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

On that chilly morning, the fire was already well underway by the time we rolled up to the scene.

Right before breakfast, we’d gotten a call that a fire was tearing through a nearby homeless encampment. These types of fires were always brutal; the flammability of their tents and the clustering of them made short work for a persistent blaze to power through, and left only devastation in its wake.

The second the apparatus was parked, we all exploded into action. As a probie, Garrett had adapted well to the process, though he still took direction from me more than anyone - a fact which clearly chafed against Liam, as one of the more senior firemen on the crew. But there wasn’t any time to fight about it, as the plumes of smoke and violent crackling of the fire meant there wasn’t time for anything except water, and lots of it.

Though it had been raining on and off all night, it hadn’t been enough to put a dent in the fire. We took our lines from the truck and moved quickly to spray the flames down as police officers and EMTs had spilled onto the scene. At the sight of a news van, I glared; I resented the presence of journalists during a call because they really never knew when to keep out of the damn way. All of them were just a bunch of glorified rubberneckers.

While soaking down the remaining embers, I glanced at one of the reporters on scene. I wasn’t really paying attention to her perfectly rehearsed speech, but her voice came across clearly and powerfully even over all of the calamity. The longer I watched her, the more I was impressed by how fluidly she moved throughout the scene with her long, straight legs. She was, admittedly, a little hypnotizing.

“Look how short her skirt is,” said Liam as we switched to cleanup. “It’s like thirty degrees out here!”

DeShawn elbowed Garrett in the ribs. “Hey, Gooch— you should go try your luck with her. Girls can’t get enough of a guy in uniform! Bet you’ll get her number in five seconds flat.”

“I mean… she’s at work, and so am I.” Garrett’s discomfort was palpable. “I don’t think—”

“What are you, gay?” Liam interjected. “’Cause you sound fucking gay right now. Should we call you Gayrett instead?”

DeShawn cackled, as did Rob, who’d come by just recently enough to overhear the conversation. Garrett, however, wasn’t remotely amused; rather than laughing along as he usually did, he glowered. Heather and I shared an uneasy look towards one another, but neither of us said a thing.

After exchanging words with both the police officers and Chief Cormorant, the reporter carried on towards a group of homeless people who’d been barred from the scene for their safety. She angled the microphone toward a man in a Dallas Cowboys hoodie, his face obscured by shaggy hair and a thick beard. I turned my attention back to cleanup, but was immediately drawn back in when I heard yelling.

“Leave me the fuck alone!” The man shouted, a mighty roar against the commotion of everyone else’s presence. “I lose everything— everything I have that isn’t strapped to my back— and you want to put my pain on TV? Just another sob story for your newsreel? Fuck you!”

The reporter swiveled back, but she was clearly unfazed. “Sir, we’re just covering the story—”

“Fuck you! All you motherfuckers watching this— you’re gonna watch this, talk about how oh, it’s such a damn shame, and it’s so fucking sad, and then you’re gonna turn right back around into your cozy fuckin’ homes and pretend we don’t exist the second these cameras are off!” He shouted again. “Fucking assholes! Do something useful for once in your lives and fuck off!”

Sensing a potential escalation, I headed over closer to try and intervene, but within a few feet of them I stopped dead in my tracks.

I pulled off my helmet and looked at the man. When his gaze met mine, he did an actual double-take, staring like he’d been shocked by a live wire.

His eyes. Such dark, dark eyes.

Immediately, the man bolted away and got lost in the crowd, escaping so quickly that there was no way I could hope to catch up to him. Even if I’d followed my instinct to run after him, I couldn’t; my limbs felt heavy and leaden, made worse by my turnout gear weighing me down.

The reporter was quick to convince the police not to do anything, especially since he’d left without hurting anyone. By now, Cormorant had sent Garrett over to break me from my trance, and I simply followed him back to the truck without explaining myself. What could I even say?

For the rest of the ride back to the station, I was on autopilot, thoroughly and completely unraveled. I knew that around me, the guys were joking and laughing about the call, the reporter, Garrett, the Chief - but it was like I wasn’t even there. Truthfully, I wasn’t.

I was back in Afghanistan again, all those years ago.

･ ･ ･

I reach up to wipe away my tears, but my hands are still wet with his blood.

I tear the dog tags off of his neck. They're still warm.

Suddenly, from the distance, I hear a shout: “Manny!”

I follow the voice and see that Raja is running back to me.

He's so far away, he seems like a mirage: hazy, quivering, unreal. Before he reaches us, a bullet strikes through his knee like an act of God.

He hits the dirt with a scream. My body moves faster than my mind does.

On the ground, Raja chokes out a sob. His knee is a mess of red flesh; there’s no way he can walk on it. When I look at him, his eyes are wet with tears.

“Go,” he says. His breath is shaky on the exhale. “Manny, please, leave me…”

I can't bear to have more blood on my hands.

With all my strength, I haul Raja onto my shoulders and pray that my feet don’t fail me now.

･ ･ ･

Throughout the rest of the day, I shambled around the station in a zombie-like daze. I wasn’t incoherent, but I felt torn in two, divided by my past and my present.

It couldn’t have been him; I was never big on math, but the odds had to have been a million to one. I racked my mind for the scraps I remembered about him, the painful little details I’d left to rot in the corners of my brain, all to convince myself I’d seen a ghost and nothing more.

Yet I couldn’t stop returning to the most pressing question of all: if it wasn’t Raja, why did he run?

In an effort to make myself too tired to even dream, I made a late night visit to the gym, a time when no one else thought to use it. I preferred being alone in there whenever possible; I just wasn’t in a mood to deal with Liam’s competitions, Rob’s betting or DeShawn being swept up in both of these activities. In a way, I was grateful for Garrett’s presence at the station because it meant that the guys finally had someone else to drag into this shit.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

When I’d finished a few miles on the treadmill, the station had fallen into an eerie lull. My insomnia had become such common knowledge that no one questioned why I didn’t retire around the same time that everyone else did. Rather than draw further attention to myself, I let them assume it was simply how I was wired - it seemed like a more dignified answer than the truth.

Careful to keep my footsteps light and quiet, I slipped through the dark halls, flipping off unnecessary lights wherever I went. When I reached the kitchen, I stumbled upon Garrett, sitting at the table with a training manual cracked open mid-chapter. Rather than studying, he was winding and unwinding a blue yo-yo like he was in a completely different world. Just as he yawned, I spoke up.

“Getting some study time in before bed?” I asked.

“Oh, shit!” Garrett jostled violently in his seat before turning to face me. “Manny! Hey! Wow, I did not see you there.”

“Sorry… my mamá always said I walked too quiet, like a cat.” I came into the kitchen and took a seat beside him at the table. “You seem tired.”

“Yeah, well, I am.” Once the shock had worn off, he yawned again. “Well, not just tired, but that’s mostly it.”

Sensing there was more to the story, I tilted my head, curious. “Everything good with you, man?”

The longer I looked at him, the more I noticed just how worn out Garrett seemed. His skin was paler than usual, more sallow than its typical pink, and his lips were dry and cracked. Across his eyes, his hair fell forward like he’d just rolled out of bed.

After he was quiet for a while, Garrett took in a deep breath, then let it escape slowly. He took his hand, which had been clutching his yo-yo tightly, and rested it on the table.

“I’m just tired of all the constant bullshit,” he said. “I get it, you know, I’m the probie so I’m lowest on the food chain, but… shit, it’s nonstop around here. Feels like there isn’t even time to work, they’re always fucking with me.”

I frowned. “The guys been hazing you that bad?”

“Well, just this last week, they dumped half a pound of flour on my head, they fed me mayonnaise filled donuts, they put shaving cream in my boots— which screwed them up so bad I had to waste a hundred dollars on new ones—” Garrett’s cheeks reddened as he raised his voice. “God, they even dumped all my socks in Vaseline, put Googly eyes on them and chased me around calling them my ‘girlfriends’! Does it ever fucking stop?”

“Jesus…” All I could do was cringe on his behalf. “Yeah, I had my fair share of that when I first started out, too. Try not to take it too personally.”

“Hard not to take it personally when I’m the only one getting my ass whipped by towels all the time.” He sighed again, an indescribable look of disappointment on his face. “This isn’t really what I thought it’d be, you know?”

Under the weight of my sympathetic gaze, the frustration in Garrett’s features softened, as if he were lowering his defenses. He leaned back against his chair until it made a pained squeak, his arms crossed tightly against his chest.

“I thought there’d be more to being a firefighter than just being fucked with relentlessly.” As he spoke, his anger turned to bitterness. “Today was one of the few days where it actually felt like the job I thought it would be, and I was still being pushed around all day. Nothing but joke after joke, and I’m always the punchline. Always. Nothing ever changes.”

I scratched my chin thoughtfully. “You can always change stations—”

“It’s just gonna be the same shit everywhere I go! No matter where I work, no matter who I’m with, it’s always just— always the same fucking shit!” He interrupted. Noticing my surprise, he seemed embarrassed by his own outburst and sighed. “I’m sorry, Manny, it’s just…”

In his pause, Garrett looked as if he were at confession, like whatever storm was brewing in his mind was a shameful one. Finally, he let out another sigh.

“Ever since I was in middle school, I’ve gotten bullied— a lot. And any time I tried to talk to my teachers or my parents about it, nobody took me seriously. Nobody believed me, ‘cause ‘boys will be boys.’” His sarcastic air quotes held a deep seated resentment - more than he likely intended to let on. “And the other kids treated me like a snitch, so they’d give me more shit. It got so bad that for the last three years of high school, I’d throw up every day before school, I was so anxious.”

Though I kept my expression in a compassionate stillness, I had to admit that it didn’t surprise me. Goody two-shoes like Garrett were always first to be chewed up and spat out, though I was proud of him for not letting it ruin him. In a way, he reminded me of dandelions in sidewalks, sprouting rebelliously in spite of their circumstances.

“I remember when I graduated, I was so excited to never deal with that stuff again, ‘cause everyone said that people didn’t do that in ‘the real world,’” he continued. “Maybe it was stupid of me, but I thought people would be even less likely to do it in a job like this where actual lives are on the line.”

I truly couldn’t figure out what to say; I was never very good with words. “That sucks. Like for real, man, it does. I’m sorry.”

His frown deepened, but it didn’t seem directed at me. “When I got into the academy, I thought we’d really be making a difference in people’s lives. But no— instead, I’m going to house calls ‘cause some kid made his microwave explode or a guy took too much Viagra and got stuck in his wife. And then when we’re done, I’m right back here where they’re hot gluing the legs of my pants shut and calling me Gooch.”

“I can’t say that’s their best work,” I said. “Honestly, me and Heather aren’t really big on all that stuff. They’ve tried to rope her into it, but she just isn’t that kind of gal, you know? Not really ‘one of the guys’ so to speak.”

“Yeah, well, even Heather joins in sometimes.” His jaw clenched in frustration. “I thought she was cool at first, but…”

“Ah, give her some time, you’ll be fine.” I took a moment to crack a few joints in my arms as I stretched. “The guys are hopeless, though. You’ll be better off giving up on them now.”

Another sigh from Garrett. He leaned forward on the table and put his face in his hands, pulling them back through his hair and hanging his head. When he lifted up his face to look at me, he looked so tired, I expected him to fall asleep if he sat still long enough.

“Can I ask you something?” Garrett asked. “Why did you become a firefighter?”

I crossed my arms, leaning them against the table. “Just seemed like a natural extension of my time in the military.”

He took his yo-yo back into his hand and began unwinding and rewinding it rhythmically at the side of his seat. “How so?”

“Well, for starters, the hazing culture is pretty much the same,” I said. “But I joined the military ‘cause at the time, I was just like you: I thought I’d be doing cool stuff and making a difference. In retrospect, I was a stupid kid with no idea of the gravity of what I was signing up for.”

“Yeah?” His tone grew softer, and he stopped unreeling his yo-yo. “You mean ‘cause the Iraq war was kinda fucked up?”

“All wars are fucked up.” I shut my eyes, trying to will myself not to think of the dreams I was doomed to meet the second that I slept. “I don’t really want to talk about it too much, but my point is that you have this idea of what you’re going to do, and the reality can be pretty sobering. And I think the same is true for working in the service.”

Garrett kept quiet as he listened to me. In his hands, he had continued to play with his yo-yo, the gears in his head shifting.

“You just need to remind yourself why you wanted to do this,” I continued. “Don’t think about stupid pranks or what the guys are saying about you. You are making a difference. You’re saving lives and you’re making the world a better, safer place every day. And in the end, that’s what matters— it’s the only thing that matters.”

By now, Garrett had been so quiet, it was less like a conversation and more like I was giving a motivational speech. I wasn’t sure what would make him feel better, so I retreated back within myself, letting silence fill the air to give him space to say his piece.

When he had seemingly nothing else to say, I moved to stand up from the table. Then, Garrett finally broke the silence. “If you could start all over,” he said quietly, “would you do it again?”

I paused. His eyes were so soulful; I felt as if I held his future in the balance, a sign to guide him down a certain path. I tried not to overstate the importance I played in the lives of others, but there was something in his face that struck a chord in me.

But I didn’t know what answer he was looking for. My job defined me, but it came at a cost: I’d seen enough awful things throughout the years that even when I avoided dreaming of Feliz, other gruesome scenes would worm their way into my head. There were times where I felt that all I was good for was soaking up atrocities, and I was getting close to my limit.

And yet I couldn’t bring myself to be so honest with Garrett, even if it might change his mind about firefighting and save him grief down the road. It was a battle of his dreams versus my nightmares, and I didn’t want to be the one to snuff out his candle, that yearning little light.

“In a heartbeat,” I lied.

Judging by Garrett’s face, it was exactly what he needed to hear. His relief was clear, and he smiled hopefully at me. I smiled back, but it felt so flat on my face, it couldn’t have possibly come across as sincere.

“Don’t give up,” I said firmly. “And don’t let these pendejos bother you, alright? They’re all stunted, anyway.”

Swinging my towel back across my shoulders, I stood from the table and gave Garrett a pat on the shoulder. As I did, his gaze fell upon my hand before slowly trailing up to my face, his eyes glinting with inspiration.

Letting out a yawn of my own, I motioned my head towards the clock. “I think you’re in the clear to go to bed by now, probie.”

“I sure hope so.” He rubbed his eyes in exhaustion. “Bet they’ll find other ways to mess me up before morning…”

“Guaranteed,” I sighed in agreement. “But at least if you wake up early enough, you’ll catch them before they put scorpions in your boots.”

Garrett froze in the middle of stacking a couple of books together. “… They wouldn’t.”

“You’re right, they wouldn’t.” I waved a hand, smirking. “They already know you’re gonna check your boots every time after the shaving cream thing.”

“Hm…” He wrinkled his nose in irritation as he finished collecting his materials. “Well, anyway… sleep well, Manny.”

As he passed me through the doorway, I nodded at him. “You too, man.”

And then there I was, alone in the kitchen, with only the ceiling light acting as a beacon in the center of darkness. When I glanced back down at the table, all that was left behind was that little blue yo-yo, unwound.