Page 9 of Second Alarm
"I meant it reverentially, Captain." Pure innocence.
" — Cal, you're on vent fan checks with Rivera. Harrison, paperwork with me. Derek —"
Derek sits up straighter. "Ready to serve."
" — you're on kitchen duty."
"That isn't a drill." Derek sets down his pen. "That's an assignment."
"It's also a drill. Your eggs were inedible. It's a crisis. We're working on it."
"My eggs are an expression of self."
"Your eggs are a hazard.” He looks around the room. “We all clear? Good. Go."
Everyone stands up to leave the briefing room. Hanna stands up. She doesn't look at me and I try not to look at her. In my peripheral vision, she's precisely and specifically there, takingup exactly the volume of air she used to take up in my dorm room, which isn't an amount of air that should be possible in a briefing room of this size, and yet — here we are.
I don't look at her.
I look at Deluca instead, who's waiting by the door with the expression of a golden retriever who's just learned there's a car ride in his future.
"Let's go, probie."
"Yessir." He falls in beside me. "Ty, can I ask you a question?"
"No."
"Is Hanna your — "
"Deluca."
"Because she and Cal introduced — "
"Deluca."
"Sorry." He drops his chin like I've taken something from him personally.
"We're going to check hydrants."
"Yes, sir."
"We aren't going to discuss Hanna."
"Copy that." He salutes me.
"Great."
"You made her coffee, and I was gonna — "
"Deluca."
He shuts up. We check hydrants. He asks me four questions about hydrants and eleven questions that aren't about hydrants, and I answer one out of every three, and by noon, he's gotten the message, or at least a version of the message that has been filtered through the porous membrane of Deluca's brain, which is that some things at Station 7 aren't discussed, and my face at the mention of Paramedic Larsen is one of those things.
Deluca asks me, on the way to the third hydrant, whether Hanna and Cal are twins, because they're the same height. I tell him no. He asks if they're really siblings. I tell him yes. He askshow many siblings I have. I tell him none. He asks if I wanted siblings. I tell him I'm fine. He asks what fine means to me. I check the cap on the next hydrant.
He asks if Cal and I really went to the Oregon State Fire Academy if we're from Montana. I tell him Montana had a two-year waitlist and Oregon ran a reciprocal certification program that Cal found. He says oh. He writes something down.
At the fourth hydrant, Deluca asks whether Hanna's boyfriend in Portland was a paramedic too. I don't know. He asks how I don't know. Haven't asked. He asks why I haven't asked. I tell him to record the static pressure. He records it — twice, slowly, like it's an act of love.
