In This Moment

Don't own, not making any money.

Johnny Gage, firefighter and paramedic, never felt so physically and mentally dirty in his life. Soot covered him from head to toe. His turnout coat was a charcoal black and his helmet was a chalky gray. His face was streaked with sweat and black mucus from breathing fire and smoke.

He was sitting on the hood of his Squad 51 at the five alarm fire that had been called officially brought under control fifteen minutes ago. His partner, Roy DeSoto, was at the hospital with one of the few people who survived the blaze. They left in the last ambulance to leave the huge piles of rubble and glowing embers that used to be a large apartment building. Johnny had already stowed their medical gear in their compartments in the back of the truck, getting ready to leave this horrible scene when he just decided to sit down for a moment and let his exhaustion take over for a while.

His sixth air tank and his facemask lay in a heap near the Squad's front bumper. Right now, he didn't have the energy to take it back to the engine.

But he wasn't thinking about the air tank or his coat or his partner right now.

In this moment was death.

And he had seen most of it.

The building was not up to code. Mel Thatcher, owner of the downtrodden building, was warned by the men of Station 51 several times to fix his sprinklers, his shoddy door latches and update the electrical wiring. But he chose to ignore the warnings and when the fire broke in the overused laundry room from faulty wiring, the doors wouldn't open, trapping the people in the basement to die of heat and smoke inhalation before the fire consumed their bodies. The sprinklers never came on. No alarm was raised.

Of course, Mel Thatcher did not live in this building. He had a plush house on Peach Street. He didn't even come down to the burning site when he was called and told his building was burning to the ground and that people were dying. He didn't even see the carnage that his neglect caused.

So, with no warning for the others that inhabited the building, the fire had a field day with the old structure and the people who called it home. The old elevator shafts acted as chimneys and threw the fuel of oxygen on the fire. Dry wood paneling was kindling for the beast. Cheap plastic furniture and flammable polyester curtains put out toxic fumes as the fire consumed them as well.

The dingy apartments that not so long ago dotted the interior held close to one hundred people.

Once breathing people.

Oh, some were rescued. Johnny went in with Roy and pulled out as many as they could find. And Squads 16, 19, 11 and 8 helped out after they were called in as the fire grew into a monster. A fire-breathing monster that snuffed out lives as easily as Johnny poured his milk for lunch.

That monster was now beaten into submission by all the engine and ladder companies. But death still reigned here in this place and in this moment.

He turned his head to look at the bodies covered in bright colored emergency blankets from the Squads. He silently counted them again in hope that his last count was wrong.

Nope. Still, fifty-nine dead. Twenty-six of them were children. He could make out their small figures under the blankets.

It seemed that for every living person they pulled from the burning coals, they found two that were already dead.

Seeing the children was the worst. Little lives put out like a candle in a swift breeze. The children caused him to grieve deep inside and brought up issues he didn't want to deal with. Old issues that were engraved on his heart and that he would be lost without their familiar pain as company in the middle of the night.

Some part of his subconscious self knew he needed to drink water to keep dehydration and heat exhaustion away. It was just an automatic reaction. His body was telling his brain that it felt some mild shock and a headache that stared in on him an hour ago.

He shuddered in his turnout coat and reached for the cup of water that was sitting on the hood of the truck beside him and took a small sip. Some volunteer had given it to him. He couldn't even remember who gave it to him, or if it had been a man or a woman. His mind was still on the fire as he silently sipped again from the cup. Johnny didn't even notice that the water had grown warm waiting for him to drink it.

He sipped again. He sweated buckets in that fire, inside that thing that could kill you within seconds if you didn't have an air tank, protective gear and the luck not to be trapped by the flames. Lifesaving things that most of the residents of the building were not lucky enough to have.

In the end, he may have sweated buckets, but his soul cried blood.

Johnny knew he missed some of the worst fighting against the monster. He rode to the hospital ten times with burn, smoke and fumes inhalation victims. Even of those that made it to the hospital, some would never recover from their second- and third-degree burns. Some lungs would shut down from the smoke and fumes and they'd asphyxiate with the doctors helpless to help them.

And every time he returned to the inferno, it was more and more like standing in the middle of his father's Hell.

He barely got to nod at his partner as they each took turns going in the ambulances. He could tell by the look on Roy's face that the deaths were beginning to catch up with him as well. Johnny wanted a chance to speak to his partner, but the patients needed to get to the hospital as quickly as they could move them. He would have to wait to later to talk to Roy.

His thought wandering was interrupted by a clatter. He turned to see the ongoing clean up of the site. There were still a few small hot spots that the engine crews were putting water on. The firefighters were out there with pickaxes and hooks, exposing the glowing coals for the hosemen.

A few of his own engine's men were out there. Chet Kelly looked up and caught him in the eye. Kelly turned briefly and said something to Marco Lopez. Lopez shook his head.

'They're wondering why I'm still here,' Johnny thought to himself. 'Cap told me to leave five minutes ago to pick Roy up from the hospital.'

But he couldn't leave.

He put down the cup and looked down at his dirty hands. The dirt went clear through to the bone. He shuddered again.

A hand came from nowhere and rested on his right knee. A familiar form stood beside him, to block out the view of the dead bodies that lined the sidewalk to his right should Johnny try to look at them again.

"Hey, pal, shouldn't you be at the hospital getting Roy?" asked his captain in a concerned voice.

Johnny raised his brown eyes from his dirty hands to look into his captain's eyes. "I will. I will, Cap. I just need a moment."

The hand squeezed slightly. "You didn't get hurt did you? You look like hell."

Johnny shook his head. "No, I'm not hurt where you could see it. Or treat it."

His captain nodded in understanding and looked over his shoulder at the bodies. He needed to get Gage out of here and away from the bodies. Every firefighter took the death of innocents hard at fires, but his paramedics were even more sensitive to the deaths. Especially Gage. "Come on, John. Your partner is waiting for you." He took his hand from Gage's knee and held it up to help Gage from the hood of his truck.

When Gage's feet touched the ground, his captain picked up his discarded gear on the ground. "I'll give the empty to Mike. We'll give you another one back at the barn. O.K., pal?"

Johnny nodded absently. Cap shifted the gear into his left hand and touched Johnny softly on the shoulder and then turned away to return to his duties.

As his captain turned away to go back to the engine, Johnny's voice stopped him.

"Cap, in this moment there's a lot of death. Isn't there? More than I've ever seen at once."

The captain turned back to his bedraggled paramedic with the soulful eyes. "Yes, a lot of death. But you and Roy and the other paramedics saved a lot of lives. It wasn't all death here."

Johnny opened the driver's side door of his truck and looked one more time at the bodies. "Yeah, a lot of lives saved."

"You did everything humanly possible, John. You and the others. Don't let there be any second guessing here."

Johnny nodded. "No, no second guessing." He was quiet a moment more. "Thanks, Cap," he said in almost a whisper.

His captain nodded and gave him a small smile. "You're welcome, John. Now go pick up your partner. He'll be worried about you. And maybe second guessing himself as well."

And just like that, Johnny was out of the moment. He now focused everything he had on going to get his partner at the hospital. His soul had cried enough for one day and Roy was probably having his own moment at the hospital near the critically burned patients in the ER.

And Johnny would soon be there for Roy like Cap was just there for him.