Loving A Firefighter (Loving Series)

Loving A Fire Fighter

Susan Leigh Carlton

Published at Amazon

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As Carrie opened the door to her apartment building, she sneezed…again, the latest of many this morning.  Carrie thought the entire five foot six inch span of her body hurt.  Even her long dark hair ached when it hit her neck after a sneeze.  She walked through the lobby with its dated carpeting and faded draperies.  The maintenance man was trying to remove a torn piece of the carpeting.  He looked up and nodded at Carrie as she passed and headed to the elevator.  She pushed the cracked call button, but the doors stayed closed.  The locator dial above the doors indicated the car was on the first floor.

“Great. 
Broken again.  Third time this month.  I don’t know if I can make it up these stairs today.” 
Carrie walked back to the door to the stairs, opened it and began the climb.  Ignoring the graffiti that adorned the walls and  with her purse on her shoulder, she held a small pack of Kleenex in one hand and clung to the stair railing, sliding her hand over the cracked paint on the railing.  Another sneeze, she put an already damp Kleenex to her nose.  The sound reverberated against the walls; she continued to climb slowly up the thirteen stairs.  When she reached the second floor landing, she paused for a few seconds.  Her knees felt as if they were going to collapse as she trudged across the worn carpeting and took another stair step.  Twelve more to go. 

Finally
, the door to the hallway and then a right turn toward 3B, down the hallway with the peeling wallpaper and ceiling paint.  On another day, she might have thought how good it would be to move to a nicer apartment, one that wasn’t so shabby.  Not today. She didn’t feel good enough to care.  As she neared her door, she fumbled in her purse and retrieved her keys. 

At the door, identified by a 3 and a B that hung
from only one nail, tilted to the side, she turned the key in the top one of the two locks she had on her door.  The snick of the dead man’s bolt as it slid from the keeper was a welcome sound.  Next, she inserted the key in the bottom lock and turned it to the left.  Nothing happened.  She turned it all the way to the left and back to the right.  It felt right. 
“I know I locked both locks this morning.  I dropped the keys on the floor when I started to put them in my purse, so why is it unlocked?” 
Too weary and sick to even care, she pushed the door and went into the living room.  She dropped her purse on the coffee table and headed back to the bedroom.

As she approached it, she heard a female voice filled with passion cry out.  Startled, Carrie stopped, then turned and went back into the living room.  She picked up the metal baseball bat she kept by the front door for protection.  She held the bat in front of her and returned to the bedroom door.  She peeked around the doorway and could see the covers moving.  Another step and she could see the outline of two bodies making the beast with two backs in her bed. 

“Who are you and what are you doing in my bedroom?”  She yelled again.  “How did you get in my apartment?  Who let you in?”  The two bodies rose to a sitting position.  The covers fell away and revealed the upper half of a blonde that was well endowed.  Her alarmed face registered her fear of the girl advancing toward her with a bat drawn back to the hitting position.  The other head turned and revealed the face of Carrie’s ex-boyfriend.  “Nathan, what are you doing here and who is this tramp?  What is she doing here?  How did you get in?”  She turned to the blonde and said, “Sister, you better get your sorry ass out of here and I mean right now or I will use your head for a baseball.  Now get out of here,” she roared.  The blonde grabbed her bra and panties off the floor and ran.  She grabbed her jeans and blouse as she left the bedroom.  She yanked the front door open and headed for the non-working elevator as naked as the day she was born. 

“Carrie, honey, I can explain,” came the whiny voice of her
ex. 

“I just bet you can.  How did you get in here?  Where did you get a key?”

“Well, I was waiting for you, and I told the manager I was your boyfriend and he gave me a key so I could wait inside.  She called me and wanted to talk.  One thing led to another and I told her to come over.  I wasn’t going to do anything but talk.”

“
Why did you break into my apartment?  You can’t just go around getting into people’s home without permission. Now you better get out of here or I will have you arrested for breaking and entering.”

“I didn’t break in.  I had the key.”
  He began to hop as he tried getting his leg into his pants.

“Nathan you have two minutes to get out of here or I will have you arrested.

“Carrie, honey, be reasonable.  I mean, it’s partly your fault too.”

“By what wild
, convoluted thought is it my fault?

“Well, if you had given me the kind of loving she was giving me then I would never have looked at her.”

“You creep, the thought of you even touching me gives me the shudders.  You have one minute.”  She took her iPhone from her pocket and pushed a button.

“Carrie honey, please.”

“Thirty seconds.  I mean it.  You had better be out the door in less than thirty seconds.” 

He hurriedly grabbed his shoes, shirt and one sock and ran out the door and into the hall where the blonde was
getting her clothes on.  She was crying and she was furious.  She railed at him, “Why didn’t you tell me that was your girlfriend’s apartment?”

“Oh shut up.  You’ve spoiled everything.”

“I’ve spoiled everything?  Wait until I tell my brother what you did.”

Carrie saw the stairway door open, Nathan went through the door.  The bimbo followed him.  Carrie went back into her apartment and locked the door. 
“I’m well rid of him,” she thought.  “I don’t know why I went out with him in the first place.”

Carrie was lucky enough to get an appointment with the doctor the next morning.  He confirmed her diagnosis of flu.  He gave her a shot of amantadine, prescribed bed rest and plenty of fluids. 

She stopped on the way home at a Taco Cabana and bought two breakfast tacos. 
When she woke that morning, she was too queasy to eat.  She was starved now.  She stopped in the supermarket and purchased eggs, orange juice and milk.  Back at her apartment building, she found the rattledy old elevator was working in its old shaky, jerking fashion.  At least she didn’t have to climb those infernal stairs.

She ate the tacos, washed them down with orange juice and returned to bed.  She stayed in bed most of the day and ensuing night.  The next day she
was better but not well enough to return to work. 

She contacted the apartment manager and admonished him about giving out her key.  The manager was defensive about it, as she expected and
only increased Carrie’s desire to move.

As the day progressed, she
was better physically but was really down about the fight with Nathan.  How could she have let herself be so beguiled with him to the point of going out with him?  Her instincts had let her down.  She promised herself it would be the last time she allowed anyone to fool her in that manner. 
“Thank God, I didn’t let it go any further.  To think I could have married that creep.  I wouldn’t have known what or who he was doing.”

That evening, she took a long soak in the tub filled with water as hot as she could stand it.  She washed her long, dark brown hair and dried it thoroughly.
  She fixed a bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon and brown sugar, ate it and returned to bed.

She was very restless and awakened several times during the night.  Sounds seemed magnified.  She dreamed she heard noises and awakened but heard nothing
unusual.  She went back to sleep and awakened to the smell of smoke and the sound of her plugin smoke detector.  She sat up in bed and still smelled the smoke.  She turned on the lamp and could see the smoke.  She pulled on a housecoat, donned her furry bunny slippers.  The bedroom door did not feel hot, and she went into the smoky kitchen but saw nothing other than the smoke.  When she went into the living room, the smoke was heavier.  She got down on the floor as she had been taught in grade school and crawled to the door, feeling her way along.  The door did not feel hot to the touch so she went out into the hall where there was hardly any smoke. 

There was a fire alarm in the hallway and she pulled it
even though the hall was not as smoky as her apartment.  Next she went to the other doors on her floor and pounded on them until she got a response except for one unit.  The building did not have sprinklers or smoke detectors but the alarm she pulled was blaring in a loud penetrating tone.  She debated about going back to get her phone and decided the prudent thing would be to get out of the building.

The other tenants came out of their apartments awakened by the loud horn.  She remembered the warnings about using an elevator in event of a fire and hurried down the stairs.  As she reached the first floor, the first responder from the Denton Fire Department rushed in and asked where the fire was.  He was in full turnout gear, with a breathing apparatus on his back and a fire axe in hand.  Another fireman joined the first one and then a third rushed in.  They began going door to door making sure everyone had been evacuated.

Carrie told the first responder she thought the fire was in her apartment.  He began the litany of questions.  No, she didn’t smoke, so she hadn’t fallen asleep with a cigarette.  She hadn’t left a burner lit on the gas stove.  She didn’t have a plugin heater.  As the questions continued, Carrie began to take notice of the firefighter.  He wore a red fire helmet with a numeral four on the front and DFD on the back.  He looked bulky in his turnout gear, but he didn’t appear to be overweight.  His face was lean and unlined, though freckled.  He was rather handsome at that.  He took the helmet off and laid it beside him.  He appeared to be about 25, the same age as Carrie.  A shock of red hair shone in the revolving lights of the fire trucks, of which there were two now and they had been joined by a police car and an EMT unit.  The sidewalk was filled with tenants and curious passersby. 

“Ma’am, I think you need to be checked by the EMT’s.  Your face is flushed.
”  He had removed his gloves to write and touched her forehead.  His calloused hand caused her to feel a warm sensation where he had touched her.  She was surprised by the spark of excitement  generated by his touch.  She had goose bumps and was trembly inside. 
“Does smoke inhalation do this to you?”
she wondered. 
“Surely not.” 
“I’m okay,” she told the firefighter.  “I have a touch of the flu and the doctor gave me a shot this morning.”

“I
still think it best have them take a look at you.”  Something in his manner soothed her.  He took her by the arm and led her to the EMT unit.  “Ma’am, I’ll check back with you in a few minutes.  I’m going to go check on the status.  What was your apartment number?”

“3B”.

“Wonder what his name is,”
thought Carrie as he turned and headed into the building.  Her thoughts were interrupted by the EMT.  She had a blood pressure cuff and began to wrap it around her arm.  She held a thermometer to take Carrie’s temp and she placed a pulse oximeter on her finger.

“This measure
s the amount of oxygen in your blood.  Your respiration appears normal except you do have congestion.  It may be due to the flu, but I don’t think we should take the chance.  We’re going to transport you to Baylor Medical Regional.”  She told her partner, who went to locate the first responder and tell him what they were going to do.