THE DREAM, a firefighter story

　

　

　

 

The Dream

　

It was that one call—the call a firefighter dreads the most.

Later, John lay in his bed and relived it, over and over. And he went to sleep and dreamed of it, and woke up soaked through with sweat, then cried himself to sleep, and dreamed again.

Little Lucy came to him, all thirty-five pounds of her, snuggly and warm and soft in her pink fleece sleepers, with felt hearts glued all about the neck and shoulders. She crawled into bed next to him, and he sat up to hold her. Snuggling her silky head of honey-colored hair up against his chest, she put her hand on his belly, and he prayed that she didn’t feel it when his chest started to heave with his sobs, and tears streamed down his cheeks.

The other guys at the station had wanted to play cards that night, and they begged John to take a hand. But he was no card player. It bored him like almost nothing else, even more than sitting in church bored him. It made them mad, but he won out, to the sound of jeers and cursing, Ken yelling for him to just "go back to his cave and hibernate." And Pat said he didn’t dare play cards with real men anyway because it was a foregone conclusion that he would lose.

So John had returned to his room, where he made his last call of the evening to Jenny and the kids. Over the phone, they read together from the Scriptures, and then they took turns saying parts of a prayer, all five of them contributing a single piece, like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, which came together with that final middle piece that was always such a triumph: "Amen."

There was a Louis L’Amour novel on the shelf in his room, mixed in with the tomes of firefighting knowledge, the big red manuals teaching new firefighters how to use a ladder, how to roll a hose, how to dismantle a car involved in a rollover to get the victim out. He picked up the L’Amour and tried to read. It was a novel he had read as a young boy, and back then, when he was innocent, he had loved it. Now it bored him almost as much as the cards did, irritated him with its simplistic characters and the narrator’s boastful prose, and he finally set it down and read from a John Grisham novel instead, hooked from the very first page.

After the heart-wrenching, terrible call, John kept crying throughout the night. He couldn’t stop his tears. Lucy stayed with him for a long time, and his wife Jenny came to him several times and kissed him and told him it would be all right. Everything would be okay. After Lucy went to sleep, Jenny came and sat on the other side of him for a long time and held his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. The other two children, Luke and Sara, were asleep in their own beds. He wanted to get up and go see them, but he couldn’t disturb Jenny and Lucy, so he stayed in bed. And the emptiness enveloped him, and the tears welled up from inside and soaked the front of his shirt.

He dreamed a better dream when next he slept. He dreamed of Luke riding his bike for the very first time. He was such a young boy—and small even for his age. But yet he rode that bike! John embarrassed himself with the tears in his eyes as he watched that bike veer back and forth, going down the sidewalk in front of their house, his boy its only pilot. His grown-up five-year-old son. Luke had always picked things up quickly. The alphabet, his numbers, his reading. He had been reading for a year now. Obviously not John Grisham novels, but still . . . Dick and Jane was no crime, for a five-year-old.

Luke had black hair, and a mischievous smile. His lips were full and dark pink, his lashes long and curly. He was going to break a lot of hearts as he got older. His kindergarten teacher said he already had.

The dispatcher’s voice sounded frantic to John, waking him from a deep sleep. He had heard the tone alert first, but he had only been asleep for maybe an hour, lying there with the Grisham novel on his chest, and he was in the deepest part of exhausted sleep. His weight lifting routine that morning had been particularly strenuous, and before that, even before the beginning of his shift, he and Jenny had been to the gym and ridden the stationary bike for exactly an hour. A lady trainer who had been coming there with her clients for a while and had more muscular legs than his had inspired him to ride the bike, and he rode it with abandon, standing up for thirty-second stretches to pump the pedals at the bike’s highest degree of resistance. John was worn out.

So sleep came hard and deep, and the tone alert went off with its six irritating musical beeps, stirred him from the deepest sleep but confused him more than anything. Then the frantic tone of the dispatcher, Camille’s, voice began to register on his mind. She was usually calm and cool over the radio, speaking with a voice like honey, a voice that any red-blooded firefighter would be okay waking up to. This time it was different. And this time a second alarm went off for John, but this one was deep in the recesses of his brain . . .

Her words were jumbled, the call was confusing. There was a fire, heavy smoke at the front windows. There was no exact address, but the caller gave a home description and a street name, and they gave the cross street.

Numbly, knowing something was wrong but not grasping what, John followed the wave of firefighters into the apparatus room and stumbled to his turnouts. He had fallen asleep in his clothes, all but his uniform boots, and he didn’t bother to take the uniform off. It would get quickly soaked with sweat, but that was why he had always kept a spare uniform in his locker.

John’s captain, Evan, was staring at him with a strange, big-eyed look as they both scrambled into their bunkers. Trying to clear his blurry vision, John stared back. Then he dug his Nomex hood out of his pocket and snugged it down over his head to protect his neck and hair. He turned away from the strange look in Evan’s eyes as he shouldered into his turnout coat that, he noticed again with satisfaction, was growing tight across the chest and shoulders from the workout routine he had been doing for the last two years.

Grabbing his helmet, with the gloves tucked up inside it, John took the railing and heaved himself up into the back of the cab. He was conscious of Evan’s eyes still on him just before he disappeared.

John finally had to get out of bed. He forced himself to ease up out of the covers and ease Lucy’s head down on the mattress. She hardly even stirred. Jenny mumbled something, but it was incoherent, and when he whispered back to her there was no response.

He went to Sara’s room and with his hand resting on the door frame he watched her dark gray form in sleep. He could make out no detail, but he could see the lump of her six-year-old form, and he could hear her breathe. There was a time that Sara had been his shadow. She had gone everywhere with him, even if he had to go to the mechanic shop. It was enough just to be with him. She and Brute, their Doberman pinscher, would jump up every time they saw him rise, just in case he was about to embark on another adventure. And usually, before coming home, they would stop at Nancy’s Drive-Inn and get a Frostie–for John, for Sara . . . and of course for Brute. Brute always had to lap his up off the bed of the pickup, at least after the first time. The first time, Sara had been bound and determined to hand feed the then six-month-old pup with both its ears still flopped over like a hound. Before she was done, and ice cream was slopped all up and down her arm from his reckless tongue, and dog spit slimed her hand, Sara had determined that it wasn’t the wisest of plans to hold a Frostie in her hand in front of Brute.

John left the doorway and stepped into the room, clicking on Sara’s Winnie the Pooh lamp and sending soft light over her button nose and the smooth skin of her forehead. He bent and peeled down the covers so he could see her soft lips, and her little round chin, with her hands folded up under it as if in prayer. John sank onto his knees, watching her, and the eyes that he thought were now dry turned red again and rained down his cheeks until he could hardly breathe.

In the back of the fire pumper, there were three seats, one facing backward, and two forward. The other firefighter, Jason, always preferred to sit in the one facing backward, and John thought he was insane. His greatest day at the fire department was when they started buying new trucks with seats that faced forward in the back, for he got motion sickness, and those backward facing seats were merciless to him.

Camille had come over the radio again with an update, that there were flames coming from an upstairs window. This was the real deal. John had strapped his SCBA around his shoulders and was all buckled in and ready to fly from the truck. Suddenly, Jason reached across and put a hand on his knee. Jason, always smiling, wasn’t smiling now.

"You okay, buddy?"

Feeling dazed, John stared at him. "Sure. Sure, I’m okay. Sounds like a real one, huh?"

He thought he saw tears moisten Jason’s eyes, and his friend just sat there for a second, then dropped his hand from his knee and sat back to get himself buckled into his SCBA. "Yeah, bud. Yeah . . . it does."

Jason looked scared. His face seemed horribly pale, even in the dimness of the cab.

John felt his heart hammering. He felt sweaty, and his breath suddenly started to come very hard into his lungs, as if they were being crushed. He cursed himself. He had been a firefighter for eight years! Why should a routine fire call bother him? He had fought these a hundred times before. But . . . There were words ringing around in the back of his head, words he thought he might have heard but couldn’t quite make sense of. And names. The street names. Names he should know. After all, he knew this town better than anybody, from his former days as a cop on these same streets.

He had noticed throughout the drive that Ken was driving recklessly, taking corners at a speed these pumpers weren’t meant for. Ken was really on one tonight. He wasn’t known to drive like this. If John had been in Evan’s place he would have yelled at him to slow it down. They couldn’t save anybody if they never made it to the call. There was no call worth getting killed over on the way. Bar none. Even a call to a bad wreck, although it sounded heartless, did not merit breaking the sound barrier. What if you ran over someone on the way, or into someone–even another fire pumper or ambulance responding to the same call? It just wasn’t worth it. But for some reason John felt this numbness in his chest, in his hands, in his face. He felt powerless to speak, to yell at Ken to slow down himself if Evan was going to refuse to tell him.

John reached out and smoothed Sara’s hair down with his callused weight lifter’s hand. Tears streamed down his face, and the whole room was a blur, but Sara’s hair was in sharp focus. The lamp light lit it dimly, and its deep, nut-brown smoothness shimmered in that light. He bent and kissed her, then stumbled out of the room to feel his way down the hall to Luke’s bedroom.

Luke was going to be his buddy, his partner through all of his school years, his hunting partner, his dog training partner—for Luke loved Brute almost as much as he did. He had to get to his boy, had to hug him, had to feel his cheek against his. But when he got to the room and flipped on the light, Luke wasn’t in bed. The bed had not even been slept in! The covers were neatly tucked under the sides of the mattress, smoothed down over the pillow. John whirled around, trying to see if Luke had fallen asleep on the floor, or in his chair. Where was his boy?

He whirled from the room and back into the hall. There, at the far end of the hall, stood Jenny and their three children. Lucy was standing just in front of Jenny’s legs, leaning back against her, and Jenny had her hands on the shoulders of Luke and Sara. They were gazing at John with concern. He started slowly down the hall toward them. Everything else was a blur, and soon, the faces of his family began to blur as well. The longer he walked, the farther away they seemed to grow, and the blurrier their faces became, all but Jenny’s. Her face came clearer and clearer, and she opened her mouth to try to speak, but he could hear no words. And then her face began to blur as well, and like a cloud of smoke, all of them began to fade and disappear until he could see the wall at the end of the hall right through their images. They all raised their hands toward him, trying to reach him, but they were getting farther and farther and farther away.

John started running, but he was running at nothing. The hall was empty now.

Ken was driving like mad. Even the ambulance, which had been out when the call came in and had turned in from a side street and had been leading them, now pulled over and let the maniac that was Ken fly past them. Looking out the window at the houses that were flying past, John began to recognize where he was. This was his neighborhood. Someone he might know was in trouble! Someone from church, maybe.

His heart began to pound even harder, and he felt the strange rush of hot tears into his eyes. Jason was still staring at him, but when he looked over his friend quickly turned his eyes away and stared out the window. He already had the thermal imager in his hand, John noticed, and it was locked there in a death grip.

They rounded a corner, close to tipping the truck over, and the street was filled with smoke and people running like ants out of a kicked anthill. Jason flew out his door, and John reached numbly around him, looking for something, but he didn’t know what. He put his helmet on and tightened the strap, then his gloves, then jerked forward to pull the SCBA out of its clamps and threw open the door.

He could hardly breathe now. He felt like he was going to pass out. What was happening to him?

Then Evan was in front of him, and he was grabbing him by the shoulders. Someone was yelling something about people still trapped inside, and somebody was crying. Another voice was screaming.

Evan shoved John back against the truck. "I said STAY HERE!" The words registered on John, but he couldn’t stay there. He was a firefighter. It was what he did. How could he stay at the truck and let his friends fight a fire that he should be at too? Just because he was feeling a little sick?

With his hand still on John’s chest, Evan whirled about, and John heard him yell at someone. An officer drew near, and John heard Evan yelling at him to keep John there. The cop nodded, and Evan whirled away.

The cop turned and said something into his radio mike, and within half a minute another cop showed up beside him. John knew them both, but he didn’t speak. He was too busy trying to breathe.

He heard someone yell, "It’s going to come down! Put your streams on the other houses!"

It dawned on him that this was Evan’s voice.

A sense of urgency came to him, and he surged forward to the fight. But the officers were ready, and both of them grabbed him by an arm and shoved him back against the truck.

John looked past the open captain’s door, and the image of the burning house came into his vision. He stared at it with vague familiarity. Those windows where the flames were shooting out. He had seen them. He had been here. This was . . .

Someone screamed again, and the two cops turned to look at him with frightened eyes and grabbed his arms harder, shoving him up against the truck. The screaming continued, louder and more insistent, and John felt his throat burning. He realized the screams were coming from him!

He could hear glass breaking, voices screaming. Other fire engines had shown up, and two ambulances, and he saw the incident commander, his battalion chief, coming hurrying by. As he passed John’s engine, he turned and stared at him, then glanced at the two cops. He rushed on without a word, his face tight.

John saw a firefighter dragging a third hose toward the house stumble and fall. He stared at where the man had fallen and cursed. That careless boy, he thought. Why was it so hard? He had told him over and over and over again to put his things away. Money didn’t grow on trees! He always had to hold back a laugh when he said that, because he remembered his own father telling him the same thing. Money doesn’t grow on trees, son. You leave your things around and they can get stolen. Look at that bike! It’s just lying there on the sidewalk. Anyone could walk away with it!

That bike . . . Luke’s bike . . . On the sidewalk.

John looked up again at the silhouette of the house, now completely engulfed in flames. Fire streams were running everywhere, but mostly directed at the houses to either side of the fire house. The only stream shooting directly onto the big, two story house, was the master stream off their own pumper. Fortunately, this area had huge country lots, and the other houses were forty or fifty yards away. But regardless, the mass of fire now threatened them even at that distance.

My house, John thought. Someone is burning my house . . .

He remembered pulling away from the police officers and running. He remembered being tackled, just as he got near Luke’s bicycle. He remembered the sounds of crackling wood, and the sounds of a wall coming down. He remembered the sound of a woman crying.

Someone picked him up and led him away. He remembered the overly bright lights as he sat in the back of an ambulance staring at the floor. Someone, somebody he was sure he recognized, was taking his blood pressure. His turnout coat was somehow off of him and lying on the bench beside him. His helmet and gloves were off. He was soaked with sweat.

There was almost no sound in the ambulance, or at least little that John could hear. Everything seemed muffled and distant. All around were flashing red lights, skittering around the inner walls of the ambulance. John stared at them in a daze. He looked at the paramedic, who wouldn’t meet his eyes. He let his numb gaze drift down to the cuff on his arm.

John walked through his house, looking for his family. All of their beds were made. They had not been slept in. He walked from room to room to room. It was cold. Cold and empty.

Suddenly, he heard a voice. "John? John!"

He turned numbly, and a woman in pink uniform pants and a white, flowered shirt was walking to him with concern in his eyes. She was a pretty girl. He thought he had seen her before.

"John, I need you to come back to your room, okay?"

He only nodded. She took his arm and led him, as if he were an invalid, down the hall and to a white room with a tall window that looked out over a valley. "You need to get some sleep, John. Try to sleep. I’ll bring you something to eat in a little while, okay?"

John stared at her as he sat down on the bed, then lay down and let her pull a sheet up over him.

He went to sleep quickly, and he dreamed. He dreamed of going on a call, the worst nightmare call a firefighter can respond to. His family was trapped in their house, and still no one knew why or how. Nobody made it out of the fire.

He cried in his dream and prayed to wake up.