10. Tate
TATE
The heavy coat slides from my shoulders and hits the floor with a thick thud.
I unclip the suspenders of my bunker pants, letting them drop around my boots.
Each movement is a well-worn groove, a sequence my body knows without instruction.
Gear gets dropped here. Hoses get checked and re-rolled there.
The big bay doors yawn wide, coaxing out the ghost of burnt plastic and smoke that clings to every surface, to our hair, to the inside of my throat.
We breathe it out. We let the day in. It’s the ritual of reset.
Only, I’m not resetting.
“You want first go at the shower, Tate? You look like you wrestled a chimney.”
Wes’s voice rises above the clatter of equipment. I glance over, my hands automatically moving to unlace my boots.
“Go ahead. I’ll finish up here.”
My hands know the work. They coil the stiff, wide hose with a practiced rhythm, spinning it onto the spool. My mind isn’t here. It’s back in a dark custodian’s closet, kneeling on a dusty floor.
The station pulses with its own life force.
The metallic clang of an air tank hitting concrete.
The low murmur of a debrief in the captain’s office.
Someone laughs from the kitchen, a sharp bark of sound that feels a hundred miles away.
It’s the same symphony as any other day, but I can’t find my place in it. The beat is off. Or maybe I am.
At the deep utility sink, I turn on the tap.
Water sluices over my knuckles, cold and hard.
I scrub at the black grime caked under my nails and around my wrists, watching the suds turn a liquid grey and swirl down the drain.
It’s not the fire I see when I close my eyes.
Not the flames contained to a single oven or the spray of the extinguisher.
It’s not even the sirens. It’s the silence.
The intense, coiled quiet of a small body tucked behind a mop bucket.
The way his hands glued to his ears, a desperate attempt to build a fortress against the world.
I remember the slight shift in his shoulders when I offered him my helmet. The barest flicker of acknowledgement. It wasn’t a rescue, not in the way we usually mean. It was a negotiation. A trade of one kind of quiet for another. I just rinse my hands, over and over, watching the water run clear.
"So." Wes's voice slices through the mechanical hum of the station. He's leaning against the counter, arms crossed, that familiar half-smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. "You planning to wash your hands until they disappear, or are we gonna talk about what happened back there?"
I shut off the tap, reaching for the rough paper towels. "What's to talk about? Kid got overwhelmed. Fire alarm's loud."
"Kid got overwhelmed." Wes pushes off the counter, moves closer. "That what we're calling it?"
The paper towel disintegrates between my fingers. I grab another one.
"And the mom." Wes continues, his tone light but his eyes sharp. "She looked like she was about to crawl out of her own skin. Hell, I thought she might tackle Rodriguez when he tried to stop her from going back in."
"Can't blame her for that."
"No, you can't." He pauses, studying my face. "But you handled the kid differently. Saw you with him. Wasn't your usual grab-and-go rescue technique."
I toss the towel in the bin, turn to face him. Wes has this way of reading a room that cuts through every defense you think you have. It's what makes him good at this job. It's also what makes him impossible to dodge when he decides something's worth pursuing.
"Kid was scared. Needed a different approach."
"Kid was more than scared, Tate. Kid was..." Wes gestures vaguely, searching for words. "What's the word? When they just... shut down?"
"Overwhelmed."
"Right. Overwhelmed." Wes nods slowly. "Like Eli used to get."
The mention of our brother hovers in the air. It's not something we talk about often, not directly. Eli's been good for years now, found his rhythm in college, but there was a time when a fire alarm would have sent him into the same kind of spiral I witnessed today.
"Yeah," I say finally. "Like Eli."
Wes moves to the coffee pot, pours himself a cup that's probably been sitting there since morning. Takes a sip and makes a face.
"So you knew? Soon as you saw him."
"I knew he wasn't going to respond to standard procedure." I lean back against the sink. "Kid like that, in that state... you don't grab him and run. You give him choices. Small ones. Make the world smaller instead of bigger."
"The helmet thing was smart."
"Helmet's padded. Cuts the noise without cutting off his hearing completely. Lets him feel safe without going completely deaf to what's happening around him."
Wes nods, swirls the coffee in his cup. "Learned that with Eli?"
"Learned a lot of things with Eli." The words come heavier than I intended. "How to spot the signs. How to talk someone down from a ledge they built in their own head. How to make space for someone to exist without making them feel broken."
"Mom looked like she knows all about that kind of space-making."
I think about the way Jordyn dropped to her knees when she saw Brody, the practiced way she checked him over, the relief and exhaustion warring in her expression.
"Yeah. She does." A knot tightens in my gut. I see her face again—that raw, frayed look. It’s a look I saw on my own mother’s face more times than I can count.
Wes drains the last of his foul coffee. "So that's it? You found the kid, he's safe. End of story."
"You know it's not." I push away from the sink, the damp fabric of my undershirt clinging to my back.
My voice drops, the words meant for him and me alone.
"Something like this... it doesn't just go away for a kid like him.
It sticks. It rewrites their code. Now every time a siren wails past his house, he's right back in that dark closet, hands over his ears.
Every time he sees a uniform, he doesn't see help. He sees the noise. The chaos."
I pace the short distance to the truck, running a hand over the cool, red metal of the door. The engine ticks as it cools, a slow, metallic heartbeat.
"It gets harder each time. The panic digs deeper grooves. If someone doesn't short-circuit that connection, his world just keeps getting smaller and colder."
That’s the part that won’t let me go. It’s not about the fire we put out. It’s about the one we might have started in his head. The one that will burn long after the smoke clears.
A quiet settles between us, filled only by the low drone of the station's lights. Wes understands. He’s seen those grooves form in our own family. He knows how hard we worked to smooth them out for Eli.
"We should have them come by the station." The thought solidifies as I speak it. I turn to Wes, my gaze steady. "Bring them in for a tour."
"A tour?"
"Yeah. Let him see the truck when it’s not screaming. Let him sit in the cab, touch the gear. Let him meet the guys when we’re just a bunch of guys drinking bad coffee."
I leave the rest unsaid. It's not about a tour. It's about rewriting the code. Giving him a memory of this place that isn't rooted in terror. Giving him a measure of control, a map of this corner of his world so it's no longer a dark, unknown territory. A visit on his own terms.
Wes sets his empty cup down on the counter with a deliberate clink. The sound echoes in the quiet bay, sharp and knowing.
"Right. A tour." His tone carries that particular blend of amusement and skepticism that means he's about to cut straight through whatever bullshit I'm trying to serve him. "For the kid's psychological well-being."
"That's what I said."
"Uh-huh." Wes crosses his arms, leans back against the counter. "And it's got nothing to do with the way you looked at his mom when she thanked you. Or the fact that you've been staring at your hands for the past ten minutes like they might sprout answers."
I turn my attention to the truck, run my palm along the smooth chrome of the bumper. The metal is warm from the afternoon sun streaming through the big bay doors.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you don't." Wes pushes off the counter, moves closer. "Look, I'm not saying it's a bad idea. Kid could probably use it. Hell, might do him some good to see us when we're not charging through smoke and chaos."
"Exactly."
"But let's not pretend this is some noble community outreach program you cooked up." His voice drops, becomes more direct. "You want to see them again."
The words hang between us. I could deny it. Could dress it up in professional concern or community service or any number of perfectly reasonable explanations. But Wes has this way of cutting through the layers until you're standing there with nothing but the truth, raw and undeniable.
"Yeah." The admission comes out quiet, matter-of-fact. "I do."
"There it is." Wes nods, satisfied. "Was that so hard?"
I turn to face him, lean back against the truck. "It's not what you think."
"I think you met a woman and her kid in the midst of a crisis. I think you handled that crisis well. And I think something about the whole situation got under your skin and won't let go."
He's not wrong. But it's not the complete picture either.
"It's the way she looked when she couldn't find him." The words come slower now, more careful. "Like the world was ending. Like everything she'd built to keep him safe was crumbling around her feet."
Wes's expression shifts, becomes more serious. "And?"
"And when she saw him with me, safe... it wasn't relief. Not entirely." I push my hair back, try to find the right words. "It was gratitude mixed with this bone-deep exhaustion. Like she'd been holding her breath for so long she forgot what normal breathing felt like."
"Sounds familiar."
It does. It sounds like every expression I ever saw cross my mother's face during Eli's worst years. The constant vigilance. The weight of being the only one who truly understood what her child needed.
"She's doing it alone." The observation settles between us with quiet certainty. "Raising a kid like Brody, navigating all of this... she's doing it completely alone."
Wes studies my face with that sharp attention he usually reserves for reading fire patterns.
"And you want to change that."
"I want to help." The honesty of it surprises me. "Not fix. Not take over. Just... help. Make it a little less alone."
"I think you are already in over your head, buddy."
"Bullshit."
I'm beginning to wonder if Wes is right.