Vertical Burn

by Earl Emerson

  He made one complete circuit of the small room without success. As he came around a second time, something moved under him in the debris.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m a firefighter. I’m going to get you out of here.”

  Now flames were crawling across the ceiling and banking down along the outer wall toward the window, sealing off their escape. It might already be too late.

  The victim, whom he initially took to be a child, swatted at his facepiece and shrieked just once before going limp. This was no child. Too large. Too strong. It was a woman.

  Half-carrying, half-dragging her limp body across the room to the window, Finney saw that the entire wall was now blocked by flame that had banked down from the ceiling. Fire lapped at his helmet, scalding his ears through the Nomex hood, roasting the back of his neck.

  “Stay calm,” he said. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  Then, as he gripped the windowsill with his gloved hand, he felt a water stream rush past his helmet from outside. He was instantly engulfed in it, the room boiling. A gallon of water produced 550 cubic feet of steam. It smothered the fire, but it also scalded his wrists and his cheeks around the edges of his facepiece. Even the helmeted figure outside backed away. Lord only knew what it was doing to the victim.

  Finney did his best to shield her with his own body, but he knew his bunkers were hot enough that a mere touch would burn her. Moments later, as the heat from the steam subsided, he got up off the floor, picked up the victim, and passed her through the window. As her limp body plugged the tiny window, he knew that should the fire come back on him now he would be trapped. In rescues, the rule of thumb was to keep the victim from blocking the rescuer’s egress, yet it was a difficult rule to follow in the field. He’d violated that rule and now his exit was blocked.

  A hot, wet heat tightened the room down around him.

  And then the victim was outside, taken away by the other firefighter. As soon as she had cleared the opening, he wedged his head and one shoulder through the tiny space. He could feel flame creeping up the trousers of his bunking pants. For twenty seconds he twisted and tried to swim through the aperture. Then, like a chunk of Crisco on a hot skillet, he began skidding on his stomach down the steep roof.

  He thought surely something would arrest his slide, somebody would come to his aid, because if not, he was going to drop into the yard on his face. But he continued to skid with agonizing slowness, and then, just as the free fall was about to begin, his outstretched hands caught the gutter in front of him. The gutter creaked and he could hear the screeching of nails. Though he couldn’t see the ground through the fog and smoke, he knew he was inches from a twenty-foot drop. Slowly, carefully, he turned around and got to his feet.

  Traversing the roof, he reached the ladder a body-length ahead of the other firefighter, who was now struggling to carry the victim. Finney stepped onto the rungs and together they carefully transferred the weight of the still-unconscious victim onto his shoulder.

  A minute later she was lying on a heavy canvas tarp at the edge of the yard.

  When Finney set his helmet in the grass, tiny droplets of moisture on individual grass blades sizzled as they brushed up against it.

  By the time he got his bottle off, he realized only one other rig had arrived. Ladder 1.

  The firefighter who’d been on the roof with him was now in the yard, facing away, removing helmet, hood, gloves, facepiece. It wasn’t until a mass of hair shook loose that he realized she was a woman. She turned around and met his eyes. Diana Moore. She’d obviously left her partner and gone to the roof by herself, the same as he’d done. She’d scrambled up the ladder and across the precarious roof lugging a charged hose line, no easy feat. She’d saved the victim and she’d saved Finney, too.

  “That was kind of close,” she said.

  “Ooooh, yeah. Thanks for showing up. You saved my behind.”

  “McKittrick told me you were up there, but when I got up and saw all that flame, I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t even get close to that window.”

  “It didn’t feel so wonderful from inside either.”

  She smiled and they continued to look at each other for a few moments. Without preamble, they both burst into laughter. Finney had had similar giddy communal moments throughout his career, yet now that he thought about it, always with men. She was good. She was damn good.

  Except for disheveled knee socks and a sturdy pair of brown leather shoes that hadn’t been touched by the ordeal, all the victim’s clothing had been either burned off or melted to her skin. Her chest and torso were blackened and cracked, and other areas of skin were as pale as parchment, blood vessels visible underneath. Her charred face was burned into a grimace—long, crooked teeth exposed. Her hair had burned off, except for a wispy scrap that clung to the nape of her neck. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were gone.

  Nothing moved except her eyes, which darted about the group, appraising each of them in turn. She seemed as horrified by the firefighters as they were by her. When her look fell on Finney, he felt as if he were being stared at by a mummy in a museum.

  At least she was alive, he thought, as she continued to stare at him.

  Sadler glanced at Finney but spoke to the others, as if he had another, private message to be delivered to Finney later. “How far away is that medic unit?”

  “Medic Ten’s delayed at the Sixteenth South Bridge with everybody else,” said McKittrick. “There’s an accident on the First South Bridge.”

  “Somebody put some O-two on her,” said Diana.

  Sadler used his portable radio to ask Medic 10 for an ETA. The reply: another ten minutes.

  The driver of Engine 11, a short, stocky firefighter with a plug of tobacco under his lip, a man who’d been in long enough to have an attitude, put together a Laerdahl bag mask, connected oxygen to the mask, placed the mask over the victim’s face, and began squeezing the bag.

  She should have been breathing deeply now, with their help, but she continued to gulp like a landlocked fish. Engine 11’s driver peered inside her mouth and down her throat with a flashlight. He tried again. Finney knew what was wrong. So did Sadler. The circumferential burns on her torso had contracted and hardened so that her lungs could not expand. They could pump in all the oxygen they wanted, but if her diaphragm wouldn’t expand, they couldn’t get air into her.

  Sadler glanced at the others. “The medics won’t be here in time.”

  “What do the medics do when this happens?” McKittrick asked.

  Sadler held up his Buck knife.

  Six minutes without oxygen and she would be brain dead. There was no telling where she was in the countdown.

  “She ain’t gonna make it,” McKittrick said.

  Finney could see the victim’s eyes widen and react to the pronouncement. It was clear from the flicker of alarm that she didn’t want to die in that yard any more than any of them did. It was also clear that she hadn’t lost her cognition, not completely.

  Sadler offered McKittrick the knife. “Uh-uh. I’m not trained.”

  “Don’t look at me,” said Sadler. “I’m no longer certified.”

  “You’re a better choice than any of us,” Finney said. As far as he was concerned, Sadler’s refusal to do the deed was an act of cowardice. Until five years earlier Sadler had been a paramedic, but he knew, as did the others, that any time a public servant exceeded his or her area of certification, a personal lawsuit could result. On the other hand, it was obvious that if they continued to do nothing, she was going to die. Sadler stepped back, as if the problem were somebody else’s.

  Finney hadn’t been trained in this, but he took the knife and knelt beside her. He didn’t know how clean the blade was, but right now infection was the least of her worries. He carefully pressed the blade into her burned flesh and made a cut in the shape of a seven on her upper right chest, a reverse seven on her left. It was like cutting charred steak. If she felt it, she didn’t respond, didn’t open her eyes
, didn’t call out.

  Once again Engine 11’s driver placed the Laerdahl bag mask over her face and began squeezing the air bulb. For the first time since they’d removed her from the building her diaphragm rose and fell. Half a minute later she came awake and attempted to speak through the mask. Finney, who hadn’t moved from his position beside her, motioned for the facepiece to be removed and leaned close enough to smell the sweet, sickening odor of cooked flesh.

  “Water,” she gasped. “For the love of God give me some water.”

  They gave her water and covered her with a burn sheet.

  By the time the rest of the units arrived, the fire had punched a hole in the morning, flames jetting fifty feet into the fog. Standing in the yard in a daze, watching as the medics placed the victim on a stretcher and administered morphine, Finney felt dry heat from the fire. It wasn’t long after Chief Smith arrived that the walls began collapsing inward.

  Monahan was the one who found the two-wheeled cart near the back door, the handle melted, the cargo transformed to turds of char.

  “Annie? Hey, was that her cart?” Sadler asked, when Monahan brought it around to the front.

  “That was definitely her cart,” said Monahan.

  “It couldn’t be Annie,” said Finney.

  “Yeah.” Monahan held up the cart with one hand. “That was her all right.”

  21. THE HERO SYNDROME

  At one end of the house a bathtub dangled by its plumbing. At the other end a broken chimney stood alone like a splinted finger. Most of the upper floor and roof had burned off or been pulled down by firefighters with pike poles, as they hunted out the last embers, and the house had spilled its contents like a broken egg; bits of smoldering cloth and burned garbage lay in the yard. They would wait to finish the overhaul until after Marshal 5 had sifted through the ruins and made a determination of cause.

  Small rooms, a good toehold, lots of nooks and crannies, balloon construction, and careful preparation by an arsonist had made the fire almost impossible to stop. Because there was a victim, it was especially important to determine cause, yet there wasn’t much left to sift through; the fire damage was massive. In Washington State an arson resulting in a fatality could be charged as murder and would be, if Annie died and if the SFD apprehended the culprit.

  As they waited for Marshal 5 to arrive, Chief Smith located Finney in the rest area.

  “Splendid job,” Smith said, his face transforming into a mask of smile wrinkles. “McKittrick said he thought nobody could make it up there, but by golly, you did, John. You and Lieutenant Sadler. You two make a great team.”

  “Actually it was Diana Moore off of Ladder One. I probably owe her my life.”

  The chief, who may or may not have heard him, stooped and picked up Finney’s helmet. SFD helmets were constructed of a tough, resilient plastic, and it was rare to melt one. Doing so was considered a totem of bravado, an announcement that one had gone where nobody else could. Finney’s helmet was melted from the top down, the face shield dissolved onto the blackened shell like a slice of cheese. “I just wanted to let you know what you did won’t go unnoticed. In fact, I’m going to submit you and Lieutenant Sadler both to the awards committee.”

  “It was Diana Moore. And I don’t want an award. She should get one, though.”

  Chief Smith smiled. “Moore, huh? How the hell did she haul a hose line up there by herself?”

  “Same way any of us would have. Muscled it up.”

  “Young woman surprises me sometimes.” Chief Smith winked as he left, and said, “Sure is cute as a button.” Or maybe he said, “Sure has a cute bottom.” Finney wasn’t sure which he heard. Both were true.

  A few minutes later Gary Sadler approached, his coat open, a cup of hot cocoa hidden in his large fist. Drifting smoke mixed with the fog, so that except for the red flanks of two nearby fire engines, the neighborhood was blanked out.

  Sadler’s face was sweaty, his teeth and mustache peppered with soot. He looked around and, when he saw they were alone, said, “You have a problem following orders?”

  The animosity in his voice surprised Finney. “Because I went for the ladder?”

  “Because you left me alone inside. You have a problem?”

  “My only problem is fiddle-faddling around while somebody is burning to death.”

  “I was waiting for you to go up those stairs with me. Were you scared?”

  “The stairs were gone. I told you that. I told you I was going outside.”

  “It turned out the stairs were gone, but what if they hadn’t been?”

  “What kind of question is that? They were gone.”

  “I didn’t know that at the time. I ordered you to stay inside with me. You and I both know we’re in a paramilitary organization here. We have officers and we have firefighters. The last time I checked, the officers gave the orders. The firefighters followed them.”

  They stared at each other for a few tense seconds.

  “You’re saying I should obey your orders even if it costs a life?”

  “What the hell do you think would have happened if Ladder One hadn’t dragged that hose line up there and cooled your ass off? You were damn lucky you didn’t both get incinerated, you and that old woman. And maybe Moore, too. She’s a damned idiot, just like you.”

  Just as Finney was reappraising Sadler in light of his refusal to cut the old woman’s chest so she could breathe, Finney could see in Sadler’s nearly opaque brown eyes that he was wondering whether Finney had abandoned Bill Cordifis the way he’d abandoned him.

  Finney’s story about Leary Way couldn’t be verified, and these days everybody in the department sized Finney up in terms of what they imagined happened at that fire. They saw Finney; they saw a dead partner. People connected the dots in different ways. It was as if Finney didn’t have any other history, as if all those years he’d worked on Ladder 1 didn’t count for beans.

  “By rights I should write charges on you,” Sadler said. “Insubordination at the scene of an emergency. You could get eight shifts off without pay.”

  “I’d gladly trade eight shifts off for that woman’s life.”

  “Oh, that’s cute. Make me look like the bad guy.” Sadler stepped close. For a few moments neither spoke. In different circumstances, perhaps with a few drinks under their belts, they might have come to blows. They both knew it would be ludicrous for Sadler to write charges on Finney after a successful rescue, no matter what orders he’d disobeyed. It would only serve to spotlight Sadler’s misjudgment and failure to reach her from inside the building. “When you came down to Twenty-six’s three weeks ago, people told me you had an ego the size of Texas, that you had a problem following orders. I didn’t listen because I like to size a man up for myself. But they were right. You’re a freelancer. A loose cannon. You go off and do what you like. It’s easy to see why Reese didn’t promote you.”

  Sadler turned and walked away. When he was ten feet distant, he turned back and said, “I noticed your hand. You going to need stitches?” Finney had cut his hand through his glove sometime during the rescue, probably while breaking out the window. Someone had wrapped a roll of gauze around it; he couldn’t recall who. “I’ll get somebody to fill in so you can go see the doc.”

  “Sure.” Although he knew in this instance it was true, Finney didn’t like being called a freelancer. In the old days freelancers were highly valued members of the department, firefighters who could get things done without being told. But these days everybody worked in pairs and they worked to a master plan—a man walking the fire ground by himself was in danger of a reprimand from the safety chief.

  A few minutes later Finney noticed Captain G. A. Montgomery and Robert Kub. As Marshal 5’s unit administrator, G. A. rarely did fieldwork, so Finney was surprised to see him at a fire scene. Then again, they had a possible fatality.

  G. A. took a couple of purposeful strides toward the house, surveying the disheveled firefighters in the rehab area. Clad in a fire d
epartment windbreaker, black slacks and dress shoes, a white shirt, and a tie that was so tight his neck veins stood out, G. A. Montgomery was hardly dressed to pick through a fire scene. Nevertheless, that’s what he and Kub proceeded to do.

  Ten minutes later they trotted back around the side of the house and met Finney as he was carrying his MSA backpack to the rig. They shook hands, G. A.’s grip like a gorilla’s, not the least deterred by the dressing on Finney’s hand. When G. A. doffed his small-brimmed orange investigator’s helmet, his hair stuck out like bristles on an old brush, and his large, lined face grew serious.

  “You guys first in?”

  “Twenty-seven’s was.”

  “But this is your district?”

  “We were out of service on an aid run when the call came in.”

  Stepping close enough that Finney could smell cloves on his breath, G. A. produced a toothpick from somewhere and placed it in the corner of his mouth. “When you got here, you see anything?”

  “Yeah. Fog.”

  “I was thinking along the lines of civilian activity, maybe someone suspicious hanging around?”

  “Just fog.”

  “That’s what your lieutenant said. He also said you two had a difference of opinion.” He bobbed the toothpick between his fleshy lips.

  “He wanted to make the rescue from inside. I told him the stairs were burned out.”

  “How did you know the stairs were burned out?”

  “I knew where they were. And I could see the volume of fire in that part of the house. This is the house I was telling you about last night.”

  G. A. Montgomery raised his eyebrows. “We’re on Riverside Drive? I guess we are. Hell of a coincidence. But then, coincidences are your meat and potatoes, aren’t they?”

  “What does that mean?”

  G. A. used his tongue to relocate his toothpick. “You realize this is arson. No electricity. Nobody living here. There’s a smell of gasoline around back.”

  “I said last night it was set to be torched.”