Chapter Twenty-One
Zoe
By week two I know the coffee schedule.
Hayes first, always. Black, no sugar, in the blue mug with the chipped handle that nobody else touches because it’s Hayes’s mug and touching it would be like sitting in Cap’s chair.
She reads the newspaper while she drinks and checks her phone once, quick, and whatever she reads there makes her mouth do a thing I almost miss.
Not a smile, not quite, but a loosening.
Torres sees me notice and shakes her head slightly.
Not yet. I’ll learn later. Torres second, cream and two sugars, in whatever mug is closest because Torres doesn’t care about mugs, she cares about speed.
Rivera third, black with one sugar, standing at the counter because Rivera doesn’t sit for her first cup.
Walsh fourth, black, reading something on her phone, pouring without looking, which I’ve tried and spilled twice.
Helena drinks tea while she's here, though she says she drinks coffee at home. This was a revelation. A firefighter who drinks tea. She keeps a box of Earl Grey in the cabinet and she makes it in a ceramic mug she brought from home and the crew gives her grief about it and she takes the grief with the calm of someone who’s been taking it for a year and doesn’t care.
Drew drinks coffee but not first thing. She waits until after the equipment check, comes back in with engine grease on her hands, and pours a cup that she holds with both hands and drinks slowly, standing at the window that faces the bay.
She’s quiet in the mornings. Everyone is quiet in the mornings except Torres, who has been fully operational since birth it seems like.
Priya is still out sick but I'm looking forward to working with her.
..eventually. She must have it really bad if the flu is still kicking her this hard.
I make the coffee now. Every morning. First one in, first pot brewed.
Hayes told me it was a probie job and I took it seriously because I take everything Hayes tells me seriously and because the coffee is a thread that connects me to the rest of the day.
I grind the beans and fill the pot and set out the mugs in order: Hayes’s blue one, then the rest in a row, and when the crew comes in they reach for their cups without thinking and nobody comments on it and that’s how I know I’m doing it right.
The tones drop at 10:14 AM.
I’ve been waiting for this. Not anxiously, not desperately, just with the awareness that it’s coming and when it comes I need to be ready.
The electronic pulse cuts through the kitchen and my body does what it’s been trained to do.
I’m on my feet before the second tone. Coffee mug on the counter. Moving.
The crew moves around me, with me, and I find my lane. Last seat on the engine, that’s my position. Cap gave the order on day one. I don’t enter any structure until she clears me. I ride, I assist, I follow Hayes.
“Medical assist, 4200 block of Calloway,” dispatch calls. “Elderly female, fall, possible hip fracture. Engine 11 responding.”
Medical. Not a fire. My first call is a medical, which is both a relief and a recalibration because I trained for fire and I’m going to an old woman who fell.
Torres drives. The engine pulls out of the bay and the siren starts and I’m sitting in the last seat and the sound is different from inside.
It’s not the sound I grew up hearing from my bedroom.
It’s bigger, more physical, vibrating through the frame of the truck and up through my boots and into my chest. The lights cycle red and white across the windshield and the world parts for us, cars pulling to the side, intersections clearing, and we move through the neighborhood I’ve walked my entire life at a speed that makes it new.
We pull up to a brownstone and there’s a woman on the front steps being held by a neighbor, an older man in suspenders who looks more scared than she does.
Hayes is first off. I follow. We carry the med kit and the backboard.
The woman is in her seventies. Gray hair, housecoat, one leg angled wrong. She’s conscious and alert and angry about it.
“I told Leonard to salt those steps,” she says as we approach. “Three times. Did Leonard salt the steps? Leonard did not salt the steps. I don't care that it's not snowing and it's warm. The steps should be salted.”
“Ma’am, I’m Hayes, Station 11. Can you tell me where it hurts?”
“My hip. The left one. The one I already had replaced two years ago because God has a sense of humor.”
Hayes kneels next to her. She’s calm and precise, assessing, hands checking vitals while her voice stays level. I kneel on the other side, med kit open.
“Kimball. Vitals.”
I take her blood pressure. Her pulse. I do it the way I was trained, steady, efficient, talking to her while I work because she’s scared even if she’s hiding it behind Leonard’s unforgivable step maintenance.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Dorothy. Dorothy Haines. I’ve lived in this house for forty-one years and this is the first time I’ve fallen on my own steps and I want that noted.”
“Noted.” I write down her vitals. “Blood pressure is 142 over 88. Pulse 96.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s elevated, which is normal when you’re in pain and angry at Leonard.”
Dorothy Haines looks at me. Then she laughs, a short, sharp sound, and winces immediately because laughing hurts when your hip is wrong.
“I like you,” she says.
Hayes glances at me. The glance carries nothing visible, but I’ve been learning Hayes for two weeks and I’ve learned what nothing looks like when it’s actually something.
We stabilize Dorothy’s leg, get her on the backboard, and load her into the ambulance that’s arrived.
The neighbor, Leonard, stands on the sidewalk looking guilty about the steps.
“Salt your steps,” I tell him.
“I was going to.”
“Salt them today.”
He nods. We clear the scene. Back on the engine, rolling through the neighborhood, the siren off now because we’re returning to quarters and the return is always quiet.
Torres catches my eye in the mirror. She nods. Rivera, sitting across from me, says nothing but her posture is a half-degree less formal than it was this morning. Walsh taps my boot with hers as we pull into the bay, a small physical contact that means more than any words she’d say.
Hayes writes up the report. I assist. She lets me fill in the vitals section myself.
“Your patient rapport is good,” she says. “Dorothy liked you.”
“I made her laugh.”
“You made her feel safe. The laugh was a bonus.” Hayes signs the report. “Next rotation we drill extrication scenarios. Bring clothes you really don’t care about.”
I bring clothes I really don’t care about. We drill extrication scenarios. Hayes times me and writes numbers and doesn’t tell me if they’re good and I run them again and again until my arms burn and my gloves are shredded.
By the end of the week, I’ve found my rhythm.
The morning coffee. The equipment checks with Torres.
Drills with Hayes. Lunch at the long table where I’ve moved from the end to one seat closer to the middle because Drew shifted over without being asked and the gap opened and I filled it and nobody said anything.
After lunch, I’m cleaning the kitchen when Cap walks in.
She pours coffee. Takes a sip. Looks at me.
“How are you settling in, Kimball?”
“Good, Captain. I’m learning a lot.”
“Hayes says your vitals work is solid and your patient communication is above average for a probie.”
I try not to react. Hayes told Cap something positive about me. Hayes, who communicates in nods and clipboard notes and single sentences that carry the weight of mountains, told Cap that I’m good at something.
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Thank Hayes. She’s the one doing the work.” Cap takes another sip. “Kimball.”
“Yes?”
“The probationary period is three months. You’ve done two weeks. That’s a start, not a finish. Stay focused.”
“Yes, Captain.”
She nods. Takes her coffee. Walks out.
I stand in the kitchen, dish towel in hand, and I think about Dorothy Haines and her replaced hip and Leonard’s unsalted steps and Hayes saying my patient rapport is good and Cap saying stay focused and the seat at the lunch table that opened up because Drew moved over without being asked.
Two weeks. Eleven weeks to go. The coffee’s brewing and the mugs are set out and I know who drinks what and when and I’m starting to learn the sound of this station from the inside, which is different from the sirens I grew up hearing, quieter, warmer, the sound of people who trust each other enough to rest in each other’s presence.
I belong here. I’ve always known I belong here.
Now they’re starting to know it too.