Chapter 2
Ty
She finishes the coffee.
I don't see her do it, because I'm in the apparatus bay, because I'm a grown man who walked out of that kitchen like a man who wasn't reorganizing his entire nervous system, but I know she finishes it, because when I pass through the kitchen an hour later on my way to the briefing room, the mug is upside down in the drying rack. Rinsed. Dried. Put away.
I've spent almost eleven years as a firefighter learning not to have feelings about a coffee mug. This one takes me ninety seconds.
Rivera is in the briefing room when I get there.
He glances up from his clipboard and doesn't say anything.
Rivera's silences are a language with its own conjugation, and the particular silence he's giving me right now is the one that translates roughly to I saw what I saw but we won't be discussing it at this time.
I sit down and I don't discuss it.
Beck comes in from the office with the daily shift sheet and a look of pre-patience. "Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Gemma. Good morning, Hanna."
"Morning, Captain."
Hanna is sitting three chairs down from me.
She's in station blues, hair pulled back — some kind of twist, not a ponytail — and she's writing in a small notebook, because she's always been the kind of woman who took notes on her first day of kindergarten, and I've been informed of this by Cal at approximately two thousand family dinners.
I don't look at her. I look at Beck with the attention of a man who's never cared about anything in his life other than Beck's briefing schedule.
"Rig checks at eleven," Beck says. "Drills at eleven thirty.
Hanna, Gemma, I want you two running through our ambulance inventory — your inventory stock is the same as Portland's, Hanna, but our stocking ratios are different, Gemma will walk you through them.
Brennan, you're on hydrant maintenance with Deluca — "
"Oh hell." Deluca sinks in his chair.
" — I heard that, Deluca — " Beck counters without looking up.
"I meant it reverentially, Captain." Pure innocence.
" — Cal, you're on vent fan checks with Rivera. Harrison, paperwork with me. Derek —"
Derek sits up straighter. "Ready to serve."
" — you're on kitchen duty."
"That isn't a drill." Derek sets down his pen. "That's an assignment."
"It's also a drill. Your eggs were inedible. It's a crisis. We're working on it."
"My eggs are an expression of self."
"Your eggs are a hazard.” He looks around the room. “We all clear? Good. Go."
Everyone stands up to leave the briefing room.
Hanna stands up. She doesn't look at me and I try not to look at her.
In my peripheral vision, she's precisely and specifically there, taking up exactly the volume of air she used to take up in my dorm room, which isn't an amount of air that should be possible in a briefing room of this size, and yet — here we are.
I don't look at her.
I look at Deluca instead, who's waiting by the door with the expression of a golden retriever who's just learned there's a car ride in his future.
"Let's go, probie."
"Yessir." He falls in beside me. "Ty, can I ask you a question?"
"No."
"Is Hanna your — "
"Deluca."
"Because she and Cal introduced — "
"Deluca."
"Sorry." He drops his chin like I've taken something from him personally.
"We're going to check hydrants."
"Yes, sir."
"We aren't going to discuss Hanna."
"Copy that." He salutes me.
"Great."
"You made her coffee, and I was gonna — "
"Deluca."
He shuts up. We check hydrants. He asks me four questions about hydrants and eleven questions that aren't about hydrants, and I answer one out of every three, and by noon, he's gotten the message, or at least a version of the message that has been filtered through the porous membrane of Deluca's brain, which is that some things at Station 7 aren't discussed, and my face at the mention of Paramedic Larsen is one of those things.
Deluca asks me, on the way to the third hydrant, whether Hanna and Cal are twins, because they're the same height.
I tell him no. He asks if they're really siblings.
I tell him yes. He asks how many siblings I have.
I tell him none. He asks if I wanted siblings.
I tell him I'm fine. He asks what fine means to me. I check the cap on the next hydrant.
He asks if Cal and I really went to the Oregon State Fire Academy if we're from Montana. I tell him Montana had a two-year waitlist and Oregon ran a reciprocal certification program that Cal found. He says oh. He writes something down.
At the fourth hydrant, Deluca asks whether Hanna's boyfriend in Portland was a paramedic too. I don't know. He asks how I don't know. Haven't asked. He asks why I haven't asked. I tell him to record the static pressure. He records it — twice, slowly, like it's an act of love.
At the fifth hydrant, Deluca asks me whether I think Hanna will stay in Copper Ridge. No idea. He asks if I want her to stay. I tell him to read me back the pressure. He reads it back wrong. I make him read it back right. He does, then asks me again whether I want her to stay.
At the sixth hydrant, I tell Deluca that the next question about Hanna costs him a lap around the lot when we’re back at the station. He nods. He keeps the nod going for three full seconds, with the gravity of a man receiving a sacrament. Then he asks me what kind of music Hanna likes.
He runs the lap. He runs it badly, the way only a probie running a lap as a punishment runs it, with too much arm swing and not enough leg.
From the truck I watch him round the corner of the apparatus bay, and I'm briefly alone with my own face in the rearview mirror.
I don't recognize the man looking back at me, which is a problem, because he's the man who's supposed to keep this together for the next decade.
This isn't sustainable, and it's only day one.
I've been telling myself for four months, since Cal told me his sister was coming back to take the paramedic opening at Station 7, that I could handle this. That I'm a grown man. That I've had a decade of practice.
And I have. I've practiced for a decade.
I practiced when Cal mentioned her over beers.
I practiced when she came home for Christmas that first year and I had a shift conveniently on Christmas Eve and offered to take the rookie's spot the next day.
I practiced when her mother invited me to Thanksgiving and I went, because you go to Mom Larsen's for Thanksgiving.
You don't refuse Mom Larsen. I practiced through the turkey and the stuffing and the casual conversation, and I practiced when she didn't come home that year because she'd taken a shift in Portland. I practiced, is what I'm saying.
I practiced when her photo was on Mom Larsen's mantel in her paramedic dress blues, graduating from some course in Portland, eyes to the camera, jaw set, hair pulled back the way she wears it now.
I practiced looking at that photo at Easter and Thanksgiving and Mom's birthday and the Labor Day barbecue every year.
I've practiced not looking at that photo, which is harder than practicing looking at it.
I can tell you the position of every pixel in it.
I practiced a lot.
And then she walked into the locker room with her hair pulled back the same way as in the photo, and Cal's arm around her shoulder, and all ten years of practice did exactly nothing, because practice is useless when the thing shows up for real.
I finish hydrant checks with Deluca. I go to the kitchen.
Derek is making his eggs. Harrison is watching Derek's eggs with the weary disappointment of a man who loves his men but is tired of them.
The kitchen is full of the sounds of a firehouse at lunchtime: radio chatter, the fridge humming, Deluca singing under his breath, Rivera grumbling about the pump, and somewhere down the hall, Hanna laughing.
That one stops me.
Hanna is laughing.
It's a real laugh. Not a work laugh, not a polite laugh. She has a specific laugh that I haven't heard in ten years, and it's doing the one thing I've been strictly asking it not to do, which is existing in my proximity.
Rivera materializes behind me without sound, as is his habit.
"Brennan."
I turn. "What."
"Eyebrow check."
My hand goes to my own forehead before I can stop it. "What?"
"You're doing the eyebrow thing."
"There's no eyebrow thing."
"Mmhmm." He brushes past me to the coffee pot. "Hydrants good?"
"Hydrants are hydrants."
Rivera's eyes drift to the door. "Deluca?"
"Still alive."
"Credit to you." He pours a cup. "Big day, rookie paramedic."
"Mmhmm."
"She's good." He lifts his mug toward the hallway.
"Mmhmm."
"Portland did right by her."
"Mmhmm."
He watches me over the rim of his mug for a beat too long. Then he goes back to his clipboard and heads for the hall.
"Carry on."
"Yep."
The tones hit at 2:47. Structure fire, 4400 block of Willow, occupants reported inside. I know it's going to be bad before dispatch finishes reading the address over the speakers. Willow runs along the cheap end of the subdivision where the builders cut corners in '04.
We're rolling in under a minute. I'm in the jump seat. Cal is across from me, shouting prep over the radio to Harrison. Hanna is in the ambulance behind us. Her lights are in our mirrors. I check them in the side mirror twice. Both times are unnecessary but I still do it.
The house is fully involved when we pull up.
Flames out of the front windows, smoke coming out of the eaves in that ugly dense way that means it's eating insulation and plastics, and a woman on the curb in a bathrobe, screaming at us about her dog.
The dog is already out. The dog is in her arms. The dog is shaking but fine.
The woman can't process the dog because the woman is in shock.
Hanna goes to her.
I watch it for one second, which is the only second I can afford.
She moves through the chaos like she was made for it.
She takes the woman's elbow. She's saying the woman's dog's name, redirecting the woman toward the ambulance with the quiet, certain authority of a paramedic who's done this five hundred times, and she's, at the same time, scanning the house for anybody else she's going to have to triage in the next sixty seconds.
I've never seen anyone do the job exactly like this.
The old version of her was good. This version is extraordinary.
That's the second I can afford.
"Brennan!" Cal is already at the door. "Front entry, on me."
"Behind you." I grab my helmet.
We go in. Interior, smoke to the floor, heat signature on the second-story ceiling.
The standard choreography kicks in — left hand search, left hand search, calling out — and my body does what I've trained it to do, which is to stop being a person with feelings and start being a firefighter with a specific job, and I do the job as Cal does the job, and we clear the house. Nobody, thank god. We come back out.
The fire is losing. Harrison is on the deck gun. The house is a total loss, but the house next door isn't going to catch, which is Beck's whole objective for the last four minutes. I pull my mask off by the engine and drink the water someone hands me. My eyes find Hanna without instruction.
She's sitting in the ambulance. The woman is in the back, oxygen on, the dog in her lap, a blanket around her shoulders.
Hanna is writing on her board and listening — really listening — with her whole face tilted toward the woman in a way I've personally experienced and had forgotten how it felt, and the way I had forgotten how it felt is that it hits me like a two-by-four now that I'm seeing it again.
Hanna Larsen can make you feel like the only person in the entire world.
I'm thirty-three years old, and I'm in love with her still, and I've been for ten years and five months, and the decade of practice has done exactly nothing. I'm no longer going to pretend it has.
I am, however, going to continue pretending in public, because pretending in public is different, and also because Cal is standing directly next to me.
Cal nudges me with his elbow. "She's good, huh."
"Yeah."
"That's my sister." The pride in his voice has been sitting there all day, waiting for permission.
"Yeah, Cal, I know."
"Makes you feel honored to know her, doesn't it?"
"Sure does."
"I'm saying I'm proud." He nods like this is a groundbreaking development.
"Yeah, I got that." I keep my face level.
"Don't be weird," Cal says.
"I'm not being weird."
He holds up his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. "You're being a little weird."
"I'm not."
"Okay." Cal claps me on the shoulder. A clap, from Cal, is the closing punctuation. It's also, as of today, a small knife in my back. "She's a good paramedic. I knew she'd be good. I told you she'd be good."
"You did tell me," I agree.
"For four months. I told you for four months."
"Relentlessly." I finish the water bottle and squish it into a small bundle.
"Hey." He punches me in the arm. "Don't be mean to me at a structure fire where my little sister is working. I'm emotional."
I roll my eyes. "Noted."
We stay on scene for another hour. Overhaul, salvage, the gas company cutting off the line, the homeowner's neighbor showing up to take her in, the dog pissing on my boot, which is fine, which is medically fine, because a dog pissing on my boot is the third most vulnerable thing that has happened to me today.
On the drive back, Derek leans forward from the back seat. "I'm creating a betting pool."
"No," Harrison says flatly.
"I'm making a bet that I can make Paramedic Larsen laugh by end of shift." He pitches it in a conspiratorial whisper, like he's proposing a heist. "Twenty dollars, gentlemen. Does anyone want in?"
Cal, the idiot, laughs. "I'll take twenty against you. My sister's poker face is legendary. You'll die trying."
"Big Jim always takes the other side," Harrison says.
"Even retired, Big Jim will take any side," Beck says.
"Noted." Derek pivots. "Rivera, you want in?"
Rivera doesn't look up from his paperwork. "Ten dollars against Derek. This is a sure thing."
"Deluca?"
"I'm a probie. I don't have twenty dollars."
"I'll spot you," Derek offers.
"Thanks, Derek."
Derek turns to me. "Brennan? You want a piece of this action?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't gamble."
"You gamble every day of your life," Deluca says.
"Not with money."
"You're such a boy scout."
"Mmhmm."
I keep my face still. I keep it very still. I don't look out the window for the ambulance. I don't need to look out the window, because I know exactly where the ambulance is. The ambulance is forty feet behind us, and she's driving it, and it's fine.
I've had a decade of practice.
I'm going to need a lot more.