Lowell climbed up on a hood and jumped from car to car, nozzle in hand. The smoke spread so thick that he disappeared and reappeared. I got between two bumpers to feed him more line, clicking in my regulator. Air hissed with inhalation.
Kat whipped water through our attack line. The engine revved up. Butcher weaved between cars ahead of the rig, holding his radio by the voice amp mounted on his facepiece.
Stygian smoke spurted fireballs. Lowell hunkered in the back of the T-boned pickup with the nozzle in a fog pattern, white bubbles spraying on the truck cab. Kat worked the pump panel, running the foam mixture thick through the water stream. I climbed up in the truck bed and supported the hose. The man inside threw frantic glances through the back window, shoving a door that wouldn’t open. His passenger side was wedged against a car facing the opposite way, its driver gone, its rubber weather stripping already warping and bubbling.
I patted the rear window. “Hang tight. We’ll get you out.”
Lowell darkened one section of fire only to see eruptions of flame in another. Kat stretched three-inch supply hose toward a standpipe in the median. Butcher strode for the tractor cab with an axe in hand. Flames lapped out like a solar burst. He tucked and shielded. Smoke swallowed his form.
“You got this?” I yelled.
He nodded, and I hopped down to the street, gripping the Halligan and ducking under the smoke.
Glass shattered. Butcher backpedaled from the belching cloud, dragging an unconscious driver up the freeway.
Radiant heat beat down. From the elevated side of the tractor spilled liquid fire like a lava river. The flow hit pavement and moved toward us. The more Lowell sprayed it, the more it spread, the hose stream serving to corral, not extinguish. The fire shifted away from the pickup, back toward the center divide.
And there, trapped under the trailer and next to the wall, sat a Mini Cooper with a crumpled roof and a damaged front end. In the driver’s seat, chestnut hair framed a blood-streaked face, two familiar eyes meeting mine.
I waved at Lowell. “Throw me the nozzle.”
He tossed it down. I diverted the fire away from the Mini, washing it toward the rear of the trailer. A steady stream of flame followed. Lowell hopped down and I gave the nozzle back.
“Hold it away from the car.”
I hopped over the fiery flow and ducked under the trailer, crouching to get next to the shattered passenger window.
“Julianne!”
“Aid—” She coughed uncontrollably.
The dash pinned her lap. A deflated white airbag hung from the steering wheel. I reached in and took her hand.
Her skin looked pale, her lips purple. “I can’t—” she coughed again—“breathe.”
I pulled the radio from my jacket. “Captain Butcher, O’Neill.”
He transmitted back. “Go ahead.”
“I need a spare bottle and mask and the extrication tools under the trailer.”
“Copy that. Truck crew’s making their way to you now.”
I pulled off my helmet. Lowell’s hose stream splashed along the car’s side, cooling my boots and the back of my pants. Julianne’s eyes drooped and she nodded forward.
“No. No you don’t.” I put a palm on her forehead and stripped off my mask, placing it on her face.
She took a breath and her eyes flashed open. She let out a shriek.
“It’s okay, it’s okay.” I kept the mask against her.
She looked as if she were drowning.
“Just breathe. Just breathe. I’m here, okay. Just breathe. I’ll hold this. I won’t leave you.”
The toxic brume pumped into the car. It stung my throat. My eyes watered. I hacked and coughed. My vision blurred. The myriad of colors faded into gray, and gray into a closing circle of black.
Just keep holding it.
Air fanned in my face.
Waits pressed a mask over my face, my extended arm still held my own over Julianne’s.
“Let’s switch.” I brought mine back in place as he strapped the spare mask over Julianne.
Behind us, someone started the power unit for the hydraulic tools.
I looked at Waits. “What’s happening with the fire?”
“They’re chasing it around, trying to keep the tanker cool.”
Timothy Clark walked over with the spreaders. Waits stepped aside and patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s get this open, Tim. Doesn’t have to be pretty.”
CHAPTER
44
I smashed the rear window with my axe.
It was too small of an opening to fit in with an air pack. I cleared the glass around the edges, leaned my axe against the bumper, and pulled the air bottle off of my back. I fed it in first and then crawled in on my belly. Metal squeaked and popped at the passenger door. Timothy, in a crouch, worked the jaws. Julianne looked to the side through her mask, trying not to move her head.
“That’s good, hold still.” I twisted into a sitting position in the backseat, her spare air bottle next to mine between my feet. I leaned close and placed my gloved hands on either side of her head. “Keep looking forward. Don’t move your neck.”
“Okay.” Her voice wavered.
“You’re going to be okay.”
“Aidan—”
A metallic groan let out above the car.
I glanced at Waits, who looked up at me. He shook his head. That noise was too loud to have come from the spreaders.
The groan shot out again, the car roof caving in places. Julianne screamed.
I scanned through the windshield. The trailer had shifted. Waits grabbed his radio, shouting something about support struts.
“Aidan,” she said.
I reached around for a recline lever on the left part of her seat.
“Aidan, I can’t feel my legs.”
The groaning crescendoed. The Mini’s frame strained under the weight.
I searched for the lever next to her door.
God, let me find it.
Steel whined. I knelt on the floor, leaning close. Her eyes met mine.
Where is that lever?
Steel whined. Her lips pressed tight. She didn’t blink.
I found it and pulled up, lowering her seatback with my other hand.
The roof buckled.
A tornado of sounds spun around the car—tools and metal and urgent efforts.
“Get that strut in there!”
Motors rumbled with elevated voices.
We lay hard-pressed, sepa
rated by masks, only inches of clearance from the roof above. My hand rested on her hip. Her fingers grabbed my coat sleeve. Tears ran down her face. As the smoke in the air started to dissipate. I could see her legs trapped beneath the dash, the lower left one deformed midshaft at the shin.
“Can you feel anything?” I said.
She frowned. “My head. Not my legs.”
Sorrow pulled on my insides. She wasn’t just a patient. But right now she had to be. “Okay.” Focus on the job, Aidan. “Try not to move your neck.”
She swallowed.
I found her fingers and gripped them. “We’re going to get out of this.” Through small slits in the window I saw firefighters working without air bottles. I stripped off my mask. “They’ve knocked down the fire.” I loosened the straps on her facepiece. She winced as I slid it off.
Her jaw trembled.
“Hey.” I would process my cascade of emotions later. “Come on now.” Right then I was her hope. “You think this is the first time we’ve done this?”
The roof bent farther with a wrenching dissonance. It pressed down on my back, forcing my face next to hers. Her cheek felt smooth and hot and wet with tears. Her respirations quickened, and she squeezed my fingers like a vise grip.
She whispered something. In quiet, split sentences. “White. Van. Cut me . . . off.”
“The white van?”
“It crossed. Three lanes.”
Her hair matted dark with blood. It smelled of salty cruor.
The passenger door screeched and then snapped open. Outside voices and sounds poured in.
“There she goes.”
“Cut the hinges.”
“Get two more struts back there. Aidan?” Sower’s voice.
“Right here, Cap.”
“We’re stabilizing the trailer. Once that’s set, we’ll cut the roof, roll the dash, and get you out of there.”
“All right.”
“How’s our patient?”
“Cap . . . it’s Julianne.”
Silence followed. “Is she stable?”
“Conscious. Left leg fracture. Head lac—”
“Good. We’ll go ahead and—”
“Ben.”
“Yeah?”
“She can’t feel below her waist.”
A moment passed. He leaned in. “Julianne, it’s Ben. We’re getting you out of here. You hang on, all right?”
She grimaced. “Please hurry.”
Something like large steel hinges creaked overhead, this time relieving pressure off my back. The noise repeated and the roof relaxed. The work of breathing lightened.
“What’s happening?” Julianne said.
“They’re lifting the trailer.”
She was quiet, and then said, “They can do that?”
I smiled, fighting to keep my appearance of confidence. “Yeah. They can do that.”
Sower commanded the scene. “Cut those A, B, and C posts all the way through.”
Someone threw a red wool blanket over us. Sheet metal squeaked and the car jerked as tools cut through the roof supports. Beneath the covering we lay removed, in wine-colored light and humid breath and the smell of sweat. Bedlam and twisted-metal mayhem all torqued about. But within was respite, the eye of the storm.
“Any changes?” I said.
“No. I’m glad you’re here.”
I looked at her legs. “I wish I—”
“No, Aidan. You’re here. I’m not scared now. We’re together.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Lift,” came the command outside. “One, two, three. Lift.” The car shifted.
“There you go.”
“Can you get across?”
“One second.”
“Okay. Good.”
Light shone brighter through the wool. My arms felt freed. I pulled away the blanket.
Sower stood and pointed. “Set it down there.”
Five firefighters carried the Mini’s roof and placed it on the hood of the pickup truck.
I rolled away from Julianne. “Hold still.”
“Don’t leave.”
“I won’t.” I placed my hands on either side of her head. “Just keep your head still.”
Waits went to work with the cutters near the open passenger door.
Julianne stared upward. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“Waits is making a relief cut at the base of the dash.”
Timothy moved in with the spreaders. Plastic cracked and squeaked until he found a solid purchase point under the dash, widening the tool from the bottom of the doorframe up.
“Timothy Clark is working to lift the dash now.”
“I can’t feel it,” she said.
“It’s lifting. I can see it. Take my hand.”
A deep groan let out from the car’s front end. The spreaders grunted.
“That’s all it’s got,” Timothy said.
Her legs looked clear. “That’s good,” I said. “We should be good to go.”
Timothy stepped aside as guys brought over a backboard. We slid it under Julianne’s shoulders and pulled her torso straight back. Her face looked stressed but composed. We secured her to the board, immobilizing her neck and spine, and lifted her away from the car and out from under the trailer.
We wound across the freeway toward the ambulance. I walked next to her, carrying the board. She brought a hand to my coat. “Come see me. In the hospital.”
I leaned down. “Of course.”
She squeezed the jacket fabric. “We’ve got to find who did this.”
“I know. I know we do.”
“We have to, Aidan. It can only get worse.”
CHAPTER
45
T he freeway mess took hours. By the time we left, only four cars had been towed. The rest sat taped off in place with fire line, lit by a portable diesel-powered light plant for the highway patrol investigators.
We ordered pizza by phone on our way back to the station. I showered and changed and sat on the bed in my cube with head in my hands. Visions of a wheelchair-bound Julianne coursed through my mind. Sorrow melded with anguish, and from that caldron anger spawned.
Butcher agreed to let us take the rig to County. Once everyone had eaten, we took the drive and parked by the ER.
I’d begun to hate the place.
Julianne was in CT on our arrival. And the charge nurse was insistent that she not have any visitors. But Julianne had already requested that I be allowed to see her, so as my crew waited in the lobby, I made my way back and stood by the empty space on the floor where her bed had been.
A nurse pushed a gurney down the hall, Julianne in it, cervical collar still in place. I helped roll the gurney back into position.
Julianne looked up. “Hey.” Her voice was raspy, her face pale. She held up a hand.
The radio clipped to my belt squawked until I spun down the volume. I took her hand in mine.
“Come down here,” she said.
I leaned on the rail and she put her hand on my cheek. Her eyes looked peaceful. I wanted to ask her how she felt, but it seemed like such an inept question. I didn’t know what to say. So I did what just felt right.
I brought my fingers to her hair and brushed it back behind her ears. I let my hand trail to her cheek, and she brought hers up and held mine there, closing her eyes and breathing deeply.
“Aidan.” Butcher’s voice startled me. I straightened and turned to see him at the doorway to the room.
I cleared my throat. “Hey, Cap.”
He ran his fingers along his moustache. “We, ah, arranged for your replacement to come in for the rest of the shift. You’re free to stay here as long as you need.”
I felt like someone had lifted a hundred pounds off my back.
“That’s . . . that’s great. Thank you.”
He shrugged and waved. “It was Kat’s idea.”
I looked back at Julianne. She kept hold of my hand and smiled.
I handed my radio
to Butcher. “Thank you.”
He nodded and stepped backward. “Give us a call if you need us.”
I woke in a chair and brought into blinking focus the walls of a windowless ICU room. IV pumps clicked metered drips through tubing. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. Julianne held a yellow legal pad in the air, scrawling notes.
I stretched, sore from the sleeping position. “Hey. What are you up to?”
“One sec, I’m thinking.”
“On paper?”
“Shh.”
The ICU was dimly lit and calm, each room secluded.
I yawned, covering my mouth. “You should be resting.”
Her eyebrows lowered in concentration. “I’ve got too much going through my mind.”
I caught a glimpse of a wall clock. 5:55 a.m.
My cell phone vibrated again. I had a new voice mail.
It was staffing. The BC said that Engine One had left an hour earlier with a strike team of engines to a fire about forty-five miles west into California. The heavy timber was ablaze off of Interstate 80 and was now threatening about three hundred homes on the edge of Truckee. Station One needed bodies to fill spots, and I was next up on the mandatory list.
Julianne laid the notepad on her covers.
I stood by the bed. “I have to go.”
Her eyes flicked a brief moment of protest. She looked to the side.
“It's mandatory. There’s a big fire in Truckee. They need people downtown for anything that might crop up.”
Her eyebrows pinched together. She brought her bottom lip up. “It’s all right. They’re taking good care of me here.”
I didn’t feel right leaving her. “Maybe I can find a way out of—”
“It’s okay. There are some things we need to talk about, though. So I’ll call you, all right?”
Those eyes held a story. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later, then?”
She mustered a smile. “Bye.”
I turned to leave.
“Aidan?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you were here for me.”
The heart monitor beeped its steady rhythm, green lines tracking across the black-faced screen. I rubbed my chin. “Funny you’d say that. ’Cause I’ve been thinking of it as the other way around.”
A blanket of burgundy hung high in the clouds. The sun shone from the east, illuminating a pall of smoke that seemed to wash an apocalyptic aura over Reno. Traffic ran lighter. Folks walked with empty stares.