image [https://i.imgur.com/S3yUexW.png]

The next day I was back at work, and after the rest of the crew had gone to bed, I was still wide awake. By now, I had resigned myself to sleeplessness, and made use of the spare time it gave me to go over the case file.

As I finished my last note, the station’s alarm system broke apart the silence I’d been sitting in. Jumping up from my seat, I ducked out of my room to join the rest of the crew, who shambled with a sluggishness that proved I really was the only one still awake at this hour. We didn’t bother speaking amongst ourselves - there’d be plenty of time to talk when we were on our way to the scene.

Suited up and headed out, once we were in the apparatus, everyone was still yawning and rubbing the sleep from their eyes as Chief Cormorant got the low-down on the details of the call. From the sounds of it, it was almost certainly a drunk driving accident, given that it was a Saturday night.

“Ugh, what do you bet it’s some dumb kids?” Liam tilted his head back against his seat. “I swear, half the time if it’s a car crash past midnight, kids are involved. Doesn’t anybody try to actually raise their kids right anymore?”

“When I was younger, my mom would read me the riot act if I got home five minutes late! Past midnight, though?” Heather let out a disapproving hum. “Trust me, they’d have never found my body.”

The crew began to debate child-raising techniques, which was precisely the moment I checked out. I had nothing worthwhile to add, since I didn’t have any kids, and the last time I’d mentioned Cleo, they made it clear that she didn’t count. It was better just to keep to myself.

When we finally arrived, it was a grisly sight: a sedan had smashed into the side of an SUV so powerfully that it resembled a broken down piñata. It was the kind of wreck that needed another crew of firefighters to help out, accompanied by two ambulances and some police officers to survey the damage and redirect traffic.

Chief Cormorant had a quick debriefing with the other firefighters on site, and a game plan was created quickly. Our team was assigned to the sedan while the other crew tended to the SUV, and now that the responsibilities had been divided, we sprang into action.

As Rob and Heather worked the Jaws through the sedan’s roof, DeShawn and Liam tied a couple of ropes to the doors on the opposing side to make access for the patients inside. Garrett and I stood at the sidelines, preparing to assist the patients once we had enough room to get in. It wasn’t going to take long, since the car was utterly FUBAR already.

The second the roof had been pulled back, the world around me quieted. I heard Rob and Heather reassuring the young man on the passenger’s side, but I couldn’t really make out what they were saying.

The inside was worse than the outside, with shattered glass stained in the blood of the passengers. The young man - really more of a boy than a man - was barely able to string along a few words, while the girl in the driver’s seat was completely out cold. Immediately, I zoned in on her.

Even in the dark of the night, with only the flashing lights of the trucks to provide clarity, I could see just how young and fragile she was; she couldn’t have possibly been older than sixteen. The curls that framed her sweet little face were matted with blood from the cut on her cheek, and her dark brown eyes were half-lidded and empty.

Once we’d made access, I crawled into the car to perform CPR while Rob and Heather took care of the boy. Though he was clearly under the influence of something, when he saw me climb into the car beside the girl, he started screaming and wrestling against Rob’s grip.

“Araceli!” He cried, his voice cracking. “Oh my God!”

“Honey, we’ve got it from here, okay?” said Heather calmly. “We’re gonna make sure she’s okay. Hey— sweetie, listen to me. Listen to me. Let’s get you to the paramedics—”

“Let me go! Please!” The boy’s face became wet with tears. “I need to see her— let me fucking go! She’s bleeding! Araceli!”

“Mijo, look at yourself. You’re bleeding, too.” Rob kept his grip firm and steady. “Tiene que venir con nosotros a la ambulancia…”

Beside me, Liam motioned with his head for me to enter. “Manny, get on it. She isn’t looking so hot.”

Silently, I nodded. The pain in the boy’s voice reverberated in my head as I placed my hands atop the girl’s chest and began pushing rhythmically. Underneath me, her ribs crunched and cracked as each violent press into her sternum became more pointless than the last, yet I kept going, even when the sweat dripped down my forehead.

The girl’s skin was pale and ashen, and a familiar, distant glassiness clouded her eyes. The harder I pressed into her, the more crazed and desperate I felt, as if I were prying her away from death itself. That was when the awful, itchy tingling rose up through my chest and flowed down my arms, and my arms burned like my muscles had torn.

“Let's get her up here,” said one of the paramedics as he brought over the stretcher. Liam and DeShawn assisted him in hoisting the girl onto the stretcher while I chased after her pulse, the buzzing throughout my body powering me to go on for what felt like forever. I’d never been able to perform CPR for so long before, and it took Liam’s hand against my back for me to snap out of my focus.

“Manny,” he said quietly, “I think you can stop now.”

It killed me to admit it, but he was right. Despite my hesitance, I lifted my arms away from her.

Without speaking, I moved so that Liam and the paramedics could bring her to the stretcher. The second that I’d stopped, Liam overtook the CPR, bouncing relentlessly into the girl’s chest as she was wheeled away to the ambulance.

While we’d been fighting for the girl’s life, the boy had been nearly inconsolable, arguing loudly with everyone who came near him. From several feet away, I saw Garrett go over to check on him, only for the boy to leap forward and attack him. The paramedics restrained him immediately after, but the boy’s pain was so infectious, I had a hard time holding such an outburst against him.

By the SUV, firefighters from the other crew had successfully extracted the other patient, who was in a much less dire state. It was an elderly man, and from the fragments of conversation that I caught, the sedan had come plummeting into the side of his car without any warning at the intersection. All he came away with was mild whiplash and some bruising, a stark contrast to the gory mess in the sedan.

I glanced over at the ambulance where they’d taken the girl, and through its doors I watched as they strapped her to the gurney to prepare for their trip to the hospital.

It was a hopeless endeavor, but on the off chance that God was taking requests tonight, I prayed for her to make it.

･ ･ ･

While we drove back to the station, the rest of the crew resumed their usual chatter while I lost myself in thought.

“… anyone else notice…”

The sharp shock I’d felt at the girl’s face had now become a general sense of grief. For the most part, I could compartmentalize my emotions when I was on call, but something about that girl stuck with me. When I closed my eyes, I could still see hers, and I realized she was now doomed to join the collection of ghosts I carried with me from past calls. How many I could carry before I split apart at the seams?

“… big-ass … nest … outside…”

With these images running through my mind, the idea of trying to sleep when we returned struck me as a joke, but it wasn’t as if there was anything better to do. At times, I felt punished by my insomnia beyond just the pain of exhaustion.

“… just use…”

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Though I hadn’t been the most compliant patient, weren’t therapy and medication supposed to make me better, not worse? Maybe the time was at hand to try heavier-hitting stuff, but that would mean being forthright with Chief Cormorant about what was going on, unless there was stuff that worked that didn’t show up on drug tests. Knowing my luck, the only medication to help me would be shit like horse tranquilizers.

“… Manny?”

“Huh?” I blinked, my eyes never having felt this dry before.

“We’re here,” said Heather, who had been in the middle of taking off her gear. “You wanna come out of the truck, or do you find it cozy in there?”

I blinked again, stunned that I’d been so checked out, I hadn’t noticed we’d even stopped. Smiling uneasily, I followed Heather out, eager to escape the crushing weight of my gear. While we all got undressed, Rob and DeShawn talked sports while Liam and Heather were going on about a TV show I’d never even heard of.

Garrett, like me, stayed quiet, likely because of the massive punch he took to the face. He was the first to undress completely, slipping away from the crew right after. Judging from everyone else, I was the only one to notice.

Once we’d all gotten our gear stored away, we split up, with most of the crew deciding to catch up on what little sleep there was left to grab. I wasn’t even going to pretend like that was a realistic option, so I dug around for an energy drink in the fridge to compensate.

Just as I took a sip, I noticed a shadow coming from under the door that led to the dumpsters outside. Stepping forward towards it, I listened closely to see if it was anything suspicious. When I heard nothing, I opened it anyway just to satisfy my curiosity, only for Garrett to tumble backwards from behind it. His head slammed against the kitchen tile, and he dropped something he’d been holding.

“Fuck!” He barked, eyes squeezed shut. “Ugh— God damn it…”

“What the—” I jumped back, a little startled. “The hell are you doing out here?”

“Would you just leave me alone for five fucking—” Upon seeing me, Garrett went quiet. I could feel him lower his defenses, and the white-hot anger on his face gave way to a tired frustration. He snapped back into an upright position and then he sighed, pressing the ice pack back up to his face.

“Hey, man, I’m sorry,” I said gently. “Everything good with you?”

“I’m fine. I just wanted to be alone,” he replied. “That’s all.”

At the sight of his frown, I couldn’t help but soften. “I get it. That was a pretty rough call. You, um… you want to talk about it?”

Garrett flattened his mouth as if he wanted to turn me away, but then scooted off to the side to make a place for me beside him.

Once I’d shut the door behind us, I slid down the wall to sit with him underneath the soft, honeyed glow of the flood light. After we’d sat there for a couple of minutes in silence, Garrett let out another sigh, but this one came out more like a grunt.

“I’m really starting to feel like no good deed goes unpunished,” he said grimly. “I didn’t even say anything to that kid, right? I was talking to the paramedics! But he got all fucking crazy at me when he saw them take that girl to the ambulance. Like, what the fuck, why was he blaming me? And— God, he hit me so hard, I thought he broke my jaw!”

“Yeah? Here—” I motioned for him to remove the ice. “Let me see the damage, chico.”

Without argument, Garrett obeyed, revealing the sizable bruise blooming on the crook of his jaw. To check the swelling, I ran the pad of my thumb over it; even though he winced, he didn’t knock my hand back.

“Mm, he got you good,” I said. “That’s definitely gonna get worse before it gets better.”

“I know that,” he grumbled, his eyebrows flat across his forehead. “You think this is the first time I’ve been punched in the face?”

“Yeah? You in some kind of illegal boxing rings I should know about?” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “Should I start calling you Rocky?”

Clearly unamused, Garrett let out a huff and kept the ice pack to his face. While we sat together in the dead of the night, I stared up at the stars in the sky, which had no hope of competing with the ever-burning lights of the Dallas horizon. Once he repositioned his ice pack, Garrett turned to look at me.

“You know, when I was a kid, I dreamed of being a firefighter,” he said quietly. “I thought it’d be just like being a superhero.”

Under the flood light, the harsh shadows gave Garrett’s face a maturity it usually lacked, washing out the rosiness of his cheeks and turning his eyes to a stark, bitter green. I gazed at him in sympathy.

“When I was in middle school, I read comics all the time,” he continued. “The X-Men, Superman, Batman— I read Marvel, DC, even some indie stuff. I loved all of them. I wanted to be just like them, ‘cause they helped people, and no one ever tried to push them around.”

“I’m pretty sure the Joker wanted to push Batman around.” I scratched my chin. “Not to be, uh… what’s the word?”

“Pedantic?” Garrett stared at me flatly, a single eyebrow raised.

I pointed at him. “Bingo.”

He rolled his eyes. “You get what I’m saying, though. They did cool stuff, they saved people… and…”

Breathing deeply, Garrett trailed off. He took the ice pack away from his face, and the condensation had left his skin a little wet. He dried it off with the back of his hand and rested the ice pack to the ground as if he were defeated.

“They never had to take anyone’s shit.” His bitterness was now sharpened to a fine point. “But it feels like all I do is take people’s shit. I’m sick of it. I don’t feel like a hero— I feel like a punching bag. Literally.”

“Should’ve read the job description more clearly,” I replied. “Right under ‘requirements’, it says: ‘Must be able to take an ass-whooping.’ Common probie mistake is not reading the fine print.”

He snorted dismissively. “Guess so.”

Again, things went quiet between us. Despite my efforts, I obviously wasn’t making Garrett feel much better. Maybe he’d had enough jokes for a lifetime, and I was only making things worse by keeping things so surface-level. I knew I should say something, but my tongue felt stiff in my mouth, bound by a limited vocabulary when it came to sensitive subjects. Still, for him, I wanted to try.

“I wasn’t really a hero tonight, either.” Closing my eyes, I bowed my head. “That girl… I could just see it in her eyes, when I was doing CPR. Felt the life leave her body. I knew she was gonna be a DOA, but… I still feel like I failed her.”

Garrett’s face was a blank screen, absent of any emotion. If he hadn’t swallowed a lump down so audibly, I’d have thought he felt nothing at all.

“You’re gonna have a lot of calls where you fail to save the day. And people will hold you responsible for it, even when it was completely out of your control.” I laced my fingers together in my lap. “Sometimes people will even think you’re the bad guy. That happens a lot if you use Narcan on people who’ve overdosed. If you think that kid hit you hard, you haven’t seen junkies when you wake ‘em up from a fatal high. Liam lost a molar that way.”

Garrett frowned. “This isn’t much of a pep talk.”

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’m not trying to give you a pep talk. I’m telling you that…”

I had to pause for a moment; behind Garrett’s eyes was such a burning sincerity, I felt guilty that he’d chosen my footsteps to follow, but it only motivated me more to change. For a few seconds, I breathed in as deep a breath as I could.

“You’re not alone.” After I said it, I exhaled. “It’s a hard job, and I don’t want you to think you’re the only one that has a hard time with it. I know what you’re going through, Garrett. And if it helps you to hear it from someone else, then I’ll be the first to admit it.”

Whatever anger Garrett had been holding on to, he finally let it go. Immediately, my efforts were rewarded with the first real smile I’d seen on him since we’d gotten back, though it was small and tired. I couldn’t help but smile in return.

I stood up from the ground and, once I’d dusted myself off, I offered a hand to Garrett. “C’mon, enough of the depressing shit. Everyone else went to bed, so we get the rec room to ourselves— let’s put a movie on.”

Warmly, Garrett gazed up at me, though the swelling in his cheek made his grin a little lopsided. He took my hand, and I hoisted him up to his feet.

“Now that you mention it, I really want to watch one of the Batman movies now…” He mused, picking up the ice pack from the ground below.

“Uh-uh, it better not be that fuckin’ Nipple Batman one again.” I shook my head as I opened the door. “We’re watching the OG Rocky. Have you seen it? You’ll love it.”

“We can rock-paper-scissors for it!” He grinned. “Best two out of three?”

“Oh, you’re on—”

Just as we were about to enter the building, Garrett put his hand to my chest to stop me, and then pointed up upward. Hanging right off the flood light above was a wasp’s nest about the size of a basket. Because it was nighttime, there were no wasps coming or going, so the hive simply sat there in an eerie stillness.

“Ugh, gross,” he sneered. “Hey, hold on a minute.”

Garrett shoved the ice pack into my hands, and while I waited for him to come back, I stared up at the nest. With the way the wasps had built their hive around the light, it was shaped like a papery little heart, illuminated from the inside and showing all of its chambers. For some reason, it was a little hypnotizing, and I couldn’t bear to look away.

Shortly after, Garrett came back with a can of Raid. I didn’t have any time to speak before he pushed me away, shaking the can violently to prepare it for use. From the doorway, he shot the spray directly into the nest, and its structure began to weaken from the chemicals bleeding into its walls.

I knew that the wasps inside stood no chance, absorbing the poison as they lay dormant. In just a few hours, the nest would crumble, and instead of a home, it would be a tomb. I couldn’t explain why, but just the thought of it made my heart sink.

Garrett let out a triumphant bark of a laugh. “That’ll teach them! Right, Manny?”

When he looked at me with that big, beaming smile, he was clearly seeking my approval.

Instead, all I could do was stare.