CHAPTER ONE | BRADY
“Hey January, go long!” a voice bellowed from across the firehouse vehicle bay.
My eyes shot up from the engine piston I was polishing just in time to see a brown orb hurdling towards me. Instinct took over and I lunged forward, dropping the grease rag that I was holding and reaching up to intercept the pass.
I caught the flying object in my outstretched hand, then immediately felt a searing heat that burned through my fingertips.
“What the hell!” I hurled the object onto the concrete floor and shook my fingers, easing the sting that tingled through my skin. Then I flicked my eyes up towards the source of the scorching hot flying object: Joshua Hudson.
Josh was Firehouse 56’s rookie recruit and resident prankster. He was also my younger brother.
“Hot potato!” Josh flashed me a cocky grin, identifying the piping hot projectile as he sauntered across the garage. When he glanced down at my feet, his smile shrank.
“More like mashed potato,” I corrected him, eyeing the crumbled remains of potato that had splattered over the pavement.
“Dammit, that was my lunch.” Josh muttered, shaking his head at the unappetizing mess.
“What the hell kind of lunch is a potato, anyway?” I picked up the rag that I had dropped on my workbench and went back to buffing grease off of the shiny steel engine part.
“I’m getting my macros,” Josh beamed, flexing one of his 20-inch biceps as he squatted down to clean up the remnants of his spoiled lunch. “Gotta keep these guns loaded, now that I’m fighting fires and saving lives with Hartford’s finest.”
I rolled my eyes. In the six years that I had been part of the crew at Firehouse 56, I’d learned a lot about humility and respect. My brother’s six-month stint at the station seemed to have had the opposite effect on him: Josh had just become more cocky and arrogant than ever.
“I guess I don’t need to lecture you about staying in shape for the ladies,” my brother added with a wink. “Right, January?”
There it was, that nickname again: January.
I had earned the moniker a few years back, when the staff of Firehouse 56 was selected to pose for the annual ‘Smokin’ Hot Firefighters of the Tri-State Area’ charity calendar. Every guy at the station was assigned a month. I got January.
A hot blonde photographer spent an entire day shadowing our department and snapping pictures of the crew at work. And when the rest of the crew went home for the night, I might have stuck around to give her an after-hours demonstration on proper hose handling techniques. My hands-on lesson must have made a good impression; when the calendar was released, there was no denying that January’s photo stood out from the rest.
There I was, stripped down to my turnout pants and suspenders, gripping onto the nozzle of a truck hose just below the sculpted v-line of my abs. If a photo could tell you a thousand words… well, this one would tell you that I had the body of a Greek God, and that I was hung like a 5” thick fire hose. And the picture wouldn’t be lying on either count.
Of course, the guys at the firehouse never let me live it down, and I had been known as ‘January’ ever since.
“I don’t need to try a different fad diet every week. I prefer to stay fit the old-school way,” I informed my brother. “By rescuing hot women from even hotter fires.”
“You better watch out, Brady,” my brother’s eyes flashed with a glimmer of competition. “You just might find yourself out-shined by your baby bro.”
On the surface, my brother and I had everything in common: we both towered somewhere over six feet tall, both had the same thick dark brown hair and bright grey eyes, and we both had an obvious inclination towards personal fitness. Besides the pair of army dog tags and eagle head insignia tattooed on my left pec, we could almost pass for twins.
But that’s where the similarities ended. Besides physical appearance, my brother and I couldn’t have been any more different...
Our conversation was interrupted by the sudden blare of a siren that roared through the brick walls of the station and rang in my ears. The emergency lights on the ceiling started flashing, flooding the room with strobes of bright red light.
I locked eyes with Josh, who stood frozen next to my work bench. The playful grin was gone from his face, replaced with a grim expression. His jaw was clenched tight, his lips were pressed into a fine line, and I could see the hesitation swimming in his grey eyes.
“Let’s go,” I said firmly. I charged through the vehicle bay towards the tightly wound staircase leading up to the main section of the firehouse. I didn’t need to look over my shoulder to know that my brother was right on my heels.
The rest of the department had already assembled in the locker room. I took a silent roll call as I scanned my eyes over the familiar faces of my colleagues, each standing in front of their respective cubby and hastily climbing into their black Hartford Fire Department turnout gear. Then I turned to my own spot on the wall of bright red cubbies and quickly started to gear up.
The adrenaline didn’t start pumping through my veins until I slid down the firepole and my boots struck the concrete floor of the equipment bay.
Getting geared up and climbing into the fire engine always triggered flashbacks to my days in the 101st Airborne. Back then, I would have been climbing into a C-130 aircraft instead of a bright red fire truck. Instead of fifty-pounds of turnout gear, I would have been hauling a fifty-pound T-11 parachute on my back. And instead of getting ready to run into a burning building, I would have been preparing to parachute down onto enemy soil.
Firehouse 56 might be worlds away from the desert terrain of Afghanistan, but the rush of adrenaline that burned through my body was exactly the same. My heartbeat hammered hard against my ribcage as I sprinted towards the fire truck and threw myself into the cab, taking the seat directly beside the driver.
The dispatcher’s voice crackled through the radio:
“We’ve got a 10-78, I repeat: a 10-78. Hartford, are you responding?”
“Affirmative,” I said into the mouthpiece of the radio. “Give me an address.”
“The intersection of Bergamot Drive and Davidson,” the dispatcher chirped. “It’s an apartment complex.”
Josh slid into the empty seat beside me, slamming the cab door shut behind him just as the truck started rolling out of the bay. I stretched my arm across the control panel, flicking a switch to activate the truck’s flashing lights and siren.
“First responders are calling it a five-alarm,” the dispatcher said. My chest got a little bit tighter, and I felt my breathing quicken. During my entire tenure with the Hartford Fire Department, I had only encountered one five-alarm fire. That had been the toughest night of my career, and that was the only time I had ever questioned my decision to become a firefighter.
An uneasy sensation tingled in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t worried about facing another five-alarm fire myself; I had overcome that fear a long time ago, and I knew what I was capable of. But I was worried about Josh. He had come a long way since the first day of training, but I wasn’t confident that he was ready to face a five-alarm fire.
When I glanced over at my brother and saw the grim, glassy expression in his eyes, I knew he was thinking the same thing. His face was drained of color, and his hands were knotted together in his lap.
Then he caught my eye, and his face stiffened. He wrinkled his brow and gave a resolute nod.
“I’m fine,” he assured me in a gruff voice. “I can handle this.”
I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I didn’t get a chance to argue. I heard one of my colleagues curse under his breath, and when I flicked my eyes through the windshield, I saw a giant cloud of black smoke billowing overhead.
We had arrived.
The truck screeched to a stop on the curb and I jumped into action, hurling myself onto the street and jogging towards the chaotic scene ahead.
“Over here!” a medic called from further down the curb, waving me down. I tucked my helmet under my arm and jogged towards him.
The medic was standing over a frail little girl, no more than six or seven years old, who was squatting on the curbside. Her face was stained with tears and ash, and her shoulders were wrapped in a standard-issue EMS blanket.
“She thinks there’s someone inside apartment 209,” the medic told me grimly.
I glanced down at the little girl and asked: “Are you sure?”
She gulped and blinked up at me, then she nodded.
“My sister,” the girl squeaked in a sniffly voice. “She was supposed to be babysitting me, but she fell asleep on the couch. Then the loud noise started, and I couldn’t wake her up, so I ran to get help…”
The little girl looked overwhelmed with guilt, and her eyes started to well up with fresh tears.
“You did the right thing,” I told her. “You were very brave.”
She sniffled and blinked up at me.
“What’s your sister’s name?” I asked.
“Macy.”
“I’m going to go find Macy now, ok?”
She nodded again, then I strapped on my helmet and started sprinting towards the building.
The top half of the apartment complex had been entirely consumed with flames, reducing the structure to the metal beams that poked through the black smoke. The burn marks on the building suggested that the fire had started on the second floor and spread rapidly upwards.
Only the ground floor was still intact, and just barely… as soon as I crossed under the archway that lead to the exterior stairwell, a giant chunk of flaming debris plummeted to the pavement, striking the ground where I had stood just a fraction of a second earlier.
I trudged forward without looking back.
Rule number one: when you’re a firefighter, there’s no time to hesitate. Every second that you waste could be the difference between saving a life, or endangering your own.
I climbed the stairs two at a time until I reached the second-floor landing. Even through my nomex turnout coat, I could feel the temperature spike. The heat licked straight through the material, immediately bubbling over my skin in a burning hot sweat.
Black smoke poured through the corridor and I stifled a cough as I pulled my breathing apparatus over my face and took a few shaky breaths.
My breathing stabilized, but even the mask couldn’t filter out the stench of burning. No matter how much time you spend running into burning buildings, you never quite get used to that smell.
I squinted my eyes as I made my way down the corridor, trying to decipher the apartment numbers that marked the doors on either side of me. The heat was intensifying, and when I passed apartment 207 and saw bright orange flames pouring under the doorway, I felt my heart sink in my chest.
What if I was too late?
I reached apartment 209. The door had been left ajar, and I used the toe of my boot to kick it open.
The apartment was filled with a haze of smoke. The sound of the fire alarm ringing was even louder in the four tight walls of the unit, and I imagined how scared that little girl must have been.
Across the room, I could see the back of an upholstered couch.
“Macy?” I called out. My voice was distorted by the breathing apparatus over my mouth. There was no response; just the flickering sound of flames burning on the other side of the wall.
Shit.
My eyes rounded the back of the couch and landed on the body of a young woman, sprawled over the sofa, unresponsive.
I pushed aside my respirator and bit down on the fingertip of my glove, yanking it off with my teeth then shoving it into my pocket for safekeeping. Then I pressed my bare fingertips onto the woman’s neck. It was faint, but I could feel it: a pulse.
I quickly tore off my breathing apparatus and affixed it to over her mouth and nose. I saw the mask fog as she took a tiny breath, then I bent forward and hooked my arms underneath her -- one arm under her neck, one under her knees. I took a deep breath of the ashy, heavy air and I hoisted her up.
Just as I turned towards the door, the wall to my right dissolved, succumbing to the torrent of flames burning from the next room over. The collapsed wall released a dense wave of heat that whipped across the room, singeing my bare skin.
I pinched my eyes shut against the heat, and I hugged Macy close to my chest as I ran blindly towards the door.
The smoke was ten times worse as I retraced my steps down the corridor towards the stairwell, but I managed to find make it to the top of the stairs.
“Almost there,” I grunted, both for Macy’s sake and my own. I plunged down the steps, and through the last hazy cloud of smoke.
And then we were back on the street; safe.
The summer air felt cold in comparison to the raging heat burning inside the apartment building, and a chill worked its way down my spine as I carried Macy towards the medic truck parked by the curbside.
The little girl spotted me and leapt up from the curb. She threw her blanket onto the ground and ran towards me, followed by the medic.
“Macy!” the child squealed.
“She’s alright,” I said. “She’s breathing. I think your sister is going to be alright.”
I transferred Macy onto a stretcher and helped EMS load her into an ambulance, then I glanced back down at the little girl.
The glove I ripped off earlier must have fallen out of my pocket, because the little girl now clutched it protectively in both of her tiny hands. She stared up at me with wide eyes, her tears replaced with awe. Then she reluctantly lifted the glove towards me. I just smiled.
“You should keep it,” I told her. “And every time you look at that glove, I want you to remember how brave you were today.”
Her ashy face relaxed and a giant smile spread across her cheeks. That was the kind of smile worth running into a burning building for.