Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

  And I was right.

  “Heath Thompson!” the emcee called then, in a loud Price Is Right announcer’s voice as if some lucky audience member had just won a new washer-dryer.

  And then it was like everything downshifted into slo-mo. The sounds of the words got deep and syrupy, and the clapping started to sound like five hundred people beating on snare drums, and I watched in disbelief as the guy himself, Heath fucking Thompson, walked out from stage left to join the emcee there.

  Actually, strutted was more like it.

  I’d know that strut anywhere: The utterly infuriating gait of a man who fully believed the world would always let him have anything and everything he ever wanted—and had never once been told any different.

  Should I have seen it coming? Should I have known better than to dare to want something for myself? Should I have assumed from the start that life would find a way to ruin this moment?

  Because I didn’t. I hadn’t. I was so gobsmacked to see Heath Thompson step onto that stage that I forgot to breathe. Entirely. Until Hernandez saw me frozen there and slapped me on the back.

  Then, everything I knew blurred into one tiny pinprick of comprehension: At the proudest moment of my entire life, one that was supposed to honor everything I had worked so hard to achieve and become, I was going to have to receive my award from Heath Thompson.

  Heath. Thompson.

  The only person in the world who could ruin it.

  Two

  AS HE TOOK the stage—commanded it, really—the roar of the crowd mutated in my head into a howly, wind-on-the-moors sound that drowned everything else out.

  The change in sound was so real, I wondered at first if something had gone wonky with the sound system. I looked around, but nobody else looked disturbed. Nobody else looked like something crazy—something impossibly insane—was happening before their eyes.

  Everybody else was fine.

  That’s when I decided it had to be a nightmare. There was no way this moment was actually happening. As I embraced that idea, the weird howl in the room became comforting proof that I must be fast asleep, tucked in bed, making it all up in my head. As usual.

  I wasn’t really here in a hotel ballroom at the proudest moment of my life, about to receive Austin FD’s highest service award—from Heath Thompson.

  Life couldn’t possibly be that unfair.

  But there he was. Still. Talking into the microphone, up onstage, in the lights, like reality was his birthright. I blinked again, as if I could clear my eyes. He was a thousand miles away. My eardrums started to throb, and then, just as I heard his distant, almost unintelligible voice call my name, or thought I did, I felt nausea welling up through my torso—from my stomach to my rib cage to my collarbones to my throat—

  Hernandez poked me on the shoulder.

  I turned to him and, in slo-mo, he pointed at the stage and waved me toward it.

  I looked around. Every face in the room was trained on me. Smiling. Clapping. Cheering. The guys on my shift stood up for a standing O, and the rest of the room followed. My next move was clear. I’d won an award, and now all I had to do was one simple thing: Walk up to the stage and take it.

  I swallowed, and stood. Mind over matter. Just stand, walk, take plaque. Simple. Simple. I swallowed again, then stood, cursing those ridiculous pumps, and moved through the crowd, winding past the tables like a blinking fish through a coral reef.

  Somewhere between my seat and the stage, I dropped my prepared remarks. I felt them flutter from my fingers, but it was like it had happened to somebody else. Oh well, I thought. No speech, then. Least of my worries.

  There was a step at the stage. Then another, then another. My ankles wobbled on those dumb heels. Then I was approaching the podium, my stomach feeling heavy inside my torso, like a water balloon tied to my rib cage.

  I wouldn’t look at him, that’s all. Or touch him. And I wouldn’t stop moving. I’d keep in motion like a shark, and I’d keep my eyes averted at all costs. Get in, get out. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Pretend it’s not happening.

  Just take it and go. Take it and get to the back of the stage. I coached myself through this the way I’d coached myself through every other hard thing in my life. The way I’d add just one more mile to a ten-mile run, or one more set of reps in the gym. I’d navigated a collapsing staircase. I’d held a dying man’s skull together. I’d jumped from a collapsing roof. I could do this.

  I stopped in front of the podium, eyes fixed on the plaque itself, trying to mentally Photoshop the person holding it out of the frame.

  Was I actually going to have to shake Heath Thompson’s hand?

  No. No way.

  I could make myself do a lot of things, but I wouldn’t make myself do that.

  I saw the plaque come my direction in slo-mo and clasped my fingers around it, trying to ground myself by focusing on how solid and heavy it was. What wood was that? Oak? Walnut? It weighed a ton.

  Take plaque, move away. But before I could, Heath Thompson—Heath Thompson—grabbed my free hand. To shake. The way every other presenter had done for every other recipient.

  Except he wasn’t every other presenter, and I sure as hell wasn’t every other recipient.

  Heath Thompson had made sure of that.

  The shock of his touch was like a burn from an electrical wire—sharp and mean and fast. It registered as pain somehow, and then, in response, on instinct, I looked up into his face.

  There he was. Older and beefier and more hair-sprayed than he had been ten years ago, and wearing a smug city-councilman expression, as if the entire world existed for him to grandstand in.

  I knew in that instant: He recognized me.

  He’d just read my name out to three hundred people, so it stood to reason.

  But I’d changed a lot—my hair was darker, and shoulder length now, and I’d worn it down when I was younger but now wore it tight back in a braid or a bun every day. I’d gotten contacts. And I had about twice the muscle mass I’d had in high school. Not to mention my dress uniform, its blazer buttoned all the way up with its padded shoulders and little crossover tie.

  Something about that combination—his beefy, self-satisfied face, his pompous grin, his self-serving posture, and then, finally, the recognition in his eyes … Let’s just say it altered my emotional landscape. In a flash, my insides shifted from cold shock to burning rage.

  There must have been a photographer there, because Heath Thompson was squeezing my hand, holding me in place, smiling offstage, and holding a pose.

  Somewhere far off, I heard Big Tom from the crew shout, “Give ’em hell, Cassie!”

  And then, just as I was congratulating myself for holding it together—for coping with such grace under the most astonishingly horrific circumstances—I felt something pressing against my butt.

  Not just pressing against it, like I’d backed up to the podium or something. Cupping it.

  The only thing it could possibly be was Heath Thompson’s other hand.

  The fact of it hit, the flashbulb popped, and then that hand gave my butt-cheek a bold, entitled, proprietary squeeze.

  And I lost it.

  Given everything, it’s a miracle I didn’t literally kill him.

  There was nothing else I could possibly have done. I turned and whomped Heath Thompson on the head with my oak-and-metal plaque so hard, I knocked him unconscious and gave him a concussion.

  * * *

  I NEVER WANTED to be a firefighter.

  There are people who dream their whole lives of becoming firefighters. There are little kids who ogle fire trucks, and wear toy fire hats, and dress up in bunker gear for Halloween.

  Boys, mostly.

  I was not one of those kids.

  In fact, on career day in kindergarten, I famously announced my goal of growing up to be the Tooth Fairy. Which I still think would be a great job.

  I never even thought about being a firefighter before it happened.

  And it happ
ened essentially by accident.

  I was on my way to med school, in fact, planning to be an ER doc. I was a freshman in college looking for a campus job, and I got recruited by a cute guy in my dorm to work as an EMT for the university. It was an easy sell. I needed practice working in medicine, and I also needed a job. Done.

  Once I started working as an EMT, I didn’t want to stop—like I didn’t even want to go off shift. I loved everything about it, from the medical training to the sirens to the life-or-death moments.

  It wasn’t just the adrenaline. There was something profoundly satisfying about helping people—about stepping into these terrible moments over and over and making things better. The feeling of doing something that actually mattered was addictive. I’d had lots of jobs over the years—dishwasher in a pizza joint, lifeguard, dog sitter—but I’d never had a job like that.

  My roommate, in contrast, had a campus job serving fro-yo.

  No comparison.

  Being an EMT was a whole new world. It was glorious. I stuck people with needles, and pumped chests for CPR, and reset bones. My first week on the job, I helped save a physics professor in cardiac arrest with a defibrillator.

  Not bad for ten dollars an hour.

  All to say, it just turned out I had a knack for it.

  When I wasn’t on shift, I was waiting until I could go back on shift. I worked holidays. I covered for coworkers. I dreamed about lights and sirens.

  I did that for two years before my supervisor recommended I get certified as a paramedic and go to work for the city. All firefighters are EMTs—firehouses handle far more medical calls than fires, in fact—but not all are paramedics. It takes a year of extra training to get your paramedic certification, and you have to really love medicine to do it, or be “forced” because the department needs you.

  I really loved medicine.

  I worked as a paramedic for a year, and then, after graduation, another supervisor talked me into applying to the Fire Academy.

  Things just kind of snowballed from there.

  Somewhere along the way, I realized this was what I was born to do.

  There are lots of qualities that make a good firefighter. It doesn’t hurt to be big and strong, because that makes it easier to handle all the equipment. It’s nice if you’re good-natured and low-key, because it’s the textbook definition of a high-stress job. Wanting to help people is a plus. And if you happen to deal with anxiety by running around in your underwear, or dumping water on people’s heads, or wrapping toilet bowls with Saran Wrap? Even better.

  You’ll fit right in.

  Oh, and if you can be a guy, be a guy. That’s definitely an advantage.

  I was not a guy.

  But I was a really good firefighter.

  Maybe that sounds cocky, but you just know when you’re good at something, you know?

  For one thing, I was the top student in my graduating class at the academy. The number one top student. I knew the Merck Manual backwards and forwards. I could start an IV in my sleep. Plus, I was strong—for a girl, and even for a lot of guys—and I didn’t get offended easily. I was totally comfortable in the firehouse with the guys. I wasn’t shy. I didn’t get scared. I never panicked. I had a single dad who was a high school basketball coach—so I grew up playing hoops constantly, and talking trash, and beating the boys at everything.

  All that helped, but what really made me a good firefighter was a funny little personality quirk that I never even knew I had until I started using it. It takes guts to walk into a burning building or staunch an arterial bleed—no question. But it also takes a special kind of brain. Firefighters think differently from other people, and this is especially true of me. Because when everybody else is panicking, when the entire whole world is freaking the heck out—that’s when I get calm.

  It’s like some circuit in my brain is reversed.

  Everybody in the fire service has this reverse wiring to some extent. When herds of panicked people are running out of a burning building, that’s when we’re calmly strolling in.

  But I’ve never met anybody who has it like I have it.

  Normal humans see the explosion, or the flames, or the twenty-four-car pileup and think: Run! My brain just thinks: Huh. Cool. Everybody else is sprinting away, wild-eyed and shrieking, because that’s what evolution wants us to do—get the hell out of there. I just slow to a stop and look around.

  I must get a tiny squirt of adrenaline—but only just the right amount. Enough to make me beautifully, brilliantly alert. Everything comes into sharp focus and gets quiet, and I can see what’s happening with exquisite clarity. For everyone else, it’s a blur, but for me, it’s details, textures, colors, connections. Insights.

  Sometimes I feel like that’s the only time I ever see anything clearly.

  Anyway, that’s why I didn’t wind up an ER doc. You don’t want me just after the emergency. You want me during the emergency.

  It’s a strange thing to know about yourself, but there it is: I’m at my very best when things are at their very worst.

  And so, even though my dad was sure the “fireman thing” was “a phase,” four years later, here I was, still at Station Eleven in Austin, still the only girl on B-shift—except for our badass female captain—and still loving every impossible minute.

  * * *

  THAT’S WHY THE night I got the valor award should have been just another easy, inevitable step in my unblemished, pure-hearted firefighting career.

  But I have to confess something. I didn’t just hit Heath Thompson, city councilman, with that wooden plaque when he squeezed my butt.

  I beat the crap out of him.

  I pummeled him. I mauled him. Even after I’d cracked his head with the plaque itself, I landed a punch to the face, a knuckle strike to the windpipe, and at least one jab to the solar plexus before adding a few good kicks to the ribs with my pumps after he hit the floor. Nobody saw it coming, not even me, so his reaction time was a little slow—which worked to my advantage.

  I cut my hand on his teeth, but it was worth it.

  I don’t remember this part, but according to Hernandez, the whole time, I was shouting, “Touch me again, douchebag! Touch me again and see how long you live!”

  He did not touch me again.

  Lucky they didn’t book me for assault. I could have—should have—spent the night in jail. It’s no small thing to pummel a city official into a bloody, quivering pulp on a stage in front of three hundred of the city’s bravest public servants. That kind of thing just doesn’t happen every day. Or ever.

  Of course, it’s no small thing to grab a firefighter’s ass, either.

  They whisked us both off the stage and bandaged his face and my hand while the emcee tried to get everybody to sit back down and finish their desserts. The police came, but Heath Thompson refused to press charges. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he kept saying through his swollen lips. “Just let her go.”

  I bet he wanted them to let me go. There were news cameras out in the lobby. And a thousand bucks says I wasn’t the only thing he had to hide.

  In the end, they snuck us both out the back door. I don’t know what kind of strings he pulled, but nothing about it showed up in the papers. I’m not sure, ultimately, if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Later that night, after I was home, and had showered and bandaged up my hand in my quiet apartment, Hernandez showed up at my door.

  I saw him through the peephole—holding my cell phone in one hand and my plaque in the other. In all the commotion, I’d left them behind.

  It took me a minute to undo all the dead bolts. When I swung the door open, he held out the plaque—tied in a plastic bag.

  “It’s pretty bloody,” he said.

  I nodded as I took it. Then I reached for my phone, but he held it back, out of my reach.

  “What just happened?” he asked, not crossing the threshold.

  I looked at my phone held hostage in his hand. I shrugged.

 
“Are you okay?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Do you want me to stay for a bit?”

  I shook my head.

  “You knew that guy in high school?”

  I nodded again.

  Hernandez assessed me for what felt like a long time. Then he said, “Am I guessing right that he has something to do with why you never date anybody?”

  I held his gaze until he had his answer.

  Then he nodded, like, Okay. He let out a definitive sigh. “Nice work, by the way. They took him to the hospital.”

  I gave a tiny little smile. “I try.”

  “My offer still stands, you know,” Hernandez said.

  “Offer for what?”

  He gave a little shrug. “For company. Actual company.”

  I knew he meant well. But I shook my head. “I’m better always on my own.”

  Next, still holding my phone, he opened his arms to offer a hug. “Come on. Bring it in. If anybody ever needed a hug, it’s you.”

  I would have said no to that, too. But just then, my phone rang.

  That was it. The moment was over. He held out the phone to me, I took it—and then I used it to salute a farewell before I re-dead-bolted the door and answered it.

  Three

  IT WAS MY mother. On the phone.

  “Thank you for answering,” she said.

  I closed my eyes. “It was an accident.”

  “I need to talk to you,” she said.

  “I figured,” I said.

  She’d been after me for weeks, and I’d been avoiding her—insisting to myself that I was legitimately too busy to talk.

  Her first call came in while I was at work, during one of the busiest shifts I’d had in weeks. We’d run nonstop calls for a suicide attempt in a high school bathroom (failed), a structure fire in an abandoned warehouse (arson), a sushi chef with a severed fingertip (reattached in the ER), and a cow wandering loose in a residential neighborhood (adorable).

  By the time I went off shift at seven the next morning, I had not even looked at my phone, much less listened to the messages from my semi-estranged mother.