Things You Save in a Fire(13)

“I can’t,” I said. Anything else, but not that.

I held still.

She leaned back. Then she let out the long sigh of a woman who’d seen, and survived, far too much to mess around. She peered at me over her reading glasses, like, Fine. “You’re sure that’s what you want to do?”

I nodded.

She looked back down at her file and retreated into formalities. “Then as of this moment, you are terminated for gross insubordination and conduct unbecoming.”

Terminated.

Oh my God. Terminated.

A fog of panic rose up through my body. Who was I if I wasn’t a firefighter? What did I do if I didn’t do this? This was the life I’d worked for, trained for, dreamed about. This was the only thing I wanted. This was my reason for going to the gym, for eating broccoli, for living. This was my whole identity.

Terminated.

But even facing that, I still wasn’t apologizing.

There was no other choice I could make, and here was my consequence.

Then I suddenly remembered one other possibility—and no matter how out-of-the-question awful it had seemed yesterday, today it was suddenly looking better.

“What if there’s another option?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“What if I transferred? To another department?”

She frowned.

“My mother is ill,” I said. “She’s been asking me to move to Massachusetts and help her out as a caregiver. Maybe I could move away and work at a different fire station. Make myself disappear.”

Maybe this could work. Anything was better than terminated. Plus, something else struck me: This wouldn’t be the last time I ran into Heath Thompson. The man was everywhere in this town these days.

Maybe it was time, after all, to get the hell out of here.

The captain frowned. “If this comes out, if it leaks to the press or he presses charges, you’ll be terminated anyway.”

“He won’t press charges.”

She stared at me while she ran through my remaining options in her head. I could see her weighing everything. She liked me, that much I knew. I wasn’t just a good firefighter, I was great. She didn’t want to see me terminated either. She started nodding, like this could work. Finally, she said, “I didn’t even know you had a mother.”

“Sometimes I forget, myself.”

“Okay. We’ll try your plan B. The promotion’s out, though. You’ll have to start all over. Stay there a few years at least. Work your way back up.”

Starting over, I could handle. Terminated? Not so much. I closed my eyes. “Thank you.”

The captain opened my file back up to make some notes. “Where does she live? I know of some openings in Boston.”

“She lives in Rockport—about an hour north, on Cape Ann.”

“Maybe there’s something closer, then. I’ll ask around.”

She was going to ask around.

I wasn’t terminated.

For a second, I felt relief—then, right on its heels, a thickness in my throat that I realized, with horror, was the feeling you get before your eyes fill up with tears. I coughed to clear it, and then coughed again. I had not cried in years, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to start now. But these guys—this shift at this station—they were my family. The idea that I had to leave them all behind created a kind of weather system inside my rib cage.

A wet one.

Not good. I wasn’t really a fan of being overcome by emotion. In fact, I’d structured my life around lack of emotion. I’d built it around routine, and safety, and order. Feelings were a lot of trouble. I avoided them as much as possible.

I swallowed. I held very still. I ordered myself to be tough. I wanted to bolt for the door, but I was afraid that if I moved, I might lose it.

Was I seriously about to cry—in front of the captain—on top of everything else?

It wasn’t looking good.

Suddenly, all deus ex machina, the tones went off for a jackknifed eighteen-wheeler on Highway 71.

Work always saved me. I stood up, felt all those unruly emotions drain away, and shifted into all-business work mode.

“Hanwell?” the captain said, as I reached the door.

I turned back to her, my hand on the knob.

She looked at me over the top of her reading glasses. “You would’ve made a goddamned great lieutenant.”





Five


WITHIN A WEEK, the captain was able to find me a position in a small city called Lillian, about twenty minutes from my mom’s place in Rockport. A shift at Station Two had two positions open because a pair of brothers who’d worked together thirty years were retiring together—moving south to Florida to fish and drink beer for the rest of their lives. They’d found a rookie for one of the spots, but they wanted somebody with experience for the other.

Captain Harris called me in after a conference call with the battalion chief and the station captain, a guy named Murphy.

“I let them know that you’re a big deal,” Captain Harris said. “I talked you up for a long time. I told them about your test scores, and how much we don’t want to lose you. I gave them some of your best saves: the double cardiac arrest at that rib joint; the infant you pulled from that car fire when no one else heard the cries; what you did to those frat boys who set that swimming pool on fire. I told them about your being the youngest person ever to receive our valor award—though I conveniently left out how you clobbered the hell out of the presenter on the stage.”