Part Five – Just Be A Firefighter
"Hey," Chet remarked, looking at the flyer on the day room bulletin board, "you guys all going to the FD Christmas party a week from Friday?" He glanced over toward the kitchen table.
Marco and Roy both replied in the affirmative. Mike said quietly that he was covering a shift at 10s so Harper and his wife could attend. Cap didn't have to answer; attending Department functions was unofficially part of his job description. John frowned slightly when Evvy didn't respond one way or the other. "How about you, Ev? You going?"
She did that thing where she looked like she was engaging her cloaking device, like on that re-run of Star Trek they had watched the other day. Lifting her cup of tea, she just shook her head.
"Aw, why not?" Chet said, seeing her response. He was getting wound up already. "All the station Captains will be there, even the ones on duty come by for a little while. And the Battalion Chief shows up, too. It's a good way to see and be seen."
One thing John knew for certain was that Evvy did not want to be seen.
Roy chimed in. "Yeah, Joanne likes the Christmas party even more than the Fireman's Picnic, 'cause we get to leave the kids at home with a sitter." He shrugged. "I mean, it's not that fun for just casual dates, 'cause everybody still tends to talk shop. Could get kind of boring if you're not part of the service or, you know, married to someone who is."
"And that's the beauty of it," Chet chimed in. "I take a girl there, inside of an hour, she's saying, 'Can we go now?' and when I agree, she's game to do whatever I want for the rest of the night." Six pairs of horrified eyes turned Chet's way. "What?"
"Anyway," Cap said emphatically, "it's a good way to meet firefighters from all across the County. You should go," he added, somewhere between a suggestion and an order.
"We could go together," John said, "I mean, not-not-not as a date, per se, but just, you know, walk in together and I can introduce you around." He felt a flush rise. "I'm not asking her out, or anything," he insisted before anyone could accuse him, "come on, now."
Roy mused, "That's not a bad idea, Junior." Evvy shot him a look of utter betrayal. "I mean, everyone knows you're here, Evvy, but hardly anyone knows you. It would be a good way to meet teams that you might be covering shifts with someday."
"Don't you already have a date, John?" Evvy asked a little desperately. "What about Amber or Bambi or whoever?"
"Yeah, we parted ways," John said, sounding not at all upset about it. "So I'd be going stag anyway."
Evvy apparently couldn't resist the dig. "That's a real shame," she said, smiling insincerely, "pretty guy like you not having a date. I mean, look at you – you've got a pretty face, nice figure, decent personality – chicks must be crawling all over you."
The guys burst out laughing at the parody of John's oft-heard assessment of Evvy's charms. John felt his face get warm again. He allowed maybe he deserved that. "Well, since we're both so … pretty, and available, no reason for us not to go together." He grinned as, neatly trapped, Evvy dropped her smile.
"Oh, my God, why are you like this," she muttered.
The alarm sounded, and the Dispatcher's voice announced a house fire. As she climbed up into the Engine, Evvy wondered grumpily why the announcement could not have come a minute sooner.
They pulled up on a small one-story Craftsman house, already involved, but not hard to contain. The couple who owned the house were standing outside; they had managed to get out safely along with the family dog. They stood on the sidewalk, in stunned disbelief, watching everything they owned go up in smoke. Cap confirmed that there was no one else inside, then sent Evvy down the west side with a line. Stoker gave her a manageable, steady flow, and she got into the rhythm pretty easily. She didn't hear the homeowner begin to worry out loud that her art studio was going up in flames. She did hear the sudden, urgent holler: "We've got solvents!" and then the low unmistakable BOOM as the studio full of turpentine, oil soaked rags, and paint reached its limit and sent a fireball through the interior of the house, and blew the side door off its hinges.
An instant later, Evvy was surprised–astonished, really– to find herself airborne, almost horizontal to the ground, her two gloved hands and two booted feet drifting weirdly into her field of vision. It was exactly like floating with her face to the sun in the warm, clear, blue Caribbean water of her birthplace, except it was nothing like that at all: hot, dry, and dark. She landed flat on the hard ground. Her head bounced, and bounced again. Her metal helmet landed to the side with a hollow crunching sound. Should have tightened that strap a bit more, I guess. For a long moment, she stared up at the darkening sky through crystal clear blue water, her lungs burning, knowing that she didn't have enough air in them to make it to the surface. She reached toward the voice calling her name and gasped.
John's face solidified in her view when she tried to focus her right eye, as her left eye was currently being held open and stabbed with a penlight. He was wearing his professional expression, mouth turned down slightly, which made him look older than his age. "Did you hit your head?" he was asking in his paramedic-talking-to-a-victim voice, probably not for the first time. She was still gathering words when she heard Marco answer, "Hit her head? She practically left a crack in the driveway."
Mm-hm, fireman gallows humour. Can't be too serious, then. She was lying on top of her turnout and moved to sit up, but John pushed her back down gently. "Now, just hold it there, Gumby, we need to check you out. Got the wind knocked out of you, and you probably have a mild concussion." Before he could finish that last word, Evvy rolled over to her side and vomited. There was a pause and then a flat, "Yep, concussion." Over her head, John called out to Cap that they needed to take her in to get checked out at Rampart. Evvy was sure that if the head injury didn't kill her, the embarrassment would.
To hear Roy describe her as a twenty-six year old female, Code I, on the biophone made it worse. There would be no doubt who they were talking about, advertising to the world that she had gotten herself hurt on the job. She looked beseechingly at Roy when Rampart gave the order to transport and said, "I really, really don't want to go by ambulance."
Roy just glanced at her and said, "Well, it's not up to you, now is it?"
"Can I at least walk over and get in, and not use a stretcher?" Her head was starting to scream with pain and her vision trembled around the edges.
"Cap's heading over this way," Roy advised, his eyebrows raised, "you want to keep arguing?"
She closed her mouth. Cap asked, "What've we got?" He wasn't quite frowning, but he did have on his concerned-dad look, which felt worse than him being mad at her.
"Probable concussion," Roy said, and John grumbled agreement. He was the one still kneeling next to the little puddle of sick. "LOC for about half a minute, so she'll need X-rays. She'll be okay, though."
"You're stood down, young lady," Cap said, "until Rampart says otherwise. I expect your full cooperation. You tell them exactly how you feel, no hiding anything." Busted.
The sway of the ambulance made her nausea worse, and Roy wouldn't let her go to sleep. He kept taking her vitals and asking her questions to check her coherence. Even so, she felt like she was missing whole chunks of time, and found herself suddenly being wheeled under bright lights into an examination room. The nice, white-haired doctor–Father Time?–took over with sure and steady hands. His voice was soothing, almost a cheerful monotone, and his weathered face with its permanent laugh lines made her feel safe. Miss McCall was there, too, smiling reassuringly as they manipulated her head and neck, looked into her ears and eyes, and drew vials of blood. She did her best to follow Father Time's, no, Dr. Early's finger with her eyes. Roy stood out of the way, arms folded, watching. His presence relaxed her; he trusted this medical team absolutely.
Roy and Dixie stepped out of the examination room to find John loitering at the base station. "How is she?" Gage asked Roy.
"She looks scared. Dr. Early's keeping her for observation, but I bet she'll be here for at least two days." Roy sighed. "I gotta say, watching her fly through the air like that felt worse than it ever has. I mean, guys get hurt all the time, but . . ." He looked at Dixie. "Do you think maybe I'm a male chauvinist? 'Cause I can't really say it's not because she's a woman."
Dixie looked at both men thoughtfully. "I think it's natural for you to feel protective, Roy. Yours is a very male profession, and dangerous. You're used to wives and girlfriends waiting at home for the call, not being the reason for the call. But from what I'm hearing, she sounds capable and ready to do the work. Don't handicap her by treating her like 'the little woman.'"
"Yeah, I see your point," Roy said. "I don't want to undermine her confidence."
John fiddled with the HT, remembering his conversation with Evvy the day they had all learned about the complaint against her and what had happened at the restaurant fire. "I think she just wants to do her job. Just be a firefighter, without all the extra adjectives tacked on."
Dixie said, "Well, I don't think there is a better crew than 51's A Shift to make that happen. As long as she knows you guys have her back, she'll be fine."
"Hmm," John responded, then tapped Roy with the hand holding the HT. "Well, let's say goodbye to Gumby, and head on back." He lifted the HT, radioed in 'available,' and sauntered down the hall to Evvy's exam room.
"Gumby?" Dixie repeated, sliding her eyes toward Roy.
"Don't ask, " Roy said.
Evvy missed two shifts, per concussion protocol, and was climbing the walls of her small apartment by the time she was cleared for work. A-Shift was taking over from B today, and she hoped she would be able to continue her six-month streak of avoiding the infamous Captain Hookrader, or "Captain Hook" as he was aptly called, but never to his face. Today, she had no such luck. Hookrader and Stanley were standing in the bay jawing when she came in carrying a bag full of groceries in the crook of her elbow (it was her turn to cook), and Cap called her over to introduce her.
"I don't think you've met Wayfair, have you?" Cap said. "She's just back today off of injured leave."
Hook inspected her carefully from head to toe. Evvy resisted the urge to tuck her shirt in more firmly or straighten her nametag. She'd given herself extra time this morning so she wouldn't come in looking like she'd just rolled out of somebody's bed. "Wayfair," Hook grunted. "Welcome back."
"Thank you, sir." She waited for Cap to nod, then escaped to the kitchen to unload the food. When that was done, she took a deep breath and headed to the locker room, dreading what today's door message might be. She murmured a greeting to Stoker, who was brushing his teeth at the sink, heading into the second day of a double shift. To her surprise, there was no masking tape on the door of her locker. She glanced at Stoker's back and carefully opened the door. Her belongings were undisturbed, the spare shirts and shoes laid out precisely as she'd left them a week before. There were no "bunny" stickers anywhere. Huh, she thought, did someone remove the evidence, or have we concluded with the "racism/sexism" portion of the program?
She cruised into the kitchen and made a fresh pot of coffee, thankful that she had gotten to it before Cap had finished his conversation with Captain Hook–his coffee was terrible. Then she sliced and salted some eggplant, stashed it in the refrigerator for assembly later, and got started on some pancake batter. By the time Roy and Chet sauntered in and welcomed her back to work, she was deep into her paperback novel depicting an unlikely romance between a world-renowned surgeon and an eighteen-year-old nursing trainee. Stoker was reading the equally implausible one she had finished while on leave, the book hidden behind an automotive magazine.
Pancakes were easily made to order when shift change was completed, and the men settled down to eat in that quick, desperate way they had, not knowing when the next alarm would come.
"Hey, Ev, these are really good," Roy said, pouring maple syrup on yet another stack. "You're one of the best cooks here."
"I don't think that's as high a bar as you think it is," Evvy replied. Heads nodded around the table; lunches and dinners were mostly endured rather than enjoyed, except for Marco's, who was genuinely talented in the kitchen, and John's, who more or less assembled meals of cold cuts, hamburgers, and hot dogs with minimal effort.
"Well, I'm not saying it's a girl thing, but . . ." Chet put in. Everybody groaned.
"You know, Chet, you might be right," Evvy answered. Heads turned toward her in surprise. Her voice took on the peppy cadence of an afternoon soap opera commercial, and she pinned a fake smile on her face. "I mean, while you all were in woodworking class or metal shop in high school, making bird houses and mailboxes, I was in Home Economics and cooking. Which is why you can handle the K-12, and I can put a tasty meal for seven on the table in thirty minutes or less for pocket change." She resumed her normal voice. "So yeah, it might be a girl thing."
"For which I am truly grateful," John said with his mouth full of pancake. "And by the way, what time am I picking you up tomorrow night?" At her blank look, he added, "The Christmas party? Our not-date?"
"Oh, come on, John. The girl literally cracked her skull and checked into Rampart to get out of going to the party with you," Marco said. "Can't you take a hint?"
The others were quick to join in the ribbing, commenting and joking about Gage's woeful track record with girls. But Evvy saw the quick flash of disappointment, or maybe hurt, in his expression before he half-smiled and picked up his coffee, and realized that his invitation to her had been sincere, if opportunistic. "Seven thirty," she said, silencing the room. "But you gotta clean the junk out of your car," she added, making a face, "because, gross."
John's mouth was still open in shock when the tones sounded, and the paramedics were called out to a woman with a back injury. Evvy put her head down and concentrated on eating her pancakes, ignoring everyone.
Evvy was just putting the pillow back on the last bunk she'd made up when the tones sounded. She couldn't hear Dispatch clearly as she headed into the bay, but Chet was pulling on his turnout, so she grabbed hers as well. Cap signed off with the station's call letters and they were underway. Well, she'd know soon enough what the call was. The landscape under the clear blue California sky changed as the Engine left the city and moved into the scrubby outskirts.
The smell hit her first, then the heat, then the noise. Two cars were mashed together, one almost on top of the other, and precariously near the edge of a dropoff. Evvy jumped down and ran around to the back of the Engine to grab a one-and-a-half as directed by Cap, and tugged the line over to the wreck to wash down the gas and oil that were leaking. Squad 51 peeled in behind the Engine, dispatched from their run at Rampart. The interior of one car, a blue Buick, was full of flames, and she could see the driver, already immolated, still in the seat. The other car, a white Pontiac, looked empty. As there were no civilians standing on the road, this was a bad sign.
Cap shouted orders over the roar of the fire, which was spreading quickly through the dry grass lining the road. Chet and Marco manned another line, trying to get ahead of the flames before the whole hillside went up.
She heard Roy call out, "We got a victim down there!" and saw Cap jog over to look. He raised the HT to his mouth, and she knew he was calling in a warning to the Engine that was already on the way. She concentrated on knocking down the fire in the vehicle, knowing that she would be needed elsewhere really soon. After a few minutes, she felt Cap's hand on her shoulder. "Okay, Evvy, I want you to go help John and Roy. They've got a person over the side."
The paramedics were finishing up getting into their gear, loading the Stokes with splints and supplies, and preparing for their descent. Chet had two lifelines in his hands, while Marco worked the hose on the smouldering grass at the top of the ridge. Chet handed her a rope, then changed his mind and swapped it out for the other. "Johnny's lighter," he said.
She mirrored Chet's wide stance, settling her center of gravity and using her shoulders as a pulley between the descending paramedic and the Engine's eye, where the lifeline was tied off securely. She blessed the hours that the lineman had spent with her behind the station, drilling her in this procedure. The rope moved easily through her gloved hands as John hop-stepped backwards down the slope. The line stopped and went a little slack as her burden reached the unconscious victim below. They sent the Stokes down.
As the minutes ticked by, the wind began to pick up–just the event all of the firefighters were silently praying wouldn't happen–and the embers hiding in the brush below came to life. Her eyes pinned to the figures down the slope, she heard Cap yell down, "You got fire below you!" There was no point in urging them to hurry; they were already working as quickly and efficiently as possible to splint and secure the victim. Yelling at them would not make the process go any faster. But the underbrush provided thick, bone-dry fuel for the hungry fire, and the embers floated around them.
A quick urgent tug on the lifelines, and Evvy began pulling up for all she was worth. The second Engine, from 8s, had arrived, and Cap directed them to beat back the flames rapidly advancing on his men. The fire licked greedily up the slope, and Evvy could see that John's turnout was smoking. The wind blew the smoke into her streaming eyes, but she could not spare a hand to wipe the tears away. All she could do was pull, hand over hand, as fast as John's legs could handle. She hummed with the effort.
John, Roy, and the Stokes came up over the ridge like bullets and skidded onto the flat. Evvy saw with horror that John's hair, sticking out from the back of his helmet, had sparked. She dropped the rope, pushed him roughly to the ground, and flipped the headgear off, beating at the tongue of flame with her gloved hands. John made "Aah! Aah!" noises as he ripped open his turnout coat and flung it away. Two seconds later, they were both doused with cold water as Marco turned his hose their way.
Roy bolted over, his hands moving across John's face and neck. "You burned? Johnny! Where are you burned?" he said. John's fingers hovered at the nape of his neck but didn't touch the skin. "I'm all right, just a little singed," he said shakily. "I'm okay." Roy looked him over carefully, then nodded. John got painfully to his feet and glanced over at Evvy. "Thanks," he said, and turned to attend to his patient.
Evvy got back on the line.
It took another alarm and two dumps from the chopper to get the fire under control. When they were finally relieved, and 51 dragged themselves into the station, it was late afternoon.
The Squad was out on another run. Exhausted and sore, Evvy sank bonelessly to the floor of the dayroom, pretzeled her legs, and fully stretched out her aching back. She could feel the weight of several pairs of eyes on the back of her head. "Man, that hurts me just looking at it," Marco said.
"Now you know why Johnny calls her 'Gumby,'" Chet replied. "If I ever dated a chick that flexible, . . ."
"I can hear you, you know," Evvy said, turning her head to rest her ear on the floor.
"Behave, Chet," Cap scolded. He bent sideways from the waist, hands in his pockets, then shook his head. "Man."
The Squad backed into the apparatus bay then, and a moment later, Roy and John wandered into the kitchen, bickering. "Now, I never said that, Roy, stop putting words in my mouth," John was saying, in a tone that indicated that this argument had been going on at least since they'd left Rampart.
"You couldn't have been more clear," Roy retorted, and the lack of anger in his voice let everyone know he was just winding his partner up.
"Trouble in paradise?" Cap asked mildly, pouring a cup of coffee and sitting down at the table. Evvy turned her head to rest the other cheek on the linoleum, eyes closed.
"Junior, here," Roy said dryly, "thinks I'm old and slow."
"Now I never said that!" John protested. "You're the one who told Dixie that I was trying to leave you behind coming up that hill. I just said it was not my fault you couldn't keep up."
"You implied it," Roy said, pushing more buttons.
"Well, in my defense," John argued back, "my head was on fire . . ."
Chet snorted. "That'll put a spring in your step, for sure."
"All I'm saying," Roy replied, "is that you seemed pretty intent on leaving me behind."
"BECAUSE MY HEAD WAS ON FIRE, ROY!" John shouted. The guys burst into laughter, and Evvy straightened to an upright position to see an agitated John looming, arms splayed wide, over Roy, who was seated and chuckling into his own cup of coffee, mission accomplished. For what it was worth, the nape of John's neck was a little pink, but she saw no damage to the skin.
"And then Evvy tackled you like a linebacker," Stoker said. "That was pretty impressive."
John's expression went through a number of interesting changes–shock, chagrin, and finally amusement. He stuck his tongue into his cheek and slid his hands into his pockets, a sly smile spreading across his face. "Yeah, well, I kinda have that effect on women. They can't help throwing themselves at me."
"And I bet they all end up beating you about the head and face, too," Evvy said, stomping to the refrigerator to retrieve the fixings she needed for her eggplant parmigiana subs.
"You guys' date tomorrow is going to be verrrry interesting, I think," Marco observed.
"It's not a date," John and Evvy both said at the same time. They glared at each other for a moment, then started laughing.
"You need a haircut now, John," Evvy said.
