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I smiled at my friend as he turned on the lights and siren and exited the highway. One thing was certain: I didn’t have to worry about my friends. We wouldn’t let a woman drive a wedge between us.
Even if that woman was Alyssa fucking Ford.
32
Jack
Alyssa fucking Ford.
She had such a way of getting her hooks into someone. I knew that better than anyone. The fact that it was my two best friends? Well, that made me want to laugh. I had warned them, after all. Being proven right was always a sweet feeling, even in strange circumstances like this.
The more I mused about their predicament, the more I thought about my own feelings for Alyssa. Her return to town had reignited a lot of the confusion I felt as a teenager. I’d spent the past two weeks looking inward, analyzing those feelings. It was easy since I was in such a good place compared to high school.
The fight we’d had in front of her store had really cleared the air. It was all out on the table: she was still mad about me rejecting her that day at the pool party, and I was angry that all she wanted was sex. Now that my temper had cooled, I understood why she was upset. If I had just talked to her that day, rather than retracting in on myself, maybe we could have worked it out.
It doesn’t matter, I told myself. I missed my chance.
It felt like a great loss. An Oscar-worthy movie that was canned before hitting theaters. Alyssa and I, despite our friction, had so much potential. I would always wonder about what might have happened if we’d been a little more mature then, and didn’t have any baggage from our abusive parents.
I guess I’ll never know.
All thoughts about Alyssa disappeared as we rounded a corner and downtown Clearwater came into view. A massive plume of black smoke was climbing into the air, a beacon that would have led us toward the call even if we didn’t have the address. Liam cursed next to me, and Mateo muttered a prayer under his breath. I just gritted my teeth and prepared myself for a rough evening.
It was a five-story apartment building, and smoke was billowing out of windows on the fourth floor. Dozens of civilians stood around on the street, staring and pointing up at the blaze as we pulled up. We were the first engine to arrive; the dispatcher on the radio let us know that three others were en route.
“Let’s get to it,” I said as I slammed the engine to a stop. “By the book, everyone goes home safe.”
“Yes sir,” Liam replied. Mateo only nodded as he climbed out the back.
We rushed to work, unrolling the hose and connecting it to the nearby hydrant. Thankfully, nobody had illegally parked in front of it, so our way was clear. While I attached the hose, a second engine arrived on the scene. It was engine number six from our station. Ellen had her boots on the ground in a flash, sprinting to connect the hose to the same hydrant as ours.
She’s good, I noted. One of the best recruits we’ve had in a while. She’ll go far.
A few residents were still stumbling out of the apartment building entrance, holding towels and T-shirts to their mouths. “The stairwell is blocked!” one of them said, pointing back the way he came. “There were others behind us, but the fire blocked the way!”
“Ladder!” shouted the engineer from the other fire engine.
“On it!” I yelled, climbing the side of our engine to the control panel that worked the ladder. I rotated it sideways, tilting it upward and extending it toward the fifth floor. I picked a window about fifty feet away from the fire; even though I would be entering a floor above, I didn’t know how quickly the fire would spread. Repositioning the ladder would waste precious time.
By the time the ladder was extended to the window, Liam and Mateo had one hose trained on the building, while Ellen and another recruit began spewing water from a second hose. The flames in the windows receded, then flared up twice as strong.
“Everyone goes home safe!” Liam said on the radio.
I shouldered my oxygen tank and clipped the straps across the front of my chest. “You know it.”
The best part about training and experience was that it took over in times like these. I didn’t have time to be afraid, or to worry about all the things that could go wrong, because my body was going solely on muscle memory. Climb the ladder, open the window, get inside and find occupants that were trapped. That was my checklist for the next ten minutes. Dangerous tasks seemed easy when they were broken down into simple steps.
Sound faded as I put on my respirator. All I heard was the sound of my own breathing, and the metallic rattling of the ladder as I climbed. Water pelted me as I neared the window, coating my suit. A courtesy from the firefighters working the hoses. The dampness on my suit wouldn’t last long in a raging inferno, but it might buy me a few extra moments. Sometimes, those moments made all the difference.
I flipped on my radio. Voices immediately filled my helmet.
“Engine two on site.”
“Get set-up on the cross-street. Hit the flames from that angle.” I recognized that as our Lieutenant’s voice.
“Hard copy.”
“Engine twelve team proceeding into the building from the first floor.”
