by Cassie Cole
“Thank you for your help,” he said when we were done. He shook my hand with both of his. “You have done a fantastic job connecting all of the dots. It’s going to be a long Christmas finishing all of this. My wife is going to kill me.”
“Sorry for giving you the extra work,” I said.
“No apology needed. This is what I live for.”
My unit mates were waiting outside. “You guys could have gone home, you know.”
“And leave you here?” Christian said. “No way.”
“Chief Elliott wants to see us this afternoon,” Angel said.
“For what?” I asked. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Probably to commend you for discovering the arsonist. That’s good publicity for the station.”
“Always about the publicity,” Sparks mumbled. “Nevermind the countless lives saved by catching him.”
They had already changed and gotten cleaned up, but I still felt filthy. “Give me 10 minutes and we can go,” I said.
I couldn’t take a proper shower with my bandaged leg, so I went into the bathroom and used a washcloth in one of the shower stalls. That one was as black as charcoal after only cleaning my arms, so I retrieved three more and cleaned up the rest of me until I was reasonably presentable. My hair was still a mess and needed a shampooing or five, but this would have to do for now.
We jumped in the car and drove to Station 1, the oldest one in the city. A gorgeous old building made of large stone blocks and old, thick glass. A cathedral of a station.
Elliott’s office was as large as his position demanded, with a giant desk and bookshelves filled with medals, awards, and various other commendations. During the drive over here I’d prepared myself to be congratulated. I had excuses ready, little comments to graciously brush aside any compliments. “We were just doing our job,” and, “Any firefighter would have done the same,” and, “I got lucky.”
But Elliott wasn’t alone in his office. Another man with a captain’s marks on his shoulder sat in the corner behind Elliott’s desk.
“Aww, shit,” Sparks said.
I realized who it was: the captain who was on site for the Panorama Tower fire. And he did not look happy.
What’s going on?
“Please sit,” Elliott said, gesturing. We took our seats in front of his desk like children visiting the principal.
The Chief looked over and said, “Captain Richards?”
The man stood and straightened his uniform. “You disobeyed several orders during a five alarm fire in an 80 story tower,” he said. “Direct orders. You were instructed to watch the east side for falling debris. You did not. Two of you were instructed to head back to the south end to assist with another engine’s secondary hose. You abandoned that job after three minutes, according to witnesses. You were instructed not to enter the building. One of you did so anyway, and then the other two followed soon after.”
He sat back down, red-faced but satisfied. Chief Elliott turned to my unit mates. “Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”
“It’s my fault,” I said before they could. “They were rescuing me. I was there to talk to Ezra Carter, the arsonist. If not for my recklessness, my unit mates wouldn’t have disobeyed orders. I put them in an impossible position. You should punish me instead.”
My unit mates, my partners, my lovers, all stared at me in silence.
Elliott studied us for a long time with an implacable, measuring gaze.
“The bond between a unit is sacred,” he finally said. “I started out on a ladder myself. Some of my deepest, longest friendships are with men and women I worked with. I would have died for them without a second thought. They would have done the same for me.”
He nodded to himself.
“I can’t blame you for what you did. If I were in your shoes, and one of my unit mates was trapped inside a burning building, a direct order wouldn’t have been able to stop me either.”
I breathed a sigh of relief along with Christian. Sparks pumped a fist.
The angry Captain jumped to his feet. “Sir! You cannot be serious…”
Elliott cut him off with a single gesture. He waited until the Captain had sat back down before continuing.
“Members of Station 47: Christian Nygaard, Angel Martinez, and Sparks Johnson. I must terminate your employment effective immediately.”
I flinched. “Wait, what?” My unit mates were all too shocked to speak.
“You all disobeyed direct orders,” Elliott said. “The chain of command is what keeps an already chaotic situation under some semblance of order. If every fireman who wanted to be a hero charged into a burning building we’d have dead firemen on every single call. Your actions at the Panorama Tower cannot go unpunished.”
“But you said you would have done the same!” Sparks said.
“I would have,” Elliott agreed. “And I would have accepted being fired for it.”
“But…” I said. “What about me?”
“You have not disobeyed any order that I’m aware of. You will remain at Station 47 as soon as three replacements are selected. I’m sorry it has to be this way.”
The others bristled but didn’t argue. They rose to their feet and left together. I stopped in the doorway and turned around.
“This is bullshit and you know it.”
A dark expression covered the Captain’s face. “I’ve lost good men because of reckless firefighters charging into a building without proper backup. You’re lucky those three are alive.”
“I’m only alive because of them!” I shouted.
“I’m sorry,” Elliott said. “But he is right.”
I stormed off before they could say anything else.
41
Amy
We drove back to the station in a daze. Nobody knew what to say or what to do next.
Angel pulled out his phone and groaned. “Just got the email. We have through the 26th to clear out the station.”
“At least they’re giving us Christmas,” Sparks muttered.
“Does this mean we can’t apply at any of the other Miami stations?” Christian wondered. “I don’t know what the process is like if we’re terminated.”
Angel said, “I think we can reapply. But we have that black mark on our record.”
“Makes sense. Guess I’ll have to brush up the old resume.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you guys?” I said. “Why are you all being so passive about this? You should get angry and resist. Maybe we can appeal the Chief’s decision.”
Christian looked at me in the rear-view mirror. “Because we knew it would happen, Amy.”
In the seat next to me, Angel put a hand on my leg. “We knew what we were doing when we went into that tower. We knew it would mean being fired.”
“Chief can’t let that behavior slide,” Sparks said.
“And you did it anyway?”
Sparks barked a laugh. “You kidding? Of course we did.”
“I don’t regret it at all,” Christian said. “Saving you or keeping our jobs?”
“Easy decision,” Angel said.
We reached our station and climbed out of the car. Obviously saving a life was more important than keeping a job—if roles were reversed I probably would have done the same thing. But now I just felt guilty that they’d sacrificed their jobs for me.
We went into the station and I stopped dead in my tracks.
Everything was different. A Christmas tree had been erected behind the couch, decorated with multi-colored lights and a red felt runner around the base. Garland had been stapled around the edge of the ceiling in the living room, kitchen, and hallway. Stuffed Santa Claus dolls stared down at us from the glass cabinets in the kitchen, their faces red and jolly.
“It looks like an elf ejaculated all over this room,” I said.
“Angel decorates every year,” Christian said. “It’s kind of his thing.”
“I like Christmas,” Angel said sheepishly.
“W
hen did you do all of this?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” he said. “It was supposed to be a surprise for you. I had to wait for you to leave the station with the pie yesterday before I could get started. Do you like it?”
“I love it!” I wrapped him in a big hug, then kissed him on the cheek. He grinned like a little boy.
“It’s too bad we only have a day to enjoy it,” Sparks said.
That brought the mood back down like someone popping a balloon.
“Should, uh, we start packing everything up?” Angel asked.
“And waste all of this? Hell no!” I said. “Plus, I’m exhausted. Let’s relax and enjoy the decorations for a day.”
I went and took a proper shower—while sticking my leg out the door so it wouldn’t get wet. By the time I came out the others were cooking dinner.
“Mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and turkey,” Angel announced. “Don’t get too excited, though. The mashed potatoes are from a mix, the green bean casserole is just green beans baked in cream of onion soup, and the turkey is a boneless breast that bakes in less than an hour.”
“But we have wine to make up for it,” Christian said, handing me a glass.
I winced. “They’ve got me on some heavy pain killers for my leg. I can’t mix it with alcohol. But the meal sounds amazing!”
Angel found a Christmas movie on the TV, which resulted in an argument over what the best Christmas movie was, so we decided to have a marathon. Angel’s pick was Elf, which we watched while eating our humble Christmas dinner. Sparks chose that old stop-animation Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer movie that came out in like 1950, the one with the Island of Misfit Toys in it. Christian followed that up with Die Hard, which spawned yet another argument over whether or not it was actually a Christmas movie. I rounded out the night with my favorite, Christmas Vacation.
We started on the couch but then I moved to the floor with a pillow because my shin was starting to ache, and felt better when it was stretched out flat. Christian joined me halfway through the second movie, and then Angel and Sparks followed suit. By the time Clark Griswold was kidnapping his boss the others were all fast asleep on the floor around me.
It was wonderful… and it was terrible. I couldn’t avoid thinking about how this was all temporary since they had been fired. I would get three new unit mates, and I’d have to start all over with them. We might try to keep our physical—and emotional—relationships going, but I knew it just wouldn’t happen. What made the four of us so great was that we lived and worked together. Trying to see each other on the weekends wasn’t the same.
Them getting fired essentially meant we were all breaking up.
While my three lovers slept quietly around me, I tried to keep my crying silent so as not to wake them.
*
I woke to the smell of something delicious cooking in the kitchen. To my shock it was Sparks with an apron around his waist and a spatula in his hand. “Merry Christmas!” he said.
“If you gained 200 pounds and dyed your beard white you could pass as Santa Claus.” I did a double take when I realized what he was making. “My pancakes!”
He looked sideways at me. “Alright, they’re really good. I’ve been resisting them for two weeks but I’m addicted now. Sit down and I’ll make you a stack.”
Angel appeared from the pantry. “I’ve got cinnamon rolls baking in the oven too.”
“And there’s hot cocoa!” Christian said as he came out of the bedroom. “Let me make you a cup.”
I sipped on cocoa—with marshmallows!—while watching my boys work. I wasn’t sure what tasted better: my pancakes cooked by a sexy redhead, or Angel’s cinnamon rolls with lemon icing.
We ate and laughed about whose movie was the best. “One thing we can all agree on is that Christmas Vacation is terrible,” Sparks said.
“Hey! It’s cheesy, but it has its charm.”
“We all fell asleep during it. It loses by default.”
“That’s just because it was the last movie! We were tired!”
Angel suddenly brightened up. “Who wants to open presents?”
“Wait, what?” I said.
He ran to the tree and pulled out three gifts that I hadn’t noticed.
“Ugh, every year,” Christian said.
“We told you not to get us anything!” Sparks complained.
“And I ignored you.” He handed out the gifts. Mine was wrapped in shiny green paper with brown reindeer all over. Rudolph, based on the red nose.
“I, uh, baked a pie?” I said, pointing to the pie still sitting on the counter where I’d made it two days earlier. “But honestly, I didn’t get you anything…”
“That’s fine. I like giving gifts. Come on! Open them up.”
We tore away the wrapping paper on our gifts at the same time. Mine was a framed photograph of the four of us posing in front of a shiny new Station 47. It was from the day we held the opening ceremony, when we were all dressed in our formal uniforms.
“Aww, look how unhappy Sparks looks!”
“That’s one hell of a scowl,” Christian said. He and Sparks had the same gift. “Thanks, Angel.”
Angel smiled sadly. “I meant it as a way to bring us all together. But now that we’ve been fired, it’s more of a keepsake…”
I quickly hugged him so he wouldn’t feel sad, even though I already did. “I love it,” I said, punctuating that with a kiss on his cheek. That pulled a smile onto his face.
I insisted on cleaning the kitchen since they’d cooked. Sparks and Angel went into the living room to watch the Christmas Day parade, but Christian lingered next to me by the sink.
“I wanted to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
“You wouldn’t leave without the arsonist. Ezra.”
“That’s right.”
“Why?” he asked. “He kidnapped you, hit you on the head, and then tried to burn you alive. Why stay for him?”
I’d been thinking about that myself, so my answer was ready.
“It’s who I am. It’s why I do this. When the fire is raging, it doesn’t matter what crimes we commit or what we believe or who we love. We’re all the same, then. Fire is the great equalizer. Leaving Ezra behind would have been sentencing him to death. That’s no different than gunning him down on the street. I’m no vigilante, even if he did do terrible things.”
Christian put an arm around my waist and kissed my hair. “I’m glad you’re who you are.”
The front door opened and a tall figure stepped in. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“Chief Elliott,” Christian said.
I put down my dish cloth and spun around. “What are you doing here?”
“Come to make sure we’re actually leaving?” Sparks asked. “Can’t you at least let us have Christmas Day in peace?”
A more hopeful thought came to my mind. “Have you changed your mind about firing them?”
“Unfortunately, no. That is done.”
I took a deep breath. I’d been thinking about what I would say to Elliott the next time I saw him. I’d expected to say this tomorrow at his office, but here and now was just as good.
“Chief, I’d like to tender my resignation.”
His eyes widened. “Pederson…”
“I refuse to work here without these three by my side. I quit.”
“Stop speaking,” he said, calmly but forcefully. “Listen to what I have to say first.”
“Okay, what is it?”
He came inside and put his hat on the counter. “I’ve spoken to the Fire Chief in Fort Lauderdale. She wants to emulate our peak hours program.”
“You want us to train them on it?” Sparks said. “I’d rather find a new job somewhere else.”
“No,” Elliott said. “I want to recommend you four for the job. You’re more qualified than anyone else, obviously.”
“I doubt she’d take us after we were fired,” Christian said.
“Oh, she will,” Ell
iott said with a smile. “She worked for me for 15 years before being promoted to the Fort Lauderdale region. A personal recommendation from me would hold a lot of sway.”
“What about me?” I asked. “They normally don’t allow transfers so soon after taking a new position. I’ve only been here two weeks…”
“They don’t allow? Who is they? There is only me, the Chief of the Miami Fire Department. And although you are correct that I would not normally allow such a thing… I think I can make an exception for the woman who caught the Christmas Arsonist.”
Angel snorted. “Is that what they’re calling him?”
“Indeed it is. And after all of the local news coverage, the Fort Lauderdale Chief will gladly accept your transfer request.”
“News coverage?” I asked. “There wasn’t much at the Panorama Tower when I was there.”
“No, there wasn’t,” he said. “But they’re outside now, waiting for you to give an interview.”
“They what?” I ran to the window and peeked through the blinds. Two news vans were parked there, and four reporters were facing away from the station while talking into microphones.
“Who told them I was going to give an interview?” I asked.
“I did,” Elliott said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this business, it’s take the credit when you deserve it. And you absolutely deserve it now.”
“Well?” Sparks said. “Get out there, Netty!”
“I…” I looked down at my sweatpants. My hair must be a mess after sleeping on the floor. “I can’t go out like this! I haven’t even showered. My hair…”
“I thought you weren’t the kind of girl who cares too much about her appearance,” Christian smiled.
“I care when I’m going to be on the news!”
“Go get yourself ready,” Elliott said. “They’ll wait for the interview.”
“I’ll stall them,” Sparks said, cracking his neck and striding outside. “Everyone, can I have your attention! Please back up to the street, yeah that’s right, another 30 feet. We can’t have you blocking the engine doors. Amy Pederson will be out shortly to answer some questions, but only for 10 minutes. No more than that. She’s a hero, and deserves some time to relax today. I will decide which interviewer goes first based on a number system…”