Through the Fire Read online

  Julianne’s voice raised a bit. “It’s great to see you again, too.” She gave Ben a hug and turned for the door, stopping when she realized her path would intersect mine.

  “Still here?” I said.

  She looked down and to the side. “I was just leaving.”

  I didn’t mean it to sound as if she was unwelcome. “No rush. I mean . . . it’ll be lunch soon. You’re welcome to stay.”

  She pulled keys from her pocket and brought her hands together.

  “Thank you. That’s a kind offer. But I do need to get going. There’s a ton of work for me back at the lab.”

  “Right.” I stepped aside. “Of course.”

  She gave me that same polite smile and walked to the stairwell. Even the way she moved seemed familiar.

  “Wait,” I said. “Are you sure we haven’t met?”

  She turned. “I never said we hadn’t.”

  “You didn’t?” I cleared my throat. “I mean, we’ve met before, right?”

  Tones.

  I tilted my head to the ceiling and sighed. She smiled, this time with a hint of friendliness.

  I motioned upward. “It’s never the best timing—”

  “Battalion One, Engine One, Engine Two . . .”

  The dispatcher continued. I put my hands in front of me. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

  She made a quick wave and turned for the door. I twirled onto the pole, spinning around and seeing, just before I descended, that Julianne was still there watching, biting her bottom lip.

  The smooth cylinder rushed through my hands, my feet braking in time with the floor. Firefighters scattered to their rigs like bugs from a lifted rock. I made it to the back of the cab as Katrina hit the button for the apparatus-bay door.

  She flipped on the rig battery switch to a high-pitched buzz. “Air pressure’s down to fifteen pounds.” A red light blinked on the dash.

  Butcher leaned over. “What?”

  Kat pushed the ignition, and the diesel motor grumbled. The ladder truck beside us echoed.

  She leaned on the emergency brake. “It’s locked out.” The buzz continued. “We’re stuck here till the air tanks build up more pressure.”

  The radio crackled. “Reno, Engine Two en route, clearing another call on the edge of our district.”

  Lowell flipped up his collar. “That keeps us first due. You want me to hook up the air line?”

  I caught a glimpse of the pressure gauge. Both tanks lingered at twenty PSI.

  “No,” Kat said. “I already had it plugged in. Something’s wrong.” She swung a look at Butcher that could have transected his head. “I thought you said it was a little leak.”

  Another radio transmission. “Reno, Engine Three en route.”

  The ladder truck rolled out, followed by the Rescue. Waits waved and smiled as he passed us.

  Lowell pounded the wall and cursed.

  Katrina revved up the RPMs. The air-pressure needles lifted like bath water. Twenty-two. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. “I can’t start moving till we get to at least forty.”

  I sat in the jumpseat and worked my arms into my air pack.

  Lowell cracked his neck. Butcher stared at the ceiling.

  We were Labradors on leashes in a park full of Frisbees.

  Katrina twisted her grip on the steering wheel. “Even forty will only give us one stop at best.”

  Dispatch came over the radio, “Engine One, Reno.”

  Butcher pinched the bridge of his nose and keyed the mic.

  “Go ahead, Reno.”

  “Are you en route?”

  Lowell sat with his knee vibrating. I stared out the window at the empty apparatus bay. Butcher let out a hard breath.

  Katrina placed her palm on the emergency air brake and pushed. “Come on, big boy.”

  It acquiesced.

  The radio chirped. “Engine One, Reno.”

  Butcher looked at Kat. “We good?”

  She shook her head. “That’s only thirty pounds . . .”

  Butcher ran his thumb back and forth over the edge of the center console.

  Dispatch again. “All units responding to the fire at Middlegate Mobile Home Park, be advised we’ve received multiple calls that there is a child still inside.”

  Butcher pulled on his seat belt. “Let's hope we don’t have to stop more than once.” He clicked the mic. “Reno, Engine One’s en route.”

  We flew off the apron like a horse out of the gate. I held the side of the seat as Kat swung us onto Second, barreling east toward Wells. My chest pounded like a war party beating skin-stretched toms.

  Radio static. “Battalion One, Truck One on scene with wavers.” Captain Sower’s voice taut but collected. “Single-wide trailer well involved, one child reported inside.”

  I leaned to look out the front. Thick, tarry smoke plumed skyward.

  “Hang on, boys.” Katrina laid on the accelerator through a yellow light.

  Butcher pushed the grinder into a screaming wail. The light flicked red with us blaring through. A block away, filtering through the haze, stood a square white sign reading Middlegate Estates.

  We slowed with the guttural flapping of the engine retarder. Katrina feathered the brake with a squeaking furp-tiss, furp-tiss and swung into the park through a curtain of smoke. The rig jerked to a halt beside the truck and a white mobile home with ten-foot flames raging from the top.

  “Here’s our stop.” She pulled the air brake.

  I hopped out my door. The odor of burning plastic stung my nostrils. A woman stood screaming in the gravel-lined street. On the trailer’s rotting wood porch, from the narrow side doorway, Chris Waits materialized, clutching a little girl to his chest.

  Her arms hung limp, gray and soot-stained.

  Fire swirled from the rooftop. It curved its neck and glowered over me like a thirty-foot cobra. I blinked to see Butcher charging around the front of the engine. His eyes were big.

  He pointed to the trailer. “Get some water on that.”

  I met Lowell at the sideboard and grabbed a loop of hose. I took off with the nozzle while he flaked out the hose.

  Over my shoulder I saw Waits set the girl on a bed of white quartz. I held the nozzle and the empty hose, staring as they pulled out a bag valve mask and placed it over her face. Timothy turned on the oxygen tank. Waits squeezed the bag.

  The small frame of her torso rose and relaxed.

  Water channeled through the hose line, straightening bends. I looked at the nozzle and the bale bent open. Before I could process the chain of events, a hundred and fifty pounds of pressure shot from the tip and the hose slipped from my grip.

  It danced like a Chinese dragon, flipping and taunting. People ducked for cover. I pounced on it, inching my way back to the tip. Flailing spray shook back and forth.

  “Shut that thing down!” Butcher yelled.

  Katrina pounded a gate valve on the panel. I reached the nozzle as the stream stopped to a trickle.

  I made my feet and closed the bale. The fire reared higher, stretching corkscrew tentacles. I stared into its burning gullet, its jaws agape, descending upon me.

  Something exploded. A heat wave stung my neck through my hood. I ducked and spun, catching glimpses of a trailer now fully involved.

  Ghoulish figures danced from the flame lengths. Taunting eyes and razor teeth, mocking cackles. The fire folded back, encircling, growing, consuming even the dirt and the rocks as it squeezed in around me.

  “Hit that, A-O!” Lowell collided with me and snatched the nozzle. My eyes refocused from him to the trailer. Fire fanned up the branches of nearby cottonwoods.

  Butcher backed up Lowell and supported the hose. “Propane tank blew.”

  Lowell cranked the bale open. “Yeah. No—” Rushing water roared. He spun the nozzle to a wide fog pattern, and the two of them marched forward.

  I stood frozen. I felt like a new kid. What was the fire doing? What was I doing? I picked up a section of hose and pushed on it. Butc
her and Lowell stumbled forward.

  Butcher turned and waved. “We got it. Go help with the girl.”

  I dropped the hose and stepped backward, tripping on a coupling and falling on my air pack. An ambulance pulled into the entrance. The truck guys worked the girl, still languid, not breathing.

  I made my feet and shuffled over to Waits, my new goal to be as little of a liability as possible. “What can I do?”

  “Pick her up.” Waits squeezed the bag mask. “It’s time for us to go.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  I wasn’t about to let a three-year-old die in my arms.

  Never mind that she had breathed enough smoke to make her lungs like leather, that Waits’s hand with the bag mask was the only thing keeping her alive.

  I cradled her body and navigated the spaghetti mess of hose lines on the broken pavement. Timothy followed with the oxygen bottle. The medics struggled with the gurney.

  “Leave it there,” Waits said. “We’re coming to you.”

  Smoke stung my eyes, spinning in kaleidoscope swirls of sun-burnt orange, amber, and yellow. The girl’s straw-colored hair bounced with each step.

  I felt like a passenger in my own body. I couldn’t think beyond the moment. Everything spiraled beyond my control.

  Amid the roaring din of Engine One’s pump, the crackle and static of radio traffic, and the hissing recession of heat from hose lines, I whispered to her, “Come on, baby. Come on now, breathe.”

  From the back of the ambulance the medic reached down. “Bring her up. There you go.”

  I hopped in and set her on the gurney. Waits kept bagging.

  The medic sitting at her head had a slim build, short-cropped blond hair, and a Charlie Chaplin moustache. “Greetings, gents. Let’s save us a girl.”

  Timothy shut the doors and the bus rolled out. Engine one faded in the smoke. The siren wailed. We hooked around the corner and I stumbled forward.

  I held the girl’s upper arm to wrap it in a blood pressure cuff. Her bicep was thin and cool, like a rubber hose. I squeezed the ball of the cuff and spun the valve, watching the needle descend, waiting for it to bounce, waiting for her pulse, to hear the loudening labor of her heart. It fluttered at eighty with the dull thud of arterial wall knocking.

  I pulled the stethoscope off. “Eighty over sixty.”

  “Thank you, sir.” The medic unzipped the intubation kit.

  I glanced at his name badge. Thaddeus McCoy.

  I looked around the ambulance, thinking I should know what to do next. I felt so out of step. “How else can I help, Thaddeus?”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “Bones is just fine.”

  I cocked my head. “I’m sorry?”

  “Bones,” he said. “People call me Bones.”

  He placed both hands on the side of the girl’s head and tilted it.

  He nodded to Waits. “Go ahead and hyperventilate her, please.”

  Waits squeezed the bag faster.

  “That’s good.”

  With his left hand around a steel cylindrical handle, Bones inserted a straight metal blade past her tongue, lifting her jaw and shining a light down her throat. With his right hand he held a breathing tube about the diameter of her pinky.

  He stared and smiled. “There you be, you pearly gates.” He slid the tube down her throat, passing the tip through her vocal cords. “Beauty, eh.”

  He sat up and held the top between his thumb and forefinger. Waits connected the bag to the tube.

  “Go ahead and ventilate.” Bones listened over her stomach with a stethoscope.

  Waits squeezed the bag.

  “Good.” Bones listened over each lung. “Good, good.”

  The driver spoke through the doghouse hole to the back. “A minute out from County.”

  “Copy, that. Here.” Bones placed my hand on the tube by her mouth. “Hold this.”

  I tightened my fingers on the plastic. Come on, girl.

  Bones keyed the microphone and gave a report to the hospital. The backup alarm sounded. The ambulance reversed into a space at the ER.

  A nurse opened the back doors. “Tube secured?”

  Bones finished tearing a strip of tape. “Just about. Okay, all set.” He looked at me. “Fine work. You can let go now.”

  I did and watched the driver pull the gurney out and the nurse take over bagging. They rolled through an automatic sliding door to the ER.

  Bones turned and saluted. “As always gentlemen, a pleasure.”

  I sat head in hands outside the Emergency Department. My hair felt hot on my palms. My coat and helmet lay next to me. Intermittent traffic squawked from the radio.

  Waits stood by a planter box, turning a dial. “Sounds like they got ahold of the fire.”

  I ran my hands over my face and nodded. No thanks to me.

  The hard thwup-thwup of helicopter blades beat overhead. A security officer walked by, keys jangling, his shoulder mic saying something about the bird on the roof. A yellow cab pulled into the parking lot.

  Waits motioned with his head. “There’s our ride.”

  I got in the cab, holding my coat and helmet on my lap.

  The driver gave us a once over. He had copper skin and a Roman nose, his black hair poofed back like Mario Andretti. “You guys smell like smoke.”

  Waits nodded. I glanced out the window.

  Mario tittered. “Imagine that, huh? So, yeah, where to, fellas?

  Downtown?”

  “Middlegate Estates,” Waits said.

  “The mobile home park?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Is that where all the smoke was coming from?”

  I pulled on my seat belt. “Yeah.”

  Mario creased his eyebrows. “Huh.” He dropped the transmission into drive. “So, what’re you guys doing here . . .” His voice trailed off. He made the sign of the cross and pulled out of the parking lot. “Never mind. I don’t want or need to know.”

  We drove a block before hitting a red light. The meter read three dollars and ninety-two cents.

  Mario looked in the rearview mirror. “You guys should be proud of what you do. You do a great job. I couldn’t do it.” He ran his hand back through his hair. “It’s hard to get on with a department though, isn’t it?” He flipped the turn signal and spun the wheel with one hand. “I have an ex–brother-in-law out in Elko who was trying to be a fireman. They did a background check on him and found out he was an accessory to a liquor store robbery as a minor. It cost him the job. What an idiot.”

  Mario slowed to let a bus merge in front of us. “So, same deal as always—you guys sign a voucher and we send it to the city?”

  Waits leaned forward. “Where do you need me to sign?”

  Mario handed back a white pad of paper with carbon pages. “Just keep the yellow copy for your captain.”

  We hit every red light for three blocks before we pulled near the entrance for the park. “Here good?”

  Waits said thanks and we got out. The cab rolled off.

  Waits threw me a look up and down. “You all right?”

  I shrugged, putting on my best nonchalant air. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, Aidan. You just seem out of sorts. But it’s everybody though, you know. Hartman in the hospital’s been hard on—”

  “Look, I appreciate your concern. Really. I’m fine.” I took a deep breath. He’s just trying to help. “What you did for that girl was great . . . it was great. That’s what matters.”

  He eyed me and nodded. “Whatever happens to that girl . . . you know, I can beat myself up that I should’ve got in there faster, or that I should’ve gone left instead of right first. But whatever happens, it’s not anybody’s fault. Except for Biltman . . . I don’t know what I’d do if I saw that guy.” He stared at the ground, shaking his head. “Just . . . if there’s ever anything you need, Aidan, I’m here.”

  I feigned a confident nod and smile. “For sure, of course. Same for you.” I pa
tted him on the shoulder and turned away. I put on my helmet and walked into the trailer park, wondering what wreck-bound surprises lay in wait for me next.

  CHAPTER

  17

  T imothy passed me in the dayroom. “There’s an envelope for you on the kitchen counter.” He stopped. “Looks like a woman’s handwriting.”

  A woman's? “Oh. All right, thanks.”

  He smiled. “Come on now. What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing, man.”

  He studied my face. “You broke up with Christine, didn’t you?”

  I shifted my jaw and scratched it. “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Please. I saw that one coming a year ago.”

  So it had been that obvious—to everyone but me, apparently. “Well, yeah. It’s . . . I don’t know. But I definitely don’t know anything about a letter.”

  “Oh, so it’s a letter?”

  “An envelope. Whatever.”

  He laughed.

  I shrugged. “It’s probably just something from Admin.”

  “It’s not an interdepartment envelope.”

  “It’s not?”

  He shook his head, grinning. “Nope.”

  “Wipe that look off your mug.”

  “Or what? You’ll do it for me.”

  “Here.” I set my feet apart. “Come here a little closer. I want to show you something.”

  He blew me off and walked toward the dorms. “Don’t think I don’t know you, O’Neill.”

  “You better sleep with one eye open.”

  His voice sailed back, “Bring it. Anytime.”

  “Don’t think I won’t.”

  I stared at the wall with the framed patch collection. A quiet hope grew in me that the note was from Julianne. Not that I’d have admitted it to anyone. I tried to shake off the thought as just a rebound reflex. But there it lingered, just below the surface.

  The kitchen smelled like sautéed mushrooms and garlic. Waits lifted the top off a steaming Dutch oven. Sortish washed a cutting board at the sink. I resolved to not even look at the countertops.

  Katrina sat by the window two tables in, penciling a sudoku.

  “There’s an envelope for you on the island, A-O.”