Chapter 12 #2
She replied with the fingers-crossed emoji. And then added, Are you wearing the sling?
Yes, ma’am.
Good. Don’t take it off.
How you feeling?
Very, very good today.
That’s nice to hear. I’ll hit you up in a bit.
I’ll be here.
I can’t wait to kiss you again.
Same.
UGH, I hate my job!
No, you don’t.
Today I DO!
Jordan sent laughing emojis. Hurry up and get your work done.
I’m hurrying.
Jordan sighed as she put down the phone.
This reminded her of high school and the heady excitement of first crushes, only this was so much better than that had ever been.
Mason was a real man, a sexy, thoughtful, sweet, funny man who made her feel things she never had before.
Today, she didn’t want to think of any of the problems waiting for her back home in LA.
She didn’t want to think about Brendan or the divorce or anything other than how long she had to wait before she could see Mason again.
Suddenly, he was the only thing that mattered.
Mason wasn’t going to survive this day. He’d been hit with one challenge after another since arriving at the station after an AA meeting.
One of his newer firefighters had called out sick—again—another had the flu, and a third was showing signs of coming down with the same thing.
The mayor had already called twice about his most recent payroll report, which had shown higher-than-normal overtime for this week in June.
They’d responded to three calls, and it was only noon.
His plan to get out of there early wasn’t going so well. In spite of the chaos, he couldn’t stop thinking about Jordan and the time they’d spent together last night or how much he’d loved kissing her.
It was really hard to focus on incident reports and personnel training with thoughts of Jordan and her sweet lips occupying his every thought.
The clock seemed to move in reverse as he participated in a training Dermot ran on responding to alcohol-related incidents and the signs of alcohol poisoning, both of which were nearly daily occurrences during the summer months.
Mason was making progress on an early getaway when they were called to the bluffs to rescue a hiker who’d taken a bad fall.
That was another thing that happened several times each year, people getting too close to the edge and having the land beneath them give way.
A man had been paralyzed after a similar fall two years ago and others grievously injured in similar incidents.
In this case, the man had fallen about thirty feet and was clinging to a root that was the only thing stopping him from falling an additional hundred feet to the rocky coast below.
His hysterical wife or girlfriend had been leaning over the edge of the bluff when they arrived.
Pulling her back had been their first order of business.
They could get their equipment only so close to the edge of the land, which made these rescues that much more difficult and risky for his team.
As he supervised the delicate operation, he wanted to scream with frustration because he couldn’t do a goddamned thing to help except supervise, thanks to his injured arm.
Dermot rappelled down the cliff to assess the man’s injuries and to get a line on him so he couldn’t fall any farther.
“He’s got a possible broken right ankle,” Dermot reported by radio, “as well as a laceration on the back of his head.” Next, he put a cervical collar on the man and got him strapped onto the board that would be used to raise him.
All this was a delicate and painstaking process that both Mason and Dermot had done many times before.
When the man was strapped in, Dermot gave the signal to begin winching both men back up the side of the cliff. As the backboard cleared the edge of the bluff, the man’s significant other ran over to him.
Mason held her back with his good arm. “It’s very important that we don’t move him any more than necessary until we can fully access his injuries.”
The young woman had a wild look to her tearstained face. “I just need to kiss him. Please.”
Mason nodded to Chris, the paramedic who was assessing the victim.
Crying hysterically, the woman kissed her partner, who was also in tears.
They’d had a close call that had been entirely preventable if they’d only adhered to the signs warning people to stay back from the edge.
Mason often wanted to ask them if the selfie had been worth the near disaster, but he bit his tongue so as not to pile on in the midst of a crisis. But he had the thought every time they rescued someone out there.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked Chris, who was assessing the patient.
“Not thinking we need the chopper. Let’s get him to the clinic and see what Dr. David thinks.”
The ambulance left with the man and his partner a few minutes later.
Dermot, who was still wearing the harness he’d donned to rappel down the cliff, approached Mason. “A matter of inches once again.”
“We’ve got to put more pressure on the town to get some sort of fence up out here.”
Residents had objected to doing anything that would impair the raw beauty of the rugged coastline, but something was going to have to happen to keep people from falling off on a regular basis. “I’ll broach it again with the mayor.”
“Good luck with that.”
No one was more opposed to the fence than Mayor Upton. “He’s not the one out here risking his own neck to save people who are too dumb to heed the warnings.”
“I’d hate to think that someone is going to have to die before they act,” Dermot said.
Though they’d had many close calls, they hadn’t lost anyone at the bluffs. Yet.
“I’m going to approach this another way,” Mason said. “We’ll get it done. Will you run by the clinic to check on how he’s doing and write it up?”
Dermot stepped out of the harness. “Will do.”
“Great job, Derm.”
“Thanks.” The younger man grinned. “A good rappel always gets the blood pumping, especially when we save someone from certain death.”
“Makes it worth getting up in the morning, for sure.”
“That it does. See you back at the barn.”
Mason headed for his SUV, thankful for colleagues like Dermot who were willing to risk their own safety to save others.
Being a first responder could be heartbreaking and exhilarating—often both at the same time.
Knowing they had made a difference for the couple on the bluffs today made all the long hours and difficult moments worth it for people like Dermot and Mason, who’d become first responders because they wanted to help others.
As he drove toward North Harbor, Mason put through a call to Big Mac McCarthy.
“Hey, Mase. Heard you saved another one out at the bluffs.”
“You heard right. Are you at the marina?”
“Yep.”
“Mind if I stop by for a minute?”
“Course not. Come on over.”
“On my way.” He ended the call and hoped he wasn’t about to endanger his job by appealing to the president of the Gansett Island Town Council to do something about the increasingly more dangerous situation at the bluffs.
Going around the mayor was never a good idea for a department head, but if the suggestion came from Big Mac rather than Mason, it was more likely to gain traction with Upton.
Playing politics was never his idea of a good time, but then, neither was fetching people who’d fallen off the side of a cliff.
The metaphor wasn't lost on Mason, who was clinging to his own cliffside in this situation with Jordan. But even if he was on his way to an awful fall, he couldn’t seem to resist the danger she represented.
Danger had never been so much fun.