Something Worth Saving (18 page)

Command to dispatch . . . Truck 1 called in the mayday. Confirmed. Firefighter down. Battalion 2 . . . mayday alert. What’s your location?

MAYDAY
. . .
MAYDAY
.

Dispatch to command, who keeps calling in the mayday? There’s too much radio chatter.

Command to dispatch, everybody continue for now and calm down. We have special teams going to where the PPE was activated. We have advanced rescue unit on scene and three additional ambulances en route.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Jace

W
HAT HAPPENS
when oxygen combines with a flammable vapor?

Well, nothing at first. But add a source of spark, and you’ve got yourself a fire.

I felt like a fire right now. A raging fucking inferno.

There were times with the danger, which I was constantly surrounded by, where I wondered if Aubrey walked away, would I blame her for doing so?

At this point, no, I wouldn’t. It would tear me apart, but with the way I had distanced myself, the games we played, I couldn’t blame her.

My thoughts were hardly on the game that night, and Logan seemed determined to change that when he handed me another beer.

“What’s up, man?” Leaning back, he propped one foot on the seat in front of him and rested his own beer on his knee.

“Fucking Aubrey,” I grumbled. “Her mom is in town, and it’s gotten her all sorts of confused, and then her fucking ex-boyfriend showed up.”

“Has she seen him?”

“Yeah, he knows where she works, and I just keep . . . fuck, I just have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that something’s off, you know?”

“Have you told her?”

I let out a heavy sigh, wishing the worry would go with it. “No. She’d probably just think I’m being overprotective. Her mom came to Thanksgiving, and it was a disaster.”

“Brooke was telling me about that last night.” Logan laughed and handed me another beer. “Own up, brother. Marry her before she has the chance to doubt you.”

It seemed random but if anyone could have said that to me and had me actually listen, it would have been Logan. We constantly had this conversation, too. When you’re with a group of guys as often as I am, it gets talked about. Around the table, on the truck, and watching television, we bullshitted, and our personal lives were never far from the topics.

“Marriage is just a piece of paper, man.” To me, it was a piece of paper. I didn’t see the difference between what we were and that.

He smiled before tipping his beer back to finish it and then tossing it to the ground along with the four other empty cups. “If you say so . . . Jace, everything you want is right in front of you. All you have to do is fight for it. Save what’s worth saving.”

“I don’t get why you’re not married if she has your kids and you’re living together,” Axe remarked, joining the conversation. “Seems ridiculous not to be, given our line of work.”

He has a point there.

Logan spit out his drink with his laugh. “Yes, Jace, tell us why that is.”

Everybody was always giving me shit over this crap.

“Come on,” I groaned. “We’re here for the game.” I gestured to the screaming stadium of full of people dressed in blue and silver. “Not to talk about my fucking life.”

“Dude, you once told me when you were a kid that you would marry that girl someday. What changed?”

What did change? Did I even know?

Life. Life changed us and dealt us hands we would have never ordinarily chosen. I always saw myself marrying Aubrey and having kids. Who knew the kids would come first?

“It might seem like a shitty piece of advice for you, but you don’t choose what happens to you. It finds you.” Logan lowered his voice so only I heard him. “But how you deal with it is something you do choose.”

I only looked at him blankly. “What the fuck does that mean, Logan?”

“Your life. It means your life.”

And he didn’t care to enlighten me.

Denny, who was beside Logan, turned to him. “Twenty says Seattle chokes.”

“Deal,” Logan said, throwing a wadded-up twenty at Denny. “Jets are on tonight.”

“You do realize Seattle hasn’t lost a home game in two years.”

Logan reached around and retrieved his money, and then cocked his head at me. “I thought Sean nailed your right eye. Why is your left one black and blue?”

I shrugged. No way was I telling them about the other night with Aubrey and our attempt at finding the passion again.

Axe was sitting beside me, scratching his balls, which naturally captured my attention.

“What, are you allergic to your drawers, man?”

“No.” He looked surprised by my question. “I shaved my balls. They itch.”

“Stop touching yourself.” I side-eyed him. “You’re in public.”

“Why is he itching his nuts?” Logan whispered to my left, eyes on the game but intrigued. Anytime Logan sensed an opening to give someone shit, he took it. Right now he sensed it.

“He shaved his balls.” I said it loud enough that the two women in front of us heard and turned around.

Logan winked at them and then looked across me to Axe. “Say what?”

“I always shave them.”

And I wasn’t surprised by that at all. He’s a dirty guy, but he did take care of himself. He just wasn’t very selective about where he fucked around at.

“Does it make it bigger?” Denny asked. “I’ve always wondered that.”

“Shut up,” Axe said, looking at me like they were all crazy. “Why did we bring the probie?”

None of us had a straight answer, but despite being a bit of a dumbass, Denny was a good guy.

The two girls in front of us turned around to face us. “Are you guys police officers?”

We got asked that question a lot. Not sure why, but we did.

Logan laughed, the sound booming. “No. Definitely not brass. We’re America’s heroes.”

“Military?”

Military?
Logan mouthed at me, eyebrows drawn together, and then he looked back at the girls, straight-faced. “No. Firefighters.”

Apparently that’s what they wanted to hear. Leave it to Logan to engage them further. “What are you, strippers?”

They didn’t even acknowledge the remark. Ignored it, actually, but I had to laugh.

“So you’re like those guys from
Chicago Fire
?” the taller girl asked, eyeing me and then Logan before looking directly at Axe.

“Those shows are bullshit,” Axe all but grumbled. “All the firefighters are hot. So not true.”

“Uh, speak for yourself,” Logan said, running his hand down the front of his chest proactively. “I’m fucking amazing.”

“You guys are pretty hot.” Her gaze drifted back to me, and she winked.

Axe cleared his throat, leaning forward. “Don’t look at Jace. He’s got commitment phobia and two kids” —he jabbed Logan in the chest — “and this one is married.” Moving from his seat next to me, he wrapped his arm around her, leading her up the steps toward the concessions. “But I’m free.”

That was the last we saw of Axe that night.

The game ended up being a wash. Seattle won by something like four touchdowns, so we ended up leaving early.

As we walked to the car, the voices and raucous sounds of the city surrounded us. The night sky was gray, overlaid by the orange haze the city lights created.

They say Qwest field is the loudest stadium in the NFL. I believe it. My ringing ears attested to that shit.

Just as I was planning on dropping Logan and Denny off and getting home to Aubrey, Denny came up with quite possibly the stupidest idea yet.

“How long do you think it would take the chief to call brass if we jumped off his roof into his pool?”

Logan spit out a mouthful of the beer he’d managed to sneak out with him from inside the stadium. “Now I know why we invited you.” He wiped his mouth and chin. “We’re testing this shit.”

Naturally we followed. Logan was the leader in most everything we did. I was sure if he jumped off a bridge, some would follow, me included. I trusted him that much.

Or maybe a roof.

Soon we found ourselves at Burke’s house on Lake Washington. Burke was the battalion chief for district four. We didn’t have much interaction with him, but he was fun to mess with. Old, worn beyond his fifty-seven years, he was paranoid like you wouldn’t believe. Some of the guys around the stations in the area have been known to play practical jokes on him, and he always thought it was the police commissioner. They had this ongoing battle with each other that we loved to fuel.

Logan had bet Denny immediately that he didn’t have the balls to jump from a roof. It was a bad idea, but then we decided that we all needed to.

Even worse idea.

Logan and I were on the roof ten minutes later, and planned to jump and preferably land in the pool.

Execution was simple. So we thought.

“How exactly is this supposed to work?” I scratched the side of my head, knowing this could potentially end badly, and wondering how we’d explain this to our own chief, my dad, should we get caught. Given he’d more than likely get a kick out of it, I still didn’t want to have to explain it

“Have you no sense of excitement?” Logan asked.

“Sorry. It’s been a few a years since I’ve contemplated suicide.”

Before I had too much time to contemplate it this time, Logan took a running jump off the roof as if he was some kind of trained diver. Fucker was good at everything.

My jump landed me dangerously close to the edge, where I knocked my knee on the diving board. Also turned out the pool wasn’t heated and cold as fuck.

Denny wasn’t so lucky, either, on his jump. He made the same mistake I did, only he nailed his chin and bit through his fucking lip. Bled like a son of a bitch.

He started screaming immediately, at which noise every light in the chief’s house turned on.

Denny didn’t like the sight of blood. Never had.

“Time to go, assholes.”

We were all bailing out when the chief opened the door to his home, dressed in a bathrobe and knee-high black socks.

“Who’s out there?”

We didn’t stick around.

“Shit, my wallet fell out,” Denny said, wiping blood from his mouth.

“Nice going, carney.” Logan shoved him.

“Fuck you.” Denny was getting pissed, probably because once the chief found the wallet floating in his pool, he’d have Denny’s ass arrested for trespassing.

“They have your wallet,” I pointed out, shaking out my wet hoodie. “You might want to be nicer to those of us who can lie about your whereabouts.”

Denny spun around, or stumbled, intending to say something, and then lost his train of thought. He did take a good lick on the diving board.

We gave up on our criminal activities for the night, and I took the boys home.

By the time we made it to Logan’s condo, Denny was complaining, trying to talk me into getting his wallet for him, and Logan was hanging out the window, puking.

I made Denny stay with him since I didn’t feel like driving twenty minutes to the other side of the city where he lived, and went home.

When I walked in the door, Aubrey and the kids were already in bed, and the house quiet aside from the hum of the furnace. I stripped out of my wet clothes and got in the shower to warm up.

As the spray began to bring my body temperature back up, I thought about the mornings Aubrey and I used to spend in this very shower.

Time was going by so fast these days, it was hard to remember what that was like, but I did remember it.

In ways I couldn’t exactly explain, there were parts of this life I had with her that kept me with her, fighting for what we had, because she did things to me in ways I couldn’t explain.

When the water turned cold, I got out and dried off. That was when I caught my reflection in the mirror. My eyes were tired, with dark circles under them, hiding pain and regret. The same pain and regret held in a pair on the other side of the wall.

Where that was taking us, I had no idea.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

“I
T TOOK
you forever to get here! Save my house.”

“Yeah, well” — I smiled sarcastically at the apartment resident standing outside his burning multi-million-dollar home, holding what looked to be a trophy — “it takes time to get here.”

I bet this fucker didn’t know, or care, that we’d just come from a job where a four-year-old boy was killed in the back seat of his parents’ SUV when his dad ran a red light.

But now here we were twenty minutes later, trying to save this guy’s house with no one in it just because he had possessions inside he said were valuable.

Those parents will never be the same. Every day they are going to wonder what they could have done differently to get their son back. And that dad who ran the red light, not a day will go by that he won’t wish it was him instead of his son. That I can be sure of.

I saw the look in his eyes as his son was covered with a tarp.

There were days when I thought I couldn’t handle it, and then there were the days when I could. As with all of us, each call affects us differently. That one got to me.