They dump the bags on the table, happy for food that they can make for themselves. Monday means barbecue; meat with that special flavor and smell, vegetables grilled to perfection, a crisp salad, and baked beans. After looking warily at their colleagues, they embrace the idea and start to get excited. That's when their haggard lieutenant walks in.
He looks at them a minute before anyone notices him and he wishes that he didn't have to erase their happiness, especially after what the past two weeks have taken from them. Soon, they are all silent, joking manner gone and that's when he tells them. "They found Tommy Doyle." What he says next, none of them really hear, for whatever it is, they now it's not "and he's alive."
Because even though they knew deep down inside he could never be alive, they all had harbored this crazy hope that maybe, just maybe, their boy would make it out.
Later, riding in silence in the fire truck, their lieutenant points to the crowd in front of the firehouse. Every person there holds at least one candle, lighting the way for their fallen brother. For, even though they had never known him, even though they had never fought fire beside him, he was their brother, as much as he was to any firefighter. He was their blood. Old fashioned New York City blood, and it ran through all their veins, that night and everyone before and since. They just didn't realize it until that day.
They all jump off the truck and one firefighter, the same one who took the card from the little boy Sam, stops and hugs a woman, his brother's wife. And he leads her inside as the one female firefighter, their one sister, stops and scoops up a little girl, her brother's daughter. And she carries her inside as the lieutenant stops, and with the help of another, hangs an American flag at the bottom of the staircase. The lieutenant turns back to the garage, to the candles, to the people, to his family.
And as he looks out over all the people, all the strangers. all the friends he's never met, he can only think of one thing to say.
"Thank you."
But that was just crazy hope.