Page 10 of Second Alarm
At the fifth hydrant, Deluca asks me whether I think Hanna will stay in Copper Ridge. No idea. He asks if I want her to stay. I tell him to read me back the pressure. He reads it back wrong. I make him read it back right. He does, then asks me again whether I want her to stay.
At the sixth hydrant, I tell Deluca that the next question about Hanna costs him a lap around the lot when we’re back at the station. He nods. He keeps the nod going for three full seconds, with the gravity of a man receiving a sacrament. Then he asks me what kind of music Hanna likes.
He runs the lap. He runs it badly, the way only a probie running a lap as a punishment runs it, with too much arm swing and not enough leg. From the truck I watch him round the corner of the apparatus bay, and I'm briefly alone with my own face in the rearview mirror. I don't recognize the man looking back at me, which is a problem, because he's the man who's supposed to keep this together for the next decade.
This isn't sustainable, and it's only day one.
I've been telling myself for four months, since Cal told me his sister was coming back to take the paramedic opening at Station7, that I could handle this. That I'm a grown man. That I've had a decade of practice.
And I have. I've practiced for a decade. I practiced when Cal mentioned her over beers. I practiced when she came home for Christmas that first year and I had a shift conveniently on Christmas Eve and offered to take the rookie's spot the next day. I practiced when her mother invited me to Thanksgiving and I went, because you go to Mom Larsen's for Thanksgiving. You don't refuse Mom Larsen. I practiced through the turkey and the stuffing and the casual conversation, and I practiced when she didn't come home that year because she'd taken a shift in Portland. I practiced, is what I'm saying.
I practiced when her photo was on Mom Larsen's mantel in her paramedic dress blues, graduating from some course in Portland, eyes to the camera, jaw set, hair pulled back the way she wears it now. I practiced looking at that photo at Easter and Thanksgiving and Mom's birthday and the Labor Day barbecue every year. I've practiced not looking at that photo, which is harder than practicing looking at it. I can tell you the position of every pixel in it.
I practiced a lot.
And then she walked into the locker room with her hair pulled back the same way as in the photo, and Cal's arm around her shoulder, and all ten years of practice did exactly nothing, because practice is useless when the thing shows up for real.
I finish hydrant checks with Deluca. I go to the kitchen. Derek is making his eggs. Harrison is watching Derek's eggs with the weary disappointment of a man who loves his men but is tired of them. The kitchen is full of the sounds of a firehouse at lunchtime: radio chatter, the fridge humming, Deluca singing under his breath, Rivera grumbling about the pump, and somewhere down the hall, Hanna laughing.
That one stops me.
Hanna is laughing.
It's a real laugh. Not a work laugh, not a polite laugh. She has a specific laugh that I haven't heard in ten years, and it's doing the one thing I've been strictly asking it not to do, which is existing in my proximity.
Rivera materializes behind me without sound, as is his habit.
"Brennan."
I turn. "What."
"Eyebrow check."
My hand goes to my own forehead before I can stop it. "What?"
"You're doing the eyebrow thing."
"There's no eyebrow thing."
"Mmhmm." He brushes past me to the coffee pot. "Hydrants good?"
"Hydrants are hydrants."
Rivera's eyes drift to the door. "Deluca?"
"Still alive."
"Credit to you." He pours a cup. "Big day, rookie paramedic."
"Mmhmm."
"She's good." He lifts his mug toward the hallway.
"Mmhmm."
"Portland did right by her."
"Mmhmm."
