Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,45
said.
“Not a big fan of blood, huh?” I asked.
“Not really.”
“You’ll get used to it. After a year, blood will seem as harmless as fruit punch.”
“That’s a disturbing thought.”
“You’re just going to need to do a lot of blood draws. You need to do so many, it becomes like brushing your teeth.”
“Hard to imagine, but okay.”
“You can get your sea legs with me, and then we’ll sic you on the rest of the crew.”
“Thanks, Cassie.”
I think it was the first time I’d ever heard him—or anyone at the station—say my first name. I didn’t even realize he knew it. Everybody just called me Hanwell.
I held my breath for a second, then forced myself to let it out. Then I held my arm out to him. “Okay,” I said, “let’s go again.”
“Now?” he asked.
“Right now,” I said, giving a don’t try to fight it nod. “Make it happen, buddy. That blood’s not going to draw itself.”
Fifteen
THE ROOKIE SAW some dark stuff with us that first month. We got a call for a grandpa who’d choked on a piece of steak (fatality), a tree fallen on a house (no one home), and a kid with his head stuck between the steps of a playground slide (close call). We got called to the scene of an abused woman who’d finally had enough and went after her husband with a shotgun (mutilation—not pretty).
It wasn’t long before the rookie had acquired what we called “the stare of life,” that shell-shocked look new firefighters get before they’ve figured out how to manage, compartmentalize, and deal with all the horrific tragedy.
Not that you ever entirely figure it out. It’s a learning curve.
You eventually get to the point where it doesn’t bother you. As much. You put it on a different screen in your mind that’s separate from your real life somehow. But it takes a while, and in the meantime, all you can do is cope.
The more stressed the rookie got, the more we joked around with him. For his own good.
Case sent him looking for a left-handed screwdriver. Six-Pack filled his locker with packing peanuts. We hung his boxer briefs from the flagpole. One day, we set his bed on four empty soda cans and remade it so it would collapse when he got in that night. And nobody ever missed an opportunity to dump water on him.
After he delivered his first baby on the box, the guys said, “How was it?”
And the rookie, shaking his head in disbelief, said, “It was like watching an avocado getting squeezed through an apricot.”
That night, the guys hung a bag in his locker with a snorkel, dive mask, and flippers, labeled OB/GYN DELIVERY KIT.
To be fair, there were also some funny calls. The lady who called us for menstrual cramps and kept talking about her “groin-icologist.” The fierce little poodle that attacked the rookie’s bunker-pants leg and wouldn’t let go, even as he hopped around trying to fling it off.
Just about the only thing the rookie didn’t see in those first weeks was a fire.
Until the day of his—our—six-week-iversary at the station, when we got a call for a garage fire at an abandoned house at the edge of town.
It was a perfect first fire. We ran lights-and-sirens, and we were the first on scene. We got to use the hoses and even worked in a lesson for the rookie about how to read the colors of the smoke.
Afterward, doing demo in the smoldering remains, I heard the captain giving the rookie advice. “A fire’s like a living thing,” he explained. “You have to treat it like a worthy adversary. It eats and it moves, and it’s going to go on eating and moving until we stop it.”
I looked at the rookie’s face. He looked flushed, and exhausted, and awash with adrenaline.
I knew that feeling.
“Pretty great, huh?” I said, as we walked back to the engine when it was all over.
“What?”
I elbowed him. “Fighting a fire.”
We were passing a drain in the parking lot, and I hopped right over it before turning back and realizing that the rookie had stopped to bend over the drain and throw up.
After a minute, he stood back up, wiped his mouth, and kept walking toward me. “Yeah,” he said then. “Really great.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT, I had a nightmare.
Not uncommon. I had lots of nightmares. But I didn’t usually have them on shift.
In this one, I dreamed I was suffocating. I must have stopped breathing during the worst of it, because when I woke