"What the hell?" Martinez yanked harder, and the entire bundle tumbled out of the bed onto the ground. Disconnected. The fucking pigtail wasn't connected to the discharge.
"Shit!" Thompson was already moving, diving for the connection. But we all knew what this meant. Someone had pulled this line and hadn't reconnected it properly.
Rage, cold and pure, surged through me. On a call with a reported entrapment, this wasn't just an oversight. Lives hung in the balance while Thompson scrambled to thread the coupling.
"Forget it!" I yelled, my mind racing through contingencies. "Benny, charge the bumper line! Thompson, forcible entry. Martinez, with me!"
We lost forty-five seconds — an eternity on a fireground. Forty-five seconds of smoke banking down, of heat building, of whoever was trapped inside running out of time.
We made up for it with brutal efficiency. Thompson popped the front door with a single, perfectly placed strike of the Halligan. Martinez and I advanced the backup line into the house, the heat rolling over us in a physical wave.
We found the fire in an upstairs bedroom and knocked it down quickly. The truck crew arrived and performed a search, finding the elderly homeowner passed out from smoke inhalation in a back hallway. They brought her out, alive.
It was a good stop. A successful rescue. But as we stood outside in the aftermath, covered in soot and sweat, all I could feel was a cold rage.
Back at the station, the mood was tense. The crew knew what had happened, and how close we had come to a catastrophe.
"L.T.," Benny said quietly as we cleaned our equipment, "A-shift got held over this morning for that mutual aid call to Pine County."
The realization hit me like a physical blow.
"Some of their guys were still here when we came on shift. They took our engine to that warehouse fire while we were on the medical run to Riverside."
Thompson looked up from coiling hose, his face darkening with understanding. "They used our crosslay."
"And didn't reconnect it," Martinez added, his voice tight with anger.
The full scope of what had happened settled over me like ice water. When you use another crew's equipment, you put it back the way you found it. When you disconnect something, you reconnect it. It was firefighting 101, drilled into every rookie from day one.
A-shift had used our primary attack line and left it disconnected. They'd left us a ticking time bomb, assuming we'd have a quiet night. Assuming there wouldn't be a life on the line.
"It was deliberate, L.T.," Thompson continued, his voice low and dangerous. "No way that was an accident. You don't just forget to reconnect a crosslay."
"I know," I said, my own anger a cold, hard knot in my stomach.
I stripped off my gear and walked straight to Battalion Chief Evans's office. Even with the late hour, he was at his desk, reviewing the incident report.
"Good stop tonight, Delgado," he said without looking up. "Textbook search and rescue."
"We got lucky, sir," I said, my voice tight. "A-shift used our engine on that mutual aid call today and left our crosslay disconnected. Cost us almost a minute getting water on the fire."
Evans finally looked up, a frown creasing his forehead. He took a slow sip of his coffee. "Are you sure it wasn't just missed in the rush? Those overtime holdovers, everyone's tired..."
"Forgetting to reconnect a primary attack line isn't being tired, sir. It's gross negligence. Atbest."
He leaned back in his chair, his expression unreadable. "That's a serious accusation, Lieutenant. I'm sure it was just an oversight. These things happen when crews are held over."
"With all due respect, sir, this goes beyond simple oversight. This is a safety issue. This is the kind of mistake that gets people killed."
"Look," he said, his tone shifting to one of paternalistic weariness. "I'll mention it at the officer's meeting. Remind everyone about equipment checks. But you need to be careful here, Delgado. You're up for promotion. Making accusations against other shifts isn't a good look. Maybe you should have checked the connections when you got your apparatus back."
I stared at him, my anger solidifying into a cold, hard certainty. He wasn't going to do anything. He was telling me it was our fault for not catching their "mistake." He was telling me that my crew's safety was less important than keeping the peace between shifts.
"Yes, sir," I said, my voice flat and devoid of emotion. "I understand perfectly."
I turned and walked out of his office, the full weight of the situation settling on me. This wasn't just about a disconnected hose or shift rivalry. This was the system protecting its own. To get this promotion, to protect my crew, I wasn't just fighting Santoro. I was fighting the quiet, insidious culture that would rather risk a firefighter's life than deal with an uncomfortable conversation.
And I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the bone, that if I wanted to protect my crew, I was going to have to do it alone.
