Tales from the Firehouse

Peaches and Cream, Baby

Station Officer Chamberlain of Green Watch had informed her that Jackson had already gone home, leaving the house in his very capable hands. Lisa had hesitated, not sure whether or not to tell him what she'd learned. If it was true, then they needed to have all the information as soon as possible. But if she was just being paranoid... if it turned out that she was just seeing conspiracies around every corner, she'd prefer if it stayed between her and her boss After all, Jackson had been at both of the fires. Martin had never even met Hoshi, as far as she knew...

She told Chamberlain that she would call back later and to let Jackson know she needed to talk to him if he called in at all.

After hanging up, she went to bed and stretched out on top of the covers. She stared at the ceiling, half hoping for sleep and half dreading the nightmares that she knew were sure to come.

x-0-x

She and Hoshi were crawling down the corridor, a hose line dragging the ground between them. They reached a bank of doors and Lisa slid the back of her hand up the wall. She could feel the heat even through her glove and slapped the back of Hoshi's leg. "Keep moving!"

He gave her the okay sign over his shoulder, half-lost in the cloud of smoke. He continued crawling and she took up the slack of the hose.

It was a fully involved fire, which meant others outside were already applying streams to the open windows. Lisa looked up at the ceiling as they rounded a corner, watching the smoke. It had seemed wrong the first time, now it was even worse. It was like a giant, flashing sign that said "Turn Back Now." She ignored it now as she had the first time and followed Hoshi deeper into the building.

She had seen what he was doing wrong the first time and had shouted at him. But even in her dream, it was still too late. She still saw sheets of smoke flowing into the cracks around the door as if the room was alive and taking a deep breath. And the exhale would be the envy of every fire-breathing dragon since King Arthur's day.

Hoshi knelt in front of the door, either not hearing her or just ignoring her and reached up. She remembered cursing and grabbing the leg of his bunkers, trying to pull him back just as he twisted the door knob in his hand.

She pulled her hand back at the last moment, right before the door opened and Hoshi was engulfed. The wave of flame looked so wrong, so unreal... Instead of exhaling, as she had the first time, she inhaled to scream. (Where the hell was her mask?) The flames followed the oxygen and by the time she realized what she'd done, it was too late. Her lungs had become super heated, fried and useless as she gasped uselessly for air. Her throat now burnt, her lungs twin lumps of charcoal, her entire insides feeling like she had swallowed a match.

And just before she burst into flames, she jerked awake in bed, breathing deep and hard with her healthy lungs. She had screamed instead of breathed. She had survived, Hoshi was dead. Her face and pillow were wet. She brushed off her cheeks and slipped out of bed on shaky legs like a new born pony. She stood for a moment, making sure her knees would support her, and went to the shower.

She turned the cool water as high as it would go, stripped out of her underwear and unwound the dressing on her arm. She got into the shower and stood motionless under the spray. Goosebumps rose on her flesh, her hair slicked back against her skull as she simply stood there and willed herself to become a block of ice. After a few moments, when her hands and knees were shaking with the freezing temperature, she finally turned on the hot water and soaped up.

She couldn't smell the smoke anymore, but that didn't mean the odor was gone. One of her ex-girlfriends had broken up with her because she "couldn't be with someone who smoked, so how could she sleep next to someone who reeked of the stuff?"

When she finally felt clean, she shut off the shower and toweled off, redressing her burn and putting on a pair of fire service sweats. The flat still felt a little too warm after her freezing cold shower. She padded barefoot to the window and pushed it open to let in some fresh air. Her flat was a basic one-bedroom over a corner shop. She had a few neighbors, but they were private and never lasted very long. It was nothing to do with her and everything to do with the kids who were at that moment closing a deal down on the corner. Her longest-lasting neighbor was a sweet old man who claimed his name was Mr Round and that his rotund waist was just a coincidence.

Down in the street, someone was screaming for someone else named Michelle to unlock the car door. The screech of tires immediately thereafter hinted that maybe Michelle had decided to leave the door locked. She watched as a pair of teenage kids on the corner exchanged a very complicated hand gesture and then went their separate ways. A limping dog exited the alleyway across the street, pausing to push his muzzle around an overflowing rubbish bin before lopping down the street and disappearing into the darkness.

She loved the neighborhood. She hated what was happening to it - the car theft, the broken windows and the graffiti on every surface - but what could she do? Call the police and give them another paper to shuffle at the end of the day? She sighed and moved away from the window. She had enough worries; she could put the world directly outside her window out of her mind for the day.

Maybe she'd move.

It was almost seven, the sun already set and her flat was filled with shadows. She padded over her rucksack and kicked it out of her way as she wandered towards the kitchen. She turned on the kitchen area lights, intent on making a cup of coffee when she caught a glimpse of the map still unfolded on the dining room table. She prayed she was wrong; someone setting fires to kill firefighters... it made her nauseated just thinking about someone sick enough to do it.

She carried her water into the living room, switching the TV on as she waked past and sat on the couch in the dark. She put her feet up and closed her eyes. She hated waking up so late; it threw off her internal clock. In a few hours, it would be bedtime. She could already see herself, up at two in the morning, watching some utter shite on the late night TV. Thank Christ she still had plenty of Poirot DVD's to watch to help her insomnia. Glancing at the TV she noticed a Poirot special was already on.

She loved watching those shows. They reminded her of curling up with her mum on the sofa on a rainy Sunday afternoon, just the two of them. She wanted someone to curl up next to her during the trips down memory lane, but so far no one she'd gone out with could get past the fact that she ran into burning buildings for a living.

The phone rang and she grumbled, picking up a cushion off the couch and covering her face with it. "Shut up and leave me alone," she groaned. After a moment, the fifth ring was silenced and her voice issued from the machine's speaker. "This is Lisa... Go for it."

There was a beep and then, "Lisa! Lisa! Lisa! Lisa! Lisa!"

She tossed the pillow away and grabbed the phone on the ninth "LIsa!" and shut off the machine. "Kookie!"

"Lisa!"

She grinned. "How are you doing?"

"I'm in a hospital bed with a catheter in a very uncomfortable position. The nurse that I spent half the shift working on just went off-duty so I have to start all over with the new one and the food here sucks."

She sat back and said, "Yeah, but other than that?"

"Peaches and cream, baby. The docs want to keep me another day... claim that I have some kind of infection. They just want to keep the Kookie Monster around a little longer. This place is Dullsville, so I really don't blame them for lying to keep me here."