“He read every patch.”
“I know.” Zoe squeezes my hand. “He does that. He reads things. He doesn’t talk about it. He just reads and decides.”
“What did he decide?”
“He paid for brunch.” Zoe turns to me. “My dad doesn’t pay for brunch for people he doesn’t respect. That’s his love language.”
I look at her. Zoe Kimball. Twenty-two years old. Standing on a sidewalk in a yellow sundress holding my hand. Her parents just left and her father nodded at my patches and her mother hugged me and I’m standing in the sunlight with someone who brought me into her family and I didn’t run.
“I have to get to work,” I say. But I've still got hours. I just need...I don't know exactly. But I need to recalibrate. I need some quiet for a bit.
“I know.” She kisses me. Quick, warm, on the mouth, in public, on the sidewalk where anyone could see. “I’ll come by later.” She doesn't push. She doesn't call me out on wanting to hide for a bit. She just kisses me.
“You always come by later," I say, teasing her.
Her smile is warm and wanting. “That’s because later is where you are.”
She walks away, sundress swinging, sneakers on the sidewalk, phone already out, probably texting Keely. I watch her go. Then I turn and walk to Anthem even though it won't be open for a few hours and I put on the Pretenders and stand behind my counter and think about a man who listened to Gil Scott-Heron in college and nodded at my jacket and paid for my eggs.
Different era. Same fight.
I think maybe he’s right.
Chapter Twenty-One
Zoe
By week two I know the coffee schedule.
Hayes first, always. Black, no sugar, in the blue mug with the chipped handle that nobody else touches because it’s Hayes’s mug and touching it would be like sitting in Cap’s chair. She reads the newspaper while she drinks and checks her phone once, quick, and whatever she reads there makes her mouth do a thing I almost miss. Not a smile, not quite, but a loosening. Torres sees me notice and shakes her head slightly. Not yet. I’ll learn later. Torres second, cream and two sugars, in whatever mug is closest because Torres doesn’t care about mugs, she cares about speed. Rivera third, black with one sugar, standing at the counter because Rivera doesn’t sit for her first cup. Walsh fourth, black, reading something on her phone, pouring without looking, which I’ve tried and spilled twice.
Helena drinks tea while she's here, though she says she drinks coffee at home. This was a revelation. A firefighter who drinks tea. She keeps a box of Earl Grey in the cabinet and she makes it in a ceramic mug she brought from home and thecrew gives her grief about it and she takes the grief with the calm of someone who’s been taking it for a year and doesn’t care. Drew drinks coffee but not first thing. She waits until after the equipment check, comes back in with engine grease on her hands, and pours a cup that she holds with both hands and drinks slowly, standing at the window that faces the bay. She’s quiet in the mornings. Everyone is quiet in the mornings except Torres, who has been fully operational since birth it seems like. Priya is still out sick but I'm looking forward to working with her...eventually. She must have it really bad if the flu is still kicking her this hard.
I make the coffee now. Every morning. First one in, first pot brewed. Hayes told me it was a probie job and I took it seriously because I take everything Hayes tells me seriously and because the coffee is a thread that connects me to the rest of the day. I grind the beans and fill the pot and set out the mugs in order: Hayes’s blue one, then the rest in a row, and when the crew comes in they reach for their cups without thinking and nobody comments on it and that’s how I know I’m doing it right.
The tones drop at 10:14 AM.
I’ve been waiting for this. Not anxiously, not desperately, just with the awareness that it’s coming and when it comes I need to be ready. The electronic pulse cuts through the kitchen and my body does what it’s been trained to do. I’m on my feet before the second tone. Coffee mug on the counter. Moving.
The crew moves around me, with me, and I find my lane. Last seat on the engine, that’s my position. Cap gave the order on day one. I don’t enter any structure until she clears me. I ride, I assist, I follow Hayes.
“Medical assist, 4200 block of Calloway,” dispatch calls. “Elderly female, fall, possible hip fracture. Engine 11 responding.”
Medical. Not a fire. My first call is a medical, which is both a relief and a recalibration because I trained for fire and I’m going to an old woman who fell.
Torres drives. The engine pulls out of the bay and the siren starts and I’m sitting in the last seat and the sound is different from inside. It’s not the sound I grew up hearing from my bedroom. It’s bigger, more physical, vibrating through the frame of the truck and up through my boots and into my chest. The lights cycle red and white across the windshield and the world parts for us, cars pulling to the side, intersections clearing, and we move through the neighborhood I’ve walked my entire life at a speed that makes it new.
We pull up to a brownstone and there’s a woman on the front steps being held by a neighbor, an older man in suspenders who looks more scared than she does.
Hayes is first off. I follow. We carry the med kit and the backboard.
The woman is in her seventies. Gray hair, housecoat, one leg angled wrong. She’s conscious and alert and angry about it.
“I told Leonard to salt those steps,” she says as we approach. “Three times. Did Leonard salt the steps? Leonard did not salt the steps. I don't care that it's not snowing and it's warm. The steps should be salted.”
“Ma’am, I’m Hayes, Station 11. Can you tell me where it hurts?”
“My hip. The left one. The one I already had replaced two years ago because God has a sense of humor.”
