America's Bravest (41 page)

“Did she talk to anybody at the time?”

He shook his head. “But we did great. I was
in the fire department’s pilot program for training guys in high
school. We both worked two jobs until I was out and into the
Academy. She went to school to get her nursing degree and, later,
her certification to be a pediatric surgery nurse.”

“I’m impressed at how far you’ve come.”

“We’re happy. Or we were, until 9/1l. She
freaked out then, too, and again when Sinco happened. But it was
the female firefighter who died that turned the tide for us.”

Jack shook his head. “Yeah, I was pretty busy
after Teddy’s death.”

“I bet.”

“So what are you saying, Tony? You left the
line for her?”

His eyes widened. “Yeah. I did. And don’t
tell me I shouldn’t have done it. I’d do anything for her.”

Harrison waited a beat. “First off, I’m not
going to tell you to
do
anything. I’m here for you to
talk, to frame things, to maybe see things in a different light.
But I have to know one thing. Are you only in my office today
because Noah made it a requirement?”

Tony shook his head.

“What is it you want from me?”

His eyes welled.
Jesús.
He pressed
the lids with his thumb and forefinger. “It’s so embarrassing.”

The psychologist chuckled. “If you only knew
the things guys come in here and tell me.”

Just fucking
do
it!
“I
can’t get it up anymore. I can’t make love to my wife.”

“Hmm. I’ve heard that hundreds of times in
twenty years, so don’t worry, you’ve got company among the ranks.
Have you ever had this problem before?”

“Yeah, of course, all guys do.” When Jack
said nothing, Tony asked, “Don’t they?”

“Absolutely. So, what’s the issue?”

“It’s been a week. It never lasted a week.
And in the past, it only happened when I was tired, when the babies
could burst out crying any minute, when my mother died.”

“Again, all normal. So?”

He swallowed hard. “I read the papers,
magazines, and I’ve gone on line, about, you know,
it
.
”

“Impotence.”

“Oh, God.” Again he sighed. “The reports say
its cause could be emasculation by women. But I don’t understand,
Jack. I love Sophia. I don’t feel emasculated. She’s always made me
feel like a god. Especially in bed.”

“You’ve had a good sex life?”

“Man, the best. Even when we were
separated.”

“You separated over your job?”

“Uh-huh. But I’m back home now.”

“Why?”

He told the counselor about Miguel. About his
own fear when Sydney was hurt. He didn’t mention Brock Carrington.
This was enough humiliation for one day.

“Are things good at home?”

“They’re great. The kids are happy. Sophia
loves having me work regular hours.”

“What about you? Do you like being here at
the Academy?”

“You know, I didn’t at first. It was like
being in an alien universe. But after a few weeks, I do. I’m
different from the other instructors.”

“How?”

“I’m nice, for one thing.”

Now Harrison laughed aloud, making Tony
smile, too.

“But I’m good at transmitting knowledge.
Seeing weaknesses and how to correct them. Right before this
happened, I was pretty psyched by how good teaching felt.”

“Then you couldn’t get it up.”

Tony nodded.

Harrison watched him.

“You think there’s a connection between the
two things?”

“I told you I won’t tell you those kinds of
things.”

“No, give me your opinion. You think the fact
that I’m beginning to enjoy working at the Academy might be
connected to not being…to impotence.”

“It could be, Tony. It could be.”

oOo

Overwrought at the end of her shift, Sophia
drove out to the lake and sat on the bench at the public beach. She
watched the waves lap and recede, and though it was chilly,
breathed in the cool, soothing air.

Be careful what you wish for,
her
mother used to say. Sophia shook her head. She’d gotten exactly
what she wanted from her husband, and still, she was miserable.

And afraid in a different way.

One of things that had always been great
between her and Tony was sex. They’d learned and experimented
together, gotten books and videos when they were older, but mostly,
they’d always been so close, the chemistry simply exploded between
them. Had she destroyed that by her fear and cowardliness?

This morning, he’d said he had an appointment
with Jack Harrison, the fire department psychologist.

And Sophia admitted to herself that
she
was the one who should be going to therapy. Not him.
But she couldn’t; she just couldn’t.

Pulling her coat tighter around her, Sophia
closed her eyes and tried to relax. Despite the bracing breeze, she
couldn’t stay in the present. Her mind drifted back…

Fifteen-year-old Sophia walked into her
guidance counselor’s office and smiled at Mr. Brady. She adored him
because he’d been so kind to her for her two years at the high
school, and was very understanding when she told him she was
pregnant. Sophia trusted him more than any other adult in her life.
And he was the one the school required she see a counselor to be
accepted into their mother-to-be program, which serviced area city
schools.

“Hello, Sophia. Have a seat.” Geez he looked
big today, even sitting behind his desk. He picked up her file and
read it. Frowned. “So, so want to keep the baby?”

“Yeah. I don’t believe in abortion. The
Catholic Church forbids it.”

“The Catholic Church says premarital sex is a
sin, too.” His tone was sort of mean.

She didn’t expect this from him. Her mother
had already made her confess to their priest and he hadn’t been
this way before.

“I’m keeping him.”

“Then what, Sophia?”

“Tony and I are getting our parents’
permission to marry as soon as we turn sixteen.”

His expression was almost…disgusted. “Do you
know how hard it’ll be for two young kids like you to make it? The
odds are against you.”

“I don’t care,” she blurted out. “I love
Tony.”

“All the girls who come in here in your
condition say the same thing about the losers who got them
pregnant.”

Though she was scared of him now, and totally
embarrassed by her circumstances, she lifted her chin and pretended
not to be. “I’m different. We’re different.”

He leaned back in his chair and she didn’t
like the way her was watching her. “You’re a beautiful girl,
Sophia. You’ll be a gorgeous, sexy woman. Are you sure you want to
tie yourself down to some deadbeat boy?”

“Tony’s not a deadbeat. He’s going into the
firefighter program junior year. He’s gonna be one and support
us.”

“He’s not even a man yet.”

Sophia swallowed hard. Despite the fact that
she thought she could trust this man, she wasn’t going to let him
put Tony down. “I won’t listen to you talk about him this way.”

“You’ll listen to anything I have to say or
you won’t get into Hope Hall. You’ll have to drop out of
school.”

She bit her tongue. They needed this. She
still had dreams of being a nurse, and Tony promised he’d help make
that dream come true.

The counselor stood then, circled the desk
and, uh-oh, locked the door. He came to stand in front of her,
towered over her really, so she was facing his belt buckle. He
traced his fingers along the metal. She was afraid to look up. Then
he knelt before her. She tried to inch back in the seat. He raised
his hand and traced the cross that laid in the vee of her
blouse.

“W-what are you doing?”

“Being nice. Like I’ve always been to you,
sweetheart. Now that I know you’re not one of those boring
good
girls, I could show you”—he cupped her very full
breast— “what it’s like to be with a man.”

“No, don’t. I don’t want you to.”

“Maybe
I
do.” His hand fisted on the
neckline of her blouse and he yanked. Hard. The material ripped
down the side.
Oh my God.

Fueled by fear and anger, Sophia pushed him
back and he fell on his ass. “What the…?”

Tony had taught her some things because he
said she was so pretty, some guy was bound to try to force himself
on her. So before Mr. Brady could finish, she kicked him in the
balls.

While he was groaning on the floor, she fled
the office.

Later, at Hope Hall, she heard that he’d put
the moves on other pregnant girls but they were too afraid to tell,
and she didn’t plan to, either. But Tony knew something was wrong,
and so she’d told him. He’d never trusted the guy anyway, and when
she told him what Mr. Brady did, he found the guidance counselor
alone, punched him out good and told him if he kept Sophia out of
the program or reported to anybody that Tony had hit him, Tony and
Sophia would tell the principal what he did and get all the other
girls to back them up.…

The slap of the wind brought her back to the
present; her feet were like ice and her hands red and roughened.
Shaky from the awful memory, she stood and walked back to her
car.

If anything, she was more miserable than when
she’d come out here.

oOo

It was Take Your Child to Work day at the
middle school, and for the first time ever, Tony could bring one of
his kids with him. Miguel happily missed school, dressed in navy
pants and light blue shirt so he looked like a miniature
firefighter. They entered the Academy gym together. He was proud of
his kid, and he wanted everybody to meet the boy.

Olive Hennessy approached them. She addressed
Miguel. “Welcome, Miguel. We have four kids here today. I’m
Battalion Chief Hennessy, and those guys over there”—she pointed to
a group of staff—“are the other teachers here.”

“Like my dad.”

She smiled at Tony. “Don’t tell anybody, but
he’s worked here the shortest period of time and he’s the best
teacher I’ve got on staff.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

Straightening, Olive nodded, then strode to
the front of the group where the recruits were lined up. They went
through the roll call, though after a month, the corrections were
few and the recruits less nervous.

Olive gave them the rundown for the day.
“Today, you’ll be in the ‘firehouse,’ aka the Academy, going about
your routine and you’ll have to respond to a call. I’m going to let
the four kids visiting us today ride the fire truck from the
Academy to the tower, then back again, so you’ll need to stuff
yourselves in.”

The “call” came right while the recruits were
cooking lunch, which often happened and line guys hated. Once
they’d received a call during Thanksgiving dinner at the firehouse
where families were in attendance. The guys Tony was working with
said their spouses were pissed off, but Sophia took it like a
trouper, as she always did. Until now.

Tony got a kick out of watching the recruits
and kids arrive at the tower when the rigs swerved into a tight
space. There were three trucks—one Ladder, one Quint and one
Pumper. Already Tony had forgotten the noise of the trucks when
they came screeching to a halt, sirens blaring. Even after they
arrived, loud beeping and simply the motors running hurt his ears.
He wondered how Miguel was doing.

Soon, his boy descended from the truck—one of
the recruits helped him down—and Tony noted somebody had put a
helmet on him and a turnout coat that was only about one size too
big. The probies positioned the aerial ladder, the mechanical one
that could reach the entire four stories of the training tower. For
today’s exercise, the recruits would operate the aerial by
themselves, place it at a window on the second floor, then climb
through the opening. They’d go inside and do a simple maneuver.

Hennessy approached him. “Miguel wants to go
up. Kyle’s taken a liking to him, so he’ll be right behind him. We
won’t let him inside, of course.”

Tony grinned, proud of his son. “Yeah,
sure.”

It was fun watching Miguel mount the aerial.
As far as he knew, the boy didn’t have any vertigo. When he reached
the top, he turned and raised a fist to his dad. Tony raised his
back.

Afterward, Miguel couldn’t stop bubbling
about the fun he had that morning. Tony had enjoyed the drill, too.
He got off seeing his kid participate and on helping with the
training exercise.

Good thing, Ramirez, ’cause you’re
not
getting off
any other way.
Shit, for a brief
respite, he hadn’t thought about his problems. He’d seen Harrison
twice more and still nothing had improved in the bedroom. It made
Tony so mad, he couldn’t contain the anger sometimes.

He ate with the other staff members while
Miguel sat with the recruits, who were doting on all four visitors.
He noticed Smith, the girl Tony had helped in the maze, was
particularly attentive. He ate the spaghetti they’d cooked—heated
up but still good—and chatted easily with the staff.

After they finished, Miguel even helped clean
up and joined Tony only after they were given a half-hour
break.

The kid bubbled with excitement. “That was so
cool, Dad. Did you see me? I didn’t even get scared. And these guys
are great. The girls, too.”

“I’m glad you’re having fun,
hijo.”

Miguel looked thoughtful. “Can I ask you
something, Dad?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Don’t you miss those kinds of runs?”

He swallowed hard. Out of the mouths of
babes. “Yeah, I do.”

“You like teaching here?”

“Yeah, son, I do. But nothing’s ever a
hundred percent in life. It’s full of choices, and often, each of
the alternatives has drawbacks.”

“I know. So how come Mom isn’t happy
now?”

“Mom?”

“Yeah, you know, because you’re not in danger
anymore.”