Billy had followed his colleagues into the burning apartment building. When they were up on the second floor, he started to regret it deeply. Nausea hit him with brute force and the room started spinning. He had no choice but to rest for a moment and grabbing hold of the nearest wall, so he wouldn't collapse. His headache that he had tried to ignore all day was now almost unbearable. His vision became blurry and his breathing faster.
"Guys?" he said, but his voice was so thin nobody would hear him. Billy knew he needed help. Fast. He needed to get out again. The pain in his head forced him down. The room was still spinning. Walsh grabbed for his radio and already felt unconsciousness approaching. All he managed to radio in was "Help me!"…
"Help me!" came weak through Johnson's radio. Immediately, he recognised the voice.
"Walsh, where are you?" Johnson asked worried, but all he got as an answer was static.
"DK, Converse, Lombardo! Walsh needs assistance, I can't reach him on the radio!" he informed his crew inside.
"Got it, Lieu!" Lombardo radioed in, followed by the acknowledgements of the others.
Charlene had been closest to Walsh, so she turned around and went back the way she had been taking, while outside Lieutenant Johnson fought the urge to get into the building himself to look for his colleague.
It didn't take long until the brass started to appear in the Emergency Room of Mercy Hospital.
While Swersky was nervously making his way through the waiting area, Faith was watching him. He was making her nervous, so she looked down onto her hands. They were read with blood. Bosco's blood.
"I need to wash up," she mumbled and went to the nearest restroom. On her way there she almost ran over Captain Stick, who was looking for Lieutenant Swersky to find out what had happened.
"Joe, who is it?" the tall, grey haired Captain asked as soon as he spotted the Lieutenant.
"It's Boscorelli, Sir. Two more civilian victims, one the shooter and one alleged rapist in custody. They're both dead," Swersky explained.
"How bad is it?" Captain Stick wanted to know. Although he rarely knew any uniformed officer by their name, Boscorelli always stuck out. Whenever there was an incident report from the 55th precinct, Stick almost expected Boscorelli's name to pop up somewhere in between. And most of the times, it did.
"We haven't heard anything yet. All we know is that he's in surgery." Swersky lowered his head and saw the blood on his white uniform shirt and on his hands.
"We will have to set a press conference. Have the families of the victims been notified yet?"
Swersky shook his head. He hadn't even thought about that so far, so he told his superior 'no'. He was surprised that the Captain seemed so calm this time.
Captain Stick turned around to his aide and told him to take care of it. Then he returned to Swersky.
"Where the hell did the shooter got the gun from?" Stick finally burst out. It was unbelievable to him that someone could get into a precinct full of police men and women with a gun and start a blood bath.
Swersky sighed and told him about what had happened in the precinct. How the shooter claimed to have information about a case and how he had guided him upstairs to meet with Yokas and Boscorelli. And that the gun that had been fired had been Boscorelli's.
"It was my mistake, Sir. I should've known better than to let that man go beyond the front desk…" It was his fault that two men were dead and one of his best officers was struggling for his life.
For now, Stick was ignoring that statement from the Lieutenant and concentrated on finding out what had happened.
"Any idea why the shooter picked the vic?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Sir. I'll have someone look into it," Swersky said, wishing for this interrogation to be over with.
The smoke was getting darker. It was almost impossible to see anything. Over and over again, Charlene Converse called Walsh's name, knowing other firefighters were doing the same in other areas of the apartment building. There was no response, neither over the radio nor through yelling. The heat finally forced her down on all fours. She had to go back very soon if she wanted to make it out at all.
"Converse, what's your 10-10?" Lieutenant Johnson asked for her location.
"Second floor, about 10 feet from the stairs," she informed her superior.
"Billy!" she yelled again, unable to keep the despair out of her voice. She slowly groped her way into one of the apartments.
"We're losing the building! Everybody out!" a voice came over the radio, supposedly from a Chief on the scene, followed by Johnson's voice again.
"DK, Converse, Lombardo, get out now!"
"But we haven't found Walsh yet!" DK contradicted.
"Billy!" Charlene yelled once again, ignoring the order. They had to find him, she would never forgive herself for letting him die in here.
Suddenly, there was a sound somewhere left of her. It sounded like a PASS alarm, the personal alert safety system, which went off when a firefighter wasn't moving for a short period of time.
The woman groped her way towards that sound until her hand felt something. It was Walsh. He was laying on the floor, obviously unconscious.
"I got him!" Converse immediately informed the others.
"Where are you Charly?" DK wanted to know, already on his way to find them. Charlene retraced her way mentally and told him where she thought she would be. Then her attention returned towards Walsh. His breathing mask was broken, his face already blackened by soot. Converse took of her mask and pulled it over his head. Then she tried to pull him towards the direction she had been coming from, but the body was too heavy. Without the mask, Charlene was even more aware of the heat surrounding her and Walsh, closing in on them. Once again, she tried to pull Walsh away from where he was laying, so they would meet with DK sooner. The smoke burned in her lungs, forcing her to cough.
"Charly? Is that you?" she heard DK's voice through the black smoke.
"DK! We're here!" she yelled over the noise of the fire raging in the building.
"Keep talking!"
Moments later, he found his colleagues.
"We need to get out!" he yelled and helped Charlene to carry Walsh towards the stairs.
When she needed to cough again, DK stopped.
"Where's your mask?"
She told him about it and wanted to move on. But DK took off his mask now and gave it to her.
"Take some deep breaths, and then let's get out of here!"
Sharing his breathing mask, DK and Charlene Converse made it out, carrying a still unconscious Walsh between them.
