Things You Save in a Fire

by Katherine Center

  “How, exactly?” I demanded. “By slipping on a banana peel in the parking lot?”

  The captain gave me a look.

  I went on, determined. “DeStasio and the rookie were injured at the same time—when the roof caved in. I found DeStasio under an overturned checkout aisle shelf, and I found the rookie—by feel—under ceiling debris. Sir.”

  But the more I talked, the worse I made things.

  The captain was a reasonable guy, but I was calling his friend a liar, and the more I did it, the more he wanted to defend him.

  “I’ve known DeStasio for almost forty years, Hanwell. We met at the academy, and I’ve seen him just about every day since. I was with him when he lost his son. I was the first person he called after his wife walked out. I have never known him to lie. About anything.”

  The captain stared me down, but I stared back just as hard.

  “There’ll be an investigation, of course,” the captain went on. “No matter”—he glanced in the direction of the ICU—“how this turns out. But I’ve got to warn you, Hanwell. Until we know the true story of what happened, I have to suspend you from duty. If DeStasio’s report checks out, we’re talking gross insubordination. And if the rookie…” He hesitated. “If the rookie doesn’t pull through, we might be talking manslaughter as well. You’ll have more to worry about than your career. Either way, you’re probably going to need a lawyer.”

  A lawyer? How could this be happening? How did DeStasio’s lies become the truth? Wasn’t the truth supposed to set us free? A lifetime of movies where the good guys won in the end had not prepared me for this. How, exactly, did the liar get to be the authority?

  Lots of reasons, of course. DeStasio was from here, and had lived his whole life here, and raised his own boy here. He’d been here forever, and he was fully involved in this world with all his boyhood friends and cousins. I was an outsider and a newcomer and an uppity girl. Any one of those reasons would have been enough to give his version of the story the edge.

  But maybe more important than any of that: He got there first.

  “It won’t check out,” I said. “Every detail in that report is false.”

  “For your sake,” the captain said, looking tired to the bones, “I hope so.”

  I took a few breaths. I felt woozy. “I will fill out my own report tonight—a correct one—and file it with you in the morning.”

  “That’ll be fine, Hanwell.”

  And now, at last, for the question that had brought me here. “Can I see the rookie?”

  The captain shook his head. “Family only.”

  I shook my head. “I need to see him.” And before I knew it, I was walking away from the captain, walking straight down the hall, back toward the crowd.

  “They haven’t even let me in, Hanwell,” the captain said, following me.

  “But I’m the one who saved him,” I said.

  “So you say,” the captain said, catching up, “but you’re also the reason he’s in here.”

  It was all I could do not to punch the wall. “I am not the reason he’s in here.”

  “Either way,” the captain said, “they’ve only let in his parents and sisters.” Then he remembered: “And his girlfriend.”

  I froze in my tracks. I turned. “Girlfriend? What girlfriend?”

  The captain looked over my shoulder to spot her.

  “The rookie doesn’t have a girlfriend,” I said. Other than me.

  The captain spotted a girl standing by the swinging doors of the ICU. He nodded at her. “His girlfriend might disagree.”

  “That is not his girlfriend.”

  “Close enough. Word is, they’re almost engaged.”

  It had to be Amy. Perfectly nice, nothing-wrong-with-her Amy. The very image of clean, ironed femininity. She was wearing a pink tank top and khaki shorts.

  I hated her on sight.

  “Amy?” I said, stepping closer.

  She looked up, but she didn’t know me. Of course. What did she even see in that moment? Some grimy, sooty, filthy, sweaty female in a firefighter’s uniform. The sight of me seemed to shock her a little.

  I could tell she had no interest in talking to me. I seemed like nobody to her.

  To everybody in the room, actually.

  “I thought you moved to California,” I said, bewildered by this turn of events.

  She looked around, like, Who is this? “I’m home on vacation.”

  “Why are you here?”

  In the second that followed, the whole room, including me, wondered if I had the right to ask her that question. But then she answered it anyway. “Colleen called me.”

  It felt so weirdly disloyal of Colleen. She knew Owen was with Christabel now—even if Christabel didn’t exist. And even if nobody in this room seemed to recognize her without her poofy hair and hanky dress.

  It pinched my heart to remember that night.

  I turned back to the captain. “I need to see him.”

  “You can’t.”

  But I did need to see him. Who cared about hospital rules?

  I moved toward the ICU doors, but then I felt the captain’s hand clamp my arm.

  I’ll tell you something. I’m strong, but the captain is stronger. No way was I getting out of that grip.

  Now I was right next to ex-girlfriend Amy, close enough to confirm that she was exactly as garden-variety as the rookie had claimed, and the whole crowd was craning to see what would happen next.

  I didn’t know what would happen next.

  I couldn’t make sense of things. The whole situation felt like a dream—or more like a nightmare. Nothing felt real. Keys jangled. Voices murmured. The ex-girlfriend stared at me like I’d escaped from the loony bin.

  Only a few things were clear:

  DeStasio had blamed me for everything he did—and everyone who mattered believed him.

  I was suspended from my job. And I was going to need a lawyer.

  My mother was dying. My dad was three thousand miles away.

  And Owen, my Owen, the one guy who was always on my side, was on a ventilator. In a medically induced coma. With a fifty-fifty shot at survival.

  “I just need to see him,” I said in a voice that I didn’t even recognize. “Please.”

  “Hanwell, you’re exhausted,” the captain said. “We’re all exhausted. Go home and get some rest.”

  “I need your help,” I said to the captain.

  But he was already shaking his head. “I can’t help you. There’ll be an investigation, and whatever happens will happen.”

  “Not with that,” I said. “I need to see the rookie.”

  “No can do,” he said in a voice like, We’ve been over this.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere.

  Time to do something really brave.

  I took a deep breath. “I love him,” I told the captain.

  He frowned at me. “Who?”

  “The rookie!”

  “Everybody loves the rookie,” he said.

  “No,” I stared at him, like, I. Love. Him.

  But the captain wasn’t having it. “Come on, Hanwell. Keep it together. Now’s not the time to develop a crush on the rookie.”

  I stood up straighter. “It’s not a crush,” I said. And then, knowing exactly how ridiculous these words would sound to the captain and every single other person in the room, including the guys on our crew, and even myself, I said, as steadily as I could, “When I say I love him, I mean I am in love with him.”

  The crowd burst out with gasps and whispers and cries of, “What?”

  A mixed reaction, but I’d say the general consensus was that I’d just made myself the butt of every joke forever.

  I could read the captain’s response in his face. We never should have hired a girl.

  No way out but through. “That,” I said, gesturing at Amy, “is not his girlfriend. I am his girlfriend. It’s not a crush. And I’m not the one who started it, either.”

  The captain frowned.
“Are you telling me that you and the rookie fell in love with each other on C-shift? In my firehouse?”

  Knowing that I was pretty much ending my run in the Lillian FD by confessing this—no matter what happened with DeStasio’s report—I nodded.

  He shook his head. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  But I had to call him on that. “Are you really going to stand there—you, married thirty-six years, a guy who’d do anything for his wife and his four kids—and tell me that love doesn’t matter?”

  That got his attention.

  “When I say I’m in love with him,” I went on, my voice shaking, “I mean that he’s the person I want to marry and spend my life with. He’s the person who makes everything else matter. But I never told him that. I was afraid of losing my job. Or of losing the guys’ respect. I know what you all think, that love is weakness—because I thought it, too, and I never questioned it. But I’ll tell you something, as of today I know for sure that it’s the opposite. I would have lifted that entire building off the ground to get the rookie out of there today, and I will do the same to get into that ICU right now.”

  The captain closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “I need to see him,” I said, my voice starting to crumble.

  “Oh, no,” the captain said. “Do not cry.”

  “I’m not crying,” I said, as I wiped my face.

  Worse and worse. My captain from Austin’s words ticker-taped through my head: Don’t have feelings. Don’t talk about them, don’t explore them, and whatever you do, don’t cry.

  I never cry, I’d said. So cocky. Just begging for life to teach me different.

  “Women,” the captain said, taking in the sight of me, shaking his head. “This is what I’m saying.”

  I stepped closer. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t roll your eyes. Help me get in, or tell me to go home, but don’t stand there blocking the door while the rookie is fighting for his life and act like caring about other human beings doesn’t matter.”

  The captain blinked. Then he cleared his throat. Then he said, “Fair enough.”

  For a second, I thought he was going to help me get in.

  But then he just sighed and said, “Hanwell, go home.”

  Twenty-seven

  I WENT, BUT not willingly.

  I went, but only because the captain steered me by the elbow down to the parking lot and made a highly compelling argument that whatever had happened at the fire, and whatever my feelings about the rookie might or might not be, and regardless of whether human connection actually had any meaning, the rookie’s parents needed all their strength and all their focus—and no distractions—if they were going to get him through this alive.

  “So I’m a distraction?”

  “You are a massive distraction.”

  “I can help,” I said. “I was there.”

  “None of that matters at this point,” the captain said. “Like it or not, the rookie needs his parents right now. There are big decisions to be made, and Big Robby’s not in great health, and Colleen is about two inches away from losing it. If you hang around here, she’s going to go over the edge, I promise you—and I’ve known this woman a long time. Go home. Let them cope. I’ll be here, and I’ll call you as soon as there’s news.”

  * * *

  I WENT HOME. What can I say? The adrenaline had worn off, and I was too tired to fight.

  But I snuck back later.

  I got home, showered, put on my softest sweats, and lay in bed.

  But it was the bed I’d slept in with Owen. Owen, who was now fighting for his life in the ICU. Owen, who I could not bear to lose.

  I didn’t sleep. I wound up writing my far-too-detailed report for the captain instead, and emailing it off at midnight.

  They were keeping him in a medically induced coma, letting the tissues heal and also offering him the mercy of sleeping through some of the pain. I thought back through what I knew about what happened. In addition to the cyanide poisoning, his airway had been burned by the hot air in the flashover. The swelling had caused respiratory arrest, which led to cardiac arrest—though I had no idea how long he’d gone without breathing. Five minutes? Ten? It’s hard to tell time in a fire.

  They say you can only last six minutes without breathing before incurring brain damage, but it really can vary a huge amount from person to person. A fit guy like Owen, I kept telling myself, could amaze us all. I thought about a story I once heard about a two-year-old boy who was drowned in a frozen river for over half an hour but walked away just fine.

  The rookie could be okay. It wasn’t the most impossible thing I’d ever tried to hope for.

  Or maybe it was.

  Finally, at two in the morning, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I snuck down the stairs, past Diana’s white noise machine, got back in my truck, and drove down to Boston.

  The waiting area was mostly empty now. The rookie’s parents were asleep on the one available sofa—his mother sideways with her head on his dad’s thigh, his dad with his head tilted back against the wall. Somebody had put blankets over them.

  I tiptoed past, and I pushed through the double doors into the restricted section.

  There are no rooms in the ICU, just beds separated by curtains. I checked one chart after another until I saw CALLAGHAN. But before I could slide the curtain back, a nurse stopped me.

  “No visitors at this hour,” she said, slipping between me and the curtain.

  “Hi. Yes, I just—”

  “You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” She looked me over. “And then only if you’re family.”

  How to describe myself. “I’m his girlfriend,” I said.

  “Then you can come during visiting hours.”

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “I’m not sure I can.”

  She stepped back and looked me over. “You’re his mistress?”

  “No!”

  “But his family doesn’t like you?”

  I sighed. “They think I’m the reason he’s in here.”

  Her eyebrows went up, like, Are you?

  “But I’m not! I’m the one who saved him!”

  I was ready to launch into the whole story—but one look at her face told me she didn’t want the story. She had work to do, and she needed the person breaking the rules to get out of the way.

  Instead, I summed up: “I can’t be here during visiting hours. But I need to see him. Five minutes—please. There’s something I need to tell him.”

  Her face pinched up. She didn’t really have time for this nonsense. But as I waited for her verdict, tears started filling my eyes and spilling over. For a person who never cried, I sure was turning out to be good at it.

  Finally, she’d had enough. “Five minutes,” she said, pointing at me. “And don’t try to sneak in here again.”

  * * *

  BEHIND THE CURTAIN, the rookie was hooked up to every tube and machine possible. He was on a ventilator, and the paper tape holding the tube in obscured much of his face. His eyes were taped shut. His face was red with second-degree burns where the edge of his mask had been.

  Thank God for the movement and the noise of the ventilator, because everything else was as still as death.

  But his hand was there. Someone had tucked his blankets carefully up under his arms and laid his hands at his sides. I reached over the rail. It was warm and soft. Alive.

  And then I didn’t know what to say. Faced with the chance to talk to him, my mind went blank. I’d planned a whole speech on the drive down—one inspiring and powerful and motivating, one he would hear through the fog of his coma and grasp on to for the will to live.

  But now I was here, and the clock was ticking.

  “It’s me,” I said. “They won’t let me in to see you. DeStasio filed a false report, and now everybody thinks I’m the reason you’re in here. Looks like I’m going to lose my job. But I don’t care about any of it. The only thing I care about is you pulling through.” I stepped a l
ittle closer, still holding his hand but reaching out to stroke his forehead, too. “You’re really something special, rookie. The world needs you. I know you’re fighting. Keep fighting. Don’t give up.”

  I leaned down and kissed his forehead.

  “They only gave me five minutes—and I’m not allowed to come back. But just know that my whole heart is with you. Apparently, I need a medically induced coma to spark enough courage to say it, but—” I took a shaky breath. “I love you. I told the captain, and the whole crew, and the entire waiting room. So now, everybody knows but you. That’s why you’ve got to get better—so I can tell you for real.”

  * * *

  AFTER THAT, I stayed away.

  I kept my phone on me at all times, waiting for texts from the captain. He was group-texting the whole crew with any information that he got, but after my enormous and dramatic confession in the waiting room, I kept thinking I’d receive something a little more personal.

  I didn’t.

  Not the first day. Or the second. Or the third.

  I only got the basic updates sent to the group: His parents were keeping vigil in the ICU. His mother hadn’t changed clothes in days. His health was touch and go, and there were moments of encouragement and moments of worry. The collapsed lung and facial burns were improving, but the real concern was the damage to his trachea.

  I wondered if ex-girlfriend Amy was still lurking around, abusing her mistaken status as “family.” But the captain didn’t mention her.

  I didn’t hear much from the guys. Let’s just say heartache wasn’t exactly their area.

  Those first days back home, banished from the hospital, melted into a blur of sleeplessness. And worry. And anger.

  And utter, agonized dismay at the rubble around me.

  I wanted to shut myself up in my room and lock the door and stop eating and curl up on the bed in a fetal position.

  I wanted to—but to my credit, I didn’t. When Diana came in to sit by me, I didn’t send her away. When Josie showed up with a homemade smoothie, I took a few sips. I’d tried coping in isolation before, and I knew firsthand that it didn’t work.

  I felt desperate, restless, lost. I needed to help, but there was nothing to do. I needed to move, but there was nowhere to go. I was more exhausted than I’ve ever been, but I couldn’t rest.