Then came the calendar.
The charity photoshoot that was supposed to be a joke, a one-time thing, the guys from Engine 295 raising money for the burn unit. Except my photo ended up everywhere. Shirtless, holding a Dalmatian puppy, looking at the camera like I knew exactly what I was doing.
I hadn't known anything. I'd just been following directions.
But the internet didn't care about that. They saw what they wanted to see. And what they wanted to see was a hero they could thirst over, a fantasy they could project onto, a man who existed for their entertainment.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped correcting people. Long before I realized what that made me. Because it was easier than explaining that I was just a guy who got lucky, who happened to be in the right place at the right time, who still woke up some nights dreaming about the ones he didn't save.
My apartment was cold when I got home. Empty. The bed was unmade. The dishes I'd left in the sink three days ago were still there.
I stood in the doorway and let the silence settle over me.
This was what I'd built. A life that looked impressive from the outside and felt like nothing from within.
I was thirty-two years old, and I had no idea who I was anymore.
Engine 295 was the only place that still felt real.
The firehouse sat on a corner in Woodside, red brick and white trim, two engines and a ladder company sharing the same apparatus floor. The building was sixty years old and smelled like it: diesel and old coffee, rubber and sweat, the ghost of a thousand meals cooked in the kitchen upstairs.
I'd been assigned here eight years ago, fresh out of the academy, convinced I knew everything and terrified I knew nothing. The older guys had hazed me relentlessly. They made me clean the bathroom with a toothbrush, sent me to the supply closet to look for a "left-handed smoke shifter," and laughed when I fell for it.
But they'd also taught me everything: how to read a fire, how to trust your crew, how to carry the weight of the job without letting it crush you.
This was where I'd become a firefighter, where I'd found the brothers I'd never had.
"Briggs! You look like death warmed over."
Brian Torres stood at the coffee station, pouring something that looked like motor oil into a chipped mug. He was a few years younger than me, built like a linebacker, with an easy grin that hid a sharp mind. We'd come up through the academy together, survived our probie years side by side, and somewhere along the way, he'd become the closest thing I had to family.
"Thanks. Did you make that coffee yourself?"
"Family recipe. Guaranteed to either wake you up or kill you."
"Comforting."
I grabbed my own mug and filled it, grimacing at the first sip. Across the apparatus floor, Garrett Stone sat in the corner with a stack of files, reviewing incident reports with the same intense focus he brought to everything. Quiet, analytical, the kind of guy who noticed things other people missed. He'd joined 295 four years ago and fit in like he'd always been here.
The morning routine unfolded around me. Gear checks. Truck maintenance. The familiar rhythm of a 24-hour shift began. Captain Rodriguez emerged from his office to run the morning briefing, with the same steady authority he'd carried for fifteen years.
This was what I loved about the job. Not the hero stuff, not the headlines. This. The structure. The purpose. The knowledge that when the tones dropped, we moved as one unit, every man trusting the others with his life.
Out here, I wasn't the guy from the calendar. I was just Briggs. One of the crew.
Around noon, the side door opened, and two small bodies came hurtling across the apparatus floor.
"Daddy! Daddy!"
Captain Rodriguez's kids, Lucia and Marco, launched themselves at their father like tiny missiles. He caught them both, one in each arm, his weathered face splitting into a grin I rarely saw on shift.
His wife Maria followed, carrying a cooler. She was small and dark-haired. They had been married for twenty years and ran their household with the same no-nonsense efficiency he ran the station. She crossed to him, stood on her toes, and kissed his cheek.
The look they exchanged lasted maybe two seconds, but I saw it: the whole conversation that happened without words, the way she touched his arm, the way he leaned into her, just slightly, like she was the fixed point he oriented himself around.
Twenty years, and they still looked at each other like that.
Something cracked in my chest.
