Page 8 of Second Alarm
"Just coffee." Out loud, to nobody — or maybe to myself.
Behind me: "Yeah."
I don't turn around. Ty is in the doorway. I know because I can see his reflection in the window in front of me.
"Is that all it is?"
His reflection tips toward me. "Is what all?"
"Is it just coffee."
A smirk crosses his face in the glass. "It's just coffee, Hanna."
"Okay."
"It is what it is."
"Okay."
He's quiet for a second. Then: "Welcome to Station 7."
"Thanks."
"I'll see you on shift."
"Yeah."
I hear him walk away. I don't turn around. I finish the coffee before I go find Beck, because I'm a woman who finishes what she starts.
It's a lie, but I'm committed to it.
Chapter 2
Ty
She finishes the coffee.
I don't see her do it, because I'm in the apparatus bay, because I'm a grown man who walked out of that kitchen like a man who wasn't reorganizing his entire nervous system, but I know she finishes it, because when I pass through the kitchen an hour later on my way to the briefing room, the mug is upside down in the drying rack. Rinsed. Dried. Put away.
I've spent almost eleven years as a firefighter learning not to have feelings about a coffee mug. This one takes me ninety seconds.
Rivera is in the briefing room when I get there. He glances up from his clipboard and doesn't say anything. Rivera's silences are a language with its own conjugation, and the particular silence he's giving me right now is the one that translates roughly toI saw what I saw but we won't be discussing it at this time.
I sit down and I don't discuss it.
Beck comes in from the office with the daily shift sheet and a look of pre-patience. "Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Gemma. Good morning, Hanna."
"Morning, Captain."
Hanna is sitting three chairs down from me. She's in station blues, hair pulled back — some kind of twist, not a ponytail — and she's writing in a small notebook, because she's always been the kind of woman who took notes on her first day of kindergarten, and I've been informed of this by Cal at approximately two thousand family dinners.
I don't look at her. I look at Beck with the attention of a man who's never cared about anything in his life other than Beck's briefing schedule.
"Rig checks at eleven," Beck says. "Drills at eleven thirty. Hanna, Gemma, I want you two running through our ambulance inventory — your inventory stock is the same as Portland's, Hanna, but our stocking ratios are different, Gemma will walk you through them. Brennan, you're on hydrant maintenance with Deluca — "
"Oh hell." Deluca sinks in his chair.
" — I heard that, Deluca — " Beck counters without looking up.
