15 minutes before Transference.
There is nothing like being in a burning building. Flames roll overhead, and you descend into the eerie calmness that waits for all those who walk the knife's edge between life and death. Even after all his years in the service, Tilly still felt most like himself in this place. Doing what few others could.
They were on primary search of the building and his rookie had just cleared the last room in the basement when a terrible moan reverberated through the joists above. The 'Orange Shield' froze in a doorway looking up at the growing flames in confusion. He had probably never heard the sound of a building collapsing from the inside. This is where he would either fall in love with this job, or quit.
Tilly remembered his first fire, the feeling of stepping into a new world, one painted in orange and red. He had forced himself to move one step at a time in the pitch-black smoke as they searched for and eventually found the seat of the fire. Every man or woman in this profession faces a moment like this. All the noise, all the talk burns up in that flame, and all that is left is your training and discipline. Everything you think you know about yourself is tested, and you find out who you are when your choices can kill one of your brothers or sisters on the line next to you.
Tilly gave the rookie one more second, waiting for him to conquer his fear and remember his training... but he just stood there, filling the doorway like a mannequin masquerading as a firefighter, as he continued to look up at the groaning ceiling.
That’s it, times up.
Tilly grabbed him roughly by the strap of his Air-pack, and pulled him close, facepiece to facepiece.
“Get moving kid,” Tilly growled, he shoved the panicked rookie towards the stairs leading up from the basement and out of the collapsing building.
The moaning from above crescendoed into a terrible splintering sound like a man with pneumonia finally coughing up his last breath. Both men were now rushing towards the stairs in a crouch to keep the heat off their heads as they covered the distance as fast as possible.
The rookie made it to the stairs and scaled them in a few bounds, showing none of his previous hesitation. But Tilly stopped short, some niggling feeling tugged at his subconscious and he turned to take one last look down the darkening hallway. Then he saw it, ten feet down the hall to the right. A small side door, probably a closet they had missed, opened on its own and a terrified tear-stained face peeked out from the bottom of the opening.
Tilly's stomach turned to stone, and his limbs went heavy as the ceiling slowly collapsed under the weight of the collapsing timbers above it.
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It was already too late...
Even if he got to her, she wouldn't survive the smoke and flames on the way out.
While his mind struggled to process through his lack of options, his body was already moving. At this point, he was limited to a crawl toward the closet to keep the heat off him. He reached the door as the sounds of the building's collapse thundered to a conclusion of shattered drywall and splintered joists. In a flash decision, he pushed her back from the door and dived in, jamming the door shut behind him.
In the dark cramped space, he could barely hear her coughing between weakening sobs, and then the staticy crackle of his radio blared into their flimsy haven.
“I repeat, all crews evacuate, there has been a collapse in the primary fire floor,” the radio droned.
Yeah, I noticed. Tilly thought wryly to himself as he took a deep breath and keyed up his radio.
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Command, this is Firefighter Tillman, I have a victim in the basement near the A side of the building. We are sheltering in place, and will be conserving oxygen.”
He turned and his jacket light lit up her face. She was staring at the heated door in shock, her eyes slowly glazing over. Tilly knew she was probably experiencing CO poisoning and made another flash decision. He was bigger and had breathed clean air more recently, so if anyone had a chance to survive the exposure... it was him.
He took a few last deep breaths into his mask, before taking it off and putting it over her face. It only took seconds for the cloying smoke that was seeping through the cracks in the doorway to invade his unprotected airway.
“It's ok Sweetie *cough*.
"This *cough* will help you feel better *cough*. "
He stuttered out as he tightened the straps around the back of her head on either side of her little ponytail.
When he turned her now limp head back towards his light he saw that she had passed out under the mask and figured it was for the best. He coughed a few more times, and fogginess began to set in. His thoughts came to him more slowly, as if billowing through his mind on a lazy cloud of smoke.
Why did it have to be a little girl?
His mind began to wander, and he was taken back unwillingly to that flat, gray Wednesday afternoon when he had finally said goodbye to his daughter after her long fight in the hospital. He could still feel her small cold hand going limp in his.
It wasn't going to be enough...He was failing all over again,
The lines between past and present slowly blurred along with his vision and there was suddenly no difference for him between that sad Wednesday so many years ago, and this one.
“It's OK Emma, *Cough* it's ok.” He mumbled as he took off his jacket in the growing heat and draped it over her curled-up form. His arms felt like they had been filled with cement and he distantly heard his radio crackling. Little cinders fell from above to sear his shoulders, but the sharp pain felt distant and unimportant for some reason.
“Tilly!...5 minu… old on!”
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