Page 37 of Until We Come Home

“Water on the fire first, Mateo,” she says, her voice hard. “That’s how he stays alive. We knock it down, then we move.”

She’s right by the book. But the left window hasn’t darkened yet, and there’s nothing between Frank and that burning hallway except a hollow interior door. A cheap door buys thirty seconds at best once that hall lights up, and I’m not leaving him behind it alone.

“He’s on the left, Bec,” I say, dropping the hose and unhooking the ground ladder off the rig. “Left side hasn’t gone up. I take the ladder, get through the glass, shut his door, and isolate the space.”

“Mateo, don't.”

“He’s trapped.” I shoulder the beam and head for the grass. “Ninety seconds. In and out.”

“That’s an order! That floor is going to flash, Mateo!”

Her voice fades behind me as I cross the lawn. I throw the extension ladder up against the siding right beneath the left window frame. Behind me, the deck gun roars to life, sending a massive stream of water straight through the right window, shattering the remaining glass and pushing a thick cloud of steam out into the afternoon air. Rebecca gets on the radio.

“Command to all units, we have a confirmed occupant trapped, second floor, front left. Engine 7 making an emergency VEIS entry off the ladder. Engine 4, step up your arrival. Callum, foot that ladder and stay outside.”

She’s covering my ass, putting it over the radio as her direct call instead of mine. I pull my facepiece on, go on air, and head up the rungs.

The sash is locked tight, so I smash the glass out with my halligan bar, clear the frame, and scramble in headfirst with my hands hitting the floor.

It’s a bedroom, dim and hazy, smoke hanging thick in the air, but I can make out a bed, a dresser, and a walker tipped over by the closet with a tennis ball on one leg. The door to the hallway is cracked open with heavy smoke pouring through the gap, and the radiant heat hits me straight through my turnout gear. I move across the floor low and shove it shut.

“Fire department!” I shout. “Frank! Call out!”

Nothing comes back except the roar of the fire on the other side of the wood. I sweep along the baseboard with my hand out in front of me, and then my fingers catch a shape on the floor between the bed and the wall—an older guy in a flannel shirt, on his side, coughing, his eyes open wide. He must have collapsed trying to reach the door on his own.

“I’ve got you, Frank,” I tell him, keeping my voice steady. “I’ve got you. We’re heading out the window.”

“I can’t,” he rasps, coughing heavily.

“You can.” I get my arms under his shoulders and start dragging him toward the window across the room. He tries to help with his legs and only gets tangled, so I tell him to let me take his weight, and he goes slack, the window getting closer by the second. Close enough that I actually think we’re going to make it out clean.

Then the hallway gives way.

I hear the sound before I see it, a heavy, hollow whump through the drywall, and the line of light under the door turns bright orange, then blinding white. Thick, pressurized black smoke starts churning in around the casing, and the paint on the bedroom side begins to blister and bubble.

That’s the flashover Rebecca called from the lawn. The hallway’s gone, and the only thing keeping it out of this room is a hollow door that’s already cooking, six feet from where I’m kneeling. If it gives before I’m out this window, we don’t come out at all. I know I should be terrified. Instead, everything inside my head goes sharp and quiet, the way it always does when things go sideways.

“Frank, we’re going right now.” I get his back against the wall beneath the sill, drive my shoulder under his chest, and push up with my legs, my regulator roaring with every breath. Callum’s helmet appears over the window frame right when I need him most.

“Pass him over!” Callum yells. “Move, Mateo, this whole floor’s about to blow!”

Between the two of us, we get Frank’s upper body through the opening and onto Callum’s shoulder. Callum backs down the rungs one at a time with Frank’s arms hanging over his coat, and I’m right behind them with a tight grip on Frank’s belt, the aluminum ladder bowing under the weight of all three of us.

Behind me, the bedroom door buckles with a loud crack, and fire rolls in through the doorway and across the ceiling of the room I was kneeling in ten seconds ago. Then my boots hit the grass, James is right there, and Engine 4 pulls up to the curb with their crew already hopping off the tailboard.

The medics take Frank right there on the lawn, slipping an oxygen mask over his face and wrapping him in a blanket, his daughter at his side sobbing, the dog still in her arms. The ladder truck is setting up in the street, Engine 4’s crew is pulling a secondary line, the deck gun is still pounding water into the right side of the structure, and Rebecca’s on the radio with the battalion chief, who’s pulling up to take command.

I pull my facepiece off for a second. The air is hot and thick with smoke, and I give myself one moment, just one, with my eyes closed and the sound of Frank coughing on the grass beside me, before I put the mask back on and get back to work.

“Fuck, are you good?” Callum asks, panting a bit, bent over with his hands resting on his knees.

“Yeah, I’m good,” I get out. “You?”

“Yeah,” Callum huffs. “But Jesus Christ, that was way too fucking close, man. I haven’t seen a flashover like that in forever. Hell of a save, but I thought you were toast for a second there.”

“You and me both,” I tell him.

We advance inside alongside Engine 4 once the deck gun knocks the main body of fire down and Rebecca gives the order, and after that it turns into a standard job. The right side of the upper floor is gutted along with the corridor, and we knock down the rest of the spot fires from the top of the stairs while steam rolls back over our helmets.