The Smoke Room (4 page)

Still on my knees, I pull her outside the swing path of the door. I haul her a few feet, then, working like a grizzly dragging a fresh kill, move forward, drag her to my new position, then move forward again. Her backside is going to be raw, but I am alone and it is too hot to stand up.

“Ted!” I yell. “I need help. Ted! I’ve got a victim.”

Tronstad does not reply, and if there are other firefighters in the house, I cannot hear them.

As I drag her toward the stairs, my head fills with stupid thoughts: that this is the strangest thing in the world, to be dragging a woman I’ve never seen out of a burning house. That I’ve been trained for just this event and after two years of waiting I’m now doing a genuine rescue. That she will not survive. That I should have been here five minutes sooner, and that if I had been, Tronstad and I would have saved her life.

Striving to protect her neck and spine, I drag her down the stairs. Her body thumps on each stair. I’m not sure she is breathing, but it makes little difference to this process. Alive or dead, I will get her outside.

Downstairs near the front door, Tronstad sees my victim, drops the nozzle, and takes the woman’s legs. I take her arms from behind, locking her wrists in front of her torso, and together we carry her into the yard as three firefighters in full bunkers and MSA bottles charge up onto the porch.

We carry her to the center of the lawn and lay her down. Tronstad drops her feet and rips off his helmet and face piece and yells, “Somebody bring a vent kit! Gum’s got another victim here.”

Twenty feet away an empty wheelchair sits beside a team of firefighters doing CPR on the man I brought out earlier. One of the CPR team is the neighbor I knocked down—a local doctor, I learn later—nose still crusted with blood from our collision.

We begin working on the woman. She isn’t breathing, and neither Tronstad nor I can find a pulse.

When you do CPR on somebody, it’s not like on TV where they have a shirt on. The first thing you do is bare the chest. Then there’s the electrodes, one under the right clavicle and one below the left nipple, on the ribs. Tronstad rips her nightgown open and begins ninety seconds of CPR, the current protocol.

Somebody brings vent kits, and we hook her up to the electrodes on the Physio-Control Lifepak. I get out the plastic bag mask and begin pumping air into her lungs, working in sync with Tronstad, two breaths after every fifteen of his compressions. Eventually more firefighters and a medic assist in the resuscitation effort. Tronstad continues the chest compressions. I stick with the bag mask, forcing oxygenated air into her lungs.

Under the direction of the Seattle fire paramedic, we shock her three times, beginning CPR anew after each shock. Johnson spells Tronstad on the chest compressions while I shrug off proposals of relief. As I kneel over her and use the bag mask, I try not to drip sweat onto her.

A pretty woman, she looks to be in her early sixties.

We shock her again, but she doesn’t come around. Across the yard they aren’t having any better luck with the man.

This is my fault. I saw off a piece of ass, and my negligence kills two people.

These two citizens have done nothing more than entrust their lives to the city. I’ve been hired by the city to fight fires and save lives. I’ve been trained and sworn in, and while my duties and responsibilities on the tailboard are minimal, my failure has resulted in this fiasco. I deserve to be jailed. Buggered. Hanged. You name it. They can’t devise a punishment severe enough for me.

Finally, after what seems like hours but what I later learn is twenty minutes, after several firefighters have offered to spell me with the bag mask and I have refused each, our patient is pronounced dead by a medic, confirmed by a doctor on the phone, and we are told to cease CPR.

Somebody takes the Laerdal bag mask out of my hands and speaks gently.

“She’s gone, man. You did your best.”

Eventually I stand and remove my MSA backpack. I am in another space. Another time. For a few minutes I am as disembodied and removed from this world as the woman at my feet.

It is hard to imagine any more crap falling out of the sky anytime soon.

5. GET OUT THE UMBRELLA, PAL

ACROSS THE YARD
they are packing the man from the wheelchair onto a gurney and running him down the street, to the rear of Medic 32, one firefighter following along doing chest compressions, another at the head with the bag mask.

It turns out only Engine 29 and Engine 36 have responded directly to the address. Engine 32, Ladder 11, Medic 32, and Battalion 7 have all gone wrong and arrived late. One of many bad addresses in our district, this Arch Place is located about seven blocks from another Arch Place, and the two aren’t directly connected. Most of the response, including Chief Abbott, who’d been at Station 32 when the alarm came in, followed the relief driver on Engine 32 to the wrong location.

To make matters worse, the other Arch Place is a narrow, contorted street that once populated with oversized fire apparatus becomes a nightmare to navigate. The mistake costs the bulk of our incoming response units between six and ten minutes in lost time, which explains why we had no help inside.

Unbuttoning my bunking coat until I feel the cool night air kissing my wet shirt, I walk over to Engine 29 and sit on the step below our crew cab. The motor is still roaring. Firefighters from Ladder 11 have set up a powerful gasoline-driven fan in the doorway of the fire house, quickly clearing the rooms of smoke. The fire had been tapped while we were outside doing CPR. Engine 36 is doing mop-up.

Through the side yard between the houses, I note an iridescent slice of downtown Seattle lit up like a ten-year-old’s birthday cake. Trying to hypnotize myself into a better frame of mind, I focus on the city until it becomes a blur of light. Having started off as arguably the best night of my career, this has rapidly segued into my worst, and possibly my last.

While I languish on the sideboard of Engine 29, two firefighters from Aid 14 lift the dead woman onto a gurney and wheel her away into the darkness.

Civilians are walking across the lawn, gawking at the broken-out windows of the house, ogling the bodies. Ogling me. Somebody needs to put up some fire-scene tape.

From across the yard, Tronstad watches me. Later in the rehab area he begins gabbing and joking with firefighters from the other units. It doesn’t help my spirits to see him so carefree and lighthearted. But Tronstad is a me-me kind of guy and can be incredibly blasé about somebody else’s misfortune.

While the rooms at the south end of the house continue to smolder, two investigators from Seattle’s Fire Investigation Unit show up and, after twenty minutes of poking around inside the structure, determine that the origin of the fire is a discarded cigarette near the front door. It seems that the man in the wheelchair had a history of careless smoking, and that we had in fact been here a year earlier for a small fire. Throughout the first floor of the house, cigarette burns stain various pieces of furniture and the floor. Neighbors tell us the man’s wife routinely complained that he was going to burn their home down with his carelessness.

One of the fire investigators, a tall, ungainly man named Holmes, comes over to me and says, “You mind showing us where you found them? We’re going to have to go over this with SPD.”

“Sure.”

Wordlessly, I walk them through the house under the hard glare of the string lights Ladder 11 has set up. None of us are masked up, although we should be since the ruins are smoldering. The walls are coated in soot, but the actual fire damage is limited to a couple of downstairs rooms to the right of the front doorway.

I show them where I found the man in the wheelchair, and then we climb the narrow staircase to the second floor. The woman smelled smoke or heard the crackling of the fire or the pinging of the smoke detectors, woke up, and did the worst thing possible—leaped out of bed and stood tall. That first inhalation cauterized her lungs with superheated air that was probably close to a thousand degrees. Had she rolled out of bed and crawled along the floor, she would have had a chance, although a slim one.

Nobody says much until we are outside and past the racket of the gasoline-powered ventilation fan in the doorway. Holmes gives me a lugubrious look. “These your first fire victims?”

I nod.

“Tough, huh?”

I shrug.

“Everybody goes through it. You’ll be okay. It’ll take some time, is all. You’ll bounce back.”

Resuming my position on the side step of Engine 29, I watch the firefighters in the rehab area. You don’t go wrong on an alarm and lose a fire victim, with another one in critical condition, and then stand around and yuk it up. Nobody is laughing except Tronstad; but then, Tronstad is the kind of guy who would tell dirty jokes at his own mother’s funeral—and did.

I can’t help noticing Holmes, the fire investigator, talking to Lieutenant Sears across the yard. After a while, Chief Abbott joins their enclave and all three steal looks at me. Five minutes later Lieutenant Sears approaches and kneels in front of me, touching my knees with both his hands.

Sears worships the fire department and everything it stands for, knows the operating guidelines like the inside of his pockets, and is one of the most personable people I’ve run across. In his early forties, he has been in the department seven years, has recently taken the captain’s exam, and will soon be leaving Station 29 when he’s promoted.

Sears is a short, stocky man, maybe an inch shorter than my five foot eight. He has sandy hair that, had it not been cropped short, would have been a mess of curls. He has to shave twice a day and has thick, muscular arms that are so hairy Tronstad once looked at them and said, “Nice sweater.” He loves counseling people and was a teacher before he got sidetracked into the department. He has an undemanding sense of humor, and despite all the grousing Johnson and Tronstad direct at his leadership abilities, I like him.

From under the brim of his red lieutenant’s helmet his brown eyes bore into mine. His eyes are sunken, his brow heavy and even darker than normal, his heavy mustache twittering in tune to his breathing. In the dark he presents a rather simian appearance. Sears is insanely proud of the job he does, which is why my conduct must disgust him. He squeezes my knees through the thick turnout clothing.

“Listen,” he says. “Bad things happen. You learn to roll with the punches.”

“Not like this.”

“This is something . . . well, it’s definitely not good, but hey, there’ll be flowers in the morning, and the sun will rise, and you’ll get past this. It might be ugly for a while, but you’ll move past it. I’ve had things like this happen . . . well, not like this, but . . .”

“What are you going to do?”

“Frankly, I haven’t decided. I’ll have to talk to Abbott about it. Listen, Gum. You need advice, come to me. Anytime. Day or night.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t call me
sir.
At least not tonight. Tonight I’m just Sears.”

“You really think I’ll get past this, Sears?”

He stares at me for a moment, then glances at the still-smoking structure. When he turns back I see the beginnings of tears in his eyes. He is as thoroughly empathetic as Tronstad is thick-skinned, and even if he won’t admit it, he knows what they are going to do to me.

“I wish I could replay this whole night,” I say.

“You and me both.”

“Can you tell me what’s going to happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“What they’re going to do to me.”

“They’re probably not going to give you a medal, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“I wasn’t expecting a medal. I was . . .”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Sears leaves.

Tronstad is watching me, cookies from the fire buff’s table in one hand, a paper cup of Gatorade in the other. He’s a self-confessed sugar junky who claims a bowl of ice cream after four in the afternoon revs him up so much, he can’t sleep. God knows why he is eating cookies at this time of night.

Two men in plainclothes march over to him and lift up their sweatshirts to reveal badges on their belts. I assume they are from the Seattle Police Department. They speak to Tronstad for a few moments.

A minute later the SPD men come over to me. “Mr. Gum,” says the black police officer.

“Yes, sir.” He lets out just the hint of a smile at the fact that I’ve called him
sir.

“SPD,” says the white officer. “We understand your actions were integral to what happened here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you lay it out for us?” asks the white officer.

“From the time the bell hit?”

He smiles. “Maybe from the time you went through the front door.”

“The front door of the house over there?”

“That’s the one.” He looks at his partner and rolls his eyes.

As we speak I decide to peel my turnout pants down so some of the sweat can evaporate. When I shrug my shoulders out of my suspenders and pull my turnout pants partially down, I realize the white material around the zipper of my uniform trousers is coated with what e. e. cummings would have called
fuck dust.
I pull the turnouts back up.

“What were you saying?” I ask.

“Were either of them conscious when you got to them?”

“No, sir.”

“The man was downstairs? The woman was up?”

“That’s right.”

Dancing around my culpability, they ask more questions about the house, the fire, the victims. When they start to leave, I stutter, “Uh . . . what’s . . . what’s going to happen now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, uh, you know . . .”

“There’ll be a further investigation. We’ll get the ME’s report on the woman. Contact the relatives. It’s pretty much routine.”

“I mean, what’s going to happen to me?”

“You?” I am weeping in front of these two heavyset cops. I’ve screwed up beyond imagination, and I am blubbering. “Well, son. Maybe you can see the department chaplain. Or your own minister. You can get some counseling is what you can do.”

“Because of jail?”

“Do me a favor.”

“Sir?”

“Before anything else happens, get yourself some counseling.” He catches up with his partner, who’s met with the two fire department investigators. Moments later all four glance over at me.

When Chief Abbott approaches, I grow still. I don’t like Abbott, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me. From the beginning of my tenure in the 7th, he’s treated us as though he had a vendetta against Station 29—in particular, the members on our shift: Robert Johnson, Ted Tronstad, and me. Johnson and Tronstad dislike him even more than I do, although around the station we feign a stilted camaraderie.

Abbott is a short, rotund man who wears heavy glasses, teaches management classes at one of the local community colleges, and doesn’t fit anybody’s idea of what a firefighter should look like—not even his own, for he often makes self-deprecating jokes about it.

Around the station Abbott is a man with a million outspoken opinions about where the department should be headed, but downtown he sits on his ideas and is known as the biggest ass-kisser around. His round head is almost entirely bald, and when he isn’t at the station, Tronstad and Johnson call him
Chief Spalding,
after the ball company, since all of his visible body parts are round enough to warrant it.

“So, young man,” Abbott says, stumping through the darkened yard toward me. “I understand you’re having problems.”

The obvious concern in his voice brings the tears back. If a man as obtuse as Abbott is concerned, my predicament is on the underside of bad.

“Tell me what’s bothering you. One of my boys gets into trouble, my first instinct is to help. I mean that, son. Start from the beginning. By the way, the man’s dead, too.” He sniggers and the slovenly snort brings me back to my senses. Abbott’s instinct is
never
to help.

“It’s the alarm,” I tell him.

“It sure got him into a lather, Chief. A real lather,” says Ted Tronstad, interrupting with the saucy rudeness he is known for. As usual, he speaks quickly and spits his words like a machine gun spits lead. His mind works quickly. It is a rare moment when Tronstad gets an idea and waits to fit it into a conversation with the deference to other speakers most people take as a matter of course. Childlike, Tronstad blurts out whatever is on his mind, no matter who he is cutting off. He gets away with it because he is funny and, underneath the brash exterior, charming, and because everybody knows he is Ted Tronstad,
comic extraordinaire.
He can be crude, but for a variety of reasons—primarily having to do with how prickly he gets when criticized—you don’t correct him. At least
I
don’t.

“Glad you came over, Chief,” Tronstad says. “I was about to have a heart-to-heart with Gum myself. You know, tell him about the birds and bees and dead people and suchlike.” He makes small talk for another minute until Abbott leaves, and I realize this is the first chance I’ve had to speak to Tronstad alone. “I hope she was a good piece of ass, Gum.”

“I’m in so much trouble.”

He gives me a look that is equal parts amusement and condescension. “Not unless you opened your trap.”

“They’re talking about me over there, the cops are.”