Page 16 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"Debbie. What is that."

"And I'm starting a collection."

Every head at that nurses' station turns to me at once.

I lean in and read the tape. Debbie's fat happy handwriting, two words.

NELLIE'S BID.

That jar has been sitting in her purse. With money in it. Since before I knew there was an auction.

Debbie smiles at me the way she smiles at patients right before something's going to hurt.

"Saturday," she says. "Wear something you can lose your mind in."

"Hell no."

Debbie holds my eyes, folds a twenty, and drops it in the jar.

Chapter five

Six Seconds

OWEN

The tones drop at 9:42 on a bright sunny morning, and my body is moving before my brain signs off on it.

Kitchen fire. Maple Street. Single story, occupant out, neighbor called it in.

Routine. The kind of call a probie writes home about and everybody else forgets by lunch.

Tater takes the officer seat. I'm behind him with Cooper, one of the green kids, who's checking his gloves for the fourth time like they might've changed size since the last check.

"Grease fire, probably," Tater says over his shoulder. "Mrs. Delgado. She fries chicken with the phone in one hand. It was gonna happen eventually."

The engine takes the corner onto Maple and I see it. Gray smoke pushing lazy out a side window. Nothing behind it. No black, no pressure, no rollover conditions. A fire you could put out with a bucket and a bad attitude.

We pull up. Mrs. Delgado is on the lawn in a housecoat, madder at the chicken than scared of the fire. Tater's already talking to her, easy, like they're at church.

I pull the line. Cooper backs me. We stack up at the front door and I put my hand flat on it. Cool. I open it.

And the smoke alarm is screaming.

That's all it is. A nine-dollar smoke alarm from the hardware store, shrieking from the hallway ceiling the way they do.

My legs stop.

Not slow down. Stop. Like somebody pulled a breaker in my spine.

Because I've stood in a hundred doorways since Chicago and mostly the sound is just a sound. But some days it isn't.

Some days it drops me right back onto the third floor that was mine, the hallway carpet we picked out together, the alarm going and going under all that roar — one stupid loyal machine still doing its job for two people who couldn't hear it anymore.

Today it isn't just a sound.

The Maple Street hallway is right there. Ten feet of linoleum and a smoking stove at the end of it.

I can't make my boots take it.