Chapter 3 #2
Schmidt rolls his eyes and slides his helmet on his head. The big shiny 53 badge glints in the sunlight. The bugles on it already feel tarnished by him wearing it. Hell is having to share a role, let alone a helmet, with this guy.
A small crowd has assembled on the footpath, watching as the home is devoured by flames, now licking their way up the exterior walls on one side. The top floor of the low-set brownstone is alight, but the windows haven’t blown out yet.
Schmidt should be talking to witnesses or an owner. Yet here he is eyeing every move we make.
“Shouldn’t you be surveying the scene?” I snap, my patience for this guy’s reckless, toxic shitty behavior almost out.
“It’s not a social occasion, Hammond. But yes, I’d much rather talk to anyone else but you.”
He swaggers off and starts talking to a small group of people. When one of them starts raising their voice and another sobs into her hand, I drop the hose and make my way over.
“What’s going on?” I ask the woman who’s repeating herself, getting in Schmidt’s face.
“My mother is home. I came back from grocery shopping to this! Isn’t someone going in to find her?” Her strained voice cracks.
“Tennison, Davies, you’re with me.”
Owens comes back from her perimeter sweep. “Heard someone calling out at the back, Cap,” she says, her focus on me.
“Oh my god! That’s my mother! She always locks the doors . . . I tell her to lock up whenever I’m gone . . . Oh my—” The woman collapses on the pavement, going down with a crunch.
I snap the radio off my shoulder. “53 requesting ambulance to our position.”
Ignoring Schmidt’s useless whining about making his call, I snatch out extinguishers and toss one at Davies before another goes to Tennison. Owens takes up the hose position I was working without me having to ask. Sandy is on the next one.
Davies pulls out three rebreathers and we slide them on, fixing them to the turnouts and packs before heading for the front door.
“Take rear, Davies.” I take point. My position to keep my team safe.
I test the door for heat.
Convinced the flame hasn’t reached the foyer, I slam the butt of the extinguisher into the door, and it flings open. Flames have engulfed the room to the left. Tennison breaks left, extinguishing the first half in a set pattern as Davies turns right, doing his sweep.
“Clear to the right.”
A moment later Tennison calls, “Clear to the left.”
“Back room, she said. Heads up, the second floor is lit.” I point a finger up and walk on.
“Yes sir” comes in unison from both of my probies.
Something cracks overhead. I hold up a fist. We halt.
A beam, ravaged with flames, crashes to the floor in front of us.
I put it out, stepping over it. Every minute we take, the lady at the back of the house is in danger of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation, or worse—burning if she can’t move out of the fire’s path.
The space narrows to a hallway. I pick up the pace.
We finally make the back of the house, and I see the woman. Confined to a wheelchair, she’s crying out, hand outstretched, coughing erratically.
She’s taking in too much smoke.
The room is shrouded in the dark curls creeping across the ceiling as they lower.
On closer inspection, I discover an oxygen tank attached to her chair.
Christ.
“Sir?” Tennison nods.
“I see it, Tennison.”
Quick, this probie.
“Davies, flame retardant. Clear us a path out of this under load.”
“Yes sir.”
I squat by the old woman’s wheelchair, patting her hand. Her other one closes over my glove. “Please, get me out of—” She coughs, hard. Blood and spittle splatter her hand, and my glove.
“How long can you go without your oxygen, ma’am?”
She shakes her head.
Dammit.
“Detach the tank from the chair, probie.”
Tennison sets down her extinguisher and starts working on removing the tank from the chair.
“Dammit. Thing is stuck.”
“Tools, Tennison.”
“Shit, sorry.”
The old woman looks between us, concern wrapping her face. “Is she new?”
I chuckle. “First shift.”
Horror crosses the woman’s face.
Loud snapping vibrates through the wheelchair as the pliers cut through the clamps holding the tank to the back of the chair.
“Can you walk?” I ask the woman.
“Sorry, sonny. I haven’t done that for almost five years.” Her trembling hand touches my jacket over my heart.
“Fireman express, then.” I smile at her, and she gives me a cheeky look. Tennison watches as I lift the woman from the wheelchair and she puts her arms around my neck.
“Tank, probie.”
Tennison places the small tank on the woman’s lap before tugging out a fire-retardant blanket and covering both the woman and the tank.
Without me asking.
I’m impressed.
“Path clear, sir.” Davies appears in the entrance to the room.
“Right, let’s get this show on the road.”
The woman huddles into my chest.
“Tennison, you first.”
“But sir, you’re under load. I can do it.”
“And I’m responsible for you all, go!”
Eyes tightening, she turns and tracks her way down the hallway after Davies. Once clear of the house, I radio for a second ambulance. Setting the woman down on the grassy front yard, I remove the blanket from her lap and wrap it around her shoulders.
“Oh, honey, thank you.” Tears streak down her weathered face.
“Any time.” I give her hand a squeeze before Owens appears with a bottle of water and a space blanket.
Schmidt is on the hose, a sour look on his face.
“What’s with bossman?” I ask Owens.
She laughs. “Oh, I told him to quit his man tantrum and do something useful like hold his hose, since he’s Cap and all.”
The woman in the blanket chuckles. “I like this one.”
“Back at ya, honey.” Owens grins at her.
The woman waves her off with a hand.
“Tennison, the next time I give you an order, follow it. Time is not a luxury we have. Do you understand?”
The probie pulls her rebreather off and swallows as crimson reappears on her face for the second time in thirty minutes. “Yes, I understand.”
Good, at least if she’s called out in front of the crew she’ll remember the lesson. One that could save her life.
I can’t keep my crew safe if they’re prone to arguing the point mid-job.
Smoke plumes from the home, and the flames are doused, the scene secured, everyone accounted for. It’s only when the hose in question dies and Schmidt stalks to where I stand do I look away.
“Done playing superhero, Hammond? Back in the truck. Now.”
One day. That’s all it took for this guy to make me wish I never took an oath to protect life.