Chapter 18
FOWLER
When the call comes in, I’m halfway through downing a protein shake and an argument with Gus over who’s responsible for the ketchup-shaped Rorschach on the kitchen ceiling.
We’re all in station T-shirts and sweatpants, lounging on mismatched couches. Then the alarm screeches to life.
Captain Vega’s voice booms from the hallway: “Let’s go, Murphy, quit your loafing!”
Outside, the sky threatens rain but delivers only humidity.
The air shimmers like a hot griddle. Some mornings I wake up needing the burn of an adrenaline spike, the white-hot edge that says you’re alive and making up for every wasted chance.
The NHL used to scratch that itch. Now it’s this: flames and a borrowed sense of heroism.
We pile into the engine with Captain Vega behind the wheel. My legs bounce as if I’ll detonate if I sit still too long. Dispatch presents its clinical calm over the radio: “Structure fire. Possible entrapment. Repeat, possible entrapment. Units responding.”
The house is already halfway to becoming a cautionary tale by the time we get there. The roof is doomed to collapse. Orange licks at the eaves, and black smoke turns the sky to a bruise. Police and fire lights paint everything in red and blue.
Vega is out first, striding through heatwaves with his turnout coat already half-buttoned. We follow, helmets slapping thighs and masks dangling. A coppery taste hangs in the air. The neighborhood crowds behind yellow tape, faces glowing with dread and awe.
There’s always a crowd. Everybody wants to see something burn that isn’t them.
We take the side door. Lopez on nozzle, me backing. Gus is behind us, carrying the irons. Vega floats behind, calling the shots but trusting us to make it work.
Inside, it’s like walking into a kiln. Walls buckle and light stabs from cracks in drywall.
Every step is guesswork. Someone’s personal history is burning up around us: family photos curled into ghosts and a half-melted television bleeding plastic onto the floor.
I shoulder a door open as we go room by room.
Only then do I hear it: not a human voice, but a high, desperate yowl.
“Dog!” I shout. My voice is swallowed by the heat.
Lopez hesitates a second, then nods, and we sweep the living room with our gloved hands. Smoke billows thickly around us. There’s another shriek from deeper in.
Vega’s voice barks in our radios. “Third floor’s about to go, you got thirty seconds.”
We’re supposed to back out. Play it safe. But I was never good at safe, not when I can help it.
The yowling is louder now. I peel left, ignoring the standard operating procedure, and push into the kitchen. Cabinets drop around me. The floor buckles underfoot. I catch a glint of movement beneath the sink—a trembling, soot-stained retriever wedged in the corner, eyes round as coins.
“C’mere, buddy,” I say, voice muffled by mask. He darts out, with hackles high and teeth bared. I lunge and hook him by the collar so I can drag him close as cabinets rain embers.
The radio in my ear is all static and shouting. “Murphy! Out now. I repeat, out now!”
I run for the door, but the house is rearranging itself. A sound like a freight train sounds overhead. I look up in time to see the ceiling fissure in slow motion—split, twist, and crash down. The retriever yelps. Something slams my helmet, then my shoulder. Pain scorches through my thigh.
I crash to the ground with the air punched out of me. My mask is sideways, world askew. The dog yelps beside me, pawing at my jacket. Its eyes are wild. My oxygen tank is somewhere else. There’s fire crawling closer now, low and greedy.
If I was the kind of guy who prayed, this is where I’d start.
I brace and try to crawl, but my right leg won’t cooperate. Broken, probably. I’ve played through worse, I tell myself, but there’s no crowd here, no ice. Just me and the dog and a house blazing down around us.
Grace’s face blurs in the smoke. I think of her, and Connor and Zev, and how we fucked it all up for her—how we made being around us a misery, when it was supposed to be magic.
I don’t blame her for hating us. I wish I could fix it, but sometimes you get one shot and if you miss, you burn.
The flames edge closer. I refuse to let go, even as my lungs howl and my vision shrinks at the edges. It’s not that I want to die, but if I do, I’m not leaving anything behind. Not again.
Then a roar sounds from the hallway. Captain Vega’s bulk crashes through debris, his helmeted head bent low. He’s shouting, but the words are lost. I see his eyes through the mask—blue, frantic, full of the same fear I remember from Dad when I broke my arm falling off the garage roof at age nine.
He grabs my harness and hauls me up. I cradle the dog closer in my arms. It’s still breathing. The pain is cosmic, but I try to breathe through it as best I can.
Vega muscles us through the fire into the night where the air far less smokey. Someone dumps water over us. The dog barks, shakes, then licks my face. It wags its tail as if this is all a normal Tuesday.
“Jesus, Murphy.” Vega rips off his mask. “Can’t follow a goddamn order to save your life.”
I try to grin—I had a good reason to ignore orders this time. “The dog needed saving.”
The kids the dog belongs to break through the ranks of firefighters and police. Their parents trail after them as a little boy and girl both under the age of seven run over to embrace their dog as EMTs try to put an oxygen mask near its mouth.
Gus kneels beside me. “Your leg’s fucked. That’s a hospital trip.”
Captain Vega waves the EMTs over. Sure enough, my leg is a mangled disaster. I’m given splint, gauze, and a healthy dose of morphine for when this adrenaline wears off.
Captain Vega leans in as the EMTs prepare to shut me in the ambulance. “You did good, Murphy. Stupid, but good.”
I nod. Words hurt too much.
Then I see the dog before the doors shut. It’s sitting at the curb, tongue out, embraced by the kids.
I wonder if Grace would see the heroism in risking my life for this dog, or just another reckless fuckup.
Probably both. But I can live with that since the dog lives.
The doors slam shut, and the siren howls. I close my eyes and let the drugs and doctors do their work.