Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,94

crew moved like lightning—ripping off his mask and helmet, pulling off his air tank, ripping open his gear, feeling for a pulse. I could see soot around Owen’s nose and mouth—and second-degree burns at the edges of where his mask had been.

It’s true that firefighters never run, but I knew this crew didn’t have a cyanide kit on their box, because we were the only crew in Lillian that had one. Somebody needed to get it—stat—and that somebody was me.

I took off sprinting, grabbed the kit, and then sprinted back, just as a medic jumped on the gurney, straddled Owen, and started pumping compressions for CPR. “No pulse,” he called out. “No respiration.”

I glanced at Owen as I ripped open the kit box with my teeth, used the transfer spike to add sodium chloride, and rocked—but did not shake—the vial to mix the solution. Unconscious. Unresponsive. He was most likely in cardiac arrest.

I heard somebody say Life Flight was inbound.

Real CPR in a real emergency is nothing like anything you’ve done in a class on a dummy. It’s ugly—almost brutal—and this is especially true when firefighters are working on one of their own. They don’t hold back.

Another medic checked the defib monitor to see if we could shock him with the paddles. Yes. The rhythm was right. Everybody stepped back. Three quick shocks, and then they were back to CPR.

I grabbed Owen’s arm and found a vein. I got the IV started, a perfect stick. The antidote can’t be given in one injection. It has to enter the system slowly, over a period of ten minutes.

But no way was I going to stand there and hold an IV bag, especially not when the medic next to me, trying to pump air into Owen’s lungs with a hand-squeezed bag, was having trouble. He listened to Owen’s lungs with a stethoscope.

“Nothing’s going in,” he reported. “No movement.”

“Tube him,” I ordered, and he turned to find an airway kit.

But I stopped him. I handed him the antidote IV bag. “Hold this.”

“I have to tube him!” he protested.

“I’ve got it!”

He stepped back, and I pulled out a pediatric airway kit. If the rookie’s airway was burned, it could be swollen, and it’s hard enough to intubate a normal airway.

The medic on top of him was still working his chest.

Others had removed Owen’s bunker pants and were wrapping his lower half in a cold gel blanket to try to bring down his body temperature.

In my memory, this whole scene always replays itself in slow motion. I can see every detail, hear every word, stretched out and slowed down. In reality, it lasted barely a few minutes, and everything happened at once.

I stepped in, tilted the rookie’s neck just right, started working the tube.

I heard Life Flight arrive, but I stayed focused.

The medic doing compressions kept his eye on me. “Come on, come on,” he whispered.

It’s hard enough intubating people—without the added pressure of it being another firefighter, a guy with your same job. A guy you know.

And if you happen to have slept with the person you’re trying to tube? Even harder.

Anybody could find it freaky.

Fortunately for the rookie, I’m not anybody.

I eased the tube in like a pro. Three seconds flat.

I told you. You just know when you’re good.

Another medic was listening with a stethoscope. “We’ve got air,” he called out, just as Life Flight settled to the ground in the parking lot beside us.

With the air came the heartbeat.

“We’ve got a rhythm,” the medic with the stethoscope called next.

It was only a short distance to the Trauma Hawk, and we all pushed the gurney toward the Life Flight crew. They took it like a baton in a relay, and we followed, shouting stats and information about his situation—explaining the cyanide poisoning and antidote protocol, handing off the IV bag, making sure they knew everything.

As they loaded him up in the chopper, I took one second to find Owen’s hand and give it a squeeze.

And then I had no choice but to let him go.

Twenty-six

LIFE FLIGHT TOOK Owen to Boston, and all I wanted to do was follow.

But there was still a fire to put out.

Our shift wasn’t over.

The medics from Station Three treated DeStasio, who turned out to have a broken collarbone, and transported him to Fairmont Methodist. I was fine, and once they cleared me, I got back to work.

We still had a job to do.

No one else on our shift was injured. On the other side of the building, separated by