CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | DUKE
“Dude! What the hell happened to your face?!”
I huffed out a sigh and rolled my eyes. I had already lost count of how many times I had heard that question tonight. This time, it was coming from Bryce McKinley.
It was Monday night and, per firehouse tradition, all twelve members of the crew had assembled at the station for our weekly poker night.
Poker night was a year-round tradition at Firehouse 56. In the winter months, our weekly games were typically held in one of the station’s upstairs rec rooms. At the first sign of warmer weather, we’d move down to the vehicle bay.
Whoever was on call at the station that night would park a couple of trucks in front of the station to clear a spot in the bay, then they’d set up the felt-top card table and metal folding chairs. Off-duty crew members would show up with cigars and booze, and then we’d all sit around playing hands and talking shit until a call came in or the end of the night, whichever came first.
Since I was off-duty that day, my only obligation was to show up. Oh, and apparently to field a dozen questions about my black eye.
“Seriously,” Bryce grimaced as he dropped into the empty seat next to me at the poker table. “What did you do to yourself?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Troy cut into the conversation from across the table “March Madness got himself into a nasty bar brawl!”
“No way!” Bryce looked surprised. “Duke? In a bar fight?”
“You better believe it, baby!” Josh grinned from the dealer’s seat as he began to shuffle a deck of cards. “I saw the whole thing. It all went down on Friday night at Rusty’s.”
“If you had stuck around after the first round, you would seen it all for yourself,” Troy smirked at Bryce. “Too bad you have that curfew…”
“I don’t have a curfew, I have a daughter,” Bryce retorted. “Sorry I’d rather spend time with my kid than getting drunk with you hooligans.”
“Josh has a kid, too,” Troy pointed out. “You don’t see him calling it a night at 7:45 p.m.”
“I think you’re losing the ‘Coolest Dad on the Crew’ contest,” I smirked up at Bryce.
“Well at least I don’t stroll into the bar with a Kate Spade diaper bag on my shoulder,” Bryce muttered.
Troy immediately keeled forward in laughter and Josh scowled as he started dealing out the first hand of cards. As soon as I got my hand, I used the cards to fan myself.
It was hotter than hell in the vehicle bay and the dense, muggy air was totally stagnant. Usually on summer nights we’d get a pretty good breeze blowing through the garage, but that wasn’t the case tonight.
After nearly a week of scorching summer heat, Hartford’s fever had finally broken this afternoon. Black storm clouds had rolled in and unleashed a torrential downpour over the city. The rain had been going strong since noon, and it showed no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
We had left the garage doors at the front of the bay rolled up, but that hadn’t made the heat drain out of the bay any faster. If anything, all of the rain pelting down outside just made the hot air more humid and heavy.
“Anyways, I’m calling bullshit,” Bryce decided. “Duke would never get in a fight. He wouldn’t want to risk breaking a nail.”
“I’d say he broke a lot more than that,” Logan whistled. “Have you seen his face?!”
“So who did you piss off on Friday night?” Bryce wanted to know.
“I didn’t piss off anybody.”
“Well you don’t get a shiner like that by being a nice guy,” Bryce nodded at the welt surrounded my eye.
“It was no big deal, ok?” I sighed. “Some jackass EMT was fucking with a friend of mine, so I put a stop to it. That’s all. End of story.”
“Timeout,” Troy stopped me. “This wasn’t just some friend. This was your new roommate. Who, by the way, happens to be a total babe.”
“Wait, Beck the female roommate is hot?” Bryce looked confused. “Why am I just finding out about this?!”
“It was news to me, too,” Troy nodded solemnly. Then he turned to me and added: “You really should have been upfront with this information.”
“I don’t see how my roommate’s appearance is relevant to anything,” I said. “You should be more concerned about the fact that a female EMT was being harassed at the bar and nobody did a damn thing to stop it.”
“Well your face sure did put a stop to it,” Troy joked, nodding at my shiner.
“It’s not a fucking joke!” I snapped. “How would you like it if some random creep snuck up behind you at a bar and grabbed your ass?”
“That depends,” Troy said thoughtfully. “Is the creep in this scenario hot?”
“You’re fucking unbelievable,” I grunted.
“I’m just messing around,” Troy rolled his eyes. “Chill out.”
“Well I was actually really impressed with the way Duke handled that situation,” Josh said, playing peacemaker from the dealer’s chair. “You stuck up for your friend and you kicked that scumbag’s ass. That makes you a good guy in my book, Williams.”
“Thank you, Josh,” I said sincerely.
“And how about that uppercut?” Logan joined in enthusiastically. “Where the hell did Richie Rich over here learn to throw a punch like that? Do they teach you how to box and weave at prep school?”
“So Duke Williams actually punched this guy back?” Bryce still looked skeptical.
“Oh yeah,” Troy nodded. “And it was a total knockout punch. One and done.” For emphasis he mimed a slow-motion punch into the table’s felt-top, causing all of the stacks of poker chips to rattle.
“So… what happened to the guy?” Bryce wanted to know.
“That’s a good question,” Troy glanced at me. “You hear anything?”
I shrugged my shoulders and feigned ignorance, even though I knew had a pretty good idea of what had gone down after the fight.
I had wanted to make damn sure that scumbag EMT never so much as breathed near Beck again, so I had made a phone call to the department hotline on Saturday afternoon. Even though it meant incriminating myself in the process, I had reported everything: the harassment at the bar, the fight…
“All right boys, enough chit-chat. Let’s play this damn game,” Josh said, slamming the deck of cards onto the table.
We were about to play the first hand of poker when, like a bolt of thunder, the fire alarm rattled through the station.
Twelve firemen jumped up and half as many bolted for the spiral staircase that led to the locker room upstairs. I was one of them.
The locker room was divided into red metal cubbies that housed our turnout gear. As soon as I got in front of my assigned cubby I grabbed my Nomex turnout pants and jumped into them, one leg at a time. I thrust my arms through the suspenders and tightened them around my shoulders, then I kicked off my canvas Saint Laurent sneakers and replaced them with my leather bunker boots.
The other guys had already finished gearing up. As usual, I had taken the longest. I grabbed my turnout coat from my cubby and bolted back down to the garage, forcing my arms through the heavy sleeves as I went.
A ladder truck was already revving in the vehicle bay and Troy Hart was geared up behind the wheel. I slid into the truck’s cab and before my ass had even hit the seat, Troy had stepped down on the gas and propelled the truck forward.
Exiting the garage was like driving straight into a car wash; rain immediately hammered us from all directions, drumming on the metal roof of the truck and pelting the windows. The windshield wipers danced frantically across the glass, but they were no match for the curtains of rain.
From my spot at the back of the cab, I couldn’t hear the operator’s voice coming through the truck’s radio; all I could hear was the rain. I had no idea where we were headed, or what was waiting for us once we got there.
We had been driving through the storm for a couple of minutes when Logan suddenly turned to me and frowned.
“What are you doing here?” he shouted over the sound of the rain.
“Huh?”
“What are you doing here?” he repeated. “You’re not on-call tonight.”
I blinked a few times stupidly, then I realized that he was right. Today was supposed to be my day off; I had only been at the firehouse for poker night. I wasn’t supposed to be responding to calls… but I hadn’t given that a second thought when I heard the siren wail.
Well, there’s no going back now…
I shrugged my shoulders and joked: “I figured I could use the fresh air!”
Suddenly the truck slid to a stop, and I glanced out the window.
“Is this it?” I shouted, confused.
Troy was already popping open the door and sliding out of the truck, so the rest of us followed suit. I jumped down towards the pavement and my rubber boots landed in a puddle of rainwater.
We were on a city street near the heart of downtown Hartford. On any other summer night, the street would have been packed with traffic and pedestrians… but tonight, the rain had driven all of the chaos away. The road was empty. I scanned my eyes around, trying to determine why he had been called out here.
At the edge of the block I spotted a man hunched over a storm drain. I frowned. What the hell is he doing out in this storm?
“This way!” Troy said, beckoning us to follow him as he trudged towards the man.
Five pairs of boots squished against the pavement as he followed Troy to the edge of the road. As the road dipped down towards the curb, the flooding got worse. By the time we reached the edge of the block, the water was up to my ankles.
“There’s something blocking the drain!” Josh said, pointing towards the storm drain built into the curb. When I glanced down at it, I realized he was right. Runoff from the rain should have been draining down into the metal grate, but instead it was pouring out of the drain and flooding onto the street.
The man standing over the drain jerked up when he saw us, and he frantically waved us towards him.
“There’s someone trapped in the drain!” he said frantically, pointing towards the flooded grate.
“I know,” Josh nodded. “Something’s blocking it—”
“No,” the man grunted. “Not something… someone! There is someone down there!”
All six of the crewmembers blinked down at the storm drain, and then I heard Troy’s voice mutter, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”