Page 79 of Igniting Her

They could see the failure she kept trying to classify as private.

On the final morning of the tour, the incident channel went quiet after a routine dumpster fire. Dispatch called Engine 12 for disposition.

Cassie heard the first word and not the rest.

Wind against a ridge. A radio opening into static. Ellie’s body appearing low beneath a fallen beam.

“Engine 12, copy?” dispatch repeated.

Mo looked at her across Engine 12’s cab.

Cassie keyed the microphone. “Engine 12 copies. Fire is out. We’re available.”

The correction took less than a second. Everyone else in the apparatus heard it take twelve years.

Back at Station 12, Mo cooked breakfast no one requested. Cassie ate half an egg because he remained at the end of the table with his arms folded. Teak described the behavior as extortion. Nobody laughed hard enough to make it ordinary.

At eight, the relief shift arrived. Turnover moved through the bay in overlapping conversations. Air cylinders. Fuel level. A sticking pressure gauge. One medical bag seal due for replacement. Cassie gave each item its correct attention and did not look for Ellie among the incoming crew.

She knew Ellie had traded the tour and was not on the roster. She had checked once.

At eight fourteen, the tones sent Engine 12 and Rescue 12 to an odor investigation at a marina restaurant. The incoming shift climbed aboard. Bay doors rose, diesel filled the air, and both apparatus pulled into the morning.

A shift left by degrees. Jamie carried two bags of laundry toward the parking lot. Priya paused beside Cassie’s office and seemed to reconsider saying something. Teak hugged Mo, insulted his eggs, and followed the others out.

Mo remained near the long table with his turnout bag over one shoulder.

“You’re off duty, Engineer,” Cassie said.

“So are you.”

“Then we have both identified the problem.”

His mouth moved beneath the mustache. On another morning, it might have become a smile.

“Go home, Cass.”

He used the name rarely. Cassie looked down at the staffing memo on her desk. “I will.”

Mo studied her through the open office door. The concern in his face had hardened into decision. Cassie felt an old warning move through her, but he only adjusted the strap on his bag.

“Soon,” he said.

He left.

The station settled into a temporary emptiness. Without apparatus, the bay looked too large. Two rectangles of clean concrete marked where Engine 12 and Rescue 12 belonged. Morning light entered through the open doors and reached the brass plaque on the wall between them.

Cassie saved the staffing memo, shut down the computer, and took her bag from beneath the desk. She had been awake for twenty-six hours. Sleep would not come, but leaving remained a task she could complete.

She crossed the apparatus bay toward the parking-lot door.

It opened before she reached it.

Ellie stepped inside.

She wore jeans, running shoes, and the black jacket she had used on cold mornings before the station began to feel familiar. Her hair was braided. No uniform, no shield, nothing for Cassie to assign. A folded sheet of paper rested in one hand.

Cassie’s body registered her before discipline could intervene. Alive. Standing. Three feet inside the door. The inventory ran beneath thought: no visible injury, tiredness around her eyes, color high in her cheeks from the walk uphill.