The Drowning Man (12 page)

“How's the jaw?”

Ted rubbed the side of his face. “Hurts.”

“I need you to keep an eye on Trent,” the chief said. “I need you to make sure he's all here.” He looked at Ted and tapped the side of his right temple.

Ted had been prepared to have his ass handed to him for the fight, not be asked to keep tabs on one of their own. “What, exactly, do you mean?” he asked.

“Three strikes and I’m taking him off rotation. Today was one.”

Ted blinked in surprise.

“I don’t care how good he is. No cowboys. I won’t let him risk our guys’ lives because he has a death wish. I should have insisted he go through a psych consult when he first came back.”

“He’ll be fine. He’ll settle down,” Ted said, ignoring the throbbing in his jaw and the guilt over not telling the chief about the day's earlier incident.

“I hope so. For his sake and this house's.”

Trent walked through his front door and eased his aching body down onto the couch. He flexed his hand and shook it out. He was damned lucky it wasn't broken. Ted's jaw was like a block of granite.

He was doing a fine job of screwing up what was left of his life. Fighting with one of the guys and risking a job ending injury as well as a suspension. Real fucking smart.

The chief's words echoed in his head.
Did
he have a death wish? He knew he was on the edge of losing control, that much was all too clear. If he didn’t get a grip soon, he wouldn't be of any use to anyone.

He laced up his running shoes and didn't get home until well after dark.

Trent was so wiped out when he got home he skipped dinner and went straight to bed. Sleep came fast, a deep crushing darkness.

He didn’t have enough speed built up and he plunged down between the two buildings, landing in a fast moving river that sucked him down into blackness and whirled him around and around as he was pulled farther down into its depths. Dizzy, unable to breathe, chest so tight it hurt.

He couldn’t see a damned thing. But he could hear Caroline’s voice in his ear. “What does death look like Trent? You can’t come back until you find Eddie.”

But he couldn’t see. How was he supposed to find Eddie? Light-headed now, he frantically reached out with his hands. The water was thick. He tried to scream but the water flowed into his mouth and down his throat, choking him. He tried to fight it, tried to find his friend but he was going to die in the crushing blackness.

Caroline’s voice was gone. He was alone. In hell.

He was falling again. He landed hard and gasped in a breath. He forced his eyes open. Still blackness. And yet, there were shadows, shades of grey that were somehow familiar. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, reached out his hands. He was on the floor. In his bedroom. Nightmare. He’d fallen off the bed. Shaking and too weak to move, his fingers found the sheet and pulled it down off the bed and around his bare shoulders.

The old three-story house was on the edge of their firehouse's jurisdiction, barely within city limits. Burt was on the radio giving the assessment to dispatch as they pulled up to the curb. “We’ve got medium to heavy smoke, visible flames first and second story on both B and C sides.”

Trent, Ted, Scott, and the probie headed for the front door of the burning house while the engine company directed the streams of water. It was cold for early November, damn cold, the frozen mist from the hoses stuck to them as Ted kicked in the door.

The fire raged in the kitchen at the back of the house. Hot orange flames shot straight up the wall behind the stove, licking along the ceiling and moving outward toward the other walls. A young woman lay crumpled in the corner, an overturned chair next to her.

“Got her,” Scott said, easily scooping her up in his arms and heading for the open front door.

The piercing sound of a child crying from somewhere above rose over the sounds of the blazing fire.

Trent nodded towards the stairway in the hall, which was already partly engulfed in flames.

Beams and debris fell as they started up the stairs through the thickening smoke.

“Structural collapse starting,” Ted shouted into the radio, one had raised over his head. “We’re going up.”

They hit the second floor landing. The crying continued, still above them.

“Shit,” the probie said, his foot nearly going through a hole in the step. He paused as Trent continued on up what remained of the stairs.

“Fall back,” Ted told him. “We’ve got this.”

The probie shook his head and followed them up. Ted glared at him. No time to argue. They'd deal with not following orders later.

The third floor was a scene straight out of hell. Thick black smoke, red-hot flames, the eerie creaking and groaning of the old wood home dying. The entire floor was comprised of a single long narrow room, lined with toys and stuffed animals, a child’s crib at the far end. No windows.

They slowly picked their way across the burning floor towards the screaming boy. The floor shook underneath them, the wood cracking as a section in front of them gave way. The crib shifted and slid towards the gaping hole, the kid hanging on to the rail, making no sound now, just a shocked expression and wide eyes as his world tilted.

Trent scrambled closer, making his way around the hole. He grabbed the crib with one hand, the child’s tiny hand with the other. The floor creaked and groaned as it continued to give way. He let go of the crib and it tumbled through the widening hole. The child screamed and thrashed as his world fell away. Trent struggled to get a better grip. Ted threw himself across the floor and grabbed Trent’s ankles to keep them from following the crib into the inferno.

Flames leaped higher. Trent ignored the pain in his hand as he reached through the flames for the kid’s other hand. His glove was coming off as the kid instinctively tried to grab onto whatever he could reach. Trent could smell his own skin burning and clamped his teeth together. Sweat and smoke blurred his vision. He would not let go. His arm felt like it was ripping out of the socket as he pulled with everything he had. Then he was lying flat on his back and the kid was safely in Ted’s arms. Someone helped him to his feet.

He finished the job in a blur of pain and adrenaline. Despite the arrival of backup, the house was entirely destroyed. They packed up their gear, as smoke continued to drift from the black shell that had once been a home. The next thing Trent knew, he was in the truck and on the way back to the station.

As soon as they were inside, the guys piled out of the truck, one by one, dirty and exhausted.

“You need to get that looked at,” Burt said, nodding at his hand and taking Trent's oxygen pack from him on the apparatus floor.

“I’m okay.” The burning pain in has hand competed with the dull throbbing ache in his shoulder as Trent hung up his coat. It was all he could do not to cry out in agony. Yeah, he was okay all right, he’d just spent the entire ride to the station trying not to throw up.

“Bullshit,” Burt said. “You should have gone straight to the hospital. Now get your ass in the goddamned van. I’m driving you there myself.”

“Chief.”

Burt narrowed his eyes.

Trent followed him to the van. He kept his mouth clamped shut the entire way there.

After Burt parked the van, Trent got out and stalked towards the front entrance, not giving a damn if the chief was behind him or not.

He signed himself in and let the nurse lead him to the designated room. He did
not
want to be in the hospital again. Walking down the white hall brought a sick sense of déjà vu. It took every bit of courage he possessed to keep walking. The throbbing pain in his hand was the only thing that kept him from turning around and running out the front door. That and the chief waiting outside the examination room.

He sat down on the bed, waiting, his knee bouncing up and down. Christ. There wasn’t enough air in the room. He looked down at his hand. It wasn’t that bad. A little ice and it would be fine. He hopped down onto his feet.

“I heard you were here,” Doctor Hender said, pulling back the flimsy curtain.

Trent forced a grin. “Not for long, I hope.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Trent sat back down and held out his hand.

Doctor Hender proceeded with the examination.

“Not too bad. Second degree. You’ll have some minor scarring but no loss of function.”

Trent nodded as the antibiotic cream and bandages were applied to his hand.

Doctor Hender studied him for a brief minute. Trent knew that despite the soot-covered face and bandaged hand, he looked nothing like the patient the doctor had treated all those months ago in the ER.

The doctor continued the exam. “Just a minor strain to your shoulder.”

Trent nodded.

“You need anything else?” Doctor Hender asked, taking a step back.

“I'm good.”

“Okay. Well, take care of yourself.”

“Will do,” Trent said, looking at the wall behind the doctor.

He sat for another minute then followed the doctor out. Burt was leaning against the wall in the hallway.

“Is the kid here?” Trent asked.

“Room 146. Smoke inhalation, minor burns. The mom’s in the room with him,” Burt said, pushing off the wall and leading the way to the elevator.

Every cell in Trent's body was screaming at him to get the hell out of there, but he knew Burt wouldn't let him off the hook that easily, so he kept his mouth shut again and followed his boss.

“The babysitter didn’t make it,” Burt said, when the elevator doors shut in front of them.

Trent nodded once and they didn't speak again as they descended then made their way down another long white hallway.

Burt stepped aside and Trent knocked once then pushed the door marked room 146 open. A curvy brown-haired woman who looked about seventeen, still in her crisp white waitress uniform, was bent over the bed, her hand stroking the boy’s forehead.

Trent cleared his throat and she looked up at them, her eyes darting from Trent to Burt. “You’re the firemen,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Trent said.

She studied Trent’s bandaged hand, then his face. “You're the Drowning Man,” she said with awe in her eyes.

Trent forced a smile. “My name's Trent.”

The young woman took his good hand in hers. “God saved you so you could save others.”

Trent squeezed her hand and took an awkward half-step back. “How’s your son?”

The woman threw her arms around him, sobbing. “He’s alive. You saved him. I get to watch him grow up because of you.
Thank
you.”

Finally, she stepped back, wiped her eyes, sat on the edge of her son’s bed, and took a deep breath. “Sorry. I’m Amy Tran.” She turned to the boy, a look of pure love on her face. “And this is Peter.”

“I’m very glad to meet you,” Trent said. “This is my boss, Chief Burt Culmer,” he said with a nod to Burt.

Amy smiled. Peter moaned softly and she turned her attention back to her son.

Burt and Trent exchanged a look, then quietly walked out the door.

Trent looked down at his tear-stained shirt, then at Burt, as they neared the exit. “Well, that was … interesting.”

“The price of being a hero,” Burt said.

Trent stopped and turned towards his boss. “I never asked to be a hero.”

“Well, get used to it. That’s exactly what you are whether you like it or not. It’s what we do. On a good day, we save lives. Your situation has made you special. What you do with it is up to you.”

Trent grunted and headed for the parking lot.

Maybe it was knowing he’d done something good that day, maybe it was the pain medicine, maybe it was sheer exhaustion. Whatever the reason, Trent was asleep minutes after getting back to his apartment and didn’t wake until his alarm went off the next morning.

Lora sat her cup of coffee down on her desk and picked up the folded newspaper article.

“You know, if it weren't for us, he wouldn't be around to save anybody,” Woods said, leaning his hip against her desk.

Lora laughed. “So actually,
we're
the ones who saved the day.”

“Exactly.”

She rolled her eyes. Then she smiled. In a job often filled with tragedy and disappointment it was nice seeing good things that happened because of people like her and Woods. It was what she lived for.

She glanced at the article again. She was glad to see Trent back to work. Getting back to the normal routine things like work were the best way to get past a traumatic event. God knows her job had given her something to live for when she'd needed it.

She sighed. Trent hadn't called her after their dinner together. Of course, she really hadn't expected him to. He had enough to deal with without adding any additional complications. And she had no room in her life for romance.

Still, there had been
something
between them.

Ten miles away, Simon Hewett was reading the same newspaper article.

He felt a surge of pride. Good for Barlow, he thought. Of course, there was a good chance that what Trent Barlow had gone through at his and Caroline's hands had made him a stronger person, more capable of saving lives than he would have been had he not been abducted and spent all those weeks at Caroline's house. In that sense, Trent Barlow should be grateful to him and his precious but long lost Caroline.

“Fucking reporter’s outside,” Ted grumbled on his way through the door at the start of their shift two days later.

“Sorry,” Trent said. “He followed me here.”

“I don’t understand why in the hell you’re still news.”

“That makes two of us.”

Ted finally cracked a smile. “Fuck ‘em.”

“Exactly.”

“How about that probie, huh?” Ted said, clapping Trent on the back as he went into the kitchen and headed straight for the coffee pot. “Keeping the flames battled back so I could pull your ass out of there.”

Trent didn’t even remember the probie coming up to the top floor. He’d been so focused on the objective, on the kid, that nothing else had even registered. Not good firefighter technique. He should have been aware of everything going on in that room. He’d make sure it never happened again.