Lark (First & Forever 5)

“I don’t know.” After a pause, I said, “Maybe I’m afraid to admit how much he means to me.”

“But don’t you owe that to yourself, and to him?”

“Sure.” I glanced at my friends, then shifted my gaze to the coffee mug. “But losing someone I loved was almost more than I could take, and now…now, I’m right on the cusp of letting someone get that close to me again, and it’s fucking terrifying. If I lost him, too, it would destroy me.”

That was pretty heavy for first thing in the morning, and I regretted going that deep. Fortunately, we were joined by two more members of our crew a few moments later, and the conversation turned to lighter subjects.

Our shift ended up being busy. We went out on three calls, all of which proved to be fairly minor, and in between we worked on a restocking project at the firehouse. One of the calls for a vehicle fire ended up delaying dinner, so it was almost eight by the time we all sat down to a meal.

Malone and I had put together a quick dinner of green salad, garlic bread, and a pot of spaghetti using some homemade marinara sauce I’d had in the freezer. My stomach was growling as I twisted a bunch of noodles around my fork and stuck them in my mouth. Then I almost choked on them when the alarm sounded.

I swallowed down the mouthful of food as I jumped up from the table with the rest of the crew. We rushed downstairs, put on our heavy equipment—for the fourth time that day—and boarded the truck, all in a matter of seconds.

Malone climbed behind the wheel and started the engine as we put on our headsets. A voice from dispatch came over the radio with a three-digit code. That told us we were on our way to an active structural fire—just about the last thing any of us wanted to hear.

My heart was pounding, and as my anxiety began to build I worked on the breathing technique my therapist had taught me. Damn it, why had I set myself up like this? I’d started my shift at less than a hundred percent, and now that I was tired, hungry, and stressed, my ability to keep my anxiety in check was hanging on by a thread.

The more I began to unravel, the angrier I became at myself. I mouthed the words, “Get it together, Hawkins,” but I said it silently, so everyone wouldn’t hear me over the headsets. Of course that didn’t help at all, and I felt my pulse quickening.

By the time we arrived on the scene a couple of minutes later, smoke and fire was streaming out of the broken first floor windows of a three-story residential structure. A police officer, who was clearly a rookie given how flustered he was, rushed up to us and started yelling, “Looks like it was a gas leak. I was the first on the scene. The family on the ground floor reported that they smelled gas, so they evacuated and called 9-1-1. A minute later, it must’ve reached the pilot light on their stove, because the kitchen exploded. A total of three families live here, one per floor. All the families upstairs evacuated by the back fire escape and confirmed there are no civilians inside. The building to the left is a single-family home and they all got out too, but it looks like it’s about to go up next if you guys don’t hurry.”

Loretta was clearly annoyed, because the rookie had taken far too long to convey that information. She snapped, “No shit,” before turning her back to him and joining the rest of us, who’d already gotten to work.

I was part of a three-person team whose job it was to unspool the hose and hook it to the closest hydrant. We’d done this a million times, so I almost operated on auto-pilot. As I pulled the hose hand-over-hand and fed it to Heath, I tried to concentrate on keeping myself together. My breathing sounded way too loud in my heavy, stifling helmet. That and the drumming of my heartbeat in my ears was all I could hear.

I felt like I wasn’t getting enough air, so I started breathing faster. That was when a full-blown panic attack finally took hold of me. I stepped back, tripping over something but managing to remain upright as I pulled off the helmet and dropped it onto the asphalt.

Sweat ran down my face, and I struggled to fill my lungs. I was breathing way too quickly. It was starting to make me lightheaded, but I couldn’t control it. As my anxiety rose, feeding the panic attack and carrying me along like a stick in a rain-swollen river, I silently begged the universe, Please, not now. Not with a fire burning and my crew right here. Not fucking now. It made no difference.

What happened after that was a blur. At some point, Loretta saw what was happening and shouted more instructions, and our crew made some adjustments. I was vaguely aware that someone stepped in and took over my job, while someone else, a stranger, grabbed my arm and led me out of the way.

I realized he was an EMT when he sat me down on the back bumper of an ambulance and performed a quick medical assessment. I was dizzy from hyperventilating, and all I could manage to say was, “Panic attack.” The next thing I knew, an oxygen mask was placed over my mouth and nose, and the paramedic seemed to be trying to talk me through it.

There was a loud ringing in my ears, so I couldn’t really hear him or anything else. It felt like everything slowed down. I looked around but felt a strange sense of detachment from all that was happening. There were a lot of people standing back behind the perimeter, watching. There was the fire, vivid and terrible as it consumed the building and threatened to spread to the one beside it. And there was my crew, working twice as hard with one man down—because of me. Shame and disappointment and a lot of other painful things welled up and left an acidic taste in my mouth.

When the panic attack finally started to ebb, a barrage of unwanted thoughts took over. This was the end of my career. Fifteen years of service, brought to an abrupt end in less than five minutes. They’d never give me medical clearance after this. They shouldn’t. I’d broken down at the most critical time—while I was on a call. If I couldn’t meet the requirements of this job, I didn’t get to wear the uniform. It was as simple as that.

The smell of smoke was sharp. Acrid. Very familiar. While I sat there, trying to regulate my breathing and earning stares from the ever-growing crowd of on-lookers, a second fire crew pulled up, and then a third. The scene played out like a movie in slow-motion, its soundtrack that incessant ringing in my ears. The blaze was right on the verge of raging out of control, so thank god my crew had backup. Maybe it meant my absence wouldn’t result in a total catastrophe. The sense of relief was so great that I wanted to cry, but no fucking way would I let myself. Not here.

In the next moment, my thoughts turned to Lark. I was struck by a desperate urge to run to him and hold onto him and bury my face in his hair. But the urge to hide from him was even stronger.

It would be awful to let him see me like this, so demoralized and defeated. I wanted—needed—him to think I was stronger than this, to think I could take care of him and protect him. That was vitally important to me, somehow. Part of me believed my strength was all I really had to offer him.

Maybe that wasn’t rational. Maybe none of this was. But it was how I felt.

Later on, when the three crews working together got the fire contained, someone made arrangements for me. Loretta found a minute to say, “Go home, Dylan. We’ll talk soon,” as she handed me my discarded helmet. There wasn’t scorn in her eyes. There was pity, and that was worse.

A police officer drove me back to the firehouse while my crew finished the job. We didn’t say anything to each other, aside from the thank you I muttered as I climbed out of her car. Once I got inside, I put my equipment away, neatly and carefully. Then I went upstairs and collected my things.

Before I left, I paused to look around and felt a profound sense of loss. This had been my second home, and these men and women hadn’t just been friends, they’d been family. I knew I wouldn’t be returning here, unless it was as a visitor. An outsider.

When my captain reviewed what happened tonight, he’d conclude I was no longer capable of doing my job. There was no doubt about it. Firefighters needed to perform under pressure, physically and mentally, no matter what. This time, there would be no do-overs, no second chances.

I’d known this was a possibility, ever since my first bout of anxiety. Even so, I’d believed I had it under control, enough to do the job and enough to make quitting a choice, not a verdict that was handed down to me. I should have quit anyway, instead of rolling that dice. But this job was a huge part of me, and it had felt nearly impossible to give it up. Besides, I’d really thought I was capable of doing what was needed from me. My captain, a therapist, and the department counselor had all thought so, too.

I should have known, though. Now this was the culmination of a career that had spanned my entire adult life. That weighed on me like a ton of bricks as I left the firehouse.

When I got to the loft, I paused just inside the door and looked around. I could smell smoke on me, and I wanted a shower. But more than that, I realized as I stood there that I just really didn’t want to be here.