Chapter 12 #2
“I mean,” I add quickly, “for the feature. For the night shifts. It matters that you see the whole pattern.”
“Right,” he says.
“Yes.”
“The whole pattern.”
“Exactly.”
He looks at me for a moment.
Then he says, very softly, “I’m glad I came back too.”
The room changes.
Or I do.
It is not much. Just a thin shift in the air between us. A warmth that has nowhere useful to go. His voice. My stupid pulse. The knowledge that if I stepped closer, he might not move away.
The knowledge that I might not want him to.
“Pippa,” he says.
I should not like how he says my name but I do.
“Yes?”
“I’ll stay where you put me.”
The words are sensible.
The tone is not.
The tone is a problem.
For half a second, I cannot decide whether to step back or step closer, which is a ridiculous set of options to be weighing in a room full of fold-out beds at work.
Then the alarm goes.
Sharp. Loud. Immediate.
The whole station changes in a breath.
Control comes through over the station system, clipped and calm.
Building fire. Possible person involved. Isolated property off Millbeck Lane. Caller reports flames visible from outbuilding. Elderly male possibly inside. Heavy rain. Difficult access.
That strips the warmth out of the room faster than the alarm.
When we get to the appliance bay Kev is already moving. Mish is at the pegs. Dan crosses to the appliance with the quick, economical stride of someone who has done this a thousand times and still knows the next one can go wrong.
AJ follows, but he looks once at me first.
Not asking what to do.
Waiting for the instruction.
I point to the spare high-vis jacket hanging near the bay. “Put that on.”
He does.
Straight away.
I look at Dan, who is driving tonight. “Watch him tonight. Keep him back from the working area when we arrive.”
Dan nods once. “Yep.”
That is it.
That is all it needs to be.
AJ is not mine to manage right now. He is an observer, and Dan can keep him safe while I deal with the incident.
I get into kit.
Boots. Trousers. Tunic. Helmet. The familiar weight lands on my body and the softer part of me goes quiet. There is no space for rest rooms or almost-smiles or the way AJ said my name.
There is fire.
There is a possible person inside.
There is weather bad enough to make every decision more awkward.
The doors roll open and the rain hits the yard in hard silver sheets. The night beyond the station is black and shining, every surface slick under the lights.
AJ climbs into the back with Dan’s gesture to guide him, high-vis over his clothes, seat belt on before Dan has to tell him. His face is pale under the interior light, but he is steady. Watching. Absorbing the change in us.
I climb in and pull the door shut.
Then we are moving.
The drive out is wet, dark and ugly.
The wipers work hard and barely keep up.
Water runs along the lanes in streams, gathering in the dips, throwing back the blue lights in broken flashes.
Once we leave the better road, Millbeck narrows quickly.
Hedges press in on both sides. The verges are soft.
The rain makes everything look closer and less certain than it is.
Dan keeps us steady.
Control updates us over the radio as we go.
Caller is the neighbour. Detached outbuilding well alight. Elderly male believed to have gone inside for a dog. Wife is with neighbour. Ambulance requested. Police en route. Possible propane cylinder stored in outbuilding.
Dan looks across at me.
I see the thought on his face before he says it.
“Cylinders,” he mutters.
“Yes,” I say. “We heard.”
He gives one short nod, because that is the whole conversation.
No drama.
Just another problem added to the list.
I glance back once.
Mish is saying something low to AJ, probably practical, probably where to stand and where not to stand when we arrive.
AJ listens without interrupting. His hands are braced lightly on his knees, but he is not gripping too hard.
He is scared enough to understand this matters and calm enough not to make that fear anyone else’s problem.
Good.
I turn back to the road.
The property appears out of the rain almost all at once.
A collection of old stone buildings emerged from the darkness.
The farmhouse sat at the centre, low and weathered, with two cottages nearby and trees black against the night beyond.
The outbuilding stood to one side, part shed, part workshop, flames pushing through one end of the roof.
Smoke dragging sideways in the rain and wind.
A woman stands by the farm gate in a dressing gown and wellies, held back by another woman in a coat who is trying to keep an umbrella over both of them. The rain has already made a mockery of the effort.
The woman in the wellies is screaming a name.
“Arthur!”
Again.
“Arthur!”
My body reacts.
Then it does what I need it to do.
It gets on with the job.
Dan brings us in as close as he safely can. The yard is uneven, slick with rain and mud. When I step down, water hits the back of my neck and runs cold beneath my collar.
I take the scene in fast.
Right-hand side of the outbuilding involved. Smoke pushing from the door and gaps in the roof. House close enough to protect if the wind changes.
Dan has AJ at the edge of the yard before I have to think about it. Visible, back from the working area, close enough to observe, far enough not to become another problem.
That lets me focus.
The next few minutes tighten into movement and decisions.
Kev and Mish get to work. Dan stays close enough to be useful, far enough to keep AJ where he needs to be. The second appliance’s crew moves link up with Kev. The neighbour is trying to tell me everything at once.
“He went back in. He said he had to get Ferdinand. I told him not to. I told him, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Ferdinand is the dog?”
“Yes. He sleeps in there sometimes. Not all the time. I don’t know if he was in there tonight. I don’t know.”
“Any cylinders?”
“One propane bottle. Maybe two. For the heater. There’s petrol too, for the mower.”
“Where?”
“Back wall. Left side, I think. Unless he moved it. I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“You’re doing fine,” I say, because people always apologise when they cannot hand you perfect information in the middle of chaos. “Stay with her. Keep her back.”
The wife is still calling for Arthur. Her voice has gone rough, torn at the edges.
I do not look at her for too long.
That is not cruelty.
It is how I keep working.
The rain makes everything harder in the stupid, practical way weather always does. Mud underfoot. Gloves slick. Water running into eyes. Radio crackle cutting through the hiss of rain and fire. The building pops and groans, old timber shifting as heat works through it.
We knock the fire back enough to create a safer approach.
Not safe.
Never safe.
Safer.
There is a difference, and the difference is the job.
The crew move with care. Dan is manning the controls on the pump. I catch one glimpse of AJ standing exactly where Dan put him, rain shining on his high-vis, eyes fixed on the work in front of him.
No notebook.
No phone.
Just watching.
Then Kev’s voice comes over the radio.
“Casualty located.”
Everything narrows.
“Status?” I ask.
A beat.
“Male. Unconscious. Bringing him out.”
The world becomes hands, space, route, rain.
We clear what needs clearing. Make room where there is no room. The ambulance is still minutes away, which is both normal and far too long. The wife’s scream cuts through everything when Kev and Mish bring Arthur out.
He is limp.
Smoke-blackened.
Grey hair plastered to his forehead.
One slipper missing.
He looks small.
They often do.
That is one of the things no one tells you.
People look small when you get them out.
We start care.
Mish is there.
Kev is there.
I am there.
Dan is still at the pump and the rest of the crew is battling the flames.
The rain comes down hard enough to flatten sound and somehow, I still hear every awful thing.
His wife crying. The radio. Kev’s breathing.
My own voice giving instructions. The ambulance arriving at last, tyres over gravel, doors opening, paramedics joining us with that brisk, terrible competence of people who know exactly how bad a moment can be and step into it anyway.
We do everything we can.
All of us.
Every second.
There is no clean line between hope and knowing. Not at first. There is only work. There is what we do because the alternative is doing nothing, and doing nothing is unbearable.
So we work.
In the rain.
In the mud.
In the orange wash of the fire we are still controlling behind us.
I do not look at AJ.
I cannot afford to know what his face is doing.
Time stretches.
Then it ends.
Not with drama.
Not with music.
Not with a line anyone would put in an article.
Just a paramedic’s voice, quiet and final beneath the rain.
And Arthur is gone.