by Cassie Cole
The crowd applauded again. Chief Elliott’s speech continued for another 15 minutes. With me up front, soon it became a game of trying to hold back my yawns.
Then it was the mayor’s turn to speak, though he kept his speech short and to the point. They cut a ceremonial ribbon, applauded some more, and then it was time for the best part: the wetting and push-in ceremonies.
They were traditions as old as firetrucks themselves, held around the country whenever a new fire engine was put into action. First they moved the new engine out of the garage and parked it at the back of the parking lot. Then two of the visiting fire engines pulled up on either side of the garage door, raising their ladders to form an A. Water hoses were connected and readied, and then Angel drove the new engine underneath while they sprayed it down with the hoses. Once those were turned off Angel parked the truck just inside the garage door and left it in neutral. All the gathered firefighters got behind the engine and pushed it into the station, cheering and high-fiving when it cleared the door.
“Is it in?” I joked loudly.
“Not big enough, huh?” Vazquez yelled.
Others shouted their own bawdy comments and jokes. It was a good time, and helped me forget that I wasn’t clicking with my new unit mates as quickly as I’d hoped.
8
Amy
We said our goodbyes and everyone left. There was a ton of food leftover: sandwiches, breakfast burritos, and little salad wraps with chicken or turkey. By the time we packed it all away our fridge and freezer were stuffed.
“What kind of name is Amonette?”
I turned from the fridge to find Sparks standing there, arms crossed and a grin on his face. “It’s French.”
“It’s lovely,” Christian said.
“It reminds me of a cleaning product,” Sparks said. “Mr. Clean! With new Amonette-powered cleaning bubbles.” He laughed at his own joke, though nobody else did.
“Better than being named Sparks,” I said. “Is that really your first name? I expected to hear the Chief list your real name.”
He shrugged. “I’m Sparks. That’s all there is to it.”
“Kind of an ironic name for a firefighter,” I continued. “You’d think they would weed out someone with a name like that during the probationary period. Bad luck and all.”
He stared at me. “It’s because of my hair.”
“Duh, ya think?”
He shrugged again. “Whatever. Still better than Netty.”
Anger flared in my chest. I held it back without snapping, but not before Sparks saw the rage on my face. I turned away before he could say something else.
Damnit. I was going to be Netty to him from now on.
“I’m gunna go put some numbers on the gym whiteboard,” I said. “I’m curious to see if any of you can keep up with my maxes.”
“I’d be curious to see that too,” Christian said. “I’ve got a hell of an overhead press.”
I changed from my formal uniform to my casual blues and went to the gym. It was nice and quiet, just how I liked it. Some guys—they were usually guys—liked to blare angry music while lifting to get their adrenaline up. I preferred the serene calm, focusing on engaging every muscle during the workout. Like meditating, only with a bar of weights on my shoulder.
The first thing I did was check the squat rack to ensure it was properly put together. Once I’d verified all the bolts were tight I did my warm-up routine. Some jumping jacks to get the blood flowing, then Frankensteins to stretch out my hamstrings.
The iron plates were shiny and new as I racked them onto the bar. A 45 lb plate on each side, then a 10 lb plate on each side. Plus the weight of the bar made it 155 lbs. A solid warm-up to get a feet for the gym.
I ducked underneath the bar and gripped it with both hands, then stepped up to accept the load onto my shoulders. I stepped back to give myself room and paused. The entire wall was one giant mirror, allowing me to get a good look at myself. I looked strong like this, my arms locked on the weight and my legs ready to rock.
You’re a rock star, Vazquez had said. “Act like it,” I said to myself.
I took two breaths, and then bent my knees and locked my back while squatting down. I completed one set of five reps before racking the weight. It was easy, but it was supposed to be. The rubberized floor felt natural under my feet. This was way better than the gym at my old station.
I removed the 10 lb plates on each side and replaced them with 25s, making it 185 lbs total. Still nowhere near my one rep max, but now we were getting serious. I took the weight on my shoulders and did another set of five, focusing on driving my heels into the ground.
Angel came into the gym while I was on my fourth set. I saw him in the mirror’s reflection, pausing in the doorway to watch. I did my fifth rep slowly, ass-to-grass, knowing that I looked good. I locked my legs vertically and then re-racked the bar.
“Good form,” Angel said.
“Bad form’s how you get injured.”
“True that.” He went over to the dumbbells and began stretching.
I removed the 25 lb plates and added a 45 on each end. 225 was about what I squatted for my working sets: three sets of five reps. I took my time shouldering the weight, raising it off the rack, and then stepping back.
The first set was easy. I drove my heels into the ground and thrust the weight into the air with my powerful quad muscles, grunting slightly each time. I caught Angel watching me with an approving look on his face.
When my first set was done I racked the weight and said, “What’s on the schedule today?”
He shrugged as he tested one of the dumbbells. “It’s technically a rest day, so no big compound movement. Just some ancillary dumbbell work, then maybe an hour on the bike.”
“Nothing wrong with that.”
“What’s your routine?” he asked.
I was glad he asked. Weight lifting was a universal language. “I lift three days a week, an A workout and a B workout. A is squats, bench press, and deadlifts. All three sets of five.”
“Even the deadlifts?”
“Uh huh. I never feel like I get a workout with just one set. The B workout is front squats, overhead press, and bent-over rows. Those are just the big movements, of course. I do whatever little dumbbell work I want on any given day: dips, skullcrushers, windmills.”
“Right, right.” He sat down at one of the benches and started curling a dumbbell.
“At least you’re not doing those in the squat rack,” I teased. It was a joke among serious lifters: amateurs usually hogged the squat racks by doing curls in them. Curls were just a vanity exercise: no real usefulness except making your biceps big. In human history, nobody ever won a battle by curling their opponent into submission.
It was just a good natured ribbing, though. Not the biting insults Sparks gave. Angel took it as such and smiled. “I’ve got elbow tendinitis. Curls help alleviate that before I do my other sets.”
“Fair enough,” I said. That was a legitimate use for curls. Plus, Angel’s face was pretty when he smiled.
I began my second set of squats. I focused on going slow, both because it was good form and because I wanted to see if he would watch me some more. He didn’t at first. He was a gentleman. But by the third rep he was glancing sideways, and I was pretty sure he was staring at my ass. I felt pretty damn good about that. I had a great ass, thanks in part to the squats I was doing.
By the time I racked the bar he was staring straight ahead again, focusing on his curls. The motion made his thick biceps bulge, like a brown loaf of bread being squeezed and stretched.
It was weird how my old unit was 100% platonic, yet with these guys I felt different. Christian was a picturesque dreamy blond firefighter. Angel was tall, dark, and handsome. Even Sparks was hot too, if you overlooked how much of an asshole he was.
Why was it different than my old unit?
It’d been a long time since I had a steady boyfriend. Firefighters worked crazy shifts, sometimes 2
4 hours at a time. That made dating difficult. As if that wasn’t enough, I had the libido of a teenage boy. If I had my way I’d have sex every single day. But in reality, I ended up getting myself off almost every day instead.
Weight lifting, too. That was a great way to get the energy out.
Since I’d come up through the Academy with Vazquez and Dominguez, they felt more like brothers to me than anything else. The idea of fucking them made me shiver—and not in the good way. So we’d always just stayed close friends.
But these three new guys? I had a fresh start with them.
Shit, it had been a long time since I’d had a good hookup. I used to hit up the clubs in Miami to find someone to help me get my horizontal exercise, but I hadn’t done that in weeks. Maybe that was the problem. I needed to get laid. Until then, I would keep thinking about my new unit mates as more than just colleagues.
Doing anything with them was probably a mistake. Right?
Right. You didn’t mess up your workplace environment by throwing sex in the mix. Deep down, I knew that.
You know what? Now that we had normal shifts ending at 8:00pm every night, the possibility of romance was back on the table. I could go on real dates. Have a consistent schedule to meet up with someone. Find a guy who wanted to get to know me, and who I could actually spend time getting to know right back.
Yep. That’s all I needed.
I started to get under the bar for my third set when a deafening alarm hit my eardrums. It was like a bird screech mixed with a referee’s whistle, a sound which instantly flipped a switch in my head.
Angel and I looked at one another, then took off sprinting.
Christian and Sparks were coming out of the common room. Nobody said anything as we ran into the engine room and pulled our turnout gear off the racks: pants thick with fire-retardant material, a matching long coat and gloves. Hats and masks and oxygen tanks, all the other gear we needed.
All the while, the computerized dispatcher spoke over the loudspeaker in monotone: “Station 47. 10th Avenue east. Office building fire. Time: 11:48. Station 47. 10th Avenue east. Office building fire. Time: 11:48. Station 47…”
It was a fire call. The real deal.
Christian hopped into the passenger seat, leaving Sparks and I in the back. Angel had our engine siren blaring as I jumped onto the exterior seat, and we were quickly on our way.
I held on tight from my bucket seat and savored the wind on my face. This was it—the reason we did this! I was a bundle of adrenaline and excitement and nervousness, as I was every time. We might save someone’s life today. Or we might fail.
Every time we went out on a fire call it was like Christmas Eve and prom night and a final exam all rolled into one.
“Chill out Netty,” Sparks said over the sound of the siren and wind. “Don’t drink so much coffee.”
“What?”
From his bucket seat next to me, he pointed at my foot, which I’d been tapping. “You’re gunna put a dent in our new pumper.”
I ignored him, although I did consciously stop tapping my boot.
I hated being in the back. I was too nervous and had nothing to do. Right now, Christian and Angel were getting more details from dispatch. Making a plan of attack, figuring out what other stations might be en route. Whether we would use our ladders, or if we’d go in the front door. Sitting in the back I had only my imagination to occupy me. I pictured a tall office building engulfed in flame, smoke pouring out of windows like upside-down black waterfalls.
Fuck, I hated being in the back.
We roared down the street for what felt like an hour before reaching the office park. A few dozen people were gathered outside but there was no smoke that I could see. Angel pulled as close to the hydrant as he could.
We had a protocol: as a bucket rider, it was my job to hook the input hose to the hydrant while the others readied the hoses that would go into the building. Our engine would essentially become a big middle-man to divert the water wherever we wanted it. The moment the engine stopped I hopped down, grabbed the hydrant wrench in one hand and the end of the hose in the other. The hose was folded like an accordion rather than in a coil, allowing it to unfold behind me as I sprinted the short distance to the hydrant.
Keenly aware that the office workers were watching, I wrapped the hose around the hydrant once and attached the wrench to the hydrant clamp. “School starts at nine and ends at three,” I muttered to myself, the mnemonic that helped us remember to start the wrench in a horizontal position. Once it was clamped on I put my boot on it and shifted my weight.
Lots of hydrants went years without use, and were sometimes painted over or covered with rust. I had no trouble with this one. As soon as I put my full weight on the wrench it swung down, loosening the entire cap. Relieved, I quickly unscrewed it the rest of the way with my hands until the interior of the hydrant was exposed. A quick visual check showed no damage on the interior and no garbage inside. Good.
Throughout all of this, the urgency of the situation gave me tunnel vision. Nothing could happen until the line was wetted. The sooner I finished, the sooner we could stop the fire. People were shouting but it was muffled and distant, not in my radio. I ignored it while focusing on my task.
I stood behind the opening and moved my wrench to the top of the hydrant, twisting it slowly. This allowed me to ensure no trash was down in the hydrant, which could clog up our hoses. But the water ran clean and clear.
I turned the water all the way off, went back around to the opening, and clamped our hose to the hydrant. As soon as that was done I hit my radio and said, “I’m at the hydrant, requesting permission to wet the line!”
That’s when I realized it was strangely quiet everywhere else. The office workers were all looking at me like I’d expected, but so were my unit mates. Christian was waving at me.
“Amy!”
“What?”
“You didn’t turn on your radio!”
Why the hell didn’t they have a sense of urgency? I found the switch for my radio, turned it on, and said, “What’s up?”
But Christian answered by walking over to me rather than speaking into the radio. “Manager said it’s a false alarm. Smoker left a cigarette in a trash can. We’re gunna check it out, but we don’t need the hose.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay,” I said.
“You’re with me. Let’s go.”
Sparks was smirking at me the whole time. “Don’t mind Netty,” he said loudly for the office workers. “She graduated from the Fire Academy, so she’s used to studying rather than doing.”
Their laughter stung like a dozen arrows. I ignored him and followed Christian into the building, glad that my helmet partially covered my rage.
9
Angel
Different firefighters reacted differently to false alarms.
There was the type that got upset. Really upset. They rushed to dress and flew out of the station, mentally preparing to walk into a fire and face death—whether their own or someone else’s. That took a lot out of a person. Arriving to find out it was all a false alarm was the adrenaline equivalent of blue balls.
Other firefighters were relieved. A good day at the station was one when no calls came in, or when every call was a false alarm, even if it meant we were bored. Nobody wanted a building to catch on fire. Firefighters were an unfortunate necessity.
Christian and I were the latter group. There was no greater relief to us than arriving to a scene and discovering we weren’t needed. It washed over me like a cool wave of calm. Everything was okay. Nobody was going to die today, at least not here.
Sparks was in the former group. He absolutely hated arriving to find out he wasn’t needed. It wasn’t that he wanted there to be a fiery inferno waiting for him. He just got really worked up over the entire thing. He pent up all that energy and then let it out when it was least convenient.
I could tell Amy was just like him. She’d leaped off our pumper like a sprinter at the block, read
ying the hose before we had a chance to tell her it was a false alarm. She was fast, though. I had to give her that. I just wondered if her nerves would be frayed for the rest of the day, like Sparks.
The others went inside while I stayed in the engine. One person needed to remain in case another call came in from dispatch. I watched the office workers mill around, bored and annoyed. They weren’t relieved that everything was okay. This was an inconvenience for them.
The building was a long warehouse with few windows. It was a call center, which probably meant little grey cubicles as far as the eye could see. I had a sister that used to work in a call center like this. She worked late at night because she called people in the Pacific and Hawaiian time zones. She hated that job. These people looked like they hated their jobs too.
Sparks came back outside by himself. He said something to one of the office workers then climbed up into the passenger seat. “Who the fuck throws a cigarette in a trash can?” he cursed.
“Probably someone who wasn’t allowed to be smoking in the first place,” I said. “Got caught, then tried to toss it away.”
“The world’s full of idiots,” Sparks said with enough heat in his voice to start his own fire. “Sometimes I wonder if we should even be saving them.”
I knew he didn’t mean that. He was just blowing off steam after the false alarm. Sparks was a dick, but he genuinely cared about people. In fact, he took it the hardest when we lost people on the job.
“Why’d you say that about Amy?”
He removed his helmet. “Say what?”
“You made fun of her in front of all those people.”
“She’s alright. She has thick skin.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I pointed out.
“Cause it’s a dumb question.”