Captain Williams indicated Ladder team to remove their helmets and masks.
“What happened?” Luna asked. Sirens were coming closer.
“Freon exposure,” Williams answered. “We got three more ambulances coming. You guys are taking a trip to MetroGen. I’m riding with Carver.”
“Is there anything else I can do?” Vanessa said, guilt written all over her face.
“You did enough.” The tone behind his words was less than kind. It had the effect of crushing Vanessa’s minimal confidence to almost zilch. He turned to Aiden. “What were they doing when you found them?”
“Trying to turn on their air,” Aiden said.
“Right.” Williams turned sarcastic, “They broke protocol by going in without their air on. Excellent. Take the rigs back to the station. Tell them we’re off service until everyone is cleared.”
That was another slap in the face. Between Vanessa, Aiden, Erin, and the two D-shifters, they had at least enough for a single engine company or to run the ambulance. His message was clear: he didn’t trust them enough without his presence. He considered them only appropriate to make the daily grocery run.
Erin couldn’t determine which of her lieutenants needed more support—Vanessa who mistook Freon for smoke or Aiden who spent half his time spaced out. It wasn’t Luna, because she was giggling constantly when they loaded her into the next ambulance.
Eventually, she went to Ladder with Vanessa. Erin sat in the officer’s seat and listened to Vanessa’s one-sided conversation.
“It was Freon. I never thought of it. It was Freon on the whole time. That’s why the smoke detector didn’t go off,” she muttered to no one in particular.
“Yes.”
“They went in without air. That’s their fault. Not my fault. If they followed protocol, none of this would have happened.”
“True.” Erin went for short answers.
“So, it’s not my fault. It’s their fault. That’s better. It’s not my fault. They violated protocol. Don’t you agree?”
Here was a harder question. “I don’t think Williams agrees.”
“How can he not? I did what I was supposed to do,” Vanessa protested in her defense.
Erin replied, “He’s testing you.”
“He’s testing me?”
“He knew it was Freon the whole time,” Erin pointed out.
Vanessa almost missed a stop sign. “Did you know it was Freon?”
“No,” Erin said. “Never crossed my mind. I do know a test when I see it, though.” She got out and helped direct the two rigs back through the barn’s doors.
Vanessa was still thinking out loud. “That ASSHOLE! He knew you wouldn’t need the water. He guessed what happened the second they didn’t answer. He let them wait till I didn’t figure it out. He deliberately put my team in danger.”
“Usually, Luna reminds everyone to go on air, but this time you didn’t.” Aiden started rechecking the way the hose had been reloaded.
The revelations were coming fast for Vanessa now. “This whole time, he’s been quizzing me and ignoring you and Luna. He’s been playing us against each other. He knows I’m roommates with Luna and you with Kevin. He’s kept us all on different assignments so far…”
She continued on that vein all the way upstairs to the Cafe. Erin handed Vanessa onions and a knife, saying. “Not that you cry, because you don’t. But if the onions made you cry while you smashed them, it’s not you.”
“I hate him.” Erin and Aiden slid further away from Vanessa because she started brutalizing the onion. “I thought he was trying to teach me, but he was picking apart my weaknesses and setting me up to fail. No wonder you’re doing nothing, Clarke.”
“Thanks, Nessie,” he drawled.
Erin kept washing off more vegetables and then passing them to Vanessa who continued to pulverize them. If nothing else came out of this, they were going to have a nice stir-fry for lunch.
D-shift reappeared to inform them the exposed members of the shift would be under observation for at least four hours, and the captain was staying with them in the ER.
