Things You Save in a Fire(80)

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THEN, DURING THE last shift before Owen would explain everything to his dad and officially resign, we got a call for a structure fire.

This was not a little garage fire on the edge of town. This was a grocery store, right in the middle, and a fire that had started in the early hours of the morning and built momentum until sunrise, when the manager witnessed a black column of smoke rising from the roof as he pulled in to work.

When we arrived, a crowd already lined the road. We were the first crew on scene.

This was a big fire.

The sight of a blazing structure fire is really mesmerizing. There are always crowds, and the crowds are stupider than you might think. Sometimes they harass the firefighters, sometimes they try to help, sometimes they try to get close up to take selfies.

We took a few minutes to assess the situation.

We were going to need backup. Lots of it.

The captain called in a second alarm. The fire chief was already en route, but he was headed in from Central, farther away. We got word from dispatch that Station Three was also on the way. Gloucester, too.

The unventilated building had spent the morning smoldering, filling with dark smoke. It was a 1960s-style box store with one entrance of glass doors at the front, and probably a door and a loading bay at the back. Windows don’t break until temperatures get to around five hundred degrees, and the row of windows across the front of the store was still intact.

It was a pretty simple layout, but what made the scene complicated was that road access to the front and the back of the store was interrupted by a solid concrete block wall. The front opened onto a highway, but you could only get to the back of the store by going around the block to a backstreet.

From the looks of the smoke, the fire was concentrated toward the back.

The captain grabbed three guys—Tiny, Case, and Six-Pack—to drive around back, closer to the source. He ordered me, DeStasio, and Owen to stay in front with the ambulance, manage the crowd, and direct the chief and all backup crews around back when they arrived. “This is a defensive fire,” the captain said as they loaded up, pointing at us. “No interior operations.”

Meaning, Don’t go inside.

No argument from me. That building was a deathtrap.

We waited out front, the three of us, but kept busy. The rookie kept an eye on the crowd, I manned the radio, and DeStasio went to inspect the building.

I don’t remember now how we divvied up those jobs. I don’t remember any discussion. Though later, I would find myself wishing that DeStasio had taken any other job at all.

Because as DeStasio inspected the entryway and the windows, he saw something that would change all our lives.

He saw a little boy inside the building.

Bystanders falsely see “someone in the building” all the time.

The smoke, the heat, the way it bends the air—it can make you see things. You can think you see a face at the window, but it’s only smoke. You can think you hear someone screaming Help! but it’s only a whistle of steam. Panic can crimp your mind. I’ve seen it happen over and over and heard plenty of stories. When a civilian says there’s someone in the building, you say thanks and keep on doing what you’re doing.

But when a firefighter says it, that’s a whole different thing.

DeStasio showed back up out of breath. Like he’d been running. And firefighters never run. “You saw him, right?” DeStasio said. “You saw him?”

“Saw who?”

“Inside the building. Just inside the window. A boy.”

I studied the windows. I couldn’t see anything. “I don’t see anyone,” I said.

He looked over to Owen. “You saw him, right, rookie?”

Owen shook his head.

But DeStasio was already pulling on his bunker coat. “Let’s get moving.”

I started to get a bad feeling. “You want to go in?”

“There’s a child in there,” DeStasio said, like, Duh.

“We don’t have the right equipment,” I said, shaking my head. “We have to wait for backup.”

Something flashed over DeStasio’s face then—some kind of rage that I had never seen before. If I had to guess, I would say maybe being told he “had” to do something by a nonranking member of his crew—and a female, at that—didn’t sit too well with him. It’s also possible that he sensed I was doubting him about the child. I’d checked those windows, and I hadn’t seen anything—and why would a kid be inside a grocery store at this hour of the morning? It didn’t add up.

“What we have to do,” DeStasio said, in a voice tight with outrage, “is get in there. Right now!”

“We’ve got orders to stay out,” I said. “Backup will be here in ten minutes.”

“No,” DeStasio said. “We don’t have time to wait.”

Here was part of the problem: DeStasio, as he was constantly reminding me, had a lot more years in the department than I did. He was senior to me in every way—except one. I was a fully trained paramedic, and he was only an EMT.

Technically, even though he was the senior crew member, that made me the ranking medic on the scene.

Which might also account for some of that rage.

DeStasio turned toward Owen. “Get your mask on. We’re going in.”