Page 6 of The Dating Charade

Jett smiled. The bushy mustache above Captain Ferraro’s half-shaved chin, however, didn’t so much as quiver. “Yes, sir.” Jett straightened his shoulders. I’ll tell her, sir.”

Jogging beneath the pulsing blue lights through the stark hall, down the stairs, and into the bay, he met Sunny squatted beside Medic 2–10, lacing up his boots. They were dressed in identical paramedic uniforms: navy-blue buttoned polos with fire-rescue patches, navy pants, black boots, black belt. The badges gave off a silvery shine, reflecting the morning light coming from the sixty-paned fire-station doors that held the four engines neatly inside.

Jett twisted the key of the gleaming Medic 2–10, and it began to hum.

Sunny hopped in the passenger seat beside him and hung his elbow out the window. A moment later, he slapped the door twice and yelled to the two men jogging into the bay. “Let’s go, ladies. Clock’s a runnin’.”

Jarod and Kevin gave Sunny looks that said well and clear they were not impressed. But then, Jett and Sunny weren’t the ones shrugging on Kevlar for what they all knew was a bust call.

“I like you, Bentley,” Jarod said, hopping into his boots and pulling up his suspenders. “You’ve been a good addition these past few months. But that doesn’t mean I’m not starting to think up ways to get you kicked over to Station 3. If you don’t get those two to stop—”

“Then what? You’ll complain to Captain that you’re missing out on beauty sleep when you’re supposed to be on toilet duty?” Jett patted the wheel. “C’mon. They’re just two lonely old ladies on a mountaintop looking for something to occupy the time.”

“Yeah?” Kevin slung his jacket around himself. “I have a neighbor who’s eighty-five. You know what she does for fun? Cross-stitches pillows. Drives a camper out to Utah. Goes to rock concerts with her grandkids. Won in her age group last year for the Turkey Trot 5K. Makes these little star-shaped cookies around the holidays filled with jelly—”

“Should I feel concerned by the depth of these details?” Jett’s voice rose as the station doors lifted.

“Does yoga on a little back patio surrounded by sunflowers she grows in her garden—”

“I’m definitely uncomfortable.”

Kevin yanked open the door to Ladder 2–0–2 beside him. “Notice nothing in that list included calling the fire department.”

The engine roared to life, drowning out any more disturbing details Kevin might’ve been planning to add. Jett closed his window.

Amid the muted noise, Sunny pulled out a Hot Pocket stowed somewhere inside his jacket. “My meemaw likes to catch raccoons sneaking in her chicken coop. She spray-paints their tails and drops them off ten miles past the river, just to see them track their way back.” He shrugged and bit into his Hot Pocket. Through his mouthful he added, “Everyone’s got a hobby.”

The trucks filled the narrow streets as they made their way through Gatlinburg, sirens reverberating off stores and churches. Soon they were surrounded by a landscape of rock and pine. Higher and higher into the mountains they went, and just when it seemed the asphalt had run out, the battered and tilted road sign for Skyline Drive peeked its head out from behind thick, wild bushes.

The airbrakes on Ladder 2–0–2 gave a squeal at the sign, and the massive engine plopped down in the middle of the all-but-abandoned road. Kevin leaned his head out the window. “Go meet your sweetheart, Bentley. Send for us if, miracle of miracles, you actually need our help.”

Gravel sputtered beneath back tires as Jett pressed his boot firmly to the floor and powered the much smaller emergency vehicle up the drive. Tree limb after tree limb snapped at the sides of Medic 2–10 until the one-bedroom house came into view, smoke curling upward from its humble chimney. Frail, eighty-four-year-old Mrs. Edna “Edie” Kolak, the one and only neighbor to Donna Gene in a five-mile radius, tightened her robe about herself as she stood from the rickety lawn chair on the front porch. Jett pulled into the driveway, and Edie grabbed the siding as she began to step off the porch.

Cold air blasted into his lungs as he opened the door.

Despite the mere twelve minutes it took to get to 525 Skyline Drive, he always felt like he was suddenly a hundred miles from downtown Gatlinburg. The air was crisper in these elevated parts, and what was a light dusting in the town below accumulated to well over three inches here, confirmed with a quick glance at the snow overlaying the old, forgotten array of lawn art in concrete shapes of rabbits and angels.

He slid on blue latex gloves.

Like a hesitant ice skater, Edie tested her unsteady slipper on the grass. “Oh, Law’, I am glad you are here.”

“Now, just get back up on the porch there, Mrs. Kolak. Let us come to you.” Jett slung the blaze-orange medic pack over his shoulder.

Edie obediently stepped back and waited. She rubbed at her gnarled, arthritic knuckles, fear powerful in her expression. “I know we weren’t supposed to call, and we’ve been doing so good until lately, but—”

A loud moan came from behind the screen door. A long moan. A moan so long it was a wonder the woman hadn’t run out of breath.

“It’s no trouble at all.” He smiled down at all four foot nine inches of the woman as he took hold of her frail elbow. “Now, why don’t we get out of the cold and see what’s going on?”

Edie all too willingly let herself be guided inside. Jett could gamble on the exact location—to the foot, really—where Donna Gene had taken a tumble. But even if he’d somehow blocked his memories of the last twenty-two times he’d been inside the house, he would still need no directions. They could simply follow the long, continuous moans interrupted only by millisecond breaths.

He led the way through the small, confined living room. On the large television covering the window, a woman yelled hysterically at a man, and the audience unanimously began to boo.

Donna’s backside was the first thing that came into view as he turned into the kitchen.

“Ohh, Jetty boy. You found me.” Donna held out a plump arm, reaching toward him as though he would pull her out of her grave.

Jett pressed his hands to his knees and squatted down to her level. The woman stared back from beneath the square card table. Somehow the three-hundred-and-fifty-pound, eighty-two-year-old woman always managed to fall off her chair and land on the yellowed linoleum, and she always twisted and turned until she’d firmly wedged herself beneath the table legs, caught like a mouse in a trap. “For the life of me, Donna Gene, I don’t know how you do it.”