Tales from the Firehouse

Have one little hissy fit and suddenly you're on everyone's shit list.

Lisa headed into the kitchen, ignoring the nerves that had just started jangling like a five-alarm bell. Jackson saw her coming and smirked. Jennie paused and looked over her shoulder before her face broke out into a shy smile. "Lisa! They said you were out."

"Yeah," she said nervously as she put the carrier bag of drinks down on the table. She was avoiding the playful grins of her co-workers and trying to focus on forming coherent sentences. "Um... hi."

"Hi," Jennie said.

Hoshi stepped between the two of them, breaking their awkward gaze. He fished through the bag and rummaged for the bottles inside. Pulling them free, he flashed a grin at Lisa and went back to the stove.

"Probably need some help with the spices, eh, probie?" Jisoo asked, getting out of her seat and standing at the stove with Hoshi. Both of them stood with their backs to the room, neither of them even bothering to pretend they were working.

Jackson also stood, moving around the table. "You guys never use enough pepper for my liking... let me see if I can find some." He stood next to Jisoo and joined in the wall of silence.

Lisa shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other, very aware of the three  crowded behind her. From the lack of noise coming from their 'preparations,' she knew they were just trying to give the illusion of privacy. She cleared her throat and motioned at the apparatus bay with her head. "Wanna take a walk?"

"Sure," Jennie said, shy smile still in place.

As she led the doctor out of the kitchen, she looked over her shoulder and said, "The Pepsi is mine. And save me some of the stew, would ya?"

"We'll have to open another can... at least," she heard Jackson grumbling.

"Probie'll have better luck cutting off one of his fingers," was Jisoo's reply as she walked away.

Lisa joined Jennie in the bay, smiling apologetically like a teenager embarrassed by her family's appearance on the front porch before a date. "Sorry about that," she said, keeping her voice low. She put her hand on the small of Jennie's back and guided her towards the open garage doors. She noticed Jennie's body tensed at the touch and was about to pull her hand away when the other woman's body relaxed. They stepped out into the chilly air, the street light on the corner casting a light glow over the driveway.

"I pestered Jungkook until he told me which station you all worked out of, to track you down." Lisa grinned at the brunette as she mumbled how she'd been sitting in the station kitchen waiting for her.

Jennie nodded at the empty section of the bay. "Was there a fire...?"

"Not yet," Lisa said. "The hydraulic ladder is just on hand at some demonstration down town." She cocked her head to the side.

"Oh, okay." She looked into the bay again and said, "So... y-you're not on the ladder?"

Lisa shook her head. "No, I'm with the engine."

Jennie smiled, obviously embarrassed. "Okay... uh, I don't..."

Lisa grinned. "Not a lot of people understand the difference. The engine carries the water supply and a whole bevy of tools like smaller ladders, axes, the fans, stuff like that. The hydraulic ladder has, as you could guess, the ladder, or cherry picker. It's a big white ladder, you can't miss it. We do search-and-rescue inside the building and put the fires out... the ladder, all they do is go up, spraying water all over the area and everyone and grab all the glory looking dramatic. The TV always zooms in on them."

"Glory hogs," Jennie said.

Lisa laughed. "Do you want a tour?"

"No, that's... I just came by to let you know that... um, you don't have to... meet me for drinks or anything if you don't want to."

Lisa felt her stomach drop. 'She changed her mind,' she thought. 'Decided she was just caught up in the moment, is rethinking it, no problem.' She managed to nod and said, "Well, I guess... we could call it off if you wanted to..."

"No!" Jennie said, putting her hand on Lisa's arm. Lisa looked down and wondered if she'd just imagined there was a spark from their contact. "I-I didn't mean that. It was just... I ambushed you and I... was thinking that you really couldn't say no without embarrassing me. I just... wanted to say that I wouldn't... I mean, if you still want to go, I'd be thrilled..."

"I still want to go," Lisa said, interrupting her.

Jennie looked as if a weight had been lifted from her. "Great. That's... thank you for not... laughing in my face. I'm not normally that full on"

Lisa smiled softly. "I'm really looking forward to it."

"So I'll... I'll see you then?"

"Count on it."

Jennie shifted her feet and then looked back into the bay. "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you back there..."

"Oh, please," Lisa laughed. "I apologize for anything those pigs said while I was gone."

"They're sweet. Especially Jisoo."

Lisa fought the urge to laugh harder. "Yes, she... she... Jisoo is darling."

"Okay, then... I should go. I'll see you tomorrow at noon."

"It's a date," Lisa said. She extended her hand as Jennie moved in for a hug. They awkwardly shifted until they were shaking with one hand and embracing with the other. Jennie grinned when they pulled back and Lisa said, "Okay... that wasn't weird at all."

Jennie smiled nervously. "Sorry."

"It's okay. We'll figure it out."

She couldn't swear to it in the dim light, but she thought that Jennie blushed. "Okay. Well..."

"Well. Have a nice night."

"You, too."

Lisa watched Jennie walk back to her car, waving as the doctor drove past. Once the tail lights faded over the rise, she turned and walked back into the bay. She froze in the doorway of the kitchen.

Jackson, Jisoo and Hoshi had moved the table so they could all sit at the long end facing the door. Each of them had a bowl of stew in front of them, but none were eating; they were too busy smiling at her. Jisoo was the first to speak, holding her hands out palm-up and batting her long eyelashes. "Well?" she said, affecting an effeminate tone. "Dish, girl!"

Lisa rolled her eyes and went to the pot. She found a bowl that wasn't too dirty and served herself. She paused at the table long enough to snag her Pepsi and shook her head. "You guys seriously need to get a life." Sticking her tongue out playfully she wandered off, food in hand.

They booed her playfully as she walked out of the kitchen with her food and drink. She stepped outside and took a seat in the lawn chair Jackson had been in earlier. She cracked her can open and set it on the ground next to her. From the kitchen, she could hear loud scratching noises as the guys moved the table back where it belonged. A few minutes later, Jackson came outside and leaned against the bay doors taking a long drink from his bottle

"Date?" he asked.

She thought for a moment and then nodded.

"She's cute Lisa."

Lisa smirked. "Yep."

"Want the guys to ease up on you?"

"'The guys?'" she asked. "So you were against moving the table?"

"Kicking and screaming," he said, but his smirk gave him away.

"It's all right, boss. I can take it," she assured him.

He nodded. "Enjoy your stew."

She raised her spoon and saluted him with it as he walked back into the building. She crossed her leg over her knee and watched the sparse traffic flow by the fire house Truth be told, she was a little touched by their playfulness. She had joined the academy with a class of four other women. The guys had been dismissive, harsh and misogynistic. It had been torture and it had only slightly lessened when she was assigned to the department.

Slowly but surely, she had gained their respect. And now, here she was... the night after fighting a fire, sitting outside of her fire house, a war wound on her arm and eating a hot bowl of stew. And she had a date tomorrow with a hot doctor.

Things were definitely on the up.

x-0-x

Her footsteps echoed through the abandoned corridors, reverberating off the bare walls. The offices had long been empty, all of the storage closets she had checked were crammed full of empty copier paper boxes, long-dead electronics and assorted junk and shit. She had shoved some more loose paper into the cracks, making sure the closets were as full as they could possibly be. Then she poured a small jar of petrol over the mess and closed the door. The fumes would build up in the cramped space and she'd get an even bigger bang for his buck.

She grinned demonically.

She carried seven more jars in her bag, protected from banging against each other by fluffy towels. The fumes were bad, but she'd gotten used to them a long time ago. Hardly even noticed them any more to be honest, but the headaches she got afterwards told her that her body still noticed. She tried to move fast, wearing a white rag around her nose and mouth, but the headaches still came, sometimes with the added bonus of blackouts. An unfortunate by-product of his mission, one that she felt he could easily deal with.

Opening the stairwell door, she walked to the edge of the landing and peered down. The stairs were illuminated by the moon, ghostly white against the darkness of the stairwell. It looked like they circled down into Hell. She poured another jam jar of petrol down the stairs, watching as the fluid seemed to jump from step to step, splashing out to either side as if thankful to be free of its glass prison.

She caught herself humming a song, something by Bruce Springsteen, and tried to remember the name of the tune. The title escaped her, as did the lyrics, she continued humming anyway. She was sure it was something about being on fire. Leaving the stairwell, she walked back the way she'd come. Petrol fumes assaulted her from all sides, from the bag at her side, from the closets she'd already rigged... It smelled like ambrosia to her, but she knew her body would rebel later. At the end of the hallway, she knelt and carefully spilled another pool just beneath the windowsill.

One floor down, two to go. She'd used three jars here, which left her only five for the other two floors. She'd have to scrimp on one of them... most likely the top floor. Unless... if the bottom and top floors were both inflamed, there was a chance the second floor would be engulfed with them. She regretted not thinking of that before she'd wasted three jars on the second floor, but no use crying over spilt petrol, she'd blame her partner for distracting her later.

She threw open the stairwell door and, ignoring the fumes, rushed up the stairs to the top floor to finish her job.

x-0-x

Lisa lay down in the bottom bunk, still wearing her t-shirt but stripped to her shorts below the waist. Her bunking pants were pooled next to her bed, her boots standing up beneath them. Should the alarm go off, all she needed to do was swing her legs over the edge and step into them, yanking the pants up and hooking the braces on her shoulders. Easy as pie, took her about three seconds to do it. Practice making perfect and all that.

The lights were out, save for the main lights in the apparatus bay. The ladder had returned around ten and the guys who weren't sleeping around her were watching something in the den. Knowing that crew, it was probably a porno. She balked at how stereotypical that sounded.

Jisoo was on the bed above hers, snoring loud enough to keep her awake and pondering kicking the struts holding her mattress up. She had one arm tucked behind her head, the other draped across her stomach. All she could think about was her date with Jennie the next day. In - she checked her watch and did the maths - eleven hours, they would be sitting together and having coffee.

It had been ages since she had been on a date. Her shifts didn't exactly offer much of a social life outside of her work colleagues, but it didn't exactly help, either. Her last date had been with an armed response police officer named Laura. Fifteen minutes into the date, Laura had basically insulted every angle of fire fighting she could think of. Fire fighters were, in Laura's opinion, lazy and shiftless, being paid a king's ransom to sit around the fire house on their arses, watch TV, play pool and occasionally get a little soot on their faces. "My job," she'd said, eyes locked firmly down her nose, "a real job... people shoot at me."

Lisa's opinion was that people would shoot at Laura even if she was a dentist.

She rolled onto her side and saw Hoshi sprawled in the bunk opposite hers, hand covering his face. He'd yet to get used to sleeping in the same room as a bunch of other people, especially people as loud as Jisoo. She grinned. The Turtle Rabbit's snores took some getting used to.

She closed her eyes, finally about to drift off, when the alarm began to sound.

Dan Fleming, who had the night watch, spoke over the intercom: "Ladder and Engine, respond to warehouse fire, 159 Great Homer Street, back of the library, Class-B fire." He repeated the message one more time and, by the time he finished, Lisa was following Jisoo across the apparatus bay, fully alert and fully clothed.

x-0-x

Jennie was curled in the corner of her couch, reading a few pages before slipping into bed for the night. She'd always been a night owl, something that had proved life-saving in her residency, and seldom climbed into bed before two. Tonight, however, she was having more than a little trouble concentrating.

She kept reading the same paragraph, trying to absorb the action on the page and finding herself unable to focus. Finally, she slipped the bookmark in and put the book on her lap. All she could think about was her upcoming date with Lisa. A fire fighter She grinned, leaning back and stretching, checking her watch as she reached for the remote. She was certain there was something on TV Land she could lose herself in for half an hour.

The TV came to life, filling the living room with pale blue light. She was about to turn across to one of the documentary channels when the scene on the channel caught her eye.

At first, she'd thought the local news was rerunning its earlier broadcast about the fire. Then, she spotted the little "LIVE!" banner in the bottom right corner, next to the address. Great Homer Street, which was in the warehouse district. In Anfield. Where Naomi was based.

"...continues to blaze out of control. Two fire fighting stations are on-hand trying to battle this inferno, but they seem to be making absolutely no headway against this thing." She watched in dull, uncomprehending horror as a large man in full bunkers swept past the reporter on the ground. The reporter caught up with him. "Sir, excuse me... excuse me, Sir?"

The smooth, stressed, but-not-old face of Officer Jackson Wang turned towards the camera, teeth bared, eyes flashing with anger. His short black hair was sticking up a little, obviously the result of removing the helmet he was carrying under his arm. Jennie saw only the smiling man blowing on a spoonful of fresh beef stew, telling her that Lisa would 'be back in just a jiffy and to grab a seat.' He snapped something that the reporter's microphone didn't pick up and headed back towards the building. The reporter stammered something about how the officer was 'obviously very busy' and promised to 'get a statement later.'

'Right,' Emily thought.

The TV crew cut back to the studio, where a harried looking anchorman was shifting papers on his desk. He obviously wasn't used to being on the air this late and his discomfort was extremely evident. He looked up at the camera, probably making sure he was still on, and said, "If you're just joining us, we're continuing coverage of a fire that was first reported around 1:30 this morning. Since our crew has been on the ground, the fire team has managed to keep the fire from spreading to surrounding buildings..."

Jennie was busy watching the picture-in-picture shot of the fire. If Jackson was on the ground, it stood to reason that Lisa was hard at work as well. The second fire in one shift... she honestly didn't know the odds, but it couldn't be all that common, could it? Certainly not another big warehouse fire. She was scanning the dark background - it was hard to tell one silhouette from another - and trying to read the reflective tape on the back of the fire fighters' jackets as they ran back and forth.

"We're getting word now," this from the local BBC reporter on the scene, "that a fire fighter may - I repeat, may be trapped inside the building. We don't have many details at the moment, but as soon as we can confirm anything..."

Jennie refused to believe what she was hearing. Her mind taunted her, assuring her that it was definitely Lisa. Lisa had just come into her life only to be snatched away in a blaze of fire in the middle of the night. Isn't that always the way? Fate poked her in the side, laughing when she jumped. She stood up, halfway decided on changing into street clothes and heading to the hospital, knowing they'd be busy. She wanted to go, she wanted to stay and hear the rest of the news, she wanted to scream at the reporter to go away and let the fire fighters do their damn jobs.

She dropped back onto the couch and hugged her knees to her chest, staring at the television and hoping for good news.

x-0-x

Lisa Manoban lay on her stomach, hand against the wall, the world in front of her a screaming swirl of yellows and blacks and grays. There was a bell ringing in her ear, the oxygen tank's five-minute warning siren mixed with the wail of a motionless PASS device somewhere in front of her. The fire was roaring on the ceiling above her; the screaming was coming from inside her own mask.

Fingers wrapped around the collar of her bunking coat and she felt herself lifted bodily off the floor. Someone was half-dragging, half-carrying her backwards the way she'd come in. Once they passed through the front door, the cold air hit her like a wave and her oxygen tank finally gave out as she collapsed in a heap on the dirt. The person who'd saved her picked her up again, letting her walk this time as he moved her towards the engine. "You all right?" he asked, helping her pull her mask off. "Where's your partner?"

She didn't recognize the man standing in front of her; he was from the city centre station and had responded to the same call. "He's in there," Lisa managed, coughing a bit as she watched the doorway dissolve into a wall of flame. "Oh, my God, he's still in there."

x-0-x

Jennie had her eyes closed, fists pressed against her forehead when she heard it.

The reporter was giving another recap of the situation, turning to indicate the three-story high inferno behind him. He'd just paused to take a breath between sentences when there was an ear-piercing yell. A woman's scream.

Lisa?

Jennie's heart jumped and she opened her eyes, frantically searching the background for signs of the woman she'd met that morning. Kneeling on the floor in front of the TV and touching the screen with her hand. Nothing. Damn it, nothing! She couldn't see anything in the dark, the smoke and with the idiot reporter standing in her way. She stood up and turned off the TV, the sudden darkness causing her a moment's blindness as she swept her hand across the coffee table for her car keys. She wasn't going to just sit around; she couldn't.

They'd appreciate the extra hands at work, anyway.

x-0-x

When she arrived, the emergency room was astoundingly serene. She headed for the elevators, looking around for signs she had missed the commotion, but everything seemed business as usual.

She rode the elevator to the third floor, where the real drama was happening. Jungkook was in a wheelchair, his bandaged head swiveling back and forth to look at whichever nurse happened to be nearby and speaking at the moment. "I do not care. I am going down to that building and..."

"You're staying right where you are, Mr. Jeon," Jennie snapped as she stormed onto the floor. Despite the panic that had propelled her the entire way to the hospital, she felt a kind of relief. Here, finally, was a problem she could deal with head-on, that she could control. Jungkook snapped his mouth shut, turning his wide eyes on her.

"D-Dr. Kim," one of the night nurses said. Her brow creased in confusion, but she didn't dare question her presence. She had, after all, just cowed the most belligerent patient on the floor.

Jennie stood in front of Jungkook's chair and glared down at him. "You will go right back to your room, get back in bed and you will calm yourself. Am I understood Jungkook?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said meekly.

Jennie exhaled. "Good." She looked at one of the night nurses as said, "Rebecca. Please escort Mr. Jeon back to his room. And make sure the restraints are nice and secure just in case we have to use them."

"I'll be good, I promise," Jungkook sighed, holding up his hands in surrender. "Geez, have one little hissy fit and suddenly you're on everyone's shit list"

"What are you doing here so late, Dr. Kim?" the remaining nurse asked.

Jennie held up her hand, watching until Jungkook was wheeled back into his room. She guided the nurse over to the desk, keeping her voice hushed. "Has he been watching much of the news?"

"Just the first little bit. He started his great escape right afterwards, so he didn't get a chance to see any developments. None of us did. Is it bad?"

"The fire is out of control from the looks of it... His watch may have lost someone."

"Oh, God!"

Jennie shushed her and said, "I'm here just in case we get a sudden burst of admissions. Couldn't hurt to have an extra set of hands."

"Right, of course, Doctor. If it does get crazy, I'll get on my knees and worship your foresight."

"Well, that probably won't be necessary," Kim said. She tried to cover her fear with a smile as she took off her coat. "I do, however, accept cash gifts."

x-0-x

Lisa sat in the back of the ambulance for the second time in one day, watching as the other fire fighters doused the building. The fire was burning itself out; all they were doing for the moment was slowing its advance on the neighbouring buildings. She couldn't believe the similarities to the afternoon's fire. It was another warehouse, this one three floors high with offices on the upper two levels. She and her partner had gone in looking for squatters and had again found no one.

Instead, another door had opened on a fireball. It was still burned into Lisa's vision. That, and the image of a helmet engulfed in bright yellow flame.

The bumper of the truck sagged and she blinked herself back to the present, focusing on Jackson's haggard face. He sat across from her and put his hand on her shoulder. "What happened in there Lis?" he asked, his deep voice tired and soft.

"He's gone, sir," Lisa managed. "Right in front of me. He..." She bit her lip and shook her head. "He disappeared. No one could have survived it."

Jackson squeezed her shoulder just once and pulled his hand back. He turned to look out of the open doors at the smouldering building. "When the fire dies down, we're going in and we're going to pull him out. We will find him, Manoban. Got that?"

"Yes, boss."

"His PASS device..."

"Ringing loud and clear, sir," she said. She turned her head back to the building. The PASS device hooked on their jackets signaled when the wearer was immobile for a certain length of time, usually over five minutes. No one liked to admit that its primary job was to find corpses. Over the calls of other fire fighters, over the sirens that were still blaring and all the horrendous noise caused by the media circus, she swore she could still hear it ringing. A small, monotonous tone calling for them to come and find it. "Can you hear it, too?" she asked.

Jackson was quiet for a minute, cocking his head to one side, obviously trying to drown out the ambient noises. "Yeah," he finally said, nodding. "I can hear it."

He sat with her for a long time, watching out the back of the ambulance as their team and teams from other stations drowned the fire out. "Petrol," she muttered. "I smelled petrol in there. Really strongly."

"Yeah. This was set."

"Fuckers," she spat.

By the time the fire had been pretty much contained, the sun was starting to colour the sky at the edge of town. Jackson helped Lisa out of the truck and stood aside as she pulled her gear back on. The surface objective was to overhaul the building, clear out all the flammable materials and snuff out any remaining heat pockets that could rekindle the blaze. But the true objective was to find their missing fire fighter

Somewhere under all this shit, Kwon Hoshi was waiting to be found and despite being due off shift soon Blue Watch would not go home without him.

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