Every time Dani closed her eyes she could hear the woman's plea to live. The big purple-blue bracelet of a bruise around her right wrist didn't help erase the horrible memory, either.
It was her first day. Her first call; a jumper standing on the edge of a fifteen-story building. As the new kid, her Captain had thought it'd be better for her to stand and watch by the sidelines but her stubbornness had gotten her on top of that building, alone with a woman who already had one foot in Death's Door.
But Dani knew how to diffuse the situation. If six years of working at her local Lifeline center had thought her something, it was how to give people hope again, and Miranda was no different. She might've been standing on the edge of a building but her hands were still holding the metal railing tight as Dani spoke with her. There was still a part of her that wanted to be saved.
"Look, Miranda," Dani smiled her kindest smile at the middle-aged woman, cautiously inching close to her while slowly reaching her hand out, "I know some real good people that will help you overcome whatever it is that's got you here, so if you can just please give me your hand..."
Miranda let out a sardonic laugh as she swung one of her bare feet in the air, making Dani freeze in her step. "Help? No one's gonna help me. And even if someone did, I ain't want no help." She brought her foot back and placed it in one of the spaces between the railing, turning her head down at the team of firefighters and policemen on the ground with a grin. "I'm free!" She shouted, the sadness behind her glee striking hard against Dani's chest while she took a few more steps forward. "I ain't never been more free!"
Close enough to smell the stench of marijuana on the woman as she let one hand off the railing and swung her body back it without a care, Dani swallowed down the fear in her throat and tried something else. "Okay, well, before you go and free yourself, Miranda, just answer me one question." The brunette turned her attention back to Dani, raising a curious eyebrow as she continued to sway back and forth from behind the railing. "You ever tried that one taco stand in South Central? The one that makes their tortillas by hand and marinate their fajita so good you don't even need sauce to give it taste? Oh, and what about their nachos; you tried those yet? Loaded up on cheese and jalapenos. And an ice cold beer, or two - That's heaven right there, huh?"
With a lazy smile on her lips, the woman pulled herself back to the railing and looked at her, "Girl, stop, you're making me hungry."
Dani smiled as she finally stood an arm's length of her and nodded, "You let me get you from behind that rail and I'll buy you lunch. I'll even throw some of my mom's amazing tostones, if you give me your hand."
"What are those?" The middle aged woman planted her feet firmly on the ground and leaned forward.
"Come on, you won't regret it, I promise." Dani held out her hand and Miranda took it.
There was hope in her eyes again; Dani had seen it before Miranda's foot slipped in the process of pulling herself from behind the railing, and fell back off the edge. The hold her hand had on Dani's wrist was the only thing keeping her from hitting the ground below, as her fingers wrapped around one of the bottom rails at the last second.
"Oh my god, oh my god! I don't wanna die; please don't let me die!" Miranda cried, catching a glimpse of the ground where firefighters moved for backup.
"No, no, no, don't look down! Look at me; just look at me." Dani felt like her arm was going to pop out of its socket from the hold she had on her. The pressure from the railing hard against her chest definitely dug at her rib cage, but she ignored the pain and concentrated on not letting go of Miranda. "Miranda, I'm gonna need you to let go of the rail so I can pull you up."
"No, no I can't!" The woman gripped it tighter while tears ran down her face. "I can't, I can't, I can't!" Her sobs had begun to near hysteria.
Dani tried to calm her down, saying softly to her, "Miranda, Miranda, hey- you can do this. I'm not going to let you go, trust me."
"You won't let go?" She repeated shakily.
"I'm not," Dani reassured before reaching out her left hand over the railing for her to grab.
Miranda looked between her and the grip she had on the bottom rail, a bitter laugh escaping her as she let go and said, "Those tostones better be good."
Dani didn't have time to reply as she clutched Miranda's free hand in hers with a groan. She should've known that the rusty old railing would not stand the pressure as she put all her weight against it and used her strength to pull the woman up.
Dani almost had her, when the railing broke and there had been nothing else to hold her back as she also went over the edge, only to be saved by the grip on the flagpole close to them.
"Shit!" Dani screamed at the eruption of pain from a dislocated shoulder. Nothing would have prepared her for literally hanging from the edge of a building, and it would've been anyone's survival instinct to let go of the drug addict hanging from their hand and save themselves, but she had chosen to be a firefighter for a reason. The same reason why she chose to live eleven years ago, when death didn't mean an end to life but a release from suffering. Because even if she couldn't save herself, there was always someone else to save.
She could have still saved this woman, if not for her weak grip. Dani hadn't let go, but there was only so much a human body could resist against, and Miranda's hadn't been able to hold up for long.
By the time Captain Nash and her team had gotten to the top and pulled Dani up, Miranda's body had lay broken on the pavement fifteen stories below.
She rubbed the dull ache on her forehead and tried to forget it as she rested her head against the firetruck's window for a second.
Dani told herself over and over that it was just the job. As a firefighter she got to save lives and be a hero, but losing people was on the job description just the same as saving them. It was not easy being a hero and she knew that. Didn't mean she wished things could've gone differently, though.
"Okay, this is your stop." Dani's fellow firefighter, Evan "Buck" Buckley, pulled the firetruck to a stop at the curbside and turned to her expectantly. "Come on, I have somewhere to be in five minutes and counting."
Dani ignored the urgency in his voice. Already fed up with the amount of times he had kicked her out of the truck while on a quick grocery haul. She had only put up with the last two because she found the three-block walk to the Station therapeutic, if anything. But today she wasn't in a mood to carry two arms-full of grocery bags in this California heat just so Mr. Buck over here could get in a hot quickie before their next call.
The more she thought about how stupidly she'd been pushed-over by him since she joined the Station, the bigger the urge she had to punch him in the face, honestly. Had she really let her PTSD get that bad that she was letting some pretty white boy disrespect her like this? No, not today.
"Keep driving, Buckley. Hen is not gonna appreciate it if her ice cream is melted."
"Dani, Dani please," he looked at her with his best puppy dog eyes, "just forty minutes; I'll pick you back right up."
Jesus, just how bad did he need to get laid? Dani looked at him and smirked, ready to see how much it would take as she extended the palm of her hand to him, "I wanna see fifty, first."
Buck shook his head in disbelief but had no choice than to bargain, "Thirty."
She let out a small, mocking laugh, "Oh, that's cute..." A stern look quickly settled on her face before she locked her door and leaned back in the passenger seat, "That'll be one-hundred, then."
"What? No that's not how you're-" He stopped and regained his composure, shrugging as he turned back to the wheel without care. "Alright, if that's how you want it. I don't mind an audience."
Dani's eyes widened and face twisted in disgust at the implication, which made Buck grin smugly while he turned on the engine. "Fine," furious, she snatched his cellphone with the GPS tracking GROOVYHEALS297 and stuck her arm out the window, threatening to break it. "Two-hundred, or paying for a new phone; what's it going to be, FIREHOSE?"
Buck's smug grin was wiped off and he let out an annoyed huff as he took out his wallet and hastily handed her two hundred-dollar bills.
After taking the money, Dani collected the few grocery bags and finally got out the firetruck. With her door still opened, she couldn't help but be filled with indignation as she told him, "And don't bother picking me up."
"Wasn't planning on it," Buck bit out before she slammed the door closed.
Oh how much she wanted to punch his face!
Luckily though, the wish to inflict pain on her teammates ended with Buck. The rest of Station 118 had been nothing but good to her since she joined them. Hen, Chimney, Captain Bobby, they all had become like a second family to her, which that on its own was something to tell. Dani never let people in. On the contrary, she pushed them away. Even her actual family, she couldn't really talk to them anymore. After everything that happened to her, there hadn't been much left of the old Dani when she was saved, and she couldn't pretend that there was so it was better for everyone if she kept a safe distance.
But even though she tried to be, Dani wasn't without emotions and feelings, and having a familial relationship with the people she spent most of her time with was almost inevitable.
Of course, Evan Buckley had to be the exception and not the rule. But although no matter how much she'd hate to admit, he wasn't even half as bad as the men she'd encountered. She gave him that much, but other than that he was an ass. An extremely cocky one, too. With that smug smirk on his lips and sly look in his light blue eyes... There wasn't anything she could do but roll her eyes as she entered the station, her hands finally softening the grip on the grocery bag's fabric - imagining it was Buckley's throat she'd been squeezing the shit out of as she walked, and finally diffused her anger.
"Dani, good you're here!" Hen smiled at her as she stepped up the stairs to the fire station's kitchen/break room loft.
"Yeah, I got the goods," Dani returned her smile and walked over to their table. She set down the grocery bags and started handing out what they asked for. "One neapolitan ice cream for you, Hen. Chim, there's your protein powder stuff. And Bobby, here's that parsley and parm."
Everyone gave her a thanks, while her captain was the one to ask her about her missing partner as he took the block of cheese and started grating it in a bowl. "Where is Buck?"
Suddenly, the two-hundred bucks weighed heavily in her back pocket as she shrugged innocently, "I don't know; he said he forgot something and had to go back." She plucked a big purple grape from the fruit bowl at the center of the table and put it in her mouth. Bobby didn't look convinced and neither did Hen and Chimney, so she turned the conversation around, wanting not to talk about anything Buckley anymore. "So, who's using what as bait...?"
Hen turned from the fridge, deciding to save her ice cream for later, and chuckled knowingly before catching Dani up, "Chimney's got a hot new girlfriend and he's using his uniform to keep her entertained."
The attention was as all on Chimney now as he fully explained, "I met her on this new dating site just for cops and firefighters; RomancingTheUniform. com. She's an adrenaline junkie, so foreplay is me telling her stories about running into burning buildings and jumping into icy lakes."
"Wait, you actually got to go inside a burning building?" Dani raised her eyebrows in surprise while she took a seat at the table.
Hen shot her new-kid excitement a sympathetic look and shook her head, "Oh no, it's been a long while since Chim did anything like that."
"I embellish a little," Chimney cleared his throat, a guilty smile spread on his lips as he nodded.
"Oh," Dani let out a small chuckle, "noted."
"I'm telling you, the uniform is a major aphrodisiac!"
"Clearly," Hen laughed and from behind the kitchen island Captain Bobby gave Chimney an amused smile.
But all their joking stopped once the missing firetruck was heard, Buck entering the station and quickly coming up the stairs to the loft.
Dani shrunk in her chair, looking over at Bobby and noticing his stern features. "I'm sorry, Captain, I didn't-" she swallowed guiltily, trying to plea her case, "he didn't really give me a choice-"
"Don't worry about it, Dani," Bobby nodded at her and sighed. "This has been going on since before you joined; I just thought... if there was someone else to keep an eye on him..."
Dani nodded silently in understanding while Buck walked over to their table with a grin on his face. Nonchalant, he smelled Bobby's cooking and tastefully licked his lips as he grabbed a string of spaghetti with his fingers.
"Hey!" Sitting down, Hen pulled the large bowl away from him. "Wash your hands, we don't know where they've been."
Bobby handed the salad bowl to Dani before he walked over to the young man. "What if we had a call?"
"I was in the neighborhood," Buck explained, "I was just, uh, getting it washed."
At this, Chimney smirked and eyed him from his seat, "They charged you extra for the detail?"
"Oh, you don't wanna know." Dani rolled her eyes when she caught the pointed look Buck gave her while taking the small bowl of broccoli from Bobby's hand and biting down on one of them.
"Listen, I like you," Bobby gained back his attention, "you're a good firefighter. I know we got this thing; you call me Pops and I give you a hard time for being a dumbass kid, we went to a Springsteen concert together," he put his hands on his hips, stern, as he finished, "but this is not a family. It's not a clubhouse- so I'm writing you up."
"Come on, Bobby," Buck's face fell for a second before the corner of his mouth lifted in a disbelieving half-smile. "See the fire. Put out the fire. The rest is blah-blah..."
"No," the Captain frowned. "The system and the rules are not arbitrary. First infraction. Two more and you're out." He held up his right hand, meaning no debating on the consequences, and took the broccoli bowl from Buck, "Now, wash your hands."
Dani kept her eyes concentrated on the plate in front of her, mindlessly turning her fork in the spaghetti while the others silently watched Buck leave. She had heard everything but not really listened, her mind wandering over to Miranda like it had been doing since she woke up this morning. She just couldn't shake what happened to that poor woman away, not even to enjoy watching Buck finally get his ass handed to him by their captain.
"You okay, Dani?"
She looked up at Bobby, who had already taken a seat at the table, and blinked away the pensive look in her eyes as she passed the salad up and smiled, "Yeah, I'm fine."
Bobby nodded, lifting his fork to have his first bite as the bell blared throughout the station and they collectively groaned.
While her team tried to scarf their lunch down in the few seconds that took them to stand up from the table, Dani lost all appetite at the sound of the bell and tried not to let them see her shaky hands.
It was just another call. She reminded herself to breathe steadily. It didn't automatically mean another loss.
If she did her job right this time, she could save someone... She would save someone.
9-1-1 DISPATCHER:
9-1-1 WHAT'S YOUR EMERGENCY?
CALLER:
YEAH HI, I LIVE IN AN APARTMENT ON 876 MCCAIN.
I'M IN MY BATHROOM AND I THINK I HEAR A BABY CRYING. IN THE WALL.
9-1-1 DISPATCHER:
HOW IS THE BABY ON THE WALL?
CALLER:
NO NO NO. NOT ON THE WALL. IN THE WALL. THERE'S A BABY INSIDE MY WALL. I-I THINK SOMEONE FLUSHED A BABY DOWN THE TOILET.
Dani rounded the firetruck, parked just outside the apartment complex, and stopped when she saw Buck excitedly take an axe in his hands. "What the hell's the axe for?"
He looked at her, a mocking tone to his voice as he weighed the axe in his right hand and explained to her like she was a little girl, "There's something inside a wall, Dani; we're gonna need something to break through it."
"Jesus," she muttered and swallowed back the curse in her throat. Obviously he was still mad at her for the money, but she tried not let him get to her. "The call said it was a baby. What we're going to need is medical equipment, not a lumberjack's axe." She looked at him and when it became clear he wasn't going to move, she sighed and pointed at the red box stored above him. "Hand me that kit, please?"
She couldn't help the bite in her words, though, and Buck smirked, pleased to see her annoyed before he reached over and handed her the med kit. "You really think there's a baby stuck inside a wall?"
"How much you want to bet?" Was what she really wanted to counter but now was not the time, allowing herself to answer seriously instead, "I hope not."
"Let's do it," Hen told them and they all made their way to the gate.
"Where are we headed?" Chimney asked Bobby as they stepped into the property.
"The fourth floor."
Buck trotted up the steps with a grin, "I'll race you!"
"Ah, race yourself, Rambo. I'm fifty years old, I'm taking the elevator."
"Who's Rambo?" The genuine confusion on Buck's face when he turned and looked at her almost stopped Dani dead in her tracks.
"Shit, Buckley," Dani had to laugh because if she didn't, she would've strangled him right then and there.
The moment they stepped into his place and got a whiff of the smell, it was clear the caller had been on something when he made the call. Probably still was. Dani picked up a smoking bong from the guy's bookcase and raised an eyebrow at Hen, who smirked and shook her head.
Bobby led the way into the bathroom and the guy, dressed in a dirty old t-shirt and boxers under his black bathrobe, stepped aside to let him investigate. After a short moment, their captain came back into the living room with a shrug, "I don't hear anything."
The young man sighed from his seat on the couch and said, "Look, I'm telling you, I heard a baby crying. Someone flushed a baby down the toilet." He was pretty convinced of this, but that didn't necessarily hold any truth to the rest of them. "Oh, I'm not high," he tried, Dani eying the bong suspiciously, and ended up admitting, "okay, I-I'm pretty high but it's a sativa. You know? It makes you happy; i-it doesn't make you hallucinate."
Chimney glanced at the bathroom again and uncrossed his arms. "It could've been a cat, right? Sometimes rats get stuck in the walls."
If Chim would've continued talking, Dani would've missed it. She caught the small noise a beat after he finished, gone just as quickly as she heard it. "Wait, wait, guys," she silenced the room. "I think I heard something," she told them and hurried into the bathroom, the team following behind her.
Bobby pressed the side of his head against the plaster white wall like she did. "You hear it?" Dani asked her captain and watched him strain to hear something before she pulled her head from the wall and quickly grabbed her stethoscope. "This will work better." She placed the earpiece into one of each other's ears and pressed the diaphragm on the wall.
Dread sat in the pit of her stomach like an anchor dropped into sea when she heard the unmistakable baby's cry. Bobby heard it, too, taking off the stethoscope and rapping his knuckles on the wall, hurrying to find a hollow spot.
"Give me a pen," he ordered as another whimper came from the wall, "give me a Sharpie."
"Hey!" The guy frowned at the big black 'X' now marked on his bathroom wall.
"Alright," Bobby ignored him and looked at his team, "we need to open up this wall."
"No, no. We're being punked. It's a tape recorder or something. Right, Spicoli?" Disbelieving, Chimney turned and raised an eyebrow at the caller.
Hen sighed and shook his head at Chimney, moving closer and looking down at the toilet, "Maybe he's right. Maybe a mother gives birth on the toilet and flushes it-"
"Okay, first of all, that's awful. Second, do you not know how a toilet pipe works? There's this piece of serpentine pipe that takes the waste - from the toilet to-"
Bobby cut him off to explain, "If this is a premature baby, its bones could bend and compress like sponges. Okay? We need to go in there."
"Stand back, I got this." Buck took in a breath and breathed out as he picked up his axe and charged at the wall.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Their captain shouted, Hen and Chimney stepping back with a gasp as Buck prepared to swing the axe. Dani rushed to stand in front of the marked 'X' while Bobby slid between her and Buck's axe, grabbing its handle and stopping him. "Did you even consider you might hit a baby?" At his words, Buck loosened the grip on the axe and let the realization slowly sink in. "Yeah, I didn't think so. Go get the saw."
"Um, yeah- yeah, okay- um, I'm gonna..." He gave the axe to Bobby and tried to hide the embarrassment rising to his cheeks as he raced out the apartment.
"And try to find some common sense while you're down there!" Chimney called after him, reaching for the axe Bobby handed to him.
"Yeah," Dani sighed as she stepped away from the wall and ran a hand through her hair, "that's about the only thing he's gonna find..." She walked out into the living room and returned not a few seconds later with a case, opening it to pull out the saw. "Captain," she raised it up to Bobby, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he took it.
A/N: Hello everyone! So, this has been sitting in my drafts for over a year now and in an attempt to clean out my files I decided to publish this work instead of deleting it. Who knows, maybe others would find Dani's story interesting?
If you have enjoyed this chapter, please leave a review on your thoughts- it doesn't have to be long, just some words of encouragement to know that you are interested in seeing this story go further!
Anyways, thank you for reading! I hope you all have a lovely day/night! :)