Page 35 of Never Forget
"Yeah." My voice cracked. "He was."
We sat with that for a moment. The kitchen was quiet except for the low bubble of the sauce on the stove.
Then Megan leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. Her face shifted into something harder, the way she got when she was about to say something that mattered.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Of course."
"I've been doing this job for fourteen years now.” Megan had been working as a 911 dispatcher since she was old enough to work. “And I love it, most days. But there are calls that stay with you." She paused. "The ones where you can hear something going wrong, and you're sitting there with your headset on, and there's nothing you can do."
I watched her face. The tightness around her eyes.
"What do you mean, nothing you can do?"
"Dispatchers don't send backup. That's the captain's call. If a crew is inside a structure and things go sideways, I'm listening to it happen. I can hear the chaos, the shouting, the alarms. But I can't send help unless the incident commander requests it."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It's how Havensworth works." Danny's voice was calm. Factual. "Different stations used to be separate departments. Different neighborhoods, different tax bases. When the city absorbed them, they kept the old structures. Each station still operates like its own little fiefdom. Captains call their own shots."
"So if a captain doesn't ask for help..."
"Then help doesn't come." Megan's jaw tightened. "I've looked into it. National standards say you should have four firefighters per engine. Havensworth runs with two or three. National standards say dispatch should be able to coordinate resources across the whole department. Here, we're fragmented. Different stations, different protocols, different radio systems that don't always talk to each other."
I thought about what she was describing. The chaos of a fire unfolding. A dispatcher who could hear it all but couldn't act. Crews arriving from different stations with no unified command.
"That's insane," I said.
"That's Havensworth." Danny shrugged. "It's not malicious. It's just how things evolved. Nobody sat down and designed it this way. It just happened."
"People have tried," Megan added. "Every few years someone brings it up. Better coordination, updated protocols, more staffing. It gets talked about in meetings and then nothing happens."
The journalist part of my brain was already connecting dots, seeing the shape of a story underneath what they were telling me.
"Thank you for telling me this." I traced the edge of my water glass with my finger.
If things had been different—if the system worked the way it should—would Jack have had to go back in alone? Would there have been another way to get that little girl out?
"A woman came to the funeral. Jenna Weston. She's the one Jack carried out of the fire. She brought her daughter Quinn. The little girl Jack went back for."
Megan went still.
"She looked about seven or eight," I continued. "Quinn. She was quiet the whole time, just holding her mother's hand. But she came. They both did. To thank us."
The silence stretched.
"Why didn't Jack get line of duty?" Megan asked. Her voice was careful. Controlled. "I've been wondering since the funeral. No honors. No recognition. Why?"
I took a breath. "According to what Sam told me, the building was unsafe. Command ordered everyone out. Jack went back in anyway."
"To save a child."
"Yes. But the city attorneys called it insubordination. If they classified it as line of duty, they'd be admitting liability. Opening themselves up to a lawsuit."
Megan's face hardened. "That's bullshit."
"Meg." Danny's voice was soft. A gentle warning.
