"Don't just think. Do." He clapped me on the shoulder. "You've got more in you. Time to stop selling yourself short."
That night, I looked up paramedic certification programs.
Twelve hundred hours of training. A year, maybe more, on top of full shifts. Expensive. Exhausting.
Worth it.
But Rodriguez's words echoed:Time to stop selling yourself short.
I didn’t tell anyone about Carmen. Not Shane. Not my family. Not Ava. I still couldn't talk about it without feeling like the floor had dropped out.
Carmen. We were together for four years. Lived together for two.
I was going to propose. The ring was hidden in my sock drawer. I was going to ask her on our anniversary. But she left three weeks before then.
I came home from a shift, and her closet was empty. Half the furniture was gone. She was sitting on the couch, waiting for me, and the look on her face told me everything.
"I can't do this anymore, Brian."
"Do what? What are you talking about?"
"This life. The shifts, the danger, never knowing if you're going to come home." Her voice was steady. Rehearsed. She'd been practicing this. "I love you, but I want someone who's going somewhere. You're always going to be running into burning buildings."
"That's my job. That's who I am."
"I know." She'd picked up her purse, her keys. "That's the problem."
She'd met someone else. A finance guy. Corner office, six-figure salary, the kind of man who wore suits instead of turnout gear. The kind of man who fit where she wanted to go.
Her voice still lived in my head.I want someone who's going somewhere.As if saving lives wasn’t going somewhere. As if running toward danger every day didn’t count as ambition.
Rodriguez's voice cut through Carmen's:You've got more in you, Torres.
It was time to prove it. I signed up for the first paramedic course.
The next morning, I was on the balcony before the sun was fully up. Two cups of coffee, waiting for her.
Ava Rothwell moved into the apartment next door four years ago. The week before Thanksgiving. I remembered because she'd been carrying a box of medical textbooks that weighed more than she did, and I'd offered to help.
She looked at me like I'd suggested she couldn't handle it herself. She could. She did. But she'd also said thank you afterward, standing in her doorway surrounded by boxes, dark circles under her eyes, and her auburn hair escaping its ponytail. There was something about the way she smiled, like she wasn’t used to accepting help, that stuck with me.
That first night, neither of us could sleep. I'd come off a bad call, the kind that follows you home. She'd just finished a thirty-six-hour shift in the ER. We'd both ended up on our balconies at 3 AM. We were strangers. Neither of us had the energy to pretend we were okay.
She'd told me about losing a patient—a kid, hit by a car. There was nothing she could do. I'd told her about the fire we couldn't get to in time.
We'd sat in the dark and talked about the weight of holding lives in your hands, about the exhaustion that comes from caring too much, about needing someone who understood without explanation. We'd been showing up on that balcony ever since.
Now it was routine: whoever was up first made coffee. We talked, or we didn't. We shared space. No demands.
She'd been a resident then, exhausted and driven, building herself into the doctor she wanted to be. Now she wasboard-certified, an attending at thirty-two, and still the most interesting person I knew.
I'd been in love with her for years. Maybe since that first night on the balcony, when she'd trusted me with her grief, and I'd trusted her with mine. But I'd never said a word. Never found the courage to cross the line from neighbor to something more.
Every time I came close, Carmen's voice crept back in. The old wound. The old doubt.
Ava was a doctor. I was a firefighter.
She was brilliant, driven, the kind of doctor who made split-second decisions that meant life or death. She'd put herself through medical school on scholarships and loans, built her career from nothing, and earned every bit of respect she had.
