I hate calls like this.When I’m in a good head space they’re almost too much to handle but tonight…it’s the first time in my career I honestly hesitate as we jump out of the rig. The frame of the gray car is so mangled you can’t even tell what make or type it is.
“Caroline is in there! Help her! I couldn’t. Please!” a distraught man is screaming from beside the wreck. One of his shoulders is hanging desperately wrong. Dislocation at best. More likely shattered.
Glass crunches under my feet as I approach. My partner Mason catches my eye. “You take her. I’ll take him.”
I nod, but fuck, my whole body wants to run away. I can’t do this. Not now when I’ve been reliving my own trauma for two days straight. This is unbearable. But I have to bear it.
This is making amends, I remind myself. That’s why you picked this career. To save people because you didn’t save Bryan or Jackson. Or Chloe. Sure Chloe lived, but she lost so much because of the crash I didn’t stop. I drop my gear as I reach what’s left of the passenger window. Caroline is a blonde, probably about mid-forties, and her face and hair are covered in bright red blood. But her chest is moving. She’s breathing.
“Caroline?” I say her name firmly and slowly. Nothing. I use a flashlight to assess the situation. Her legs are pinned under the collapsed dash and her whole body is wrenched forward pressed against it. The back door and the front passenger door are crushed into each other. I will definitely need the jaws. “Talk to me Caroline. If you can hear me, you have to try and talk to me.”
Silence. Is this what it was like for the paramedics who rescued Chloe? Our co-worker Dan Keribo is at the other car, and as he turns away from the driver’s door, his eyes meet mine and he shakes his head. Probably the same thing the firefighters and paramedics who attended the wreck I was in would have done when they got to Bryan.
“We need the jaws!” I call out gruffly to the firefighters on scene. Once they cut off the door, it’s easy to get her out. And although her legs are both broken and she has a few nasty cuts on her forehead, her breathing stays steady, and her vitals are good as I get her in a collar and on a backboard with Mason’s help.
As we roll her back to our rig, her husband says, “Is she going to be okay? Oh my God. Please, say she’ll be okay?”
That’s what Chloe would have asked about Jackson if she had been conscious. It was probably her first question when she woke up. Where is my husband? How is he?
“We are doing everything we can for her, sir,” I promise.
He has his arm in a sling now, and Mason helps him into the back of the ambulance. “He was weaving all over the place behind us. Caroline asked me to pull over and let him pass so we could get his license plate and call the cops. But then…I don’t know. He hit us instead of passing us.”
I grit my teeth but nod then look at Mason. “I’m driving.”
I can’t stay in the back and listen to this guy. He needs to get it out. He needs to share. It’s too close to home. Normally, I do well with this no matter how close to home it feels. I encourage them to talk, to share, to lean on me emotionally because I want to help ease their pain and my conscience. But I can’t do it tonight. I will break.
Later, as we pull back into the fire station, I’m still shaking. Jake’s engine didn’t come out on the call, another engine did, but he’s standing in the bay when we return. As soon as he sees my face, his own goes ashen. He walks over and leans again the back of the rig. “Was it bad?”
“Drunk driver,” Mason answers for me. “The couple will live. The drunk did the world a favor and died.”
Jake tenses immediately. “Dude, chill. That’s not the right attitude.”
“It’s the truth though,” I say, and Jake’s coal-colored eyes widen with shock. I keep going. “Fuck him. He’s a murderer.”
“Logan, we need to talk,” Jake says firmly. He looks up at Mason. “You can handle this, right?”
“If I have to, yeah. But he owes me a beer,” Mason says. “I hate cleaning the rig alone.”
“I’m fine, Jake,” I snap but he ignores me and crosses his arms.
“If you want me to say Lieutenant Maverick is requesting a meeting, I can word it that way,” Jake says, and I clench my fists. He’s my boss and will be captain soon, so I have to respect that. Fact is, I need a minute away from the rig and Mason anyway.
I follow along beside Jake as he heads up the stairs and into the kitchen area of the firehall. It’s almost four in the afternoon. The guys will come in here in about an hour and start making dinner, but right now it’s empty and private.
“So you’re hanging by a thread, huh?” Jake pulls himself up to sit on the counter by the sink.
I grab a stool at the island in the middle and sit. I feel like I’ve been standing for seven years. I haven’t. In fact, we’ve had a pretty light shift up until this call. I scratch the back of my neck. “I’m fine. I have to be. All good.”
“You can’t play a player, Logan,” Jake replies and frowns. “This Chloe thing is heavy and fucking horrible, so you don’t have to pretend everything is fucking fine and dandy. You’re not very good at it anyway.”
“No. I’m fine. I mean…I’m not. At all. But work is keeping me grounded and focused,” I reply. “And your place is giving me the space I need from everyone. So long as you’re not driving Terra nuts.”
I’ve been staying at Jake’s apartment, and he has been staying at Terra’s so I can wallow in my misery in privacy. Jake smirks at my sister’s name. “Of course I’m not driving her nuts. Your sister loves me, dude. Like madly, truly, deeply. And anyway, I basically lived with her even before you needed a place to stay.”
“You guys gonna make that official? Then maybe I can rent your place,” I say. “Although it only has one bedroom and I need two. The social worker says River needs his own room.”
Jake pops off the counter, his lean six-foot four frame making the floor boards rattle when he lands. “Shit. That reminds me. Cap said someone called here looking for you. Manuel Jimenez.”
