Page 30 of Engulfing Emma

I should ask her out.

I stare at the dark ceiling, planning a date with Emma. We’d go to dinner, maybe a club after, so we could dance. Anything to get her in my arms again. The few times I held her, it felt right—even when she was passed out or having a panic attack. Something stirs inside me, and I turn on my side to hide my growing erection. It’s dark in the bunkroom, but not so dark that someone walking by wouldn’t see the tented covers.

Before I can fully immerse myself in an Emma fantasy, Dispatch comes over the loudspeaker, waking up the entire room and summoning us to a residential structural fire. Lights come on, and we race downstairs to our rigs.

Cameron laughs at me as we’re pulling on our gear. “Damn,” he says, noticing the bulge in my pants. “Don’t you hate it when a good dream gets interrupted?”

“Fuck off, Curtis.” I climb into the front cab, a smile cracking my face.

We arrive at the house to see smoke coming out of several windows.

“It’s a live one,” Justin says from the driver’s seat.

He parks the rig, and we help Engine 319 hook up their hose.

J.D. shouts orders. “Briggs and I will take Nelson and Curtis and attack from the back. August and Andrews will man the hose and be ready to go on my command. Cash and Neal, go through the front and take the second floor.”

We grab our gear and disperse.

Justin and I put on our tanks and masks and head to the front door. It’s locked, but the house is old and a swift kick to the door does the trick. The smoke is thick, and the glow from the fire is at the back of the house. Kitchen or family room maybe. The other team will handle that.

Once we’re up the stairs, I hear a woman screaming and banging on the wall, but I can’t see through the smoke, it’s so thick. “Fire department, call out!”

“Here. I’m here,” she says, coughing.

We feel our way down the hall until we run into her. “Ma’am, we’re going to get you out. Is there anyone else in the house?”

“My kids,” she says, barely able to get the words out. She isn’t breathing very well.

“Where are they?”

“Baby, behind this wall. My son, at the end—” She goes into another fit of coughing.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll find them.” I grab my radio. “Neal is on the way out with a woman. Two kids inside. A baby and an older one.”

The captain radios that he’s on his way up.

I open the door to the room the woman pointed to and quickly locate the crib. The child inside it is wearing only a diaper. And he’s not moving. “Got the baby,” I yell into my radio as flashes of Leo go through my head. I scoop the baby into my arms. He starts moving, and relief flows through me when I realize he was only sleeping. I put his blanket over his head and run back to the stairs.

As I make my way downstairs and outside, the fire is moving closer to the second floor.

I hand the baby off to Debbe and Ryan and run back in to look for the other kid. Before I make it into the house, Bass comes out with a kid over his shoulder. He puts him on the gurney just as he comes to.

The kid, who can’t be more than fifteen, is disoriented and slurring his words, and the soot on his face makes his complexion appear a shade darker than his African-American skin.

The mother, who is watching over her baby, stops what she’s doing, rips the oxygen mask off her face, and accosts the teen. “This is all your fault! What were you doing? Smoking crack? Huffing paint?”

“What do you care?” the boy yells and tries to sit up. “You don’t give a shit what I do since Dad died.”

The woman pushes him back down. “You could have killed us.” She motions to the burning house. “Look what you did to our home.”

“Let it burn,” the kid says. “You hate that fucking house. We all do. Maybe his goddamn ghost will die with it, and we can all get on with our lives.”

I can’t help feeling sorry for the kid. He lost his father. I’m all too familiar with what it does to a child when they lose a parent.

I knew a lot of kids who lost a parent in 9/11. We all handled it differently. Fortunately, I was able to turn my grief into a career. Emma buried hers in boys. But more often than not, kids dealt with it by turning to drugs and alcohol.

We put the fire out quickly, and after a few hours of overhaul, we pack up our gear as the sun is rising. Before I get in the rig, I do something I rarely do—I talk to one of the neighbors who’d been watching from his front porch.

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