Through The Fire

“I’m not just letting you know,” Rafe said, coming around the tall counter and reaching for the phone. “I’m calling for help.”

“Sir, you can’t be back here.”

Rafe thrust the receiver into her hand. “You have a fire. Call 9–1-1.”

“Sir, if you’ll just calm down—”

“I’m calm.” He stepped back into the hallway and reached into the pocket of his jacket for his cell phone. “Take a look for yourself.”

“Your child couldn’t be safer here, even though we’ve had quite a few false alarms over the last few days,” she said, finally standing. “We have all the latest monitors.” She waved toward a computer monitor. “I’d know if there was a problem.” She came around the counter toward the hallway. “But I will look…” Her gaze lit on the smoke. “Oh, no!”

By then, Rafe had dialed 9–1-1, and the instant the dispatcher answered, he said, “There’s a fire in the children’s wing of Vance Memorial Hospital.” He looked up and down the hallway for the ever-present fire extinguisher that should have been somewhere close by.

The nurse was back inside the nurse’s station, finally calling for help.

Over the cell phone, the dispatcher said, “We should have received an automatic call if there was a problem—”

“The fire started in the janitor’s closet,” Rafe interrupted, running up the hallway, searching for an extinguisher. “The sprinklers haven’t come on and—”

“What’s your location, sir?”

Rafe relayed that information as best he could, noticing that the nurse had called whomever she needed to because he heard a summons over the intercom. “Dr. Firestone to the pediatric wing.”

Just then, he saw another nurse notice the smoke coming from beneath the door. She punched a code on the keypad next to the door.

Rafe raced back toward her. “Don’t open the door!”

But he was too late. The latch clicked and she pushed the door open. Acrid black smoke billowed out of the room, accompanied by the unmistakable whish of air being sucked into the room. Rafe pulled the nurse from her frozen position in front of the door. In the next instant, flames licked into the hallway, flicking like a snake’s tongue.

“Are you okay?” he asked her, urging her away from the open door.

Her eyes wide and frightened, she nodded, then ran toward the nurse’s station. Suddenly, there were people everywhere, while someone shouted orders.

Rafe ran back toward the entrance to the wing, wishing he remembered where he had seen the fire extinguisher. Finally, he found it near the entrance where the doors were now closed. He grabbed the canister and rushed back to the fire, where black smoke continued to pour out of the closet.

He lost track of time after that, something that always happened when he was fighting a fire. Prayer and intense concentration on the task at hand occupied his mind. The only things he knew for sure were that the sprinklers weren’t coming on and the canister didn’t contain nearly enough volume to put out the fire. The best he could hope for was to contain it until the fire department arrived.

Lucia Vance arrived at the hospital with her fellow firefighters a scant six minutes later. Since their station was the closest, they arrived before the four other engines that had also been called out, just as they had when they had responded to a false alarm an hour earlier. During her last shift, they had answered four false alarms here, and this was the second call today. Just as she had the previous times they had responded, she carried a roll of hose over one shoulder and an ax in her hand. She and the other four firefighters followed the incident commander, Neil O’Brien, into the building. Each time they had responded to a call, the alarm had come from somewhere in the remodeled section of the hospital. This time, the emergency panel indicated the fire was on the second floor of the brand-new pediatric wing. Each time, the panel had showed a suspected fire in different areas—no two calls had been the same.

“It’s gotta be another false alarm,” said Lucia’s partner, Luke Donovan. “No way would there be a fire there. Not with all the sprinklers and sensors.”

“You’re probably right,” O’Brien said, leading the way. “Meyers and Jackson, secure the elevators. The rest of you come with me.”

They entered the stairwell and made their way to the second floor. As soon as they came through the door, Lucia smelled smoke.

This was no false alarm.

The floor was bustling with activity, and a nurse rushed toward them, pointing toward one of the adjoining hallways. “Down there.”

“Vance and Donovan, make an assessment and report back,” O’Brien ordered.

Lucia followed her partner down the hall, the smell of smoke stronger with each step they took. They turned a corner, and the smoke hung from the ceiling like an ugly black blanket billowing in a breeze.

The silhouette of a man kneeling on one knee suddenly became visible. He was clearly a civilian since he wasn’t in turnout gear, but he expertly wielded the extinguisher.

He violently started when Lucia touched his back. “We’ve got it, sir,” she said through her mask. He looked up, his face streaked with smoke, his eyes the most vivid green she ever remembered seeing.

“The stairwell is that way,” she said when he stared blankly at her. “You can go.”

He nodded, his eyes somehow boring right through her, then handed her the canister, the athletic grace of his stride catching her attention while she and Luke briefly assessed the fire. All around them, hospital personnel were busy evacuating patients, but despite the fire, everything seemed calm. Eerily so, Lucia thought as the assistant fire chief joined them.

“At least it’s confined,” O’Brien said. “Donovan, they need extra help with a couple of critical patients that they have to get away from this smoke right now. Since you’ve got the back for the job, you’re the man.”

Luke shook his head. “Can’t leave my partner—”

“This isn’t a discussion. Get going. I’ll stay here with Vance.”

Lucia looked over her shoulder at O’Brien, who stood there with his radio to his mouth as he talked to one of the lieutenants on an engine that had just arrived. Since he had been gunning for her for months, she thought it odd that he had dismissed her partner. It would have made more sense if he’d had three other people around to do the job of putting out this confined fire.

“Be safe,” Donovan said as he headed back in the direction they had come.

“Get going, Vance,” O’Brien ordered.

Refocusing her thoughts on the task at hand, she found the valve halfway toward the end of the hall. She hooked up the hose and switched on the valve. As she aimed the nozzle toward the open door, she thought she smelled the distinct aroma of lacquer vapors. One more odd thing, almost as odd as O’Brien sending her partner away.

In the next instant, an explosion knocked her off her feet, the force of the blast throwing her against the opposite wall.

A monstrous blossom of fire unfurled through the space where the closet door had been, pinning her in place and reaching for her.

TWO

Giving the firefighters a backward glance, Rafe headed for the stairwell. All around him, there was a buzz of controlled activity, the kind that came when a crew had trained for this kind of disaster and knew exactly what to do. It was clear that an evacuation was being prepared for.

He looked back at the firefighters one last time, wondering if there was something more to the fire that he hadn’t noticed. Figuring he was an extra set of hands for whatever might be needed, he headed toward the nurse’s station.

Within a few steps, his heart lurched when he remembered the kids in the chapel. Surely they were gone already. But what if they were still there? Since they weren’t patients, they might have been overlooked. He reversed his direction and headed for the chapel across the hall from the janitor’s closet. How could he have forgotten about them while he was searching for the extinguisher? Rescue was always the first order of the day with fire—a fact as basic as breathing.

“Get out of here,” one of the firefighters said, a stocky man, the insignia on his helmet identifying him as a battalion chief.

The man rushed past him, speaking into his radio before Rafe could answer.

Relieved to see another firefighter hooking a hose up to the valve, Rafe opened the chapel door.

He stepped inside, the door automatically closing behind him. The two kids were nowhere to be seen, the beanbag where they had been sitting empty. Since kids often hid from fire, he couldn’t assume they were gone simply because he didn’t see them.

“Anyone here?” he called. Through the big window, Pikes Peak was beautifully framed, just as advertised in the news article that had made him look for the chapel in the first place. Snow gleamed on the mountain, pristine and surreal compared to the smoke-filled hallway. Whispering a quick prayer for the safety of everyone around him, Rafe looked around for the kids once more.

Just then an explosion in the hallway rattled the windows, the concussion of it dropping Rafe to his knees. A brilliant flash of orange flared through the hallway window.

Behind him, a child cried out.

He whirled around and found the two children huddled behind the heavy drape that framed the window. Relieved they were safe, at least for the moment, he went to the door to check on what had happened.

“It’ll be okay,” he said reassuringly to the kids as he peered through the window. The smoke was thicker, obscuring the view of anything in the hallway, then shifting and revealing a reflective stripe on a bundle on the floor next to the door. Not a bundle. A person. The firefighter he had last seen hooking up the hose to the valve.

Without a second thought, Rafe knelt, flung open the door, grabbed on to the coat and pulled. The firefighter moaned.

“I’ve got you.” Through the smoke, Rafe could see the closet was fully engulfed, and, oddly, there was a wall of flames between them and their route to safety. There shouldn’t be that much fire. Once again he wondered why the sprinklers weren’t coming on.

The instant he had the two of them back inside the chapel, he closed the door. During those scant seconds, the small room had filled with smoke, which rose to the ceiling.

Next to the window, the two children watched him with wide eyes, neither of them speaking.

“Why don’t you two sit down on the floor there next to the window? Breathing will be easier,” Rafe said, eyeing the smoke that was seeping beneath the doorway. He went to the window and pulled down the drape. Rolling up the fabric, he laid it on the floor next to the door, covering the crack as best he could.

Rafe pulled the helmet and mask off the firefighter, doing his best not to jar him—her! he realized as a long, black braid tumbled out of the hat. Her eyelashes were as dark as her hair, making her skin look all the more pale.

“¿Está muerta?” one of the children asked, a little boy who looked as though he could be no more than four or five.

“No,” Rafe answered, reassured by the pulse beating strongly beneath his fingertips. She wasn’t dead. “La señorita no está muerta. ¿Hablas inglés?”

The boy shook his head.

To the woman, he said, “Can you hear me?”

She moaned again.

Rafe took off his jacket, folded it, and slipped it beneath her head as she lay on her side, her canister of air still strapped to her back.

“Are you visiting a brother or sister?” he asked the children in Spanish.

“Mi hermana,” the other child said, creeping closer to hold the boy’s hand. “Ana.”

“Ah. This is your brother—tu hermano?”

She nodded. “Ramón.”

“And what’s your name?” Rafe asked, continuing to speak in Spanish while keeping a close eye on the firefighter. Thankfully, color was beginning to seep back into her cheeks. She didn’t seem to be unconscious, but she wasn’t with it, either.

“Teresa.”

Pulling his cell phone from his jeans pocket, Rafe dialed 9–1-1, reminded of when he had done so a little earlier. This time the line was busy, and it remained that way for the next several times he dialed the number.

Next to him on the floor, the woman opened her eyes. When her gaze lit on him, she immediately struggled to sit up.

Rafe pressed a hand against her shoulder. “Just take a breath first.”

Her eyes were huge in her face, her skin too pale. “I’m okay,” she said around a cough. “The explosion just knocked me down.”

“All the more reason to take a minute.” Rafe figured she was lucky. Her lungs could have been seared by the heat from the explosion.

“I’ve got to get back—”

“There’s fire clear across the hall.”

“We’re trapped?”

There was still a way out of the chapel, though not his first choice. Rafe glanced toward the big, west-facing window, and her gaze followed his.

“That’s a last resort,” she said, evidently coming to the same conclusion he had. Sitting up, she put the small radio strapped to the outside of her turnout coat to her mouth. “Donovan, are you there?”

There was a moment of static, then a voice said, “Lucia, where are you?”

When she met Rafe’s gaze, he said, “The chapel across the hall from the janitor’s closet that’s on fire.”

She nodded and repeated the information, adding, “I’m in here with a civilian and two kids.”

“Stay put,” Donovan said. “We’ll have water on the fire in the hallway in a minute.”

Her gaze lit on the two children, then came back to Rafe. “You were the one fighting the fire when we got here.” After he nodded, she added, “Your children?”

“No. Just met them.” He motioned toward them. “This is Ramón and Teresa, and they’ve been visiting their sister, Ana. I’m Rafael Wright. Are you okay?”

“Not bad for having the breath knocked out of me.” She pulled off her gloves, then ran a slim hand over her forehead. “I’d just hooked up the hose to the valve. I hadn’t gotten a drop of water on the fire before the explosion.” With an easy motion that came only with practiced repetition, she slipped the air tank off her shoulders and set it with her helmet and mask.

“I didn’t see your partner.”

She looked at Rafe. “Chief O’Brien sent him away. Said he’d stay with me.”

“A heavyset guy?” When she nodded, Rafe added, “He was headed back toward the stairwell right before the explosion.”

“Well, that figures.” The inflection in her voice gave Rafe the idea that she didn’t like or respect O’Brien. Still, she spoke into the radio once more. “Vance reporting in.”

“Are you hurt?” came a gruff voice, clearly not Donovan’s, over the speaker.

“Your chief?” Rafe asked.

She nodded, and into the radio said, “I’m okay, sir.”

“Donovan said you’re trapped in the chapel. When we get this baby put out, you’ve got some explaining to do.”

Rafe bristled at the man’s tone. As a hotshot superintendent who had often been the commander on a fire, he knew there was a time to hold your people accountable and a time to put their well-being and safety first. A fleeting look of irritation chased across her face, confirming to Rafe that he hadn’t imagined the man’s imperious tone.

“Strange the sprinklers in this brand-new building haven’t come on,” Rafe said.

She nodded. “As strange as all the false alarms we’ve had the last few days. We expected this to be another one.”

The smoke at the ceiling grew thicker, and Rafe motioned to the kids. “Ven acá,” Rafe said, motioning for them to come sit beside him and the firefighter. “Sentémonos aquí.”

“They don’t speak English?” Lucia asked as the kids approached.

Rafe shook his head, and again spoke to the children, repeating the same words, then adding in English, “Come sit next to me.”

She held her arms out to the little girl, who somehow recognized the gesture of comfort and came toward her. Settling the child in her lap, the woman touched the child’s chest. “Teresa.” Then she repeated the gesture against her own chest. “Lucia.”

Lucia, Rafe mentally echoed. The name fit her. As exotic as her dark brown eyes and her creamy complexion.

“My partner is out there,” she said, “and he’s going to have us out of here muy pronto.”

Her fractured Spanish made the kids smile, just as Rafe suspected she had intended. She looked from the child to him and the little boy, who had sat down between them.

“If these kids are like my nieces and nephews, they don’t care what you’re saying—they just need to hear the sound of a calm voice.”

Rafe nodded.

“What brought you to the hospital?” she asked.

“A friend.”

She grinned when he didn’t add anything more, the expression transforming her face from pretty to vibrant. “Ah, the old visiting-a-friend routine. Personally, I thought this was the place to meet strangers.”

Rafe smiled back, recognizing that she was deliberately trying to turn their attention away from the fire on the other side of the door. “So far, that strategy is working.”

She glanced at the children. “Ask them about their sister.”

In Spanish, Rafe asked about Ana’s illness but was only able to find out that she was a couple of years older—seven to their three and four—and that she was very sick.

“I know what that’s like,” Lucia said, her gaze going from one child to the other. “My father is in this very hospital in intensive care.” Rafe watched her as she looked around the small chapel. “As soon as we get out of here, I’ll need to go see my mother and call my brothers. They’ll all be worried.” She glanced at Rafe. “Do your parents worry?”

“About what?” He was still caught on the part of her statement that her father was in the hospital.

“You.”

He shrugged. “Some, I suppose. More about my sisters.”

She smiled down at the little girl in her lap, who automatically smiled back. “See? A man can go off to be a policeman or a spy or a mountain climber and that’s okay. But a girl is supposed to play it safe—”

“Don’t be including me in your generalities. I never said that.” Some of the best firefighters on his hotshot crew were women. “I don’t believe that.”

“Do you worry about your sisters?”

“Of course. One is a homemaker and has a little girl. My other sister teaches school.” He gave Lucia a grin. “Now there’s a dangerous occupation.”

Lucia gazed down at the two children. “That wasn’t a very nice thing for him to say, especially since he doesn’t think you can understand him.” She brushed a hand over Teresa’s hair. “Children are gifts from God—everyone knows that. I wish that I could make you understand that I’ll be praying for your sister.”

The gesture was so nurturing that Rafe was entranced. Movies painted the heroic picture of a big firefighter tenderly caring for those smaller, weaker. This more feminine version of that same image made Lucia more appealing than she could know—especially since the gesture was not even a conscious one on her part.

Teresa leaned her head against the sleeve of Lucia’s turnout coat.

“Rezebo mi oraciónes por vuestra hermana,” Rafe said. When Lucia looked at him, he repeated in English, “I’ll say prayers for your sister.”

She smiled and looked from one child to the other, repeating the words, words that made both of the children smile.

Rafe knew too well what it was like to have a parent in intensive care. Even though that had been a whole lifetime ago, the feelings suddenly at the surface were as sharp as they had been when he was no older than Ramón. He hadn’t understood the significance of his mother being moved from intensive care into hospice. For a while, he had even hoped the change meant she was getting better. Since he was again allowed to sit next to her on her bed and put his arms around her, that had to have meant she was getting better—or, at least, so he had reasoned as a four-year-old boy.

Too vivid was the memory of that last day when she had taken him to the chapel and cradled him in her lap. He had sensed something was terribly wrong, and the ache in his chest that day had been suffocating.

“God is always with you,” his mother had whispered, her hand warm against his chest. “Always. No matter where you are or what you are doing, just look inside. God is right there.” She’d had tears in her eyes when he had looked up at her. “He loves you, just as I love you.” She gathered him closer, and to this day, he could still feel her cheek against the top of his head. “All you have to do is close your eyes and pray. You’ll feel God, and you’ll feel me. Both of us loving you.”

He had hung on to the promise his entire life, and he had always found it to be true. Especially in tense situations like this one, with a fire in the hallway and a two-story drop to safety through the window.

Lucia’s radio crackled to life, and Donovan said, “A little break at last, partner. The sprinklers finally came on. You should be seeing water seep under the door.”

Glad to have an activity that brought his mind back to the present, Rafe scooted across the floor toward the door and, sure enough, the drape he had taken off the window was wet. “That’s exactly what’s happening.”

Lucia relayed the information.

“It won’t be long now,” came the answer.

While they waited, Lucia continued to talk to the children, and as she had predicted, they responded simply to the sound of her voice.

“You’re good with kids. Do you have children? I know you mentioned nieces and nephews,” Rafe asked, wanting to ask her instead if she was married.

“No children,” she said. “Three nieces and two nephews so far, plus some honorary ones. What about you?”

“Never been married,” he said.

“Me neither,” she said.

“So no children,” he continued, as though finding out she was single hadn’t meant anything. She was single.

He looked down at the two children sitting between him and Lucia. Men weren’t supposed to have the ticking biological clock, but he did. He didn’t like the sudden realization that even if he found a woman today that he’d like to marry, he was still several years away from having children.

“You mentioned a sister—”

“With a little girl,” Rafe said. “Yeah. She’ll be two soon. They live in Atlanta.”

“A long way from here.”

“Yeah.” For the ninety-ninth time over the last day, Rafe thought maybe he could talk his sister into moving closer if her marriage ended. If, he reminded himself. Better that things work out in her marriage instead of his selfish wish to have her closer.

“What do you do, Rafael Wright?” Lucia asked with a smile, “when you’re not putting out fires and rescuing small children and damsels in distress?”

“Put out fires,” he said, looking steadily at her and thinking a man could lose himself in her dark eyes. “Don’t rescue many damsels, though.” When she raised an eyebrow in question, he added, “I’m the superintendent for the Sangre de Cristo hotshot crew.”

“You’re a firefighter?”

“Big difference between structure fires and wildfires,” he said.

“But you’re a firefighter?”

He nodded. “I’m also a volunteer for the city wildfire volunteer squad.” In the year he had been here, the volunteers had been called upon only once, since the city had a well-trained wildfire unit. He liked being involved, though, and feeling as though he was part of the community.

“Well, that at least explains why you’re so calm,” she said, glancing toward the smoke clinging to the upper part of the room. “Most civilians would have been climbing the walls by now.”

The radio crackled to life once more. “We’re coming in,” came her partner’s voice at the same moment as the door was pushed open, shoving the wet drape out of the way.

The big firefighter who came through the door had removed his mask. He grinned when his gaze lit on Lucia. “Way to go, partner. Sit in here where you can hug the kiddies while Jackson and I do the hard work. You slacker,” he said without a bit of heat in his voice.