Through the Fire Read online

  Timothy took a kneeling position at the doorway to a raging back room. The hallway temperature neared unbearable heights. I held the hose behind him and leaned my shoulder into his back. His torso shifted as he opened the bale and the water stream shot out. He swept it across the ceiling and circled it around the room.

  The fire danced. It mocked. It shot from the room with wicked lit fingers, clawing and scratching, curling around my air bottle. It tugged at me, pulling me to it. Flame edges whipped down the walls, forming a sickle in the air, swinging in a slow arc down toward my sternum.

  I had to get out.

  I turned and bolted, colliding with Butcher, knocking him to his rear. The smoke spazzed and scurried. I glanced back to see the fire darken in the room. The atmosphere cooled, lightening from black to gray. Someone outside broke a window. A fan started on the porch, pushing the haze past us.

  Butcher made his feet and stared at me through his mask. He held a radio mic by his facepiece. “Battalion One, Attack Group. We have knockdown.” He broke his gaze and walked past me.

  Timothy worked the hose line into the room, hitting hot spots with short bursts of water. I stood as the truck guys scooted by, tools in hand. Lead-colored smoky wisps vacillated and wove in front of my mask. I leaned against the wall and took off my helmet.

  Nothing made sense anymore.

  CHAPTER

  13

  T he wrinkles beside Benjamin Sower’s eyes looked like rays of the sun in a child’s drawing.

  I dropped my turnout boots from the back of the rig to the app-bay floor. “That is definitely a Captain Sower joke.”

  He grinned, his broad shoulders shaking as he chuckled. “Well now, what else would a cow without any lips say?”

  I shook my head and smiled at the floor. “I guess ‘Ooo’ is it.”

  He laughed again, the fluorescent lights casting a dull sheen over his bald head.

  I climbed down and hung my suspenders over the chrome bar beside the door. My turnout pants were dank and thick with the smell of smoke. “So what did you learn on the second floor?”

  He hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “That I’m glad I work on the third.”

  I laughed. It sounded like a pressure relief valve off-gassing. “Come on now, Ben. We go way back. What’s the inside story?”

  “We do go way back. As far back as you go. I was there the day you were born, remember?”

  “Strangely enough I don’t recall a whole lot about that day.”

  “Your father’s wry sense of humor lives on, I see.”

  I didn’t want to talk about my father. “So tell me.”

  “All I know is that the pressure from city hall to find this firebug is building.”

  I nodded. “And today’s fire—”

  “Probably.”

  I swallowed. As far as I was concerned, any arsonist could be the arsonist, the one who set my father’s fatal fire.

  Ben shifted his stance. “So, have you seen the garden out back?”

  “Um, yeah, actually. That corn looks pretty high. Kind of weird, right there in the middle of the city.”

  “I’m really happy with that. Last tour someone took off with a couple ears. And that’s fine. If they need it that bad, they can have it. I’ll grow more. Or God will. He provides.” His face turned solemn. His voice quieted. “Aidan, on a different note, I have been a bit concerned for you.”

  Alarms of suspicion rang in my head. He had just come from talking with the chiefs. “You’ve been concerned? Or did somebody come to you who was concerned about me?”

  “No. No one came to me.”

  My face must have betrayed my skepticism, because he said, “My talk with Mauvain had nothing to do with this. I just . . . I haven’t had the chance to talk with you since the whole thing with Hartman. I’ve felt a burden for you in prayer.”

  He and my dad had been best friends. I had so many memories of him from growing up—Bible studies at our house, barbecues, birthday parties. Even then he didn’t have hair.

  I patted him on the shoulder. “Thanks, Ben. Really. I appreciate the concern.”

  He waited.

  He knew me too well. I shook my head. “You know, I should have made a better judgment call. We just got into a hairy situation. But Hartman’s going to be all right, and that’s what matters.” Somehow the words sounded false as they fell from my lips, bearing a hollow timbre of rationalization. I was sure he could see through it. I blurted, “I’ve just been off my game a bit since I came back. I’ll get it back though. I just stutter-stepped a bit on this last fire.”

  Ben sat on the sideboard, nodding slowly, as if he were part of a conference call and listening to another party. He brought his elbow up and rested it on the intake manifold. “It’s not like you to feel off your game.”

  “No. I know. But it happens to all of us, right?” I zipped up my station boots and draped my uniform pant leg over them. “Like a batting slump. I’m just thrown off my rhythm.”

  “Remember Wade Boggs, Aidan?”

  I straightened. “Sure. Yeah. One of the best batters ever.”

  “Yes. While not a model of moral fortitude, he was in fact one of the all-time best. He was also extremely superstitious. Had to eat chicken before every game. Had to always have batting practice at the exact same time. He had these habits he was committed to following to keep himself on his game. But you know what? I bet you none of that had much to do with why he hit so well.”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Twenty-twelve vision. He could see the ball like no one else. He came built that way. He possessed a gift.”

  I studied the soot-stained and heat-discolored number 1 on the engine’s side.

  “So do you, Aidan. I saw it in your father, and I’ve seen it in you.”

  An emptiness augered into my gut. I noticed my hand trembling and crossed my arms over my chest. The gift hadn’t saved my dad. What hope did I have? I ran my hand over the warped number 1. “What happens if you can’t rely on that gift anymore?”

  He breathed in. It seemed like a mix between knowing he’d made a connection and realizing that now he had to deliver some answers. He spun the wedding ring on his finger and looked up. “There isn’t one of us who doesn’t need to learn how to better place his trust in something, or someone, outside of himself.”

  “What if there isn’t anyone you can trust?”

  “You know there is, Aidan. You’ve known it since you were—”

  Tones.

  “Engine One to a medical emergency, seizure. Haley’s Casino. Use the air curtain entrance on Virginia.”

  I threw my turnouts in the back. “I’ll see ya, Benjamin.”

  He stepped back from the rig. “We’ll talk later.”

  I nodded and closed my door. Katrina fired up the engine and Lowell Richmond hopped up into Timothy’s seat.

  “What’re you doing here?” I asked as I pulled on my seat belt. “Waits finally kick you off the Q?”

  He threw his turnouts on the floor. “Yeah, I needed a break from rescue, and Timothy owed me.”

  Kat rolled the rig out and flicked on the lights, looking both ways on Evans. Butcher put us en route over the radio and flipped on the grinder siren. All westbound lanes on Second were stacked, so Kat took oncoming traffic, blaring the air horn. Cars acquiesced by moving to the side.

  She weaved the rig through the intersection. “Did the off-going crew mention anything about an issue with the brakes?”

  Butcher scratched his cheek. “There was something in pass on about the mechanic coming to check on a little air leak today. Just make sure you keep her plugged into the air line back at the station.”

  Kat gave him an impatient look that said, Please. “You know I always do.”

  A white-shirted security guard stood at the casino entrance. We pulled to a stop by the curb.

  I snatched the defib and the blue bag from the med compartment that held all the intermediate life-support medicatio
ns and tools. Lowell swung the red first-out bag over his shoulder with its oxygen bottle and basic life-support supplies. Butcher stepped down to the sidewalk, then turned and climbed back into the cab to grab his small steel clipboard.

  “C-P-R, Mark,” Lowell said.

  Butcher looked up. “What?”

  “Clipboard. Pen. Radio. C-P-R. What good is a captain without them?”

  Butcher’s face changed from surprise to frustration. “I thought you meant we had a cardiac arrest, Lowell.”

  Lowell elbowed him. “Glad to have me back, aren’t ya, Marky?”

  We walked from the street through the heated air curtain to the casino floor. Mirrored pillars flashed our reflections. James Brown’s “The Big Payback” filled the room from planter-hidden speakers. Stoic-looking overweight people sat and played slots under advertisements of happy-looking fit people playing slots. Security snaked us through to an elevator that another guard kept open with a key.

  Butcher turned to the first officer. “The paramedics are still coming, too.”

  He looked back toward the doors and then spoke into a black microphone on his shoulder.

  The guard in the elevator was young and pale with a narrow chin and greasy dark hair. His long bony fingers fumbled with a doughnut-sized key ring that sported about a hundred keys. He talked to himself, turning the emergency operation key left then right. “Ah, let’s see. Okay. Well, no. Okay.” We stopped at floors three, four, and six to the semi-alarmed stares of hotel guests before taking our nonstop trip to floor seventeen.

  Butcher peeked at the run sheet. “Should be seventeen twenty-two.”

  We filed out of the elevator, Lowell after me, until the door closed, sandwiching him from shoulder to first-out bag.

  Bony Fingers flinched and cringed and pushed about six buttons in a frenzy. “Sorry. Oh, right. Sorry.”

  Lowell worked his way loose. The doors came together behind him. “If that guy’s still here when we get back, I’m taking the stairs.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  T he hallway smelled like air-freshener-suppressed cigarette smoke.

  A busy flower pattern wove through the middle of a dark green carpet. Butcher stopped by a door on our right. “Seventeen twenty-two. Here we go.” He stood to the side and knocked. “Fire Department.”

  It was a standard practice, standing to the side of the door. You never knew who might be holding some kind of weapon on the inside. The sliding of a latch sounded.

  A middle-aged woman with dangling turquoise earrings answered. “He’s right in here. Over here.”

  A man lay supine in bed, wearing a white collared shirt that fell open to the covers. His receding hairline was rimmed with sweat and his cheeks were flushed. Dried blood stained the corners of his lips.

  I set down the defib and felt for a radial pulse. It was strong, regular, and rapid—around a hundred and twenty beats per minute.

  The television flickered in silence. Meteorologist Mike Alger pointed and drew arrows along the Pacific Coast.

  Lowell shook the man's shoulder. “Sir, sir, can you open your eyes?”

  I wrapped the Velcro blood pressure cuff around his bicep. He grunted and mumbled and withdrew his arms.

  Lowell held open the patient’s eyelids and shone a light in his pupils. They were sluggish and about two millimeters. He pocketed the penlight. “What is his name, ma’am?”

  “Gregory. But he goes by Greg.”

  “And what is his last name?”

  “Sutton.”

  He rubbed Greg’s sternum with his knuckles. “Mr. Sutton. Greg? Can you open your eyes for me?”

  Greg moved his arm to his chest. I trailed after it with the bell of the stethoscope. Lowell flashed me an apologetic look. He fished out an oxygen mask from the first-out bag and placed it on Greg’s face.

  I pulled the stethoscope from my ears. “One thirty over seventy.”

  He wrote it on his glove. “Ma’am, what is your relation to Greg?”

  She twisted her hands as if they were stuck in a finger puzzle, and her earrings waggled as she answered. “I’m his wife.”

  “Does he have a history of seizures?”

  “Not for some time.”

  “But he has in the past?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he taking any medication for it?”

  Butcher stepped forward with an empty pill bottle. “Dilantin. Looks like it’s due for a refill.”

  “That’s right,” Earrings said. “We ran out two days ago, but we don’t know any doctors in this area.”

  Lowell handed me an IV bag and looked up at Earrings. “How long did his seizure last?”

  “About a minute, maybe.”

  “Can you show me what it looked like?”

  I flashed a look at him. He had no need for her to actually show him what the seizure looked like. He clenched his teeth, determined not to smile.

  “Well”—Earrings stiffened her body and brought her arms to her chest—“first his eyes rolled back, and then it was like this.” She tightened her jaw and started to vibrate. The shaking traveled down her arms, progressing into a whole body convulsion.

  It was impressive.

  Lowell pressed his lips together and nodded. “Thank you. That’s perfect. Thank you so much.”

  Butcher turned his back to Lowell and placed a hand on Earrings’s shoulder. “Ma’am, we’ll keep your husband on oxygen to clear up his head, start an IV, and check his blood sugar. The paramedics should be here soon, and we’ll go from there.”

  She looked at her husband’s face. “I’ve never seen him this bad.”

  I bled the air from the IV tubing. Lowell placed a tourniquet on Greg’s arm, causing the veins to bulge and swell. He uncapped a needle and guided it to pierce Greg’s skin, like a diver into shallow water. He slid the catheter into the vein, pulled out the needle, and placed it on the nightstand. “Sharp out.”

  I held the IV bag in the air and rolled the white plastic wheel upward, watching the fluid flush into Greg’s arm. Lowell taped it all in place as the paramedics walked in the door.

  Butcher plunged a drop of blood from the needle onto a glucometer strip. “One fifteen on the sugar.”

  Earrings rubbed her dangling turquoise as if it were a magic lamp. “Is that normal?”

  Lowell smiled. “Yeah. That’s just fine.”

  She exhaled.

  Butcher gave the medics the rundown.

  Greg blinked and stared at his feet. He pulled the mask from his face to his forehead. “Who are you people?”

  “Honey, it’s me,” his wife said, taking his hand. “It’s okay. They’re here to help you.”

  His eyes locked in recognition. “Why? Who needs help?”

  “It’s the ambulance, Greg. They’re here to help you.”

  “I don’t need any . . .” He darted glances around the room. “What’s going on?”

  His wife patted his hand. “You had a big seizure. You need more of your medicine.”

  Greg rubbed his forehead. The mask snapped off his head. He stared at it and then the IV in his forearm. He worked to pull the tape off with his free hand.

  “No, no, honey,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t do that.”

  The medic held Greg’s arm down and put a palm over the IV site.

  Greg whipped his head and stared at him. “What are you doing? Don’t do that.”

  I glanced at Lowell. He stood at the foot of the bed, his arms hovering over Greg’s legs.

  The medic released Greg’s arm. “Here’s the deal, Mr. Sutton. You need to get your Dilantin levels checked. Why don’t you do like your wife is suggesting and let us take you on in to the hospital? She can ride with you the entire way. What do you say?”

  He breathed out through his nose, protest written on his face. His eyes turned to his wife, confusion and resignation brimming. But then I saw something I hadn’t seen in Christine for a long time. Something foreign yet familiar. It locked
between them like a three-corded rope.

  Trust.

  “Okay.” Greg nodded, tears streaming. He squeezed his wife’s hands. “Okay.”

  Lowell patted my shoulder and motioned toward the door. “Let’s get the gurney.”

  CHAPTER

  15

  T he rig jostled over the Evans Avenue potholes on our way back to the station. My cell phone vibrated and I flipped off my headset. “Hello?”

  “Aidan, how’s it going?”

  I recognized Blake’s voice. “Hey, man. They keeping you busy enough in Prevention?”

  “Honestly, it’s crazy. How about you? Nothing like a series of fires for cutting short your leave without pay, huh?”

  Nothing like an old friend to hit you where it hurts. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “How’s things going with that? You and old Butcher make up? You like best friends now, or what?”

  I laughed. “Right.”

  “Mauvain knocking on your door, wanting to go fishing and have barbecues?”

  “Man, just shut up.”

  “All right, all right, seriously though. Everything okay? I mean, Hartman and everything?”

  I was tired of talking about it. Tired of thinking about it. “Yeah. You know, I’m actually in the rig right now on the way back from a call.”

  “I got you. Other ears present. Hey, I was actually wondering if we could get together for lunch. There’s something I needed to talk to you about, and I’d feel best if we could meet in person.”

  I had the sensation in my chest that you get on an airplane with a sudden change in altitude. “Oh, okay. Of course. I’m on shift all day today. Can you come downtown? I’m not sure what we’re making for lunch yet.”

  “Right. You just said you were on the rig, too. You know . . . it’s probably better that we meet alone. How about tomorrow morning instead? I’ll buy you coffee.”

  What is he guarding? “Yeah, all right. Just give me a ring around eight.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I flipped the phone closed. What was so private he couldn’t risk anyone at the firehouse overhearing?

  Back at the station I hiked the stairs to the third floor. Ben Sower stood in the dayroom talking with Julianne. They were focused in conversation and didn’t notice me.