I didn’t have time to admire the gear… the fire alarm was ringing when I arrived at the station, and I had to rush to pull on the suit and follow the crew out to the truck that was waiting in the vehicle bay.
I didn’t hear the call from dispatch, and I didn’t even realize where we were headed until we pulled up in front of the high school.
I glanced up at the brick building tower over me, and my stomach twisted into knots as all of those long-buried memories and emotions came rushing back to the surface.
Then I felt somebody grab me by the arm of my jacket,
“There’s no time for sulking, lone wolf,” Walker grunted, dragging me towards the building. “We need to locate where the fire started.”
As soon as we pushed through the doors and stepped into the building, we were greeted by an almost-impenetrable wall of black smoke. I could barely see my own two hands in front of me, let alone the room around me.
All I had was my memory to guide me…
“This way,” I said, charging forward and taking the lead.
The only thing I could see in all directions was black smoke, but when I blinked my eyes I could see a clear vision of what the high school had looked like eleven years ago. I saw the hallways and the stairwells; every door and every window.
I trusted my memory and kept walking through the smoke, arms stretched out ahead of me and Walker holding onto the back of my coat. Finally I felt my hands hit a second set of doors.
We pushed through them and found ourselves in a hallway. It was considerably less smoky, and I got my first good look at my surroundings, the old yellow lockers that lined the wall, the red brick walls, the giant mural of Hartford High’s mascot.
Everything was exactly the way I remembered it. Underneath the heavy stench of smoke, it even smelled the same; like chlorine and glue and old library books.
“Rory, I need you to tell me where we’re going,” Walker barked urgently through his face shield.
“Right,” I said, forcing myself to focus. “The fire must have started in the kitchen. That would explain why this side of the building is already smoked out…”
“Is there any way to access the kitchen?” Walker asked.
I glanced grimly back in the direction that we had just come from. The glass doors were holding in the smoke, but they wouldn’t be able to for long; black tufts were already streaming through the crack at the bottom of the door.
Walker followed my gaze, then sighed and amended his question,
“Is there any way to access the kitchen besides the way we just came?”
I pinched my eyes shut as I tried to remember the school’s layout. I tried to focus, but my mental map was marked with red x’s, designating every fist fight and confrontation. I couldn’t separate the hallways and common areas from the memories of what had happened there.
“There’s a shortcut!” I remembered suddenly. “This way!”
I took off running down the hallway. My heavy boots thudded on the tile floor, and my breath made foggy circles on the transparent shield that hung down from my helmet and covered my face.
I knew that we were getting close to the fire again. The air was getting hot and thick, and every breath I took flooded my lungs with smoke. Still, I pushed forward.
I didn’t stop running until I reached a dead-end, where the hallway split in two directions.
“Left or right?!” Walker shouted, running up behind me.
I already knew that turning left would take us back towards the cafeteria… but for some reason, I still found myself glancing to the right.
And that’s when I saw a woman running towards us, frantically waving her arms over her head.
Not just any woman; it was her.
I recognized her immediately. Even though I was standing in a burning building and wearing fifty-plus pounds of turnout gear, I felt an ice-cold chill race through my spine.
At first I didn’t believe my eyes. I assumed that she just another memory, or another figment of my imagination… but then Walker saw her, too,
“What the--” he grunted. “I thought the building was evacuated? What the hell is she doing in here?!”
That’s a good question… I shook my head, speechless.
In that instant I forgot all about the black smoke and the fire burning in the cafeteria kitchen. I forgot about Walker, and I forgot about rest of the crew waiting for us back outside.
All I could focus on was her.
In my graveyard of painful memories, Desiree Leduc was the one I had buried the deepest. She was also the one memory that refused to stay buried. For eleven years, she had haunted me like a ghost from my past. And for eleven years, I had tried to forget.
But now, eleven years of suppressed anger and hurt suddenly dissolved into thin air.
Now, Desiree Leduc wasn’t just a buried memory or a ghost from the past...
Now she real, and she was running straight towards me.
I started walking towards her, and as I closed the distance between us I yanked off my helmet. My eyes burned from the smoke and the hot air stung my skin, but I barely noticed.
Without the shield over my eyes, I could see her clearly… and she could see me too.
“Des…”
She froze, and her big brown eyes widened around me.
Does she recognize me? Does she remember?
She took a small breath and opened her mouth to say something, but before she could form the words… she fainted.
CHAPTER TEN | DESIREE
I blinked open my eyes and was immediately blinded by a flash of bright light beaming down from the shiny chrome sky. I dragged my hand towards my face to shield my eyes, and that’s when I realized something was wrong.
Like, wrong wrong.
I was on my back, my entire body was stiff and numb, and my lungs felt like they had been filled with a gallon of sand.
My mind raced with questions, where the hell am I?! What happened, and how did I end up here?!
I forced my eyes open again, and this time I squinted through the bright light until the chrome sky came into focus.
Turns out it wasn’t a sky at all; it was a ceiling. I could see the fuzzy shape of my reflection hovering directly above me. My eyes widened as they flicked around, taking note of my surroundings, the IV drip, the soft beep of a heart monitor, the sterile smell of bleach and isopropyl alcohol.
Am I in a… ambulance?!
I tried to push myself up, but a heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder and eased me back down onto the stretcher.
Once the back of my head touched down on the crunchy paper pillow, a face popped into view above me.
“Welcome back, sleeping beauty!” the female EMT grinned down at me. According to the name badge embroidered on her black shirt, her name was ‘OLIVIA BECK.’
“Wh-what--” I tried to mumble, but my throat was too dry. The words turned into a wheeze, and then the wheeze turned into a full-blown coughing fit.
Once I had recovered, the EMT offered me a water bottle and helped prop me up on the stretcher so I could take a sip.
“You inhaled a lot of smoke,” she said. “You’re probably going to be a little hoarse for the next few days.”
“Great,” I mumbled in a dry, raspy voice. “As if it wasn’t hard enough teaching a unit on dystopian literature to an AP English class that has apparently never picked up a book before, now I get to do it sounding like Kermit the freaking Frog.”
“Wow,” the EMT raised her eyebrows. “Well, that answers one of my questions.”
“Huh?”
“When someone comes back to consciousness after fainting, I ask them a series of questions to ensure that they’re fully cognizant and self aware,” she explained. “You just answered question number three, ‘describe your current profession.’”
“Oh,” I frowned. “I figured you’d just ask me what today’s date is, or to name the current president.”
“Eh,” the EMT sh
rugged with a smile, “I try to avoid questions that can elicit an emotional response.”
“Fair enough,” I said. Then I frowned, “Wait… did you say I fainted?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Which leads me to question 4, ‘what’s the last thing you remember?’”
I pressed my eyes shut and tried to trace back to my steps.
“The school was on fire,” I said slowly.
“Good!” Olivia said encouragingly. “What else?”
“One of my students was missing. I ran back into the building to look for her. The hallways were filled with smoke and I could barely breathe. I was running around in circles. And then I saw--”
Rory. His face flooded my mind.
“What?” the EMT pressed. “What did you see?”
I flicked open my eyes and his face disappeared.
“Can smoke inhalation cause hallucinations?” I asked. Then I added quickly, “Hypothetically speaking, of course…”
“What kind of hallucinations?” Olivia looked intrigued.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged casually. “Like… maybe an old acquaintance?”
The EMT frowned, and I had a feeling that I wasn’t exactly acing her series of questions.
“Did you see someone you know inside the building?” she asked.
“No,” I said quickly. Then, reluctantly, “But I think I saw someone I used to know…”
“And you think it was a hallucination?” she asked. “Why?”
“Because it’s impossible,” I said. “It couldn’t be him. I haven’t seen him in over a decade, and… it’s just impossible.”
Olivia’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then she leaned on the edge of my stretcher and asked,
“Could you describe him for me?”
“Umm…” I felt my cheeks turn pink and I swallowed nervously.
“Did he have black hair?”
“Yes…”
“Dark, kinda miserable looking eyes?” Olivia continued. “Thick beard?”
“Huh? Wha-- how did you know that?!”
“Was he dressed like a fireman?”
My eyes popped wide open and I jolted up on the stretcher. I was officially freaked out.
“Just… sit tight,” Olivia said, holding up a hand to calm me down. “There’s someone I think you should see…”
I watched as Olivia stood up and crossed the narrow ambulance, then she pushed open the door and poked her head out.
I couldn’t hear what she said, but almost immediately I saw the door open further. Then the EMT stepped aside and Rory climbed into the ambulance.
The bus shook with his weight, and he was so tall that he had to bend his neck to stand over me on the stretcher.
He looked so different, but the little pieces of Rory that I remembered were still there, that straight nose, those dark eyes…
I wasn’t hallucinating. He was real… and he was really here.
“I’m going to give you two some alone time,” Olivia said. She slipped around Rory, then hopped out of the ambulance and slammed the door shut behind her.
Rory’s eyes never left me. They held me tight, like a harness. I remembered how safe I used to feel when he was around; like I had a guardian angel that was always looking out for me.
“Long time no see,” he said finally. His lips twitched, and I could see the faintest hint of a smile through his beard.
My mouth fell open and I heard a soft exhale roll from my lips. There was so much that I wanted to say, and so many questions that I wanted to ask… but I couldn’t find the words.
Suddenly I had the chills. I wasn’t even cold, but my entire body started shaking and shivering.
“Oh, Des…” Rory noticed right away. His eyes filled with gentle guilt, and he pulled off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders. It was warm and heavy… so heavy that my shoulders sagged underneath its weight. There was something comforting about the pressure, and there was something even more comforting about the way it smelled like him; like cologne and ash, and something familiar… something that brought me right back to that night at the park.
My lungs still ached, but I took a deep inhale of him anyways.
God, I had missed that smell. When we were younger, I couldn’t get enough of it. I would lean close or drop my head on his shoulder, just so I could breathe him in.
For a second, I was lost, high on pheromones and whatever the hell was pumping into my veins from the IV drip bag… then I snapped back to my senses and immediately stiffened under the weight of the fireman’s jacket.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him bluntly.
“I work at the fire department,” he said. “Firehouse 56. We got a call this morning about a fire at the school, and--”
“No,” I stopped him. “I mean here, as in Hartford. What are you doing in Hartford?”
“Oh,” he said. “I moved back.”
“Why?”
He looked slightly hurt by that question, and he didn’t say anything for several seconds.
“Why?” I repeated. “Why now? After… how many years?”
I knew damn well how many years it had been, but I didn’t want to admit that. I didn’t want him to know that I cared as much as I did…
“Eleven years,” he said softly.
“Eleven years,” I repeated, “And you just… show up out of the blue?”
“It’s complicated,” he said wearily.
“Oh, it’s complicated?” I sneered. I knew that I was getting emotional -- worse, I was getting mean -- but I couldn’t help it. I had been holding the emotions in for so long, and now the dam had broken and everything was pouring out of me.
“What about when you left without saying goodbye?” I asked. “Was that ‘complicated’ too?”
His eyes ignited with hurt. I had seen that same look in his eyes so many times, but I had never been the one to cause it.
“Did you think I did that on purpose?” he asked me. His voice was so low, that I almost couldn’t hear it over the hum of the heart monitor. “Des, the Connecticut State Police were at my house. They had already arrested my stepfather for assaulting an officer, and they had my mother in handcuffs on the curb. I didn’t have a choice… they dragged me out of the house.”
I was silent. There had been so many times that I attempted to fill in the blanks about what happened that night, after the police showed up at Rory’s house. I had written and re-written so many fictional accounts of that night in my head, but it still remained a mystery to me.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Rory said gently. His eyes were burning, and his jacket was heavy on my shoulders. “And I never would have left without saying goodbye to you, Des…”
“But you did,” I whispered.
I knew that I couldn’t blame Rory for what happened that night. I knew that it was outside of his control. But Rory had eleven years to say goodbye, and he never did.
When he left that night, he vanished into thin air.
“Can we talk about this?” Rory asked me.
“We’re talking right now.”
“No. Not here…” he shook his head. “Can I meet you? Dinner, maybe?”
Do you know how many times I would have given anything for ‘dinner’ with Rory over the last eleven years?
I wanted to say yes… but instead, I found myself shaking my head slowly and glancing down at my hands.
“I don’t see the point,” I said. “We’re practically strangers now. I don’t know you anymore.”
“Des--”
“It’s been eleven years,” I told him. “The past is the past. Ancient history.”
He looked crushed, but before he could say anything the ambulance door opened behind him.
“Knock knock!” the EMT said, climbing back up into the bus. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Rory was just leaving.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN | RORY
“What the hell happened out there, McAlister?!” the promoter screamed. “I had five G’s on this fight, and you stood there taking punches like a fucking blow-up doll!”
I tried to pull my head up, but my brain was doing somersaults inside my skull. The entire room was spinning. My stomach heaved and I spit a mouthful of blood and bile into the bucket between my knees.
“Jesus,” the promoter grunted in disgust. “Look at yourself, McAlister. You can’t go back out there like this.”
“I’m fine,” I said. The words sounded slurred; my lips and tongue were swollen, and I was hanging onto consciousness by a thread.
I was far from “fine,” but I knew that I needed to get back into the ring. I didn’t have a choice… I needed to finish this fight.
“You’re fucking insane!” the promoter cackled, gnawing on the toothpick that was wedged beneath his gold-plated canine. “He knocked you out. Game over…”
“It’s not over yet,” I snarled, spitting another mouthful of blood into the bucket.
I forced myself to sit up on the stool, then I dumped a water bottle over my head to wash away the sweat and blood that stained my skin. I felt a stinging sensation ignite everywhere that my opponent’s fist had left its mark, but I ignored the pain… just like I ignored the second wave of nausea that was battling its way up my esophagus.
The skin on my knuckles was cracked and raw. The fissures had been sealed shut with super glue, but fresh blood seeped out as I re-wrapped my hands in gauze.
“You’re a crazy motherfucker, you know that?” the promoter said, shaking his head. Then he grinned and rubbed his palms together greedily, “Alright, fine. Let’s get you back in that ring, eh? Let’s see if you can win back those five G’s…”
That’s what this was all about, the money.
I couldn’t pry my eyes open without seeing double. My lungs were throbbing, the blood in my veins was ice-cold, and my skin was bruised and stretched tight over my swollen muscles.
After that last fight, I was fucked up… maybe even concussed. Getting back into the ring now was like feeding myself into a meat grinder… but I needed that fucking money.
I had just gotten accepted into the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy. Training to become a Boston firefighter wasn’t some sort of life goal or dream come true for me... it was an escape route. It was a steady paycheck with benefits and health insurance… all things I needed, now that I had a baby on the way.
The Complete Firehouse 56 Series Page 65