Blaze (The Firefighters of Darling Bay Book 1)

by Rachael Herron

  Tox’s voice, startling and clear, cut through all the chatter on the live radio dispatch. “Engine One, on scene. Two-story residential house, flames showing on the bravo and charlie side. Citizen reports explosion. Possibly hazmat, cook house. Incoming units, use precaution. Next due, charge the LDH. Engine One has Miranda Command.”

  Grace felt a mixture of fear and unwarranted pride. He sounded so…in charge. Competent. Like he was going to blow out the fire himself, with his own breath.

  A dispatcher who wasn’t Lexie responded, her voice electric with intensity. “Command, be advised, reports of two people inside. Repeating, possible two people trapped, last seen in the second floor hallway, one male adult, one female juvenile. Command copy?”

  Tox was terse but clear. “Copy. Engine Two on scene, passing command. We’ll be rapid intervention crew, making entrance.”

  “Copy, Engine One RIC.”

  Grace didn’t know what all the words meant, but she knew one thing—it didn’t sound good. She was pulling on her running sneakers before she knew what she was doing. It wasn’t until she’d laced them and her hand was on her front door that she realized she was being ridiculous. She couldn’t go to a fire. How could she have even thought of doing that? What would Tox say, if he looked out from doing his job to find her in the certainly inevitable crowd of lookie-loos?

  She would help nothing. She could help nothing.

  It was a terrible thought. No wonder people wanted to be firefighters and doctors and nurses. Helping was altogether a better, easier choice than choosing to do nothing. She walked back into the kitchen and started the kettle for tea.

  Grace sat at the kitchen table, pushing away the plate of half-eaten fish and rice. In one hand, she held her phone, staring at the house on the map where the fire units were. She listened to Tox say something about a second alarm, his voice tight with stress but still easy to understand. In the other hand, she gripped her mug of tea. It cooled as she forgot to drink it.

  The squawks from her phone bled into each other. Grace heard beeps and then Sue recited a list of more engines and trucks.

  “I need medics on the bravo side,” said a man’s voice. Not Tox’s. “We’ve got three victims. One firefighter down.”

  Grace felt a chill run through her. She might not know anything about firefighting, and it was only a guess, but her intuition knew who would have been taking the risks inside that house. She knew which firefighter was down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  When Tox opened his eyes, he saw yellow. A lot of yellow. Yellow helmets, yellow turnouts, even Coin’s vaguely yellow, sick-looking face.

  There was an oxygen mask on his face. He yanked it down to his chin. “What the…” He tried to sit up and gasped with pain.

  “Oh, no, brother.” A firm hand—Hank’s—pushed him back down.

  He looked around. They were moving, and he was in pain. That was all his smoke-addled brain could figure out.

  Behind Hank’s head he saw a medical cabinet as familiar to him as his own first-aid box at home. Okay, he was in the back of the rescue ambulance. And wow, he hurt.

  “What happened?” It was painful to talk, too. Smoke inhalation, obviously. He did an inventory of his body—not burned. Unless they already had the morphine in him. But no, if he had the good stuff on board, his back wouldn’t have felt as if he were lying on broken glass.

  “You don’t remember?”

  Tox thought as hard as he could. They shouldn’t have gone in, he remembered that. It was a meth house, a cook gone bad. Tox, as the hazmat expert, should have insisted no one entered. But there were people inside. “Inside. Upstairs. A man. Big guy.” The shape came back to him, a man’s body in the darkened, smoke-filled hallway.

  The smaller shape lying next to him.

  Hank nodded and kept his eyes on Tox’s vitals. “Yeah, the owner of the house. Mazanti got him out.”

  “And the girl?” Now he remembered. In the smoke, he’d given the sign to Mazanti to drag out the man—he’d carry the female. It had probably been a boil-over, and he knew the solvents and gases inside were probably unstable.

  The little girl. She’d been so light in his arms.

  “They’re working her,” said Hank simply.

  Tox knew Hank meant they were giving her CPR.

  “What’s your pain level right now?”

  “Now? It’s about a hundred out of ten.”

  Hank stretched to grab the bag that held the morphine. “You’re getting eight.”

  “It’s just my back.” And his lungs. And his ribs. “Make it four and I’ll take it. Did I fall?”

  “Like a stack of lumber.”

  Crap. “Did I fall on her?”

  Hank smiled. “No way. You carried her out like she was your own daughter. Handed her to Sims—”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “—because you were about to pass out and he was the closest to you. You went down and smacked your head on the pavement. Your helmet got the brunt of it, but I think that’s how you hurt your back, the recoil when you bounced back up.”

  “Gotta love a leather helmet.” Some of the new guys liked the composite New York style but give Tox his old leather one for head and smack protection any day. “I hate morphine,” Tox said through gritted teeth. Bright white spots danced at the edge of his vision. Man, this pain sucked. “How’s the fire?” Tox hadn’t ever left a fire still burning.

  “They have knock down on it. Here comes your fix.” Hank fixed the needle and prepped it to go in his line.

  “I’m telling you. Only a little. I hate the way it feels. I want to see the little girl at the hospital. I want to be okay for it.”

  “Tox,” snapped the normally mellow Hank. “Shut up.”

  Hank usually had the longest fuse on their crew. Tox hadn’t seen him like this in years. “She’s not okay, is she?”

  Hank looked out the small side window, as if to judge how far they were from the hospital. Like Tox was going to get seen anytime soon, with an incoming code blue kid. “Nah. She’s not.”

  There wasn’t anything to say to that. Tox should have carried out the man. Given the girl to Mazanti to carry. The Angel of Death had struck again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Grace paced past the fire station again. Eight times she’d done it now, hoping that she’d just “happen” to be passing by when they pulled back in. She’d heard on the phone app when they started releasing units, letting them go back to their home stations. She hadn’t heard Engine One being released yet, but it was possible she’d missed it. She didn’t understand all of the radio traffic.

  No one had come back yet, not the truck that lived at Station One, nor the red SUV she assumed belonged to a chief or something. It was just her and the other people out for their evening strolls, only they just went past the station once. Not like her.

  A blue curtain twitched at the yellow house across the street, and Grace wondered if the neighbors were getting suspicious of her. Well, who cared? What would they do? Call in a suspicious-looking exercising woman who was obsessed with the firehouse?

  She checked her phone again. She hadn’t dared call Tox—of course not—but she’d texted him, hoping he’d text back, assuring her that he wasn’t the “firefighter down” she’d heard. But she’d heard nothing back. She’d texted Lexie, too, in the hopes that she was working tonight, but had only heard silence from her, too.

  Grace paused at the end of the long driveway that curved around to the back of the station. A strange howl floated on the wind. A dog’s complaint.

  A dog who sounded like Methyl.

  Sure enough, the little blond puppy was tied to a concrete post. She started wriggling as soon as she saw Grace, her back end jumping with excitement. “Okay! Here I am! Here I am.” She unsnapped the leash from where it had been secured to itself, and Methyl didn’t give her a second’s chance. She leaped up into Grace’s arms, scrabbling until she had her front paws on Grace’s ri
ght shoulder.

  Grace held the dog like a big, furry baby. “You’ve put on a bit of weight already, huh?” The relief was palpable. Here was Tox’s dog. Tox had to be okay, because he had a dog now. Even though the logic wasn’t sound, Grace clung to it, unable to think about the alternative.

  Lexie’s orange Mini pulled into a back parking stall. She jumped out. “I was down the coast. I headed back as soon as I heard the call go out—I know Sue and Wendy probably need help in there. Wanna come in?”

  “Yes.” She did. Desperately.

  “That your dog?”

  “It’s Tox’s.”

  Lexie’s face registered her surprise. “Wow. I’m off a day and the whole world turns inside out.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tox was put in his own room at the hospital, something the tiny Darling Bay ER rarely did. He knew it was done to keep him out of the mix, but he resented it. Hard.

  Unfortunately, he was strapped to the bed with not one but two IVs. He could extricate himself from under the tubes and wires, but he was too exhausted to do so. Yet. Just give him a few minutes, and Tox would be right up and fighting again.

  Chief Barger gave a short knock at his door and then entered. “How are you doing, champ?”

  The chief was only nice like that when he had an unpleasant task to do.

  “She didn’t make it, huh?” Tox looked straight at the chief, keeping an eye on the mustache. A lot could be told from Chief Barger’s mustache.

  “She’s still alive.” The mustache wobbled.

  “Great. That means she won’t be soon.”

  Barger shook his head. “I’m so sorry to tell you this, Clement.”

  Ouch. His first name. No one but HR used his first name. And the Chief.

  “But they’re going to harvest her organs tonight. Her parents have decided.”

  Harvest. As if she was some kind of field. As if that somehow made it okay. It didn’t. A child should never have to give up a life to save another child. Never.

  Tox rubbed his eyes, not caring how the IVs dug into the back of his hand. He was on so much pain medication he could barely feel it anyway. “Wait. Her parents?”

  Barger said, “Yeah. That’s the good thing. Mazanti got Dad out and they got pulses on the way to the hospital. Mom was at work, she’s here now with him.”

  No matter what, that father had to wish he’d never woken up. That’s why it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. A man in Darling Bay this morning had a kid. Now he didn’t.

  Tox wanted to be alone so he could practice steeling his expression. “I’ll be fine, Chief.” What a load of crap. “I just need to get back to work and I’ll be fine.”

  The mustache jumped this time, and even through his morphine haze, Tox knew that was serious.

  “Look, Clement. You’re gonna be out a while.”

  “It’s my back. That’s all. I put it out coming down. My neck’s been hurting, it’s all connected, you know. I was running fast so I hit the ground the same way.” Tox wished he could remember running down the stairs with the little girl, but he couldn’t. He really wished he could remember handing her over to Sims, but that was gone, too. “I’ll take a week off and be back the next tour.”

  “It’s not going to be that easy, son.”

  “Oh, yeah. It is.” Insubordination didn’t count in a hospital, right?

  “You’ve had, what, nine deaths in the last twelve months?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You know Darling Bay has only had thirteen all year. You’ve been on three-quarters of them.”

  “I work a lot of OT. So?”

  “So that means time off.”

  “Says who?”

  The mustache firmed into a straight line. “Says me. Take the mandated time. And you don’t come back till you’re medically cleared.”

  “I will be.”

  “And by medically,” Barger tapped his forehead. “I mean up here.”

  “A shrink.”

  “It’s not the end of the world.”

  Tox stuck out his chest, a frustrating thing to try to do while lying almost flat in a hospital bed. “I’ll get cleared in one visit.”

  “Good for you, then. We want you back, son. But we want you back with a sound back and a clear mind.”

  Tox chewed the inside of his lip. He wanted to ask something, but if he did—if he found out the answer—

  “What?” Barger was itching to get out of the room, Tox could tell. He was almost out. Tox couldn’t blame him.

  “Would anyone else have lost her, you think?”

  Barger’s eyes softened and his mustache drooped. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “But it’ll come up in the after-action report…You don’t remember?”

  Tox’s heart quickened. “I don’t remember anything after picking her up.”

  “You went the wrong way. You went into a closet with her. Dropped her. Mazanti had to leave the guy, go get you, turn you around and give you back the little girl.”

  Tox saw a veil of black dancing at the edge of his vision. “It was my fault.”

  “We’ll never know, Tox. She was probably too far gone, even then.”

  It wasn’t true. That’s what they told each other when something went wrong. You can’t fix dead.

  Only sometimes they could, and that was his job, to fix dead when he could. Especially when a little girl’s life hung in the balance.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Barger.

  As if words could do anything to dull the roar Tox heard in his head.

  A nurse entered briskly, her scrubs covered with tiny rainbows. “How’s your pain?” she asked.

  “Too high.”

  The nurse nodded and filled a needle. Barger nodded sympathetically and left.

  Tox closed his eyes and felt the morphine blaze up his back and then drag him under. He wished he could shut out the world for a lot longer than the medicine was going to help him do. Forever, maybe. So he could apologize to the girl. He didn’t even know her name.

  Right before he slept, a nurse touched him on the hand. “There’s someone here who says she wants to see you.”

  Grace, Tox thought groggily. “No.”

  “Are you sure? She’s got flowers and a real worried look.”

  “Sure. No. Send her away.”

  He didn’t deserve her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It hurt.

  A lot. Tox didn’t want to see her.

  At all.

  Grace had gone back to the hospital three times, once with flowers, once with a dumb little teddy bear, and once she’d sweet-talked the nurse into letting Methyl visit from inside a crate.

  And every time, he’d said no. She couldn’t come in.

  At the clinic, she worked with her patients like normal, but Mrs. Little asked why she was so sad and if acupuncture would help her, too. “It probably would,” Grace said. “I should find a practitioner, I guess.”

  From the other side of the room, Steve Swanson hooted. “You should find a boyfriend, that’s what I think.”

  Mrs. Little shushed him, and Grace laughed lightly, but the embarrassment cut deep. It cut even deeper still when Mrs. Little said sotto voce, “I heard about you and that firefighter. None of them are any good, dear. My husband was a police officer. I know about firefighters.”

  “Oh,” was all Grace could think to say as she checked a point on Mrs. Little’s hand.

  “Lazy,” Mrs. Little whispered. “Just want to sit in their recliners all day. They don’t really want to help. Ninety percent of the time there’s a medical emergency, it’s the cops who get there first and fix it, you know.”

  “Ah.”

  “You don’t believe me. But you’ll see.” Mrs. Little nodded with authority. “You’ll probably keep seeing him, because that’s what young girls do. They like to do what’s not good for them.”

  “That’s not true,
” interrupted Grace. She couldn’t help it. “I’m not that young, I’m thirty-three. And I always do what’s good for me.”

  “Then why do your eyes look so sad, dear?”

  An hour later, as Grace locked the front door after the last patient, she asked herself the same question. Why was she so devastated by the rejection of a guy she’d gone out with once? She’d slept with him, yeah. Was that the problem? Grace didn’t think so—she didn’t place overmuch weight on worrying whether a sexual action was right or wrong. It just was. Sex was sex. Bodies were bodies. She knew how to treat them, how to make them feel good. And connection was good.

  Sure, she thought, as she fell into the rocking chair on the glassed-in porch. Sex was good. Positive. It benefited the body, mind, and soul. A physical link with another human being was a good thing.

  It was just that she’d had such a connection with him. Foolishly, she’d deluded herself into thinking it could be more.

  That, combined with the fact that she had no idea where Samantha was…Grace felt helpless.

  She pulled out her phone and stared at its face as she had approximately one million times this week. No text from Sam. Nothing from Tox.

  Nothing at all.

  Grace wasn’t usually scared to death of the big things. She’d nursed her mother until she died, not minding washing her, taking care of the body that had brought her into the world as her mother left the same. She’d taken care of her sister over and over again, never sure it was going to work, never confident Samantha would straighten out, would really drop the drugs, leave the men, never sure if she’d really mean it when she said she was starting over. And Grace had opened this practice by herself, with money she’d saved by working her butt off for other people, ordering water and salads when she went out to eat with friends, knowing every penny saved was another penny toward her dream. She wasn’t scared to go after what she wanted. Usually.