CHAPTER THREE | RORY
Gym class had just finished, and the boy’s locker room was swarming with sweaty freshmen. Jokes were being made, towels were being snapped, and laughter echoed through the cinder block walls.
The only guy who wasn’t in on the joke was me. I ignored the snickers and whispers as I weaved my way towards my locker. Then I glanced up and my heart stopped.
The door to my locker was already open, and Logan Ford was reaching inside. When he withdrew his hand, I saw that he was pinching my t-shirt between his fingers.
He held it up to his nose, then pretended to retch in disgust.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” I demanded, snatching the t-shirt away from him.
“Dude, your clothes reek!” he grimaced, waving a hand in front of his nose dramatically. “Why do you smell like nobody loves you?!”
“I don’t smell like anything,” I grunted. “And if I catch you touching my shit again, I’ll kick your ass into next week.”
They were borrowed words; my stepfather had used the same threat on me countless times. Luckily they seemed to do the trick. Logan rolled his eyes and huffed out of the locker room. The rest of the class followed, filing out one by one.
I waited until I was alone, then I lifted the t-shirt to my nose and inhaled. I immediately cringed. Somehow the stench of my mother’s house had become embedded in my clothes.
Poverty. That’s what it smelled like.
My heart thumped as I slowly raised my arm to my nose and inhaled. There it was again, the same stench, festering from my pores.
I couldn’t escape that fucking smell. It was woven into the fibers of my clothes, the layers of my skin, my hair, my fingers...
How had I not noticed it before?!
There was a janitor’s closet in the back corner of the locker room. That’s where I had found the wad of steel wool and bleach.
Eyes stained with tears, I stormed back to the communal showers. I cranked the shower taps and stood under the stream of water as it grew hotter and hotter… until it was scalding.
Then I started scrubbing.
The water boiled on my back, the steel wool scoured my skin, and the bleach burned. My arms were raw and covered in red welts, but I didn’t stop...
Logan’s words kept echoing in my head, repeating over and over, “Why do you smell like nobody loves you? Why do you smell like nobody loves you? Why do you smell like nobody loves you?”
Suddenly the loud wail of a siren pierced my eardrums, jerking me out of the memory.
I blinked open my eyes and found myself standing back in the Firehouse 56 locker room. The fire alarm was ringing, and emergency alert lights were flashing overhead.
Footsteps thundered through the tile floor as other members of the crew flooded into the room and rushed to gear up in front of their respective cubbies.
“We’ll have to finish the tour later,” Walker shouted at me over the chaos as he jumped in front of his own cubby and started pulling on his turnout pants. “It’s showtime!”
I glanced around, becoming reacquainted with my surroundings. The locker room was reduced to a chaotic fluster as the rest of the crew geared up. Besides me, there was only one other person in the room who was standing perfectly still,
Logan Ford.
His eyes were locked on me, and there was an expression on his face that I couldn’t make heads or tails of.
I knew for a fact that I smelled like Dior Fahrenheit cologne and the most expensive laundry detergent that money could buy, but I still felt the sudden urge to pull up the collar of my t-shirt and inhale… just to see if the stench of my past was still there.
What if it was still clinging to me, after all of these years? My own personal scarlet letter; proof that Rory McAlister was -- and always had been -- just a poor, pathetic bastard.
“Let’s go, McAlister!” Walker said suddenly, snapping me out of my thoughts as he pushed me towards the door. “I know it’s your first day, but that doesn’t mean we’re leaving you behind.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me!” he gave me a final shove through the door, and Logan slipped out of view. “What better way to get acquainted with your new crew, than to ride-along and watch them in action?”
I had to scoff at that. I had barely spent an hour at Firehouse 56, but I was already way more acquainted with the crew than I wanted to be…
***
It was just supposed to be a ride-along. Walker made that very clear, I was supposed to just watch from the sidelines; spectate without getting involved.
But there was something Walker Wright didn’t know about me, I’m not a ‘watch from the sidelines’ kinda guy.
I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut or my head down. I’ve never been one to mind my own business while shit goes up in flames around me.
As soon as I saw that overturned car wedged in the ditch on the side of the road, I knew that I wasn’t going to sit on my hands and do nothing.
I couldn’t just watch from the sidelines while the goon squad attempted to save the day… especially not when the crew consisted of guys like Duke and Logan.
The fire engine slid to a stop on the side of the road, and everyone jumbled out.
I was following behind them when I felt a hand grip onto the back of my Bauhaus t-shirt.
My eyes flicked back, and I spotted a face that I vaguely recognized from that stupid calendar. He was the month of January, but I couldn’t place his name...
“Slow your roll, sparky,” he said sternly. “Remember, you’re just here to watch and learn.”
“I served on the Boston Fire Department for six years,” I snarled, jerking his hand away. “I don’t need to take lessons from a fucking pin-up calendar model.”
His lips pressed together to make a fine line.
“If that’s the attitude you’re going to have, then you might as well pack your bags now and take your ass back to Boston,” he snapped back. “That kind of bullshit doesn’t fly on this crew.”
His shoulder shoved against mine as he stomped towards the overturned car.
I let him get a few paces ahead of me, then I followed him towards the ditch.
The soft grass on the side of the road was gouged with a pair of tire tracks, marking the path the car had taken as it careened off the road and slammed into its final resting place in the ditch. The front of the car had taken the brunt of the crash; the hood was wrinkled up, and brown smoke puffed out of the engine and hung over the ditch like a dense fog.
The air got thicker with each step I took, and I had to bury my nose in the fold of my elbow to stop myself from choking on the stench of burning plastic.
The windshield and driver side window were both shattered, and millions of tiny specks of tempered glass glistened in the grassy embankment. The driver side door had crumpled like a piece of tissue paper, and a few of the crew members were trying -- in vain -- to get it open.
I knew that door wouldn’t budge. The last time I’d seen a wreck like this, it had taken six crew members and the jaws of life to pry the door open and rescue the driver trapped inside.
“Can you climb through the window?” Mr. January asked the woman in the driver’s seat. That was another mistake; the woman was clearly in shock, and the only thing she was capable of was mumbling incoherently.
Since the rest of the crew was crowded around the woman, I started to circle around to the back of the car.
I smelled it before I saw it, gasoline.
The sweet aroma was overpowering, and when I glanced down and identified the source of the smell, I felt my blood go cold. A stream of crystal clear liquid was pouring from the severed fuel line under the body of the car. The liquid pooled in the grass and formed a narrow stream as it followed the slope of the ditch.
My eyes darted between the stream of gasoline, the smoking engine, and the trapped driver.
Fuck.
This was bad. The car could blow at any second; it would only take one spark to fill the ditch with flames--
“Jesus, McAlister!” a voice groaned behind me. I spun around and saw Walker stomping towards me.
“You can’t be down here!” he said. “You’re not even wearing any gear!”
I glanced down, and for the first time I realized that he was right, I wasn’t wearing turnout gear or a mask to protect me if this -- when -- this car became a fireball. I just had bare arms and the t-shirt on my back…
“Why don’t you stand on the road and direct traffic?” Walker suggested. He nodded back at the road, and I saw a line of cars trying to navigate around the firetruck.
I shook my head. Then, keeping my voice low, I said,
“There’s a gas leak.”
“Wha-- are you sure?!”
“The fuel line must have gotten severed in the crash,” I explained quietly. “Gas is leaking everywhere…”
“Fuck,” Walker hissed. I saw his mind race with the same thoughts that I had just been thinking; weighing all of the options, all of the pros and cons…
Then, with a sense of grim resolution, he said, “We’ve gotta get her out of the car.”
He flicked down the mask on his helmet and jogged towards the car. This time I kept my distance, watching from the top of the ditch.
The crew worked together, squeezing and wedging and tugging. All I could see was the back of their black turnout coats… then suddenly they jumped back, and a limp body spilled out through the driver side window.
“We’ve got her!” Walker yelled.
At first I thought that he was talking to me. Then I realized that an ambulance had arrived on the scene, and a pair of EMTs were waiting on the road’s gravelly shoulder with a stretcher.
The woman was paralyzed by shock, and Mr. January and Duke had to work together to carry her up the embankment towards the roadside. She was still mumbling under her breath, and as she got closer, I realized she was saying the same thing over and over,
“My baby, my baby, my baby, my baby…”
“What is she talking about?!” I asked.
“Who knows,” Duke shrugged. “She’s been saying the same thing since we got here…”
Her eyes were hollow and dark, and her lips kept mouthing the words again and again,
My baby, my baby, my baby…
The realization hit me like a cinder block to the gut.
“She was telling you that she has a baby,” I said. “A baby… in the car.”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I heard the unmistakable sound of a spark hitting gasoline, followed by the roaring crackle of flames erupting.
In the time it took to blink my eyes, the car was consumed in flames. I could feel the heat from the road.
The woman howled in agony and writhed manically to get out of Duke’s grip.
I couldn’t blame her; I knew that if I was in her position, I’d do the same thing.
There’s something absolutely primal about a parent’s instinct to protect their child. You can’t understand it until you’ve felt it yourself…
Before anyone could stop me, I plunged down the slope of the ditch towards the car.
The wreckage was consumed with thick orange flames, and the heat chapped my bare skin. I ducked down, crawling towards the side of the car on my hands and knees as plumes of fire erupted over my head.
The back of the car had remained relatively unscathed in the crash. I knew it was a longshot, but I didn’t have a choice, I had to try opening the rear door. That was the only way I could access the backseat.
Gasoline soaked into the knees of my jeans as I knelt in front of the car. I reached for the door handle, and the hot metal seared through my palm. I forced myself to hold on as I pressed the lever.
Miraculously, the door swung open. As soon as I saw the lifeless infant strapped into the car seat, my heart sunk.
I’m too late...
Flames were flicking at my bare skin from all directions. There wasn’t time to think or worry; I had to act. I didn’t let myself look down as I crawled into the car and quickly undid the harness on the car seat. I kept my eyes pressed shut as I hugged the lifeless baby to my chest and backed slowly out of the car.
I forced myself to focus as I shielded the baby’s head and ran through the wall of flames, then up the steep and muddy hill.
I had just reached the side of the road when I felt the baby squirm, then heard a smothered sob.
“He’s alive!” I cried in relief. I held the baby against my chest, feeling the swift kick of his heartbeat.
He’s alive…
An EMT pulled the baby out of my arms, and I slowly fell to my knees. Smoke filled my lungs, and my body was starting to loosen as I drifted out of consciousness.
The last thing I saw was my daughter’s face, and then the world slowly faded to black around me...