Page 58 of Sparking Sara

Bass swats my arm with the back of his hand. “You’re one of us, too, Andrews. We got your back whenever you need it.”

“Thanks, bro.”

We pull up in front of a house with smoke spewing from the front door. A lady in a bathrobe is standing on the sidewalk, holding the hands of two small children.

We hop out of the truck. “Anyone else inside?” Captain Dickerson asks.

“My husband!” she screams. “He was still sleeping upstairs. I was fixing breakfast for the girls.” She covers her sobs. “Please save him.”

“Briggs and Hanson, take the back,” J.D. says. “Andrews and I will take the front. Squad—get ready to attack.”

As J.D. and I put on our masks and head in the front door, I wonder why he paired us the way he did. Usually, in a fire, J.D. pairs me with Bass.

“There,” I say, seeing the stairway through the smoke.

I look beyond the stairs and see the faint glow of fire. Coming in from the back, Bass and Steve will be in a good position to handle it.

J.D. and I quickly ascend the stairs into the murky, smoke-filled upstairs hallway. It’s hard to see anything.

“Fire department. Call out!” J.D. yells through his mask.

I walk through a doorway on the right and step on a toy. “Kid’s room,” I say.

The room on the left is not so easy to label. J.D. goes deep inside the room before he darts out. “Bunk beds,” he says. “Not the master.”

“Fire department. Call out!” he shouts again.

Finally, we come to a third open door. The smoke is not as thick in here and I can clearly see a man on the bed. “Got him,” I say, making my way to the head of the bed. “He’s still breathing.”

I get the man onto my shoulders and J.D. leads the way down the smoke-filled stairway.

Out front, the woman comes running up to us as we put her husband onto a gurney. “George!” she shouts as Debbe and Ryan tend to him with an oxygen mask.

The man is finally awake and coughing. He reaches up and touches his wife’s face. “The girls?” he asks through his mask.

“They’re fine,” she says.

J.D. turns to me as we walk back into the house to help put out the fire. “Why the hell do people sleep with their doors open?”

Ten minutes later, the fire is out. I point to the wall behind the charred clothes dryer. “Point of origin,” I say. “Damn, people. It takes three fucking seconds to clean out your lint filter, and ninety bucks a year to have the duct cleaned out and this won’t happen.”

The other guys shake their heads. If we each had a nickel for every house fire that was started by a dryer vent …

Back at the station, J.D. finds me fresh from a shower. “Sit down,” he says, motioning to the bench in front of my locker.

I finish pulling my shirt over my head. “What is it, Captain?”

“You did good today,” he says.

“I did my job today. Same as everyone.”

“And the other stuff? How are you dealing with that?”

“You mean car accidents?”

He nods.

“I’m dealing,” I say. “Why?”

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