by Natalie Ann
“Aw, Roberta, you’re so supportive.”
“Yes, she is,” Bridget said. “I don’t know what I’d do without Roberta and Big Mike.”
“Me too,” Aisling said. “We’re always included in all the family activities.”
“You’ll always be the mother of Mike’s baby,” Roberta said. “And we’ve always loved Devon. He’s one of us with a different last name.”
The fear had been that Aisling would allow Devon Lyon, the man she married after Mike Saint had been killed in a wildfire, to adopt baby Mika. But adoption hadn’t been brought up. Aisling did everything she could to make sure Mika was included in the Saints’ lives, from asking them to babysit to inviting them to dinner at least once a week. In turn, Roberta and Big Mike included them when attending Mass on Sunday, Wild Pancakes afterward, Sunday dinner, and every holiday and celebration they had.
Lunch out with three little toddlers ended up being so fun. “I really hope I get pregnant right away,” Candy said. “I want our baby to be close to these three.”
“Get busy, then,” Roberta said. “We’ll know what you’ll be having by Christmas.”
“I’m doing my best,” Candy answered, the excitement she felt growing. “We aren’t doing anything to prevent it.”
“Not even using those decorative condoms our mother-in-law bought you?” Aisling said, roaring laughing.
“I was tempted just to see what they looked like on, but I didn’t want to waste one spermatozoon,” Candy replied.
“That’s a medical term,” Bridget teased, and Roberta just shook her head, laughing.
“So not to change the subject, but I have a request to make to Roberta.”
“Whatever you want. I’m waiting.”
“If you feel like taking over the interior design of our house, go for it. I’m overwhelmed at the thought of it, and after Monday I won’t have the time.”
“Wow, you’re kidding,” Roberta said with a big smile on her face. “I’d be honored. No one else will let me touch their houses.”
“That’s not fair,” Aisling said. “I’m living with the stuff Devon grew up with.”
“You’ve already decorated my house,” Bridget said, laughing.
That night as Candy lay in bed, she sent Joey a text message right before she turned the light out.
Your family is getting impatient. We’d better get to work.
In minutes she got a return text.
Come visit me tomorrow. We can have a quickie in Bridget’s office.
Laughing, she answered him that she’d stop by on her way home from their lunch out after church. I’ll have a dress on, she texted. Easy access.
They went to Wild Pancakes again after church because Big Mike didn’t get to go with the women on Saturday.
“I’ll never get tired of this place,” they chorused.
“I just can’t order pancakes every time we eat here or I’ll end up being as big as a house,” Big Mike said, grinning, the joke being he was already massive, over six six and would admit to weighing two hundred fifty pounds.
“Pop, I’m just afraid you’ll break the ladder on the tiller truck,” his son Tony teased. Tony was Bridget’s husband.
“Hey, I don’t climb ladders anymore. Remember my knee, smart aleck.”
“Right, sorry, Dad.”
The food came and the frenzy of eating began, as it always did when most of the family ate together. Candy took pictures to send to Joey, who was at the firehouse.
Hurry up, he texted. I’m horny after your text last night.
She sent a selfie of her lips puckered up with her eyes closed. I’ll be there as soon as we’re done eating.
Back at the Saint house, she begged off visiting and didn’t mention going to the firehouse. The ride up the mountain road did the same thing to her belly that it had in the past: excitement to see Joey, and then the childhood thrill of the fire engines backed into the garage with their fronts facing out, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
As in the past, she parked in the far reaches of the parking lot, out of sight of anyone sitting in front at the picnic tables or working on the landscaping. She sent Joey a text, and in minutes he was waiting for her at the back door.
“You look good enough to eat,” he whispered, reaching for her. Holding her face in his hands, he kissed her passionately, smoothing his palms over her hair. “Come on in. They’ve got a movie on upstairs.”
“Did it just start, or is it almost finished? That should give me an idea about how much time we have.”
“We can take all the time you want. Follow me. Business first.”
Leading her through the maze of fire trucks, they ended up at the supply closet, where he could lock the door for privacy. Once inside, Joey didn’t waste any time, lifting her skirt and pulling her underpants down.
“What do you want me to do?” she whispered.
“Bend over the desk.” His voice was husky and urgent. Probing around her a little bit, he groaned with satisfaction. “Oh, baby, you’re ready for me.”
“I’ve been thinking about you for twelve hours.”
He gave out a throaty laugh. “Gotcha. Me too. I promise this won’t take long.”
It didn’t either. She could hear him unzip, fumble around a bit transferring some of her wetness onto himself, and then as he pushed up against her, she yielded to him smooth as satin. He felt so good inside her, she took advantage of him, tightening down, making use of the Kegel exercises she’d been doing.
Surprisingly, she came before he did, a rare occurrence in that situation at the firehouse, and it spurred him on, moving wildly inside her. With his hands on her hips, she knew it was his turn when he paused for just a second and thrust in as deep as he could go.
Grunting, trying to bite back a loud cry, Joey finished, moving slowly inside her, reluctant to end it. Hating to vacate the premises, he waited, still inside Candy while she stayed facedown, smiling into the back of the vinyl-clad chair, giving him a moment.
“That should do it,” he finally whispered, slowly pulling out. “If you’re not pregnant after that, I must be shooting blanks.”
“Oh, Joey, I love it when you talk to me that way.”
“I’ll make it up to you when we’re home,” he said, laughing. Gathering her in his arms, he wished they were home in their own bed.
“I’ll hold you to it,” she said, resting her head on his chest.
“Do you want to hang around, or are you going right home? You can stay as long as you want.”
“I’d better get out of here before their movie is over,” she answered, wishing she could stand on her head and allow the products of his ejaculation to move farther up inside her. But it wasn’t to be.
He handed her paper toweling, and she quickly jammed it into place and pulled her skirt down while Joey listened at the door.
“It’s safe.” He opened up to the still-empty garage.
“I hope it stays quiet for you,” she said while they walked to the door.
Holding her close, he kissed her again. “Thank you for coming up,” he murmured. “Call me when you get home.”
He waited until she started the car, waving to her as she left the back of the lot. In all the times she’d visited him there, they’d never had sex in the firehouse, but something about being married made him yearn for her. It was the complete opposite of what he’d been told would happen.
“You’ll miss the adventure,” one of his fellow firefighters had said. “She’ll be in your bed every night now. There’s nothing new to look forward to.”
But he was wrong. Marriage changed everything for Joey. It might have been his religious upbringing that did it, the fear that he’d go to hell or, worse, his mother would catch him in bed. He’d met Candy a few years before, but he didn’t date her until she was finished with undergrad.
Then they waited to get married because she had a goal she wouldn’t have been able to reach without her parents’ help, and that was
to get through medical school. But after Joey’s brother Mike died, the urgency Joey felt to be married grew into an obsession.
“What if Aisling hadn’t agreed to marry him? There’d be no Mika. That would have been the end of Mike.”
So she agreed, and with one more year of medical school, they were married. That weeklong honeymoon was so wonderful; he’d never been so satisfied. There was no concern over being interrupted, and they could do everything they never felt comfortable doing before because of guilt, good old Sunday-school guilt like there was on the rare times they left town and he got a hotel room.
“Buddy, you’re thirty years old. You’ve been with Candy for a long time. What the hell are you waiting for?”
This was from his younger brother Leon, who thought nothing of bringing a girl to the family home to spend the night, sneaking them out in the morning, or just letting Roberta find them at the kitchen counter, waiting for their eggs to be cooked.
“She’s got a goal,” Joey would explain.
“Yeah, I hear you,” they’d say, giving up. The women ruled the kingdom in the Saint household.
In the middle of his reverie, the alarm went off, and the disembodied voice of central dispatch called out, “All hands working, structure fire, two thousand block of San Pasqual.” Then she was interrupted by a second alarm, which listed all the vehicles and brass they’d require. Joey ran to the front of the building and was in his turnout gear at the wheel of Engine 5 within seconds. That would be the end of his private thoughts.
While Candy drove back home, she thought of possibilities. Hopefully, she was pregnant; the thought brought her so much joy. A little baby made of Joey’s DNA to carry on the Saint name, a living, breathing being that the parents would worship.
In the throes of baby fever, she thought of baby names. For some reason, she was obsessed with girl names. Unfortunately, her favorite, Isabella, was taken by Bridget and Tony’s daughter. Family names were uninspiring: Roberta, no. Frances, double no. The names that went well with Saint led to thinking of the saints associated with childbirth and babies and motherhood. Saint Brigit was the saint of babies and midwives and knew St. Patrick back in Ireland. It was a lovely name for a girl, but Bridget might want to have that name available in case they had a third child, and Candy didn’t want any ill-will with her sister-in-law.
She arrived at home, the excitement over her new life with Joey increasing expectations that would grow exponentially. The first thing she did once inside was go to the old-fashioned paper calendar hanging on a nail in the kitchen. She used the calendar on her phone and a Google calendar for school, but for household stuff, the paper calendar worked wonderfully for getting an overall picture of what was happening in their life. On the paper calendar, she placed a big red ML on that day for Made Love. Her period was due in ten days, so she should be right in the center of her fertile time, the realization of that increasing her heart rate along with her expectations.
The key was to stay busy until Joey got home from work Tuesday morning. As she glanced around the kitchen, the chaos of unpacked boxes set her teeth on edge. Instead of unpacking, she wanted to daydream about baby names some more. Back to thinking of the saints, she spent time writing down all the saints and what they were sainted for. But it would have to wait. The cosmos was at work, the buzzer on the front door rang out, and handle jiggling, the door opened.
“Hello, it’s your mother-in-law, ready to work!”
“Why aren’t you at home?” Candy asked, greeting her with a hug. She was disappointed that her name search was thwarted for the time being, but happy for the help.
“Big Mike is cooking dinner tonight. I want you to come, so I’m here to help.”
“I was just looking at the mess, feeling sick.”
“We can do one room at a time. You start your little job tomorrow, right? If you don’t mind me being here alone, I can get a lot done while you’re away.”
Candy bit her tongue. Roberta’s alluding to an internship with the top pediatrician in San Diego as a little job amused her. “I don’t care if you’re here alone. We have no secrets.”
“Good! Well, let’s get busy, then.”
The next two hours had Candy taking direction from Roberta, and in that short amount of time, the kitchen boxes were emptied into freshly lined drawers and shelving. She’d started organizing the wedding gifts as Candy opened them, writing what the gift was on the card and who the giver was so thank-you notes could be written later.
Later that afternoon after Roberta had gone home, Candy marveled at how settled everything felt. Roberta’s ideas had made the house feel like a home.
Chapter Two
Fortunately, structure fires in the rural area of Station #34 weren’t that common because the wildfires burned brush-covered acreage that was sparsely populated. But this fire was terrifying because by the time the crew arrived, it had engulfed an old farmhouse that had been converted into a multi-unit apartment building populated with low-income tenants. Joey knew that meant the landlords often didn’t put as much care into safety features, and this particular landlord had been cited before on nonworking smoke detectors, locked exit doors, flammable window treatments, and other dangerous conditions.
So when the call came through for the fire in the 2000 block of San Pasqual, Joey wondered if it was the house they had dubbed the Lime House because it was painted dayglow lime green.
“Is it the Lime House?” he asked, pulling the cord that sounded the siren as he merged onto the paved road outside the fire station.
Ben Jacobs, the firefighter riding shotgun, looked at the GPS map. “It looks like it. Same block, on the east side of the street. That place is usually packed with families that have kids, too.”
The third alarm sounded just as Joey pulled up to the structure, which was now engulfed. Crowds of people hung around outside: neighbors who had seen smoke from afar and tenants.
The fire chief called out assignments, and since Joey and his crew were the second to arrive on scene, the first crew manned the hoses, and #34 would go inside with extinguishers once the water had put the visible fire out in the ground-floor kitchen, where they suspected it had started, spreading to the apartments above it.
A ladder truck arrived, and that crew went to the roof with a chain saw to cut a hole that would allow smoke and heat to leave the building from the attic.
Using an ax to cut through a door at the side of the house, Joey cautiously entered a hallway filled with thick smoke.
“Careful, Saint,” his backup warned. “Watch for holes burned through the floor.”
They slushed through the water, their flashlights barely cutting through the smoke. Joey heard something and threw his arm out. “Stop! Listen.”
It was faint, in the background, the howling of a cat. “It’s a cat. Keep going,” the fire chief called out.
“No! Wait. That’s no cat.” Running through the building, Joey screamed, “Tell them to stop cutting through the roof!”
The shouts of the men giving the directive echoed through the house to the outside. Joey came to a rickety staircase piled knee deep with wood and shingles that had fallen through from the roof. He told the men behind him to use caution as he threw the debris aside to clear the way. As they climbed higher, the sound became unmistakable.
“That’s a baby!”
Running through the second-story stairway, he went into every room, looking for survivors. The crying had stopped when he found a debris-filled apartment. He couldn’t tell if the mess was from the fire or if the tenant was just a slob. He searched the apartment, going from room to room and finding nothing.
But in a small room off to the side was a box, and thank God he thought to look because the baby was in the box. It was a tiny thing, wisps of hair evident even through the smoke. A rosebud mouth and long eyelashes on cheeks stole his heart in seconds. But the baby was not breathing. Taking his oxygen mask off, he placed it over the tiny motionless baby. It was so small
the mask engulfed the body.
“I’ve got a baby!” he screamed into his radio.
As he moved with the baby through the debris, the fire had flared up again, the smoke so thick he was having trouble breathing.
“Get back!” he screamed, choking. “Get back.”
Then he saw his brother Tony.
“Take a breath,” Tony yelled, holding his own mask over his brother’s face. They went down the staircase side by side, Tony sharing his oxygen with Joey, who cradled the still infant in his arms. Other members of their team waited for them with a second tank at the foot of the stairs, guiding Joey, holding the bundle, out of the building.
When they exited the building, the fire chief yelled to start dousing the flames with water again now that the baby was out of the building.
Suddenly, the baby began to wail, and sighs of relief could be heard through respirators. At the back of the rescue truck, Joey reluctantly gave up the baby to the EMTs, hovering as they successfully resuscitated the baby. So tiny, it was obviously a new arrival. Why was it left alone in a burning building, in a cardboard box?
“You saved her, Joe. It’s a little girl. You saved her life.”
He watched as they pulled away, headed to Rady Children’s Hospital.
The fire chief went to the group of people and asked if anyone had a baby, and the tenants pointed out the mother.
“That’s the mother,” Rick Jackson told Joey, pointing to a young woman sitting on the ground smoking a cigarette.
Joey didn’t notice specific individuals in the group of people who had escaped from the building. They were clumped together, with EMTs looking them over. But later he would learn that the mother of the baby was high on meth when the fire started, able to escape, but left her baby behind.
The rest of the time the crew was at the scene was spent making sure the fire was out completely and doing mop-up. At six that night, they were done.
Joey threw the keys to Ben. “Can you drive?”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Joey climbed into the back of the engine, nodding to one of the men to ride shotgun in his place. He avoided the rest of the crew that night, working as diligently as he could to keep his mind a blank.
