The second time we went back in, the smoke was thicker.
There were times when the smoke was so thick and the heat was so intense that you couldn’t hear, let alone see anything. But I had confidence in my training to know I could make it out alive.
If I didn’t, well, I knew I would have given it what I had to give.
Most firefighters know the risk versus reward scenario of our jobs. If we can save a life, we put ourselves at risk.
I never thought of it in terms of what I would be willing to do to save someone’s life. It’s more like, if that person has a chance to live, then I’m going to make an effort to save them.
Now, if it’s too dangerous, let’s say a well-involved building that might be 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, well, then, no one could survive that. There’s no sense in going in.
If the upper floor to a home has smoke so thick and brown, and we had to get through that to save them, they wouldn’t be alive.
Most people don’t realize that smoke will kill you just as quickly as flames can.
Logan got the male victim and was taking him down the stairs when command came through. “Where’s Denny?”
“Fuck if I know,” I told them, pissed that he hadn’t stayed with us. And just as I said that, a portion of the stairs gave way to the fire and collapsed.
I found Denny as I fell from the second floor to the first. Turns out he was behind me.
Fire is a living, breathing thing. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can control it, manipulate it. It can make you think it’s under control, and then suddenly, and usually without warning, it comes back to bite.
“You guys all right?” Mike asked.
My hand reached for my radio. “Never better.”
Once I got my head around my dive to the lower floor, I could hear the beeping of Denny’s PASS device and the hiss of his breathing apparatus. “Where the fuck are you, probie?”
“In the basement,” he said, words punctuated by the shaking in his voice.
Must have been the first time he’d floor-surfed. Not mine.
I looked over the edge of the floor where it had collapsed. “Hey, you. Need some help?”
He smiled as if he couldn’t wait to get out of there. We’d just gotten back outside to the staging area when I saw the woman we rescued being transported, but she appeared to be breathing now.
It left me with a smile that I’d saved one today.
“What is that smell?” Logan brushed ash from my hair and then looked over at Denny.
“Nothing.” Denny looked around the room. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Bullshit. It’s you.” Logan gagged and put his mask back on. “My nose is full of soot, and it’s not even making a difference here. You stink.”
“Take it back.” Denny shoved him back, and Logan collided with me against the side of the truck. I nearly threw up because the motion of Denny shoving Logan caused whatever had died in his pants to stir, and the smell got stronger.
“Probie shit his pants when he fell through the floor.” Reaching down, I put my own mask back on.
Logan nudged me. “You owe me twenty bucks.”
“I never bet you shit, asshole.”
“Yes, you did. Last week we said when probie got his first fire, he’d shit himself.” He held out his hand.
“I’m vulnerable.” I shoved Logan back against the wall. “I just fell through two floors. Don’t be a dick.”
He started laughing as Kasey came in. “Stop fucking around, assholes, and begin ventilation.”
We had just started ventilation when I saw another ladder company bringing down a body, succumbed to the smoke, no doubt. I hated seeing that. Logan looked up. His head tilted sideways, and then he tipped his head as the two firefighters moved past us with the body.
You know what I hate the most?
The people who say things like, “You have it so easy. So, what, you rescue cats from trees all day and help little old ladies down the stairs?”
That’s the general consensus on what we do, right?
The people who think that are the same ones who think it will never happen to them. They think they’re tough, that their muscles and strength, pride, or whatever will help save them.
I got news for you. I’ve seen even the toughest fall down and beg for you to save them.
Those guys who talk shit like that, can they understand what it’s like to look into a parent’s eyes as they beg you to save their little girl trapped inside their home? Can they understand what it’s like to extract a sixteen-year-old football star from his car when a drunk driver crossed the line? And then tell his parents he didn’t make it? Can they understand what it’s like to crawl on your hands and knees, burning through your gear searching for a mother, only to find her hugging her two small children, all dead?
Unless they’ve lived that lifestyle, walked in my shoes for a day, they can’t understand any of this and what I felt on any given day.
Day in and day out we bust our balls saving what we can, and at the end of the day, we’re tired.
We don’t want to be accountable some days. Some think that’s why Axe is the way he is.
At some point being accountable finds us, whether we want it to or not.
For me, I wanted it to find me. Begged for it. I wanted Aubrey and our kids in my life.
Now look at me.
I don’t know when it happened.
For us, we had gotten into a comfortable, familiar pace of parenting and living together, and I thought for sure I should propose. Then she got pregnant with Jayden. And I told myself she had two babies, so the least I could do was put a ring on her finger. But I had fears.
Fears I hadn’t told anyone. Even Logan.
Aubrey grew up in a home where men were changed like bed sheets. Weekly. Seeing that, and the way she was treated, changed her mindset on a lot of things.
I never thought Aubrey would cheat on me. It wasn’t in her nature after seeing her mom act that way for so long. But it did put doubt in her head about my intentions. Just as much as she saw her mom treat men like dirt, her mom was used just as often.
And then you take into account what Ridley did to her – you have a girl with underlying commitment issues and a boy afraid to push her into anything. I wasn’t sure Aubrey wanted to marry me. We literally never talked about it. Just went with the flow, so to speak.
But I did wonder, would she even say yes?
We’ve never talked about marriage. Not since we were little.
A while back we spoke about her mom and all her shit she’s pushed upon Aubrey, and Aubrey said, “I don’t understand marriage.”
She never expanded on the statement, and it got me thinking it wasn’t what she wanted. To me Aubrey was a simple girl. Insecure in some ways, had dealt with her fair share of assholes, and didn’t always open up. There was self-doubt in her veins that hadn’t even touched the surface of our relationship, and to me, she wasn’t ready for it.
She loved me, I knew that. But was she ready for marriage?
No one really knows the extent of what Ridley and Georgia had done to Aubrey emotionally. I had an idea, but it scared me to think that we’d never spoken about it. I knew he hit her, and that didn’t sit well with me. But what I lost my head about was that her mother allowed it and never did anything to stop it. Aubrey would never admit to it, but I know Ridley wasn’t the first guy to lay a hand on her in anger. Georgia’s clutch of endless men had done it, too. I saw it firsthand when we were younger.
I never said anything, and it killed me when she moved away with her mother, because I knew it would happen again. And it did. Only this time it was with someone she trusted her heart and body to.
That someone was supposed to be me.
For that reason, I despised her mother and the way she used her, and manipulated her. What if she convinced Aubrey that we weren’t meant to be again?
I didn’t think she’d listen, but you never know, and with the way shit’s been going lately, it’s hard to say.
Logan and I spoke about it often. He thought it was strange we weren’t married but had two kids together. Nowadays, though, it wasn’t all that weird and was rarely questioned. Logan didn’t know about everything else that was going on but he had an idea.
Gracie is four now, and I know she sees it. The strain that’s there. The change.
I make an effort. Aubrey makes an effort. We both feel it now. The distance that’s creeping in and everything in between. It’s money, it’s work, it’s distance and time and a silence you want to break but just can’t. Not always within your control, but it’s there. I fucking hate it. I hate all of it and I want my family back, but breaking that cycle is hard to do. Saying something is hard.
Logan and Brooke are different. Not sure how they do it, but they do. Maybe it’s because Brooke stays at home with Amelia during the day, or maybe it’s that their relationship is just stronger. High school sweethearts, married after college, had Amelia not long after.
Storybook romance, even.
It was that kind of relationship. The one you saw in kids’ movies where the king was so devoted to his queen he brought her a magic flower–type shit like in
Tangled
.
He adored Brooke.
While most of the guys at the firehouse complain about wives and girlfriends, I’ve never heard Logan say a single negative thing about Brooke. If he had, I never heard it, and he told me everything. Even the shit I didn’t want to hear. The details I never needed to hear, he subjected me to.
Where’s this going?
I believe what they have is obtainable. But it requires work.
Work which Brooke and Logan put into their relationship. There’s something else, too.
You have to realize, fuck, you gotta
know
that shit doesn’t last forever. People die. They die every day, and when you have a job like we do, you know that. One minute they’re there and the next, they’re not. Logan knew that. If you didn’t when you started, you found out early on.
Did I?
Sure I did. You couldn’t be a firefighter and not know that.
But I also hadn’t experienced personal loss like Logan had with his sister and then his mother two years ago.
Heavy on the heartache, his life hadn’t been easy. Just like most firefighters.
I knew very well everything in my life could be taken from me. Regardless of whether I knew it, I hadn’t changed my ways. I saw it with my grandpa, my dad, my brother. It was the endless cycle of a lifestyle we chose. Then again, we lived for it.
Believe it or not, there are firefighters out there who’ve never battled a fire other than in training exercises. Then there are some who battle them every day for thirty or forty years.
My point is, the more you fight, the more it changes you and becomes some sort of accelerant to your own lifestyle. You crave it.
There’s an eerie stillness in a fire. It’s a moment when it either gains strength or begins to die down. I was that stillness right now.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to marry Aubrey, because I did. Without a doubt, she was the one for me.
When Gracie was born, I intended to marry Aubrey, but then she had found out that I was in the middle of getting my certifications for the fire boat amongst being neck deep in building fire inspections and side jobs. Then with a new baby and Aubrey’s business taking off, it wasn’t exactly the right time. We were already living together and playing the part of a married couple.
It was more or less at that point a piece of paper. I had insurance for Gracie and Jayden, and Aubrey had her own. It wasn’t like we needed to be married for things to work.
There were times when I felt like the biggest asshole for not proposing to her. Now more so than any other time.
I treated Aubrey as my wife. There was no doubt about that. I didn’t sleep around, and I didn’t flirt. If Aubrey walked into a room, my eyes were only on her.
To me love was like a fire. In the beginning, it’s high heat, destruction, heavy breaths, spark, fuel . . . You’re in love.
A fire is a chemical reaction between chemical compounds with energy. Some fires come on like a flash fire, quick to burn, but die down quickly, too.
Then you have the slower-moving fires, the ones that burn steadily, hot but maintaining their heat and destruction. No matter which way you come at it, the flames rage on.
You gotta maintain it. You can smother it, and it’ll eventually die down. You cut off its fuel and heat, and eventually it’ll burn out.
And should the spark go out, well, we will know once the flames are gone. All that’s left eventually is the volatile gas that makes smoke.
Fire and love are the same. When you understand fire and are aware of how it gains strength, you can fight it. When you understand love, you can give it.
When you fall in love with someone, it’s done one of two ways.
The first kind of love is friendship. Something connects you to them in some way. Maybe it’s liking the same music or the same restaurant. You have a spark that starts a fire.
Now, let’s say you develop a mutual love for this, and you soon find you have other interests together, too. The spark spreads, catches wind, and creates a fire.
And before you know it, you’ve started something that would take a fleet to put out.
Then there’s the instant attraction. You don’t need more than one spark, because that instant fuel mixture you have hits hard. The backdraft. The kind you never see coming until it’s too late.
When you understand fire, and how it gains strength, you can fight it. When you understand love, you can give it.
W
HEN WE
got back to the station, we topped off the water in the tank, refueled the trucks, cleaned the SCBA by putting new air bottles in the packs and refilling the used ones, including Denny’s. Loaded new hoses, charged batteries for the radios, generators and fans, cleaned the gear, and then showered.
We no sooner had finished showering than another call came in. This time it was a guy who’d fallen off his roof and landed on his buddy’s truck with the gutter he was cleaning up his ass.
We must have driven around that block three times and still didn’t see the address they kept calling out. Turns out we were on the wrong street. Never let Axe drive. Ever.