Page 5 of At First Spark
I rub at it automatically. “That doesn’t mean I fought it.”
“It absolutely means you did,” Beckett says.
“It means my pillow attacked me.”
“Sure.”
I ignore him and reach for my gloves.
The bay sits half lit in the morning sun, dust motes turning in the shafts of light cutting through the open doors. The engine takes up most of the center space, bright and clean, and still slightly surreal to me if I look at it too long. The workbench along the far wall is cluttered in the way active places always are—chargers, medical supplies, coils of rope, half-open binders, pens that probably don’t work, and a clipboard nobody puts back where it belongs.
Familiar already. That matters.
Captain Mac comes out of his office a minute later, clipboard under one arm, eyes sharp and unreadable as he scans the room.
“Morning,” he says.
We answer in some version of unison.
His gaze lands on me and holds. “Wright.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You ready?”
The question is simple. The answer shouldn’t feel complicated after all the work it takes to get here. But Mac never asks careless questions.
I meet his eyes. “Yes, sir.”
He watches me one second longer, then nods once. “Good.”
No speech. No false reassurance. That’s Mac.
He checks the clipboard and points with the end of his pen. “Gear check. Tank check. Then we go over overnight staffing.”
“Yes, sir.”
That’s the thing about the station—once work starts, thought gets quieter. Routine steps in. Hands take over. I run through the same sequence I’ve run through in training and on shared shifts in neighboring counties. Straps. Buckles. Mask seal. Hose connections. Pressure. Recheck because overconfidence gets people hurt faster than fear ever does.
“Still think Bertha works,” Beckett says as he swings a med bag onto the bench.
“No,” Ray says.
“It has character.”
“It has a serial number.”
I adjust the strap on my tank. “You name the engine, and Mac makes you clean bathrooms until you die.”
Beckett points at me. “That’s fear talking.”
“That’s realism.”
Mac doesn’t even look up from the clipboard. “If I hear one more person call the apparatus by a human name, Shaw is scrubbing every toilet in this building.”
Beckett winces. “Wow. Hostile work environment.”
Ray’s mouth twitches, which on him counts as a full laugh. I check my gloves and set them beside me. Metal clicks. Velcro tears. Zippers close. Coffee gets swallowed between tasks. The open bay doors frame the brightening morning outside, gulls crying somewhere over the water, tires passing on the road beyond.
