Let Love Be Read online

  I use the PA system to get his attention. “Callahan, get your ass down here, kid. The dishes aren’t going to clean themselves.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brody sliding down the pole. He pops up on his feet when he hits the bottom and pokes a thumb over his shoulder while facing the full dining room. “That never gets old.” With a smile of a five-year-old boy who just arrived at recess, Brody fills his plate before sitting next to me.

  “Dishes? I thought I was on shitter patrol.” He stuffs his face with a chunk of steak, chewing with his mouth open.

  See, no manners necessary.

  “That was before you were late to dinner.” Reaching under the table, I pull out the plastic bag and hand it to him. When he pulls out a toothbrush and a bar of soap, he pulls a ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ face.

  While everyone else is laughing in an uproar, I lean in to him and whisper coolly, “That’s what you get for calling me old, kid.”

  I laugh a full-bellied chuckle. Besides, thirty-four is not ancient like Brody makes it out to be. He’s just a wise-ass twenty-four-year-old.

  Our laughter is cut short by the blaring tinny sounds of the alarm bells ringing. Muffled static filters through the room and everyone shuts the fuck up, waiting to hear the instructions.

  “Two-alarm fire. Empty warehouse. 2415 Park cross at West Broadway. Squad 18.” The loudspeaker cuts out and we all push back in our chairs, racing toward our gear, which is always laid out and ready to go.

  Manny, the chauffer, is in and ready to go first as usual. Beeping the horn and wailing the sirens, he slaps his hand on the side of the door, “Giddy up, boys! Let’s go. We got a fire to put out!”

  Fitzy, the captain slides in next to Manny and gets on the radio to dispatch our ETA. Brody and I sit next to each other in the rear-facing seats behind the front of the engine. Hefting the weight of our oxygen tanks over our shoulders, we slide the masks into place, leaving the oxygen off until we arrive on the scene. Brody hasn’t been on too many calls in the two months since he’s started. Luckily, it’s been a little slow recently.

  We twist and turn through the streets of lower Manhattan, speeding as quickly as the traffic will allow us to. On the way over, we hear over the dispatch that the fire has been escalated to a three-alarm blaze. Another company is called in; more information is called out over the speaker.

  When we pull up in front of what’s supposed to be an abandoned warehouse, I see a bunch of kids, covered in smoke and soot, off to the side of the building.

  “Donovan!” Fitzy calls to me as we both get out of the rig. “Go get those kids away from the building and find out if they know if there’s anyone else in there.”

  “Sure thing, Cap.” Grabbing my helmet, I run over to the three boys hunched over, coughing their lungs out.

  “You guys okay? Is anyone hurt?” No one answers as a look of fear flits across each of their young and dirty faces. As one of them is about to speak, he starts coughing like crazy, so I hold up my oxygen mask and tell him to take a few deep breaths.

  When he stands upright, he seems better – and a little less afraid. “We were just hanging around. I swear. We didn’t do nothing.” He seems to be about fifteen-years-old, innocent enough, but it’s not my job to figure out how the fire started.

  My job is simple: put the fire out and make sure that everyone is safe.

  Now that he has his bearings, the kid scans his group and pales, which is noticeable even through the black smokiness covering his face. “Tony. He’s still in there. He was right behind me!” The panic rising in his voice causes him to choke.

  I click the button on my walkie-talkie at my shoulder to relay the information to Fitzy. “Cap. There’s a kid in there. His name’s Tony.” I move my mouth away from the speaker to ask the kid where they last saw Tony. “Kid’s say he’s somewhere on the third floor – that’s where they saw him last.”

  “Ten-four, Donovan,” Fitzy’s voice calls out on the walkie-talkie. “EMTs are here. I’m sending them over to the kids. Get your ass back to the rig so we can get a move on, now!”

  He’s already calling out orders as I approach the rest of the team. Brody and I are partnered together. Our mission: find Tony. After Fitzy lays down the rest of the plan for extinguishing the blaze, we all go into motion. Ladders up, hoses out, radios on.

  “I lead; you follow. Got it,” I direct Brody whose eyes look a little frightened behind the Plexiglas of his facemask. He nods, and when he does, my eyes are drawn to his exposed neck. Reaching out, I adjust the collar of his jacket to make sure all of his skin is covered. For all his bravado earlier in the day, I can tell Brody’s more than a little off-kilter right now.

  As we crawl up the stairs of the burning building, Brody is never more than a step behind me. The smoke is thick, curling in every corner and crevasse of the hallway. Black and billowing clouds form above us as the heat intensifies. We army-crawl into an open room and my sight immediately falls to a pair of legs stretched out before me. Tony is slumped up against the wall, but even in the dim light, I can tell he’s breathing. I call through my radio to let them know that we’ve found him, but when I turn to look for Brody, he’s not right behind me like he’s supposed to be.

  I crane my neck up to the other end of the small room where there’s a door leading into what I assume is an adjoining room. Before I can even call out for him, Brody is testing the door and opening it.

  I watch, horrified and in slow motion, as the smoke is sucked back through the seams of the door. “No!” I scream, but it’s completely ineffective. He can’t hear me over the loud explosion of the flashover. Fire licks at the walls of the larger room as the flames blast everywhere.

  With a calmness that belies the frenzied anxiety I’m feeling, I call into my radio requesting back up. Within seconds, Manny is behind me, pulling an unconscious Tony out of the room.

  The heat is nearly unbearable as flames begin consuming the room. There’s smoke everywhere, making it impossible to see anything. All I know is that I need to find Brody. I need to get him out of here. As I crawl on my stomach across the hot floor, I hear the beams creaking, weakening under the pressure and heat.

  Sweat beads in my eyes under my mask. I can barely see. Reaching out and sweeping my hand across the floor, I brush over a pair of boots – Brody’s. I crawl up alongside him and somehow make out that he’s cradling his right arm with his left.

  “Fire threw me back. Busted my arm against the wall.” He tells me through the walkie-talkie.

  A loud boom crashes through the room as a beam from the ceiling flies through the air. Suddenly, the fire is everywhere. The flashover ignited the entire room and now the structure is compromised.

  “We gotta move. Now!” Brody nods, acknowledging my instructions. I get back down on my stomach, but instead of going out first, this time, I crawl behind Brody. I don’t want to lose sight of him, so keeping him in front of me is the best way to do that.

  Every time he drags his arm on the floor, pulling himself forward one slow inch at a time, I see Brody’s body tense, wincing in pain. “Keep going, Brody. You’re almost there,” I coach, trying to encourage him through the pain.

  When my bunker gear gets caught on a spike of wood jutting out from the floor, I grab at Brody’s ankle, forcing him to look back. “Keep crawling to the stairs. I just need to get unstuck.” Again, he nods before painfully crawling away.

  That’s when it happens.

  The floor breaks away under the heat from below and another huge beam of steel comes crashing down from above. Both Brody and I fall through the open floor. Wood splinters off the walls, cement crumbles on the floors, smoke billows around us as the fire rages on.

  My world fades to black as consciousness slips away into the fiery darkness.

  It’s been four days.

  It’s been ninety-six hours since I last kissed his lips, since I last felt his loving arms wrap around me from behind, since his strong and stubbled
jaw nuzzled into my neck.

  Numbly – as that’s the only way I can do anything since he was killed – I force myself out of bed.

  Staring blankly into my opened closet, I become overwhelmed with anger. How the hell am I supposed to pick out something to wear for my husband’s funeral when all I can think about is curling up in that box with him?

  There’s nothing to live for now.

  Just as quickly as that thought enters my mind, the sharp kick to my ribs from my unborn daughter reminds me otherwise.

  I might not want to carry on, but I have to.

  She’ll need me.

  I don’t even know what I end up putting on, but I’m dressed and walking down the stairs ten minutes later where Linda, my best friend, and Ray, my husband’s best friend, are waiting for me.

  They look at me with pity in their eyes and I feel the pain weighing like an anvil in my heart. With more sadness than any of us can put to words, we get in the waiting black limo and drive off to the church to say goodbye to the man I’ve spent my entire life loving.

  The only thing that makes me realize that this is not some kind of horrid nightmare is the kicking baby. Holding my hands over my round belly keeps me focused on something other than the priest’s words. Counting the rhythm of her hiccups pulls my attention away from counting the minutes since Jimmy was taken from me – from us.

  The wind whips outside the church, causing high-pitched whirrs to sound in the knave. The only things holding me up are the hard bench beneath me and Linda’s warm comfort at my side.

  After a final prayer, I watch the pallbearers carry Jimmy’s casket down the aisle in the church.

  It’s the same aisle that I walked down when we got married. That day, it felt like I couldn’t walk toward him fast enough. Now, watching him be carried away from me, I feel time stand still. I want to scream and curse God for taking Jimmy away from me. But, instead, I find that it takes all of my energy to just get out of my seat and follow behind the coffin.

  Frozen and incapable of talking through the lump in my throat, the ten-minute drive by our house and to the cemetery passes in complete silence.

  My short heels bite into the soft, wet ground. Ray loops his arm through mine and I have to wonder if his intent is to hold me up, or to keep himself steady. I look up into his bloodshot eyes and we exchange a sad smile and nod. “I gotcha, Luce,” he whispers and tightens his grip on my arm as he escorts me to the line of chairs arranged before Jimmy’s coffin.

  Words are spoken, prayers offered up to God, goodbyes are said, but I don’t register any of it.

  “May he rest in peace.” The priest softly closes his bible and I feel fingers close around mine.

  The cold and bitter fall air chills me to the bone. Thick, grey clouds threaten overhead. Rumbles of thunder and flickers of lightning are off in the distance somewhere. A thin mist of cold rain hangs all around us.

  Somehow, the clouds manage to reign in the water, just as I’m somehow managing to hold back my tears. It’s numbness really. You can’t cry when you feel nothing. Pain has evaporated and morphed into anesthetized calmness.

  Sitting at my side, Linda squeezes my hand again. “It’s almost time to go.” Her words and the warmth of her hand shake me from my blank stare. What little glimmers of light the sun was just shining have been swallowed up by the blackest cloud in the sky. Angrily, I laugh at how appropriate the scene is.

  My light is gone.

  Dead.

  Buried.

  Through the shuffle of people who have come to say goodbye to my husband, my Jimmy, I vaguely feel Ray grip my shoulder. “It’s time, Luce.”

  A fierceness I thought was buried in the ground alongside my love bubbles up in my chest. “No, no, no,” I repeatedly whisper, a tiny, fragile sound.

  Throwing Ray’s hand off my shoulder, I stand as quickly as my almost-nine-month pregnant belly will allow me.

  “Easy, Lucy. Come on, let us help you.” Linda tries to calm me, pulling me to her side. With all the strength I can muster, I push her away. In the distance behind her, I notice that the crowd that had just left the ceremony has now focused their attention back on the scene that I’ve just created.

  A swift kick to the ribs from my baby girl brings me back to the here and now. I take a few shaky breaths and exhale them raggedly through the sobs closing my throat. Ray and Linda sandwich me between them, afraid that I’ll collapse under my pain like I did the other day.

  Wrapping my arms around their waists, I squeeze them tightly and try to garner some strength from their support. “I just can’t bring myself to say goodbye to him.” My chest heaves through the thought of turning my back on him one last time.

  Linda grasps my shoulders and pulls me into an intense hug. When she releases me and steps back, holding me at arm’s length, I see the pain in her eyes. She smoothes my hair, tucking it behind my ear. “I know you don’t want to say goodbye. But it’s about to pour and we don’t want you getting sick.”

  On her last word, heavy blobs of rain start falling from the sky. Ray pulls off his jacket and holds it up over my head like an umbrella. “Let’s go, Lucy,” Ray grits out through the tears he’s somehow fought off since Jimmy was crushed.

  Looking up into his sad, brown eyes, I break a little more. I force a lame smile, really just to appease them, and ease some of their concerns. “Just give me one more minute with him. Go on to the car. I’ll be right there.” Ray and Linda exchange a look over my head before stepping away from me.

  Inching myself over to the coffin, I reach out a shaky hand. The cold wood finish is glossy with rain and I mindlessly follow the streaks of water as they travel to the seam that keeps the coffin closed.

  Thoughts of Jimmy, cold and alone, buried in the ground for all eternity ravage my soul. I’ll never be able to hold him again. I’ll never curl up next to him in bed.

  He’ll never hold our daughter.

  “I don’t know how to go on without you, Jimmy. Please tell me…how.” Sobs swallow my words and the rain falls down in sheets through the sky.

  The baby kicks once more.

  With one hand on Jimmy’s coffin and one on my belly – one on my past and one on my future – I say one final goodbye to the only man I have ever loved.

  “I’ll always carry you in my heart, baby. I love you, Jimmy.”

  The sharp, stinging smell of antiseptic cleaner hangs in the air. I hate hospitals. I hate burn units even more. It’s literally hell on earth.

  And I’m in it.

  Before the others could get up to us, the floor gave way and Brody and I crashed through three stories and sunk right down into the basement. On the way down, my jacket caught on something and tore it straight in half, peeling away the most protective layer in the process. When I landed in the rubble below, I lost consciousness for more than a few minutes. The only thing that woke me was the blaze eating away at my stomach and chest. Ironically, the Kevlar gear beneath my jacket protected me so well that I didn’t wake from the burns initially.

  The second-degree burns are healing and I didn’t need a skin graft. I was lucky. A broken arm and some melted skin, a few days in the hospital and I’m free to go.

  Lucky is a funny word, though.

  I don’t think anyone would consider being stuck on the other side of a three-foot thick cement wall where you hear your partner screaming in pain lucky. There’s no luck involved in not being able to get to him because you can’t move, because you’re being burned alive. I don’t think anyone would feel fortunate if they were the first to be rescued as the screams on the other side of the wall fade into silence.

  “Well, good morning there, Evan. How are you feeling today?” Janice, the day shift nurse, cheerfully carries in my breakfast, smiling as bright as can be.

  I try to push myself up in the bed and it hurts like a bitch.

  Luck my ass.

  “Hey, Jan. I’ve been better.” She places the tray on my side table and helps me get adjusted,
propping some pillows behind my back.

  “Dr. Tompkins will be around shortly and we’ll see about getting you out of this place soon. That ought to cheer you up, huh?” She pushes the bed table in front of me and opens the lid for my breakfast. “You got a few visitors out in the waiting room. Are you up for some company?” She hands me a cup with a few pills in it and I swallow them down with the weak coffee next to my tray.

  “Sure, but not for long.” I don’t need to be reminded of how I failed. Hopefully, the pain meds will kick in before long and I can pretend to need sleep.

  Halfway through my plate of eggs and bacon, Fitzy and Manny step into the room, with a cup of real coffee and a box of donuts in hand. I guess having people visit you comes with some benefits.

  “Hey, man, you look a lot better than yesterday.” Manny hands me my coffee and I manage a polite nod.

  I want to say, “Wanna trade places, see how good it feels?” but I bite back my sarcasm. He did save me, after all.

  “Thanks. Feeling a little better. Nurse said I might be able to go home soon, so there’s that.”

  Fitzy props open the box of donuts and I grab one. Plopping himself down into the chair next to my bed, he looks exhausted. I’m sure these last few days haven’t been easy on him either. As Captain of our squad, I’m sure he blames himself for what happened.

  I think it’s genetic with firefighters. We can’t help but blame ourselves when something goes wrong. It’s how I’m feeling about Brody.

  “How’s the kid doing?” No one told me anything yesterday, and if they did, I was so out of it on pain meds, that I don’t remember. All I can recall is someone telling me that Brody was here too. Knowing that they got him out of the building was enough for me at the time, but now I need to know what happened to him.

  My question hangs heavily in the room for a few long moments. Fitzy drops his elbows to his knees and scrubs his hands over his face. He looks like he hasn’t slept since everything happened.

  Manny clears his throat and it breaks the tense silence in the room. “He’s okay. Still not out of the woods yet, but he’s improving by the hour.”