Page 109 of How to Fan the Flames

I am there.

Dan is still at the pump and the rest of the crew is battling the flames.

The rain comes down hard enough to flatten sound and somehow, I still hear every awful thing. His wife crying. The radio. Kev’s breathing. My own voice giving instructions. The ambulance arriving at last, tyres over gravel, doors opening, paramedics joining us with that brisk, terrible competence of people who know exactly how bad a moment can be and step into it anyway.

We do everything we can.

All of us.

Every second.

There is no clean line between hope and knowing. Not at first. There is only work. There is what we do because the alternative is doing nothing, and doing nothing is unbearable.

So we work.

In the rain.

In the mud.

In the orange wash of the fire we are still controlling behind us.

I do not look at AJ.

I cannot afford to know what his face is doing.

Time stretches.

Then it ends.

Not with drama.

Not with music.

Not with a line anyone would put in an article.

Just a paramedic’s voice, quiet and final beneath the rain.

And Arthur is gone.

14

Chapter 13

AJ

By the time weget back to the station, the rain has found every possible way into me.

Down the back of my neck.

Under the collar of the high-vis.

Into my shoes.

Possibly into my soul, though that may be the night rather than the weather.

No one says much when we pull in.

That is the first thing I notice.