Not charm. Not exactly.
Understanding.
Which is worse.
He looks as if he is about to say something else.
Something gentler, maybe.
Something I am not sure I want to hear in my office with the recorder still sitting between us.
Then the alarm goes.
The sound cuts through the room, brutal and immediate, and everything else disappears.
AJ’s head snaps towards the door.
I am already moving.
The station changes shape in seconds. Chairs scrape. Voices sharpen. Footsteps hit the corridor. The ordinary noise of the day vanishes beneath the controlled rush of response.
I grab my radio and head for the door.
“What do I do?” AJ asks behind me.
“Stay with me until I tell you otherwise. Don’t get in the way. Don’t argue. If anyone gives you an instruction, follow it.”
“Understood.”
Details come through the radio as we reach the garage. Road traffic collision. Single vehicle overturned. Twopeople trapped. Ambulance en route. Police notified. Rural road outside Fellside, near a bend I know too well because everyone knows it too well.
My stomach tightens, but only once.
Then the job takes over.
The crew are already pulling on kit, checking equipment, moving with that fast, practised rhythm that looks chaotic to anyone who doesn’t know what to watch. I point AJ towards the safe side of the garage, near the line I gave him on day one.
“Get in the appliance and listen to Dan,” I say.
He nods.
No questions.
No performance.
Just nods.
For one brief second, I notice that.
Then I am in the cab, door shut, radio alive, the engine pulling out into the yard.
There is always a strange stretch of time on the way to a call. Too fast and too slow. You gather information, plan for possibilities, adjust the plan as more comes in. You think about access, fuel, casualties, glass, metal, weather, traffic, bystanders, the ambulance’s arrival time, whether police will get there before the road snarls into a mess.
You do not think about the fact that two people left home this morning expecting to come back.
You do not think about wives or husbands or someone waiting for a phone call.
You cannot.
