Page 39 of Never Forget
The guy’s breathing was shallow and ragged, but breathing. The paramedics took over. I ripped off my mask and gulped air that tasted like smoke and sweat.
"Cap." I turned to find him on the radio. "We need to call for backup. This thing's getting away from us."
Cap glanced at Sean, who was wrestling with a hose line. "We got it handled."
"The exposure on the east side?—"
"I said we got it."
Sean looked up. Grinned through the sweat. "Relax, Reeves. We don't need babysitters."
I opened my mouth to argue. I closed it.
Cap was already moving, shouting orders at Tyler. The decision had been made. Backup meant admitting we couldn't handle it. Backup meant paperwork and questions and other stations showing up to take credit.
Backup meant weakness.
So we fought it ourselves. Four guys against a fire that should have had eight. We got lucky. The wind shifted, the water pressure held, the structure didn't collapse while Tyler was still inside checking for secondary victims.
By the time we had it under control, my arms were shaking and my lungs felt like they'd been scraped raw.
No one got hurt. This time.
Cap clapped Sean on the shoulder as we packed up the hose. "Good work. Told you we had it."
Sean grinned, pulling off his helmet. "Never doubted it."
I watched them. The easy confidence. The backslaps. The way they talked about it as a win instead of what it actually was—a near-miss we survived because the wind changed direction at the right moment.
No one mentioned backup. No one mentioned how close it had been. No one mentioned that if the wind hadn't shifted or if the structure had collapsed—we would have been four men trying to dig Tyler out of rubble that was still burning.
I thought about what Jamie said. I thought about Jack going back into a burning building alone because no one else was coming.
We loaded the engine and headed back to the station. I didn't say a word the whole drive.
The bar was the same as it had always been.
Same smoke-stained ceiling. Same TV playing a game nobody was watching. Same chalked tallies on the board by the dartboard, same sticky floors, same smell of spilled beer and hot wings. A crew from Station 12 had claimed the pool table. A couple of off-duty lieutenants were arguing about something near the jukebox.
We'd started with just the four of us—Cap, Sean, Tyler, and me—but a couple guys from Engine 7 drifted over when they saw us. They pulled up chairs, asked about the call.
"Pulled a guy out of a fully involved structure," Sean said, leaning back with a grin. "Flames out of three windows, smoke so thick you couldn't see your hand. Textbook grab."
He was riding the high. It showed in his face, in the way his whole body had loosened since we left the scene. This was the payoff. The reason you did the job. You walked into hell and you carried someone out, and for a few hours afterward you felt like exactly who you were supposed to be.
"Dispatch kept asking if we needed mutual aid." Sean shook his head, still grinning. "I told them we'd call if we needed a hand holding."
The Engine 7 guys laughed. Cap raised his beer in a small salute.
"That's the difference," Sean said. "Some stations, they panic. Call for backup the second things get hot. Us? We handle our own."
"Damn right," Cap said.
I took a sip of my beer and said nothing.
The conversation drifted. The Braves were choking again. Someone's kid was starting little league. Sean kept the energy up, kept the room moving, basking in the glow of a job well done.
He wasn't wrong. We'd saved a man's life today. That mattered.
