Page 11 of Second Alarm
He watches me over the rim of his mug for a beat too long. Then he goes back to his clipboard and heads for the hall.
"Carry on."
"Yep."
The tones hit at 2:47. Structure fire, 4400 block of Willow, occupants reported inside. I know it's going to be bad before dispatch finishes reading the address over the speakers. Willow runs along the cheap end of the subdivision where the builders cut corners in '04.
We're rolling in under a minute. I'm in the jump seat. Cal is across from me, shouting prep over the radio to Harrison. Hanna is in the ambulance behind us. Her lights are in our mirrors. I check them in the side mirror twice. Both times are unnecessary but I still do it.
The house is fully involved when we pull up. Flames out of the front windows, smoke coming out of the eaves in that ugly dense way that means it's eating insulation and plastics, and a woman on the curb in a bathrobe, screaming at us about her dog. The dog is already out. The dog is in her arms. The dog is shaking but fine. The woman can't process the dog because the woman is in shock.
Hanna goes to her.
I watch it for one second, which is the only second I can afford. She moves through the chaos like she was made for it. She takes the woman's elbow. She's saying the woman's dog's name, redirecting the woman toward the ambulance with the quiet, certain authority of a paramedic who's done this five hundred times, and she's, at the same time, scanning the house for anybody else she's going to have to triage in the next sixty seconds. I've never seen anyone do the job exactly like this. The old version of her was good. This version is extraordinary.
That's the second I can afford.
"Brennan!" Cal is already at the door. "Front entry, on me."
"Behind you." I grab my helmet.
We go in. Interior, smoke to the floor, heat signature on the second-story ceiling. The standard choreography kicks in — left hand search, left hand search, calling out — and my body does what I've trained it to do, which is to stop being a person with feelings and start being a firefighter with a specific job, and I do the job as Cal does the job, and we clear the house. Nobody, thank god. We come back out.
The fire is losing. Harrison is on the deck gun. The house is a total loss, but the house next door isn't going to catch, which is Beck's whole objective for the last four minutes. I pull my mask off by the engine and drink the water someone hands me. My eyes find Hanna without instruction.
She's sitting in the ambulance. The woman is in the back, oxygen on, the dog in her lap, a blanket around her shoulders. Hanna is writing on her board and listening — really listening — with her whole face tilted toward the woman in a way I've personally experienced and had forgotten how it felt, and the way I had forgotten how it felt is that it hits me like a two-by-four now that I'm seeing it again. Hanna Larsen can make you feel like the only person in the entire world.
I'm thirty-three years old, and I'm in love with her still, and I've been for ten years and five months, and the decade of practice has done exactly nothing. I'm no longer going to pretend it has.
I am, however, going to continue pretending in public, because pretending in public is different, and also because Cal is standing directly next to me.
Cal nudges me with his elbow. "She's good, huh."
"Yeah."
"That's my sister." The pride in his voice has been sitting there all day, waiting for permission.
"Yeah, Cal, I know."
"Makes you feel honored to know her, doesn't it?"
"Sure does."
"I'm saying I'm proud." He nods like this is a groundbreaking development.
"Yeah, I got that." I keep my face level.
"Don't be weird," Cal says.
"I'm not being weird."
He holds up his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. "You're being a little weird."
"I'm not."
"Okay." Cal claps me on the shoulder. A clap, from Cal, is the closing punctuation. It's also, as of today, a small knife in my back. "She's a good paramedic. I knew she'd be good. I told you she'd be good."
"You did tell me," I agree.
