“Catwalk first,” Aiden suggested. The catwalk had two sets of stairs at either end and a blocked off fire pole. The fire pole was out of use because statistics found more injuries occurred going down the pole than the stairs.
Erin was determined to get somewhere. “I’m worried about you. You’re pulling away from the team, and during the Freon, you froze.”
“I didn’t freeze,” Aiden said shortly.
“Sorry. Is there anything would you want to talk about? The apartment fire and the teenager. She died, right?” Erin went to yet another angle.
“People die in fires all the time. I did my best with her.” Aiden started sweeping the catwalk with more energy than the task demanded.
“I was scared of heights when I started in Seattle. I almost fell off a ladder four stories up. I was carrying a kid; I could have dropped her,” Erin admitted.
“Heights?” Aiden asked. She knew he was likely trying to remember if he’d ever noticed Erin give any hint of her past fear.
“I was worried that every time I got on the ladder, I’d fall. I’d wake up and hope that I was assigned to Engine or Medic. If I got assigned to Ladder, the house had better be burning on the first floor and not the fifth.”
“You don’t seem to have problems now.”
“Now, I’m a superstar. Back then, my team noticed and helped me. I went to therapy once, talked to a counselor. They started me climbing ladders without my gear and then with my gear. Over time, I got more confident, and it faded.” Erin was almost three years away from her fears now.
“It faded?”
“Faded slowly. If I hadn’t been able to tell my team, I don’t know where I would have been. I wouldn’t have been able to keep it quiet forever.”
“Color me not shocked. You never hold anything in.” He knelt down for the dustpan.
“I do hold stuff in,” she disagreed. Obliviously, she couldn’t tell him about her crush on the Chief culminating in the past weekend.
“You don’t. You tell everybody what you’re thinking all the time.”
“Do not.”
“This isn’t a bad thing. You aren’t like Luna who gives everyone the most negative and forceful version of her opinion, which is why the captain hates her. You talk all the time, but it’s pretty positive, fun, and friendly.”
“It’s called extrovert,” Erin protested.
“Or you have no inner monologue because you say it all out loud. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong with me because I don’t. We work for a tyrant who wants to lop off heads of anyone who speaks up.”
Right on cue, the captain entered the barn and yelled, “Team coffee meeting in my office now!”
The klaxon went off, and everyone waited. Hopefully, they would get a chance to avoid the meeting. “Firehouse 15, Medic 15 call for chest pain on West 34thstreet.”
Luna and Theo ran for their rig and pulled out.
Lucky ducks.
“Everyone into my office,” Williams barked before reconsidering. “I mean, please come to my office.” He escorted the remaining five into his office where he had two large carafes of coffee from Panera with eight pre-poured cups. “Here.”
“Wow. Coffee. Umm, thank you, Captain,” Vanessa stammered. Everyone held their cups nervously, standing back near the door. Even though Williams was seated behind his desk, no one was eager to come closer.
“Yes,” he said, “I might have been hard on people last shift. Perhaps if we shared our feelings and… things?” Williams played with a pen and a piece of paper on his desk.
“Share, sir?” Vanessa took a small step forward.
“Yes. I need to get to know you guys and… ladies… better. I didn’t have a permanent team when I was in FEMA, so I might be rusty.”
“You don’t say,” Kevin deadpanned, joining Vanessa in front of the captain’s desk. “Anything in particular you wanted to ask about?”
“I was going through the personnel files, and it seems that only Carver here is married. Any kids and stuff?”
