When I walked through the door, the guys were shuffling in as the shift changes began.
“Did you break her hip?” was what I heard as soon as I walked in.
Gathered in the lounge, Logan and Axe were already talking, loud and bright-eyed. The two of them were never late to anything, and if they could have predicted a fire, I was sure they would have been right there and ready for it five minutes before it started.
“Fuck you,” Denny Harlin, our new probationary firefighter (probie), on the job four months, grumbled as they shit-talked his new girlfriend. Hell, she could have been his mom.
“Let me ask you something.” Logan leaned forward, getting serious now. “Does she go to brunch with your grandma?”
“She’s only forty-two.” He blinked his long curly black eyelashes, as if forty-two was an okay age. Whenever he’s listening to someone talk, he scrunches up his nose. It makes him look like he’s taking a shit or something.
“And you’re twenty.” Logan shook his head, his feet moving from the floor to the table. “That’s weird. Can’t your smooth-talkin’ ass find a girl your own age?”
Denny looked at Logan’s boots on the table, rolled his eyes, and tried to ignore us by finding the container of peanuts interesting.
Logan looked up the magazine he was holding. “What’s that chick’s name from
Jersey Shore
. . . you know the one with the big eyes?” Logan was great at diverting a conversation just to piss people off. It’s like sport to him. That, and betting.
Everyone laughed but never gave him an answer. None of us knew.
“Haven’t you ever heard of the divide by two and add seven rule?” I asked, still smiling at Logan as he tried to Google it on his phone. He hated not having the answer.
“No.” Denny looked at me funny, thrown off by my question. What’s that?”
“He’s never even heard of Michael Jackson. Don’t confuse the kid,” Kasey said, taking a seat next to Logan. “Stay on track.” He sat down and leveled a serious look at Denny. You never wanted a look like that from Kasey. “If she graduated with your mom, which I’m sure she did, stay away from her.”
Logan leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Her name is Nicole Polizzi. In case you care.”
I laughed again, shaking my head.
“Don’t bring her around here. Cap might get confused, thinking his sister’s here.” Axe laughed, adding to the conversation.
“Department regulation, no fucking in the firehouse unless it’s your own hand,” Logan told him, throwing the
Playboy
magazine. It hit him in the chest with a thud. “Fuck away if that’s the case.”
Denny looked at Logan as if that statement was bullshit. All of us had probably done it at least once here. I knew I had with Aubrey, and I knew Logan did with Brooke once. Kasey probably hadn’t, since he’s a rule-following hard-ass.
Most of the time our days started with teasing, ribbing, joking, anything to get a rise out of anyone. Denny was our guy most of the time, being the probie and everything, but we had others we picked on. Axe was a good one. We’d ask him what disease he had this week.
The thing about him, though, was he liked to dish it but couldn’t take it.
Most guys follow the rules. Axe, well, he doesn’t give a fuck. He pushed boundaries most didn’t even know were there. But because of him, thousands of people were alive.
Axe had his fair share of heartache. More than most.
Parents? Died when he was eight. Lived with his uncle until he was eighteen. Uncle, a firefighter with Engine 27, was killed in a fire, which was probably why he became a firefighter. He got married to his high school sweetheart at nineteen. She died of a brain aneurism a year after they married.
Dude’s had a hard, tragic life.
He’s spiteful and selfish but a funny guy, and I understood his position. Most of us did. He’s devoted his life to the firehouse now, and other than sex with random women, he has nothing else.
People always tell you what it’s like to lose someone, and you prepare yourself to a certain extent. Nobody prepares you for the after part. The weeks, months, even years after their death and the longtime effect it has on you.
All Axe knew now was drinking and pussy. If that’s the life he wanted, he had it. In fact, it was the life a lot of firefighters had. When you see the shit we see day in and day out, it’s hard not to find the release those two habits offer.
“Hey.” Logan nudged my ribs with his elbow. “Come help me with something.”
He grabbed both Denny and me, and we walked out to the street where our cars were parked. He pointed to Sean Randal’s car. I hated that conceited fucker, and Logan knew it. He put whipped cream in my heater vent on Saturday, and my truck still smelled like rotten milk.
“A little payback?” He shook a vial of gold and turquoise glitter left over from Amelia’s birthday party. I nodded but then my eyes caught her shop across the street.
There was an ache in my chest when I saw her through the windows. So many times I wanted to run over there and just hold her, let her know she wasn’t alone, but nothing made my feet move.
“I remember when you guys did this to me,” Denny said, laughing so hard he could barely get the glitter down the vent without getting it all over the place.
“You should. It was last week.” Logan wiped the excess off with a napkin. “Dude, his car is black. Take it easy.” He brushed a few more bits of glitter away. Only problem was that he brushed them in my direction, and I sneezed.
That shit went everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. In my eyes, up my nose, in my hair, and even my ears. Ever tried to get glitter off yourself?
It ain’t easy. That shit’s like glue.
Kasey noticed my hair as I walked inside. “Why are you all sparkly?”
Sean, who was standing beside him with a clipboard in hand, going over checklists, snapped his head in my direction. I smiled. “No reason.”
As with most firefighters, we played jokes daily. When you’re with each other as much as we are, it’s like a game to see who you can piss off the most. We’d all been the brunt of them on more than one occasion, and we fucked with anything we could, from their bed to their lockers and even their cars.
The only thing that was off limits?
Gear was off limits for safety reasons. We all have different ways of organizing our gear, sizing it, setting it up for quickly donning it for a call. So don’t fuck with it. That’s the general rule for us.
Beds?
Oh, yeah. Fuck with that. Salt or sugar, or sand for Denny. He’s OCD, and the dude spends so much time washing himself he’s an easy target for sure.
“Come on, boys, time to get to work,” Mike, our captain said, taking a walk through the apparatus bay, where we were standing next to the engine and truck parked in our six-bay station.
As the day started around nine, we’d usually move on to doing our daily checks of the trucks. Made sure they were ready to go and full of water, that all the radios were working and the apparatuses all had their equipment and were prepared for the next call.
When we weren’t on a call, our jobs usually included training, maintaining equipment, cleaning equipment, or building inspections. Then there were the jokes, our political views, behavior problems, drinking, cheating — you name it, it happens at every firehouse. Hell, it happens anywhere you work.
My job for today was cleaning windows. Logan was beside me in scuba gear. He’d do anything for a laugh, and the way people looked at him wearing scuba gear to clean a window got a laugh.
He usually wore complete bunker gear and a mask when he cleaned the bathroom.
“Do you think I could hit Wicked Wonders with this hose?” Logan asked.
I laughed. “Probably.”
No sooner had I finished washing that window than I heard the laughter from beside me as Kasey asked, “You need some water?”
And there went my clean window.
He was such an asshole.
Sometimes I hated that we were assigned to the same house, ’cause he was always giving me shit. He thought I was a spoiled brat who needed an attitude adjustment, and I thought he was a judgmental hard-ass.
If he was to offer any last words to me, I knew exactly what they’d be, with a brash smile plastered across his too-cold face. “It ain’t all about you, asshole. Have some respect.”
Though Kasey was only thirty-four, he was shameless beyond his years and had seen more shit than most in this job needed to.
Thankfully, I wasn’t a probie at this house, or I probably wouldn’t have made it out alive. Another guy I went through the academy with did his probation here, and he’s a janitor now. Tells you how easily Kasey can get inside your head.
Beep Beep
The alarms went off throughout the building and the apparatus bay where most of us were standing. “Ladder 1, Engine 10 . . . 764 Alaskan Way . . . structural fire. Battalion 2. Medic 16.”
We all stopped what we were doing and headed for the truck. Everyone except Denny, who was eating a cupcake. A fucking cupcake.
“What the hell!” Kasey roused Denny by throwing his helmet at his feet. “Come on!”
“Where?” He took another bite of his cupcake.
“It’s a fire.” Logan slapped the back of his head, excitement and anticipation heard in his tone. He loved this. “We’re all invited.”
Within thirty seconds our ladder and engine pulled out onto Washington Street.
Firefighters aren’t good at anything besides fighting fire. And I say that because it’s true. We can’t act normal if we’re not making fun of someone. Most of us suffer from shift insomnia, have drinking problems and depression. We can’t make relationships work, and we have a hard time co-existing. We’re impatient, we’re angry, we’re annoyed, but we’re good guys.
We chose firefighting because it’s what we knew.
I say that we can’t function because we seem to lack patience and understanding for what’s going on around us.
For example, Logan probably doesn’t even know where Amelia goes to school, nor could he remember a birthday or anniversary, but he loved his wife and daughter with so much passion that he didn’t need to remember those details.
“They called in a second alarm already,” Mike Rogers, our captain, said, his eyes full of excitement.
I was positive Mike had spent most of his childhood being treated for pyromania. It led to a career as a firefighter and eventually a position as lieutenant. Crazy bastard. Didn’t mean he didn’t still have an obsession with it, because he did.
I admit that I’ve always had an obsession with fire, too. It’s something that forms early on for most firefighters. For me it started when I was in preschool maybe. It could have been sooner, but I was four or five when my dad came home from work where he worked Station 17 with my Uncle Jerry. They’d been working a structural fire where a family’s two children had been trapped.
One little girl I went to school with died in the fire, but her brother was saved. Though my father was clearly broken up about losing the little girl and not being able to save her, he was thankful he saved one of that family’s children. The boy he saved was Logan.
“Are you scared?” Logan asked Denny when we reached the entry, command giving orders to Mike as he relayed them to us. They let us know there were six floors to the apartment complex and that most had been evacuated, except for a woman on the third floor.
He was. I could tell by his face he was and the way he tapped his foot the entire way here. “Yeah.”
Logan met me outside, halligan in hand. “Ready, man?”
“Always, brother.” We go in when everyone else goes out. We’re all crazy. You have to be to go into a burning building.
Logan smiled and continued up the stairs. Denny looked back at me when we reached the second floor and pulled our masks over our faces. “I forgot to fill my tank after the last job.”
“You’re such a douchebag,” I said. “How the fuck have you made it this far in life, let alone graduated from the academy?”
He looked confused.
“Go back to the truck and get the spare one.” He did as I told him, barreling down two flights and then returning just as quickly.
Most know firefighting is inherently dangerous, along with operating some our tools of the trade. To me, and most of the other guys, the waiting around seemed to be the most stressful part . . . when all our work was done and we were just sitting around, waiting to see when we’d be called to duty. That gets to you sometimes.
Once we were on a job, we did what we were trained to do.
“I’m getting too old for this shit,” Axe said, behind Logan and in front of me. Never failed — Logan was usually first in and last out. It’s just the type of guy he was, full of the dedication, valor, and commitment most people never had, let alone breathed daily.
I looked up to him in many ways, both professionally and personally.
Around us, black smoke billowed through broken windows, letting us know we didn’t have long. The smoke, a vapor so dense it felt like glue, clinging to me and my lungs.
The path a fire will take is hard to calculate, and being on the pipe with a hose in hand is essentially a lot safer than search and rescue. There’s nothing to protect you.
Fully charged with black smoke, the second and third floors were engulfed.
Command had told us the woman was on the third floor. Once we found the apartment, we could hear moaning but couldn’t see anything, the heat so intense it was blinding. To my left, Logan got out the thermal imaging camera and searched, crawling on all fours. I stayed below the heat, searching. Like all firefighters, we assessed the situation and responded based on our training.
“Seattle Fire Department . . . anybody here?” That dirty orange glow had consumed the kitchen.
We found her in the kitchen, unconscious and unresponsive. She wasn’t breathing.
“Ladder 1 to command, we got her and are bringing her down now.”
“10-4, another resident said there’s a male victim trapped on two.”
I pulled the woman from the home and began CPR until Ben, the paramedic with Medic 16, came over and took over compressions. That was when I went back in, looking for the male victim with Logan.
I didn’t like calls like this. They reminded me that you could be doing anything, like making dinner, and shit happens. Fire happens.