There was no way she didn’t know how attractive she was to him. She must’ve sensed the shape of it with every encounter. The yoga studio had been a mere blip compared to how he’d responded to her at the incident debrief and then the apartment building fire. His knowledge that she was a living breathing sexual harassment suit should have tempered his desire. Physical contact only made it more acute.
If he started touching her, she wouldn’t stop him. And he didn’t think he’d be able to stop himself. Not now, maybe not ever.
This would pass, he told himself. He would get away from her soon, and it would fade. He could date someone who wouldn’t destroy his career.
To be sure, he turned the water to as cold as possible.
* * *
“Today, you get to impress me. Show me the most innovative training technique in your arsenal. It might bend the protocol, but I don’t want to be opposed to new things,” Noah said a few hours later after the nine a.m. shift lineup.
As Hudgens had pointed out, he hadn’t seen the team push itself as all the calls he’d witnessed were pretty small potatoes. It wasn’t uncommon to have weeks or months between big calls, and it was at the pleasure of the firehouse on how they trained in between. The A-shift would have some very inventive methods of training, he was sure.
The female officers were positively gleeful, though Aiden Clarke rolled his eyes. It took no time to figure out why.
The team quickly rolled out two fish tanks full of water and two cardio-pulmonary monitoring units. Everyone stripped down to skins or sports bras and lined up behind the fish tanks. Theo Jefferson and Kevin Jones appeared to be setting up an obstacle course with tires and turnouts. Clarke brought out a whiteboard with everyone’s name listed and a time. Rodriguez was busy setting up a microphone and two sets of waterproof headphones.
“What’s going on?” Noah asked, watching the activity.
“This is the Air Management Challenge. You submerge your head in the water for as long as possible while one of the lieutenants recites the Rules of Engagement for Firefighter Survival or something else,” Knight explained. Par for the course, she was eager to prove her mettle.
“Who approved this?” Noah inquired.
“Captain Soto, of course. Rodriguez and Knight worked it out when Jefferson and Hudgens transferred,” Clarke answered. Unlike Knight, Clarke was fading in the background, often deferring to Rodriguez. Noah had no idea if it was the regular dynamic or if it was because their relationship had fractured. As Chief, he could not ask.
“Don’t forget the meditation,” Knight prompted.
“After we have a winner, we meditate for five minutes before we get to the obstacle course,” Clarke explained further.
“So, this is a breath-holding, listening under pressure, and testing your medical equipment contest?” Noah asked to confirm his understanding of the exercise.
“Exactly. It’s multifaceted,” Knight exclaimed with enthusiasm. “Before beauty pageant matches, I used meditation to filter out extraneous information under pressure.”
“Naturally,” Noah responded. He couldn’t exactly fault this plan because they were monitoring the entire thing. Being trapped without air in a smoke-filled room could lead to air hunger. Air regulation without panicking was a key firefighting skill.
There’s probably a healthy dose of hazing, too,he thought. Carver’s response was far less enthusiastic compared to his teammates. Hudgens had her arms crossed over her sports bra, smirking. Noah made sure his eyes never rested on her for more than seconds at a time. He couldn’t think about their morning interlude.
“Who wins?” Noah asked.
Jefferson guffawed. “Erin wins every time. The real contest is for second place. Second place picks the teams for the obstacle course.”
“What does Hudgens get?” Noah asked, telling himself not to think about giving anything to her.
“Other than eternal bragging rights? She gets a five-second head start on the course. Average of the times gets us the winning team. The losing team cleans the toilets,” Rodriguez said, testing the microphone.
Noah had to admit the contest was quite clever. If Hudgens consistently won, she always started with an advantage on the obstacle course, making her in high demand as a teammate. One of the harder objectives the fire department had was integrating women. This challenge played to her strengths and rewarded the men for making her part of their team. It encouraged cooperation and teamwork between the members doing the race.
Rookie initiation was alive and well. If this had been a planned hazing for Hudgens last year, it backfired. Carver had been selected by Noah for his particular combination of skills, but firefighting hadn’t been one of them.
All firehouses had a certain amount of hazing and low-level initiation. The probies got stuck with grunt work: laundry, cleaning, cooking, and still were trained on firefighting as they earned their place on the squad. The key was to strike a balance between humiliation and teambuilding before the probie quit. Women had it harder than men, but 15 had been the most successful at retaining their women.
Except for the illicit romance between his two lieutenants, which he hoped was well in the past.
“B, C, and D-shifts do this?” he asked Clarke.
“Once a month. We try to do it once a week with our new probie. Watch now. You’ll see what happens.”
Jones and Carver both put the headphones on and attached a pulse ox to their foot. They plunged their heads into the fish tanks and stood there. Rodriguez had the mic and started reading out the Rules of Firefighter Survival. She made it to Rule Number 10 when Carver pulled his head out. She’d started reciting the lunch menu when Jones quit.
