The Fireman I Loved to Hate by Jenna Gunn
Chapter 12
“House fire, someone’s trapped inside…Marina Road…”
I don’t hear anything else. Before I know it, my feet are in my boots and my suspenders are up. My jacket is on without a thought, and my helmet has found its way onto my head. I’m in the rig and setting up, while I wait on the other guys. It’s not long before we’re on the road.
When you’re on your way to a fire, any fire, time slows down and speeds up. Every road feels too long, then you’re there before you know it. A therapist once came to the firehouse to give a group presentation on how firefighting can lead to PTSD. The time distortion thing, according to him, is completely normal.
My first fire was when I was ten. And every fire after that always takes me back.
It might be disingenuous to call it my first fire, but that’s how I have always thought of it. My own house caught fire when me and my twin sister weren’t home. We were having a sleepover at our grandparents’ house. She wore a mint green nightgown with unicorns on it, and my pajamas were covered in dinosaurs. We slept in bunk beds in the spare room. It’s weird, the little details you remember years later.
The next morning, Grandma got us out of bed early and brought us into the living room. I whined and complained, and so did Alyssa. But then we saw the look on Grandpa’s face, and we quieted down. He didn’t look at us. He just stared out of the window. Grandma’s eyes shined with tears as she told us, “There’s been a fire…”
After we buried our parents, Alyssa changed. She retreated into herself and became obsessed with baking. She runs a bakery in Charleston and has a family there, her husband Grand and her daughter Clara. They are the perfect family. I’d be envious, if I weren’t so damned proud of her for getting past her issues.
I changed too. I became obsessed with fire science. Protecting people became my focus after the fire, because I couldn’t let what happened to us happen to anyone else. If I could change someone’s luck, then I would do it. No matter what.
Grandma’s cracking voice is on my mind on the way down Marina Road. That and the one thought, Don’t let Raina be the one trapped in the house. By the address, I knew it was her neighbor, but she spends time with them, and it could be her inside. The thought makes my chest tighten in panic.
Tongues of flame lick out the windows, while smoke billows into the sky. Since the houses are so far apart, the fire hasn’t spread. Ben said, “Dispatch had it wrong. It’s not the whole house.”
Dispatch always has it wrong. Comes with the job. Witnesses see a house fire and it’s the biggest blaze they’ve ever seen, so of course, it gets reported like that. But it’s never that big and I was relieved to see it.
The neighbors, however, are horrified. They are scattered in their front yards and some in the street. Ben has to park the truck carefully, after he beeps our way through them. The rest of us jump out and get to work. I’ve never had trouble concentrating on the task at hand; after all, you go through so much training that it becomes muscle memory. But there was a part of my mind that was divided from the rest. It was a Raina-shaped part of my brain.
She was the first person I saw as we ran up with the hose. Relief almost knocked me off my feet, I was so lightened by the sensation. She stood next to Mrs. Logan in her pajamas. I can stop worrying and focus entirely on the fire.
Everything goes by in a blur, but it’s the blur I’m used to. My body is weighed down by the fear and boosted by adrenaline. It’s like running through waist-high mud toward something that might kill you in half a dozen ways.
The crews’ voices boom in my head over the radio. Voices boom in my head. My breath pulses into my mask. Bridges darts across the yard to get Raina and Mrs. Logan away, and on the radio, he said, “The husband is still in the house.”
“Got it,” I respond.
Everyone has their stations. Mine is to go inside and retrieve any survivors. This case seems relatively open and shut, since the front door is wide open. I hurry inside.
Smoke everywhere, so I step carefully over the carpeted floor and past a blur of too much decoration to hunt for the husband. No one in the kitchen and the fire didn’t start there. It’s almost clean.
Up the stairs two at a time. I come into the end of a narrow hallway. Wallpaper disintegrates from the flames and shrivels into ashes. Flames stab around the edges of doors, looking for tinder. Smoke masks the top two feet of ceiling space.
I bang into something. It’s hard. Not the husband, probably a table. I shout, “SIR!”
“Here!” a voice cries out. He’s in the room at the end of the hallway.
“Stay there if you can, I’m on my way!” I run to the voice and get on the radio, to tell them to get a ladder to the room on the west end of the house. Tara responds positively. There’s more chatter about the ambulance, but I put it out of my mind to focus on getting him out of there. “I’m coming in, get back from the door!”
“Okay!”
I open the door and step back fast. Smoke pours into the hallway from the room. But only smoke. No flame. An old man sits against the far wall near a window, choking and coughing. He’s surrounded by smoke and I can hardly see him.
The en-suite bathroom door is open on the other side of the room, with flames and smoke climbing out of the doorway. Everything near it is singed and covered in soot.
“I’ve got you!” I call out to him as I walk over. As soon as I slide the window open, I know our time in the room is limited. The moment smoke finds a new escape, it floods out and adds more air for the fire, causing it to grow exponentially. Tara has the ladder in position, and I secure it to the window. “Can you stand?”
He coughs, “I think so, son.” I grab his arms to help him up and he squints into my mask. “You that cat guy?”
“I’m the cat guy,” I reply. The moment he tries to smile, his lungs wretch smoke at me. I grab him before he collapses on the floor. “Let’s get you out of here.” I lean him closer to the window and help him climb backwards. It’s awkward for everyone the first time, and even more so when you’re oxygen deprived. He winces when he touches the hot windowsill, but gets his footing faster than I expected. I take his arms and Tara grabs his legs. “We’ve got you, Sir.”
“I know,” he gives a little smile.
I track his arms and Tara guides him down. Cap shouts on the radio, “Get out, she’s coming down!”
“Copy,” I respond. I follow Mr. Logan down the ladder, grateful no one else is in the house.
EMTs whisk Mr. Logan away, and the real fight begins. Water pounds into the walls, while smoke vents out the holes put in by the crew. The house isn’t salvageable. We fight like this to save the rest of the neighborhood. As we watch, the roof collapses inward, along with the walls of the upper floor.
The entire event lasts maybe ninety seconds, but it will be days before I’ve fully calmed down. It’s like that every time for me. For others, it can be hours or weeks. Some firefighters never recover, and they either give up the work or they crave the rush of the next rescue and it becomes an addiction for them. I never want to work with anyone like that. They are dangerous.
My heart slams in my chest. I take my helmet and mask off, then grab a bottle of water. It’s easy to dehydrate under all that gear and at those temperatures. My body is too warm. Adrenaline is keeping me amped up.
The therapist that came for our presentation said the adrenaline makes the pupils hyper-dilate, which is why everything seems so much brighter for a while after a fire. Blood is redistributed, so the brain has better access to glucose, which is why you get that blood sugar drop after. There is almost always a massive burger and taco run after we all get back from a fire.
The fire reduces to smoky wet cinders as I watch. The Logans’ pride and joy is nothing but a dark shining mass in the dark. It’s sad, but I was happy to see the pair get whisked away together in the back of the ambulance. As long as he doesn’t have any other medical conditions, he’d be fine. I breathe a deep sigh of relief, knowing I did my job.
Fast feet approach, and my fight or flight response is still running high, so I turn to meet my attacker before they get to me. It’s Raina and she throws her arms around me. Without thinking, I pull her close to me. It’s an awkward hug, because of my gear. But she holds me tighter than I had imagined she could, given her size.
I want to bury my face in her unkempt curls, but I know how smoky that would make her, and I resist. My gloved hands hold her back and I can’t stop thinking, I want more of this. I want this all the time.
She mumbles against me, “Thank you.”
I feel like I should be thanking her. At the moment, I’m not scared of anything. “Can I come over tomorrow? To see Carmen? And Monroe?”
“And me?” she asks with hope in her eyes.
I smile. “And you.”
“Absolutely,” she says with enthusiasm. I think she surprised us both.
“You sure about that?”
“Yes,” she says firmly. “I have a Zoom call with my agent in the morning, but I’m going to cancel it. I’m too frazzled with all of this happening.”
“Makes sense. I need to meet up with my crew. See you around eight?”
She nods rapidly, then lets me handle my business. I can’t believe she agreed to it, but I’m overjoyed. That’s the thing about adrenaline. Everything is either the best or the worst for a little while. And I’m happy to ride the high with Raina. When I join up with everyone, Bridges says, “Saw you get a hug.”
“Shut up.”
He grins when I roll my eyes at him.
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