Page 100 of Never Forget
What did a structure fire look like from inside? How did you know when a floor was about to give out?
"Most of what we do isn't fire," I said.
He looked up.
"That part surprises people. The truck's got fire on the side and that's the picture everyone carries around, but fires are maybe one in ten calls, some weeks less. The rest is medical. Car accidents. Heart attacks. A kid having a seizure. Somebody who fell and can't get up. We show up before the paramedics on most of it. Our job's to keep someone alive until the ambulance rolls in behind us."
I opened the side compartment and pulled out the medical bag so he could see it.
"This is the bag we grab first, nine times out of ten. More than the hose. Most of what a firefighter does is show up to the worst moment somebody's ever had and try to make it less bad."
Cole looked at the bag for a long beat.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
I put the bag back.
He was fiddling with the strap of his backpack and not meeting my eyes.
"What do you do when you show up somewhere and something's wrong, but it isn't the thing you got called for?"
I looked at him.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. A house that doesn't feel right. Someone who says they're fine and you can tell they aren't."
I thought about it for a second.
"You note it. You mention it to your officer. There are people whose job is to follow up on things like that. Firefighters aren't those people, mostly. But we see a lot. Sometimes the thing we see is the thing someone else has been missing."
Cole nodded. He kept working the strap.
"You don't look the other way," I said.
He glanced up then. He held my eyes a second longer than a teenager usually would.
"Okay."
The kid thought about things. That was clear enough after an hour with him. A sixteen-year-old asking a real question deserved a real answer, and I'd given him the one I had.
The tones dropped before I could ask him anything else.
"MVA with entrapment. Child in the vehicle. Coleman area."
I was already moving.
"Stay with the rig. You don't leave it unless I tell you."
Cole nodded. His face had gone pale.
We were rolling inside of ninety seconds.
Sean drove. I rode up front with Cap. Tyler was in the back with the medical bag between his boots. Single-vehicle. Residential street. Child in the back seat.
The scene was on a side street four blocks off Coleman. A sedan had gone off the road into a utility pole. The front end was folded back on itself. A man was on his feet next to the car, bleeding from a gash above his eyebrow, his right arm hangingat an angle it wasn't meant to. He was pulling at the rear door handle with his left hand but the door wasn't moving.
