Pin-Up Fireman

CHAPTER SEVEN

Boyd’s aunt dropped him at the station about five hours later. He collapsed onto a chair at the large wooden dining room table, the heels of his hands over his eyes as he mentally shifted from scared dad to macho fireman. He took a deep shuddering breath and straightened. The crew had stopped their various chores to circle around him to ask about Matt. Someone set a cup of coffee in front of him. He gave a mock salute with it. “Thanks.”

After a couple sips, he sat the cup down and laced his fingers at the back of his head. “Matt has pneumonia. They’ve got him on oxygen and an IV of meds. He was sleeping when I left. My aunt’s going home for something to eat, to grab his favorite books and her crocheting. Do you know all the nurses in the ER know him by name? Isn’t that a damn sad state of affairs?”

Jace sat a sandwich in front of Boyd. “Thanks, Jace.”

“Sure. You gotta be emotionally beat. I go nuts when little Andy gets the sniffles and cries all night. My wife stays calm, thank God, because I fall apart. It’s gotta be doubly hard on you, playing both roles.”

This group of co-workers—sometimes pains in the asses, sometimes understanding siblings—were Boyd’s family. They understood the emotional stress he was under. “Did the EMT’s tell you how bad he looked when we got there?”

Ivy Jo rubbed her hands over his shoulders, massaging his tense muscles. “I told them, Tiny. He was weak as a puff of air. As soon as he saw you, his arms rose toward you. He adores his daddy. That much is clear.” She leaned over his shoulder to look into his eyes. “Tiny, we need to get him seen by a specialist in asthma and lung diseases. Want me to look online for some?” She spoke as if this little white boy was her son or nephew. Her genuine concern had Boyd dangling by an emotional thread.

He patted her brown hand and brought it to his lips for a kiss. “If you have the time, I’d really appreciate it. You sure Ryder won’t mind?”

“Ryder? You still dating that ugly, old, reprobate?” Quinn winked at her. “He’s not getting too frisky, is he?”

She planted a fist on her hip. “Do I ask you questions about your sex life? Don’t be prying into mine, which is just fine and double-dandy, by the way.”

Captain Steele exited his office and asked about Matt. The siren went off and the location of the fire announced. Half-eaten sandwiches in hand, fire personnel raced to the uniform rooms. How Quinn was able to get in his uniform and gear before anyone else, no one knew. As driver of the largest and newest fire truck, Quinn expected the men assigned to his apparatus to be onboard seconds after he was settled in the seat and revving the diesel engine. Heaven help you if he had to blow the horn and holler your name, because he would ride your ass until the next slow-moving fireman rose to the top of his shit list. His truck always had to be the first one out of the station.

Smoke rolled skyward as they turned onto an older residential street. The houses were so close together, the blaze had spread to the homes on either side of the building of the fire’s origin.

Boyd dragged the main hose to the fire hydrant farther up the street and, using a large wrench with a pentagon-shaped socket, opened the hydrant and made the connection. He opened the valve and ran to attach the hose to the fire engine, which used a powerful pump to boost the water presser and split it into multiple streams for numerous hoses.

Ivy Jo handed one off to Wolf who slung the hose over his shoulder and practically ran up the rungs of the ladder to reach the roof of the middle house. Boyd co-joined other hoses so more firemen could try their best to extinguish the fires on the nearby homes. Jace took a section and followed his brother Wolf up the ladder, too, in an effort to contain the blaze from the top down.

More fire trucks rolled in and hoses hooked up to distinguish the flames. Captain Steele ordered all the occupants of the houses and onlookers to stand across the street. He inquired until he found out who lived in each house. Had they gotten out safely? Did they have their kids and pets? One mother suddenly went ballistic and could be heard screaming above the din of machinery. Her son was missing. He was with her just a few minutes ago.

The captain spoke into his mouthpiece. “Boyd, got a missing boy. Ten years old. Lives in the middle house, his bedroom is upstairs, middle door on left. His mother thinks he went back inside for a ball glove.”

“On it. What’s his name?” Boyd grabbed a hose.

“Dustin. It’s his dad’s glove. He gave it to the boy to keep until he got back from Afghanistan.”

“Oh hell, of course he’d risk his life to retrieve it.” His Matt would do the same. Boyd flipped down his mask, turned on his oxygen and charged inside to the smoky pandemonium. The blast of heat hit him like a motherfucker. What was it doing to Dustin? Would he know enough to stay close to the floor?

Boyd raced up the steps, going as light on his feet as a giant like him could. He rounded the corner and there lay the boy on the floor. Boyd ran water over the walls and carpet surrounding the kid, not wanting to hit him full force with the hose, lest it take off any of his skin. This way it would soak into him. He reached into the bathroom and hosed down some towels and laid them over Dustin’s back before he scooped him off the floor. Sure enough, the boy clutched his dad’s baseball glove.

Speaking into his mouthpiece, he told the Captain he had the boy and he was still breathing, although unconscious. “On our way out. Have a stretcher and oxygen ready.”

About three steps down, Boyd’s boot broke through a step. On a twist and a roll, he maneuvered the kid on top of him when he landed. He jerked his boot out of the hole, but most of the old wood of the step came with it. Holding the kid and the hose took some finesse as he turned around so he could stand. Trouble was he was facing going up instead of going down and the soul of his foot hurt. His mood was going to hell in a hurry.

He backed down a few steps until he passed the solid wall and reached the banisters. At the next step, the board broke, forcing him onto the step he’d just vacated. The stairway was weakening. He kicked the banister free with his good foot and jumped to the floor with the kid, hoping like hell the fire hadn’t deteriorated the floor. The last thing he needed was for them to end up in the basement.

The floorboards cracked when his boots hit, splintered, broke and through the dust of a century or more of life. Boyd and the child he held close to his chest fell to the top of the washer and dryer in the basement. The jagged edges of the old lumber tore off part of his face gear. Pain shot through Boyd’s head, back and that damn step still clung to his boot. Fuck!

He rolled off the dented appliances and, limping, searched for an outside door. On the other side of the basement, concrete steps lead to locked double doors. Laying the kid aside, he checked his pulse and respiratory rate. Both were fair. Boyd snatched his ax from his utility belt and hacked his way out of the wooden portal. Once he had a hole big enough to pass Dustin through, he gave his position and handed the boy off to another firefighter. He made the hole bigger and pushed himself and his step buddy nailed to the bottom of his boot through the ragged hole he’d made.

Once he’d hobbled his way to the ambulance, he could hear Dustin’s mother giving the kid holy hell. Boyd stood beside her. “Ma’am, I know you’re upset because your son risked his life and is lucky to have survived. But your husband put him in charge of something.” He tipped his head toward the glove Dustin clutched to his chest. “He took the lessons of being responsible you’ve probably been drilling into him and knew he had to get that glove for his dad. Kids think differently than adults. They haven’t mentally matured the capacity to reason things through, they just react.”

She nodded and started to cry. “Yes, I know.”

“You’ve got a fine son, ma’am. He’s one to be proud of. He truly is.”

He hobbled away to the other ambulance and asked someone to remove the board from his boot. It was all he could do to keep from yelling a string of cuss words when the EMT pulled out the nail for it had gone through his boot into his foot.

“Take your boot off. Let me look at that hole. You up to date on your tetanus shots?” The older, barrel chested man gave him the stink eye which galled him even more.

“Aren’t we all? It’s a company requirement.” He removed his boot and blood ran out. “Put some antiseptic on it, a patch and wrap it up. Looks like we’ve got hours of work left here today.”

“If you think I’m letting you…”

Boyd grasped the old man’s shirt. “You have no freaking idea the day I’ve had already. Don’t give me a bunch of bullshit. Fix my foot so I can do my damn job.”

The old man yelled for the captain who took one look at Boyd’s foot and pointed to the ambulance where the boy was being cared for. They rode to the hospital together, an ice pack on Boyd’s face where the wood had ripped away part of his protective mask.

A shower, a salad and a glass of wine and Graci-Ella had unwound enough from her day at work to watch the news she always recorded on the TV. Tonight, local news topped national. A fire destroyed one house and did serious damage to two others. One fireman rescued a boy from a burning building, falling through the steps and floor to the basement in the process. The boy sustained minor injuries and was released. The fireman was hospitalized.

The camera panned on the kid who talked in a hoarse voice about this giant of a man who kept him safe as they fell through floors and then carried him out of the building. “He was like Superman, but with bigger muscles, and he kept telling me I was going to be okay. Sometimes he called me by my real name and sometimes he’d call me Matty. I think maybe he got hit on the head and was confused.”

She sat straight in her comfy chair. Matty? The man the kid boasted about had to be Boyd. How badly was he hurt? She thumbed through her cell phone numbers until she found Noah Steele, Station thirty-two. A press of her thumb to call, and he answered on the second ring.

“Captain Steele here.”

“This is Graci-Ella. I just heard about the fire today on the news. I record it every day so I don’t miss it.” Stop rambling. I sound moronic.

His smile almost filtered across the phone lines like a handful of glitter. “And you want to know if it was Tiny who was hurt and how bad his injuries were and what room he was assigned at Bay Care Health System?”

Lord have mercy. Is this man a mind reader?

She twirled a strand of damp hair around her finger. “Well…ah…I knew he had a rough day with his son. I was hoping it wasn’t him. I do have his number, but I didn’t know if he’d have his cell or be in any shape to talk.”

A slow chuckle crackled over the line. “I’m an old army dawg, honey. I don’t mince words, especially when I see an instant attraction between two people I like. He’s in room three-ten. Take him some snicker doodles from Westside Bakery. Remember, room three-ten.” He ended the call and she flew to her bedroom to put on some clothes.

She called the bakery to see if they were still open and did they have snicker doodles. Did they also have chocolate chip pecan cookies and coconut macaroons? She ordered a dozen of the kind Boyd liked and a dozen mixed for herself. A change from her pajamas to red shorts, a white tank top over a red bra and red sneakers, as well as a quick make-up job, a spritz of perfume and she was out the door.

The hospital elevator stopped on the third floor and she made a turn, following the corridor toward Boyd’s room. Was she chasing after this guy like some needy female? He talked as if he was really into her, but was he? After all, they’d only met a few days ago. She glanced at the bag of boxed cookies. My God, she’d even gone out of her way to bring him his favorites. But, what if Captain Steele was teasing her, trying to make a fool of her? What if Boyd absolutely hated their cookies? She chewed her bottom lip; better to take them to work tomorrow and set the cookies out in the lunch room. Except, few of her co-workers would appreciate them. That was the thing.

She leaned against the edge of the open door to three-ten, working up the courage to peek in. If he was asleep, she’d just leave the cookies and run. Slowly she leaned around the doorjamb and peered in. His eyes were closed. His face was patched on one side. As quietly as she could, she set the bag on his nightstand and turned to leave. A wrist snaked out and grabbed her forearm.