Chapter Twenty-Five
Zoe
I've been waiting for this. Not the medical calls, which I've run three of now and which taught me how to talk to people who are scared and how to read vitals.
The medical calls were real and they mattered and I'm glad I had them first. But this is different.
This is what I trained for. This is fire.
The electronic pulse hits and my body moves before my brain catches up.
Mug on the counter. Towel dropped. Feet on the floor moving toward the bay.
Around me the crew is doing the same thing, that coordinated flood I've watched from the outside and am now inside of, every person finding their lane without collision.
Torres is in the driver's seat before I clear the kitchen.
Rivera is behind her. Walsh and Drew are gearing up at the lockers, moving in practiced rhythm, turnout pants and boots and jackets in a sequence so fast it looks rehearsed but isn't. Helena is a step behind them.
Hayes is already at the engine, checking her radio.
I gear up. My locker is at the end of the row, last spot, probie position.
My turnout gear is clean because I haven't worn it on a real call yet.
I step into the pants, pull the suspenders, shrug into the jacket, grab my helmet.
My hands are steady. My fingers work the clasps without fumbling.
I've done this a hundred times in drills and the drills hold now, the muscle memory carrying me through the gap between training and real.
Cap comes through the bay. She's on her radio, getting dispatch details, her face carrying the focused calm that makes her Cap.
She looks at me as she passes. One look.
Brief, assessing, the same look she gave me on my first day when she said "welcome to Station 11" with no ceremony and all the weight in the world.
"Kimball rides," she says to Hayes. "Interior cleared for entry."
Interior cleared. She's letting me go inside.
I don't react. I want to react. I want to scream and pump my fist and call Teague and tell my parents and tell Keely and tell everyone I've ever met that Captain Vera Donnelly just cleared me for interior operations on a structure fire.
But I don't react because this is the job and the job doesn't pause for celebrations.
"Copy," Hayes says. She looks at me. "On me. You go where I go. You do what I tell you. You don't improvise."
"Yes, Hayes."
"If I say out, we're out. No questions."
"Yes, Hayes."
She nods. We mount up. Last seat, next to Hayes.
The engine rocks as Torres fires it and the bay doors open and the siren starts and it fills me up the same way it did on the medical call, that physical vibration through the frame and the seat and my spine, but this time it's bigger because this time I'm going into a building that's burning.
"Structure fire, 3100 block of Delancy," dispatch reports. "Two-story residential, smoke visible from the street. Engine 11 responding."
Torres drives. She drives the way she does everything: with total command, aggressive but controlled, the engine moving through intersections like the city is opening a lane for us.
I watch the streets go by through the window and they're my streets, my neighborhood, the same blocks I've walked and biked and driven a thousand times, and somewhere ahead of us a house is on fire and people might be inside.
Rivera is on the radio confirming hydrant locations. Walsh and Drew are quiet in their seats, faces set, doing whatever internal thing experienced firefighters do before they enter a structure. Helena checks her mask. Hayes sits beside me and says nothing. Her presence is the instruction.
We turn onto Delancy and I see it.
Smoke. Gray-black, thick, pouring from the second-floor windows of a narrow row house, three windows across, the middle one already blown out.
No visible flame from the street but the smoke is telling me the fire is interior and established and feeding on whatever the second floor is giving it.
The front door is closed. A cluster of people is on the sidewalk across the street, a woman in a bathrobe holding a phone, a man with two kids, a neighbor pointing at the building.
Torres parks the engine. We dismount. The air hits me and it smells like burning wood and plastic and something chemical underneath, insulation or carpet or paint.
The smoke is rolling from the second floor in waves and I can feel the heat from here, not intense, not yet, but present. A living thing behind those walls.
Cap is out first, assessing. She's looking at the building, the smoke, the windows, the roofline. Reading it the way Hayes reads me, the way Vanessa reads Teague. Seeing what's happening and what's about to happen.
"Rivera, take Walsh and Drew. Primary search, first floor." Cap turns to Hayes. "Second floor is yours. Take Kimball."
"Copy."
"Torres, water supply. Get me a line to the second floor as soon as Rivera's team confirms the first floor is clear."
Torres moves toward the hydrant, fast, purposeful. Rivera's team goes through the front door, low, masked, disappearing into smoke that swallows them in two steps.
Hayes looks at me. Through the mask her eyes are the same steady eyes that have been training me for three weeks. No different. No extra concern. She's not worried about me because worry isn't useful and Hayes doesn't carry anything that isn't useful.
"Mask on. Stay low. Left hand on the wall. We go up the stairs and we search every room. If I call it, we leave. No hesitation."
"Copy."
We go in.
The first floor is smoke but manageable. I can see Rivera's team ahead of us, flashlight beams cutting through the haze, moving room to room. The stairs are on the right, narrow, wooden, and the smoke is heavier as we go up because smoke rises and the fire is above us and we're going toward it.
I keep my left hand on the wall. I stay low. I follow Hayes.
The second floor is different. The smoke is dense and black and my visibility drops to the beam of my flashlight and the outline of Hayes in front of me.
The heat is real now, pressing against my gear, my mask, the exposed skin at my wrists.
I can hear the fire, a sound I've heard in training rooms and controlled burns but never like this, never in a place where someone lives, where there are photographs on walls and furniture in rooms and the building is being eaten from the inside.
Hayes moves left. I follow. First room: bedroom, door open, empty. She checks behind the door, under the bed, the closet. Systematic. Fast but not rushed. She clears it and we move to the next.
Second room: bathroom, small, empty. Clear.
The hallway. The smoke is thicker here and I can see an orange glow at the far end, the fire showing itself through a doorway. The heat jumps. My mask is working, feeding me clean air, and I breathe and stay low and keep my hand on the wall and follow Hayes.
Third room: the fire room. Hayes stops at the door. She reads it. The door is hot. She tests the handle with the back of her glove. She looks at me.
"This room is fully involved. We don't enter. We move past. There may be a fourth room beyond."
"Copy."
We move past the door, staying low, staying on the wall.
The heat coming through the doorframe is intense and I feel it through my gear in a way that training doesn't prepare you for because training burns are controlled and this fire is not controlled, this fire is doing whatever it wants and what it wants is more.
Past the fire room. The hallway continues three more feet and there's another door. Closed. Hayes tests it. Cool enough. She opens it.
A bedroom. Smaller than the first. Window on the far wall, smoke filling the upper half of the room, clearer near the floor. I sweep my flashlight and I see it.
A crib.
The crib is empty. I check it, hands on the mattress, nothing. I check under the crib. Behind the door. The closet, which is four hangers and a pile of shoes and no child, no infant, nobody.
"Clear," I say. My voice is steady through the mask and I'm proud of that. "Room is clear. No victims."
Hayes nods. "Good. We're done up here. Back the way we came. Stay on me."
We go back. Past the fire room, where the orange glow is brighter now and I can hear something structural shifting, a groan from above that means the ceiling is thinking about coming down.
Hayes hears it too. She picks up the pace without running because running in a burning building is how you trip and fall and die.
Down the stairs. Through the first floor, where Rivera's team has already cleared and the hose line is coming through the front door, Torres and a Ladder 6 firefighter feeding it in. The water will start hitting the second floor soon. The fire will start losing.
We exit. The daylight is a physical shock, bright and clean and cold after the smoke, and I pull my mask off and the air tastes like oxygen and distance and relief.
Cap is at the command position. She looks at Hayes.
Hayes gives her the report: second floor searched, three rooms cleared, one room fully involved, no victims found.
The woman in the bathrobe is across the street talking to a police officer and I can hear her saying "everybody's out, we all got out, the baby's at my mother's. "
The baby's at her mother's.
The crib was empty because the baby was somewhere safe. I checked it anyway because that's what you do. You check. You don't assume. You put your hands on the mattress and confirm what you hope is true because hope is not a search protocol.
Another station came and is helping cut the roof to ventilate.
The smoke changes direction as they cut, pulling upward instead of pushing outward, and inside the building the hose teams are working and the fire is fighting back but losing.
The structure is holding. The second floor will be damaged but the house will stand.