Chapter 5 The First Fire Together

POV: Wren

The torn page is still folded in my back pocket when the tones drop, and there's no time to think about it, no time to do anything but grab my bag and run for the rig with Patel already behind the wheel and the engine roaring to life in the bay beside us.

"Structure fire," Patel says, reading off the dash screen as we pull out. "Two story, residential. Caller says family's trapped on the second floor."

My stomach drops the way it always does at those words, family trapped, two kids and a parent maybe, somebody's whole life about to change in the next ten minutes whether we get there in time or not. I check my kit on autopilot, gloves, airway gear, burn dressings, the same checklist I've run a thousand times, except my hands aren't quite steady the way they usually are, and I tell myself it's the adrenaline. Just the adrenaline.

We're three minutes out when I see the smoke, a gray column rising over the rooftops, thicker than it has any right to be for a house that size.

The engine's already on scene when we pull up behind it, hose lines stretched across a yard scattered with a kid's bike and a half deflated soccer ball, neighbors gathered at the property line in robes and pajamas, somebody's dog barking from a porch two houses down like it's trying to warn the whole street. Flames are showing through a downstairs window, orange and hungry, and smoke pours out from under the eaves in a way that tells me this fire's been building longer than anyone realized.

Cole's already moving, helmet on, voice cutting through the chaos in a way that pulls every head on scene toward him at once.

"Two in, two out, primary search starts upstairs. Reyes, Patel, you're on the line. Ortiz, with me." He's not shouting. He doesn't have to. Something about the flatness of his voice makes people listen harder than yelling ever would. "Calloway, stage here, gear up, we'll have a victim for you fast."

"Copy."

I set up my kit on the lawn, laying everything out in the order I'll need it, oxygen first, burn dressings second, IV supplies within reach but not in the way. My hands know this part. My hands have always known this part, even on nights when the rest of me didn't.

Cole disappears through the front door with Ortiz right behind him, both of them swallowed by smoke that's gone from gray to black in the last sixty seconds, which means the fire's eating through something it shouldn't be, furniture or worse, and every second they're inside feels longer than the one before it.

The radio crackles. His voice again, calmer than the situation has any right to allow.

"Command, primary search second floor, smoke's heavy, visibility's near zero. Continuing search."

Something about the rhythm of it snags at the back of my brain, the exact spacing between his words, the way he reports position before condition, condition before request. I don't have time to chase the thought down. The radio crackles again almost immediately.

"Command, we've got one, child, conscious, carrying her out now."

I'm on my feet before the sentence even finishes, moving to the edge of the yard where they'll come out, and a minute later Ortiz appears through the smoke with a girl maybe seven years old wrapped against his chest, coughing hard, eyes wide and streaming. I take her from him without breaking stride, getting her down on the blanket I've already spread on the grass, oxygen mask in my hand before my knees even hit the ground.

"Hey, sweetheart, I'm Wren, I'm gonna help you breathe easier, okay? Big slow breaths for me."

She nods, too scared to talk, gripping my sleeve with a fist so tight it'll probably bruise. I check her pulse, her color, the soot ringing her nostrils, working through the assessment the way I've done it a hundred times before, except behind me the radio's still going, Cole's voice reporting back to command, and the words are catching at something I can't quite name yet.

"Command, second victim located, mother, non ambulatory, beam's down across the stairwell, we need a second line up here now."

Beam's down. My hands keep moving, checking the girl's airway, but something in my chest has gone tight and strange, listening for the next thing he's going to say before he says it.

"Command, structural integrity uncertain on the east side, proceed with caution, we're bringing her down now."

Proceed with caution. The four words land somewhere behind my ribs like a hand pressing flat against an old bruise, and I don't know why yet, don't have time to know why, because the girl in front of me starts coughing harder, her oxygen sat dropping on the monitor, and I have to get the mask adjusted, has to get more air into her before anything else matters.

"Hold still for me, baby, almost done."

My fingers are wrapping a strip of gauze around her arm where she scraped it scrambling down the stairs, simple, routine, the kind of thing I could do with my eyes closed, except my eyes aren't closed, they're wide open and fixed on nothing, because the radio crackles one more time and Cole's voice comes through again, giving the order to bring the second victim out through the east stairwell despite the uncertain integrity, structure holding for now, proceed, proceed, proceed.

The gauze stops moving in my hands.

I'm not on this lawn anymore. I'm somewhere else, two years gone, listening to a different voice give almost the exact same string of words in almost the exact same order, beam down, integrity uncertain, proceed with caution, the words that came right before the radio went silent and stayed silent and never gave me David back.

The girl tugs at my sleeve, confused, scared by my sudden stillness more than she was scared by the fire. "Are you okay?"

I don't answer her. I can't, not yet, my hands frozen halfway through a knot they've tied a thousand times without thinking, my whole body locked in place by four sentences spoken in a stranger's voice that somehow landed exactly the way another man's voice landed the worst night of my life, down to the order, down to the pacing, down to the words themselves.