We never got her back, though.

With kids, it doesn’t matter. You try beyond hope, no matter what.

We entered the neighborhood and found the street. School was out for the day by now, and kids just home from school stopped on their front walks to watch us go by.

At the location, a tiny grandmother stood in her driveway. She waved her arms like semaphores. I knew even from the street that her eyes would have that look eyes always get when the souls behind them are recoiling into shock.

“This way,” she said, leading us into the house.

We followed, steeped in that sensation of focused attention that accompanies every call. You never habituate to it. You never tire of it. No matter how many calls you go out on. No matter how many unspeakable, hilarious, tragic, ridiculous, heartbreaking, disgusting things you see. That moment of anticipation, as everything in the world disappears except for the one life-or-death task in front of you, is always exquisitely the same.

There’s not a name for that feeling. But it’s really something.

“Over here,” the old lady said, turning the corner into a living room. The TV was on too loud. In a recliner up ahead, an old man was fast asleep with a cup of coffee beside him.

I frowned. “Him?” He was geriatric, not pediatric.

She didn’t break stride, urging us past the chair. “No.”

Behind him, on the floor near the kitchen, lay a pile of bath mats, and on top of the pile, unconscious and unresponsive, was a Chihuahua.

“Here,” the old lady said, the expression on her face urgent.

But it didn’t compute for me. I was looking for an eight-year-old child. “Where?”

“Here,” she repeated, gesturing at the dog.

The four of us looked down: brown-and-white Chihuahua. Dead as a doornail.

We looked back at the old lady.

She gestured at the dog. “My baby,” she said, and her voice broke into a genuine sob.

Eight-year-old female.

Six-Pack and Case looked at each other, then turned right around to walk back out the front door without a word. Only the rookie and I stayed.

My heart, which had clenched in preparation for a child, relaxed. I felt a wash of relief. Compared to the drowned girl, whose wet eyelashes I still saw sometimes when I closed my eyes, a dead Chihuahua seemed almost delightful.

I took a step back, then let out a long breath that I expected to be a sigh—but it came out instead as a laugh.

The old lady’s eyes questioned mine, like, You think my dead dog is funny?

And I tried to make mine say back, Sorry! Not funny. Just—funnier than a dead child.

That’s when the rookie made attempts at comfort, saying things like, “It was just her time. She’s in a better place now.”

But the old lady’s voice flooded with grief. “No,” she said. “Please.”

The job hardens you, there’s no question about it. That’s the only way to survive. You take in too much. One horror after another soaks through your skin, swirls in your lungs, echoes in your ears. You can’t think too hard about what it means, or how anybody feels, least of all you. You can’t help them if you become them—and the only reason you’re there is to help.

Of course, my laughing hadn’t exactly helped.

The job hardens you, but it shouldn’t make you cruel. Her baby.

So I decided, for my own sake as much as hers, to pretend to try to save her dog.

Even though that’s not what 911 is for.

It was hopeless, of course.

I took another look at the dog. Still dead.

I knelt down anyway. I opened the medical kit and pulled out the oxygen tank and a flexible pediatric mask, curling it into a cone shape around the pup’s snout. The rookie followed my lead, dropping to his knees and starting chest compressions with his fingertips.

And that’s how we—paid, professional firefighters for the esteemed city of Lillian, Massachusetts—wound up doing CPR on a Chihuahua.

I gave the rookie a look, like, You are never telling anybody about this.

And he gave me a look back, like, Oh, I am telling everybody about this.

The rookie pumped the chest, and I administered the oxygen, and the old lady wiped shaky tears from her cheeks with knobby fingers, watching us like nothing else would ever matter in the world.

I’ll give it three minutes, I thought.

Then I gave it seven.

Finally, I sat back and flipped off the oxygen.

“I’m sorry,” I said, meeting the old lady’s eyes. And I was.

The rookie and I bowed our heads for a moment of pseudo-respectful silence, and that’s when—I swear to God—that crazy Chihuahua gave a snort as loud as a backfiring car, flipped up onto its pointy little paws, and blinked at us.

I gasped and dropped the mask.

The rookie jumped back. “Holy shit!”

“I don’t like that language,” the old lady said, like a reflex.

Then we all stared as the dog bent low and clenched every single abdominal muscle as tight as stone until a pile of dog-food-smelling vomit flopped out of her mouth with a splat. Next, she shifted position, and a metal thimble came flying out of her face like it had been launched by a slingshot.

It hit the window with a clank and rolled to a stop next to the still-sleeping old man.

We looked back and forth between the dog and the thimble, which seemed to have a circumference wider than the dog’s own throat.

Then the dog looked at us for a second, like she couldn’t imagine what we were doing there, before peeing on the floor and then trotting off through the doggie door to get on with her day.

Next thing I knew, the old lady—surprisingly strong—had clamped us into a group hug, and my face was in the crook of the rookie’s neck, my cheek registering some sandpapery stubble and my brain registering panic over being so close to him. The old lady held us there a minute, snuffling tears of relief and saying, “Thank you, thank you,” before grabbing both our hands and leading us to a broom closet in the kitchen.

Inside, down on the floor, was a box full of fat, squirmy puppies.

“Take some,” she said, urging us down toward them.

She wanted to give us puppies? “No thank you, ma’am,” I said. “We can’t accept—”

I was going to say “gifts,” but as I watched the rookie bend right down and pick up and cradle one of those little squirmers in his arms, I finished with “puppies.”

The rookie stood back up to show me, his face bright with good fortune. “Look at these little guys!”

“Half Chihuahua,” the old lady said, “and half poodle.” Then she tilted her head to gesture next door. “The neighbors.”

“A Poo-huahua,” the rookie said, nuzzling his face down into the puppy’s fat belly.

“Rookie,” I said, shaking my head. “No.”

“Don’t you think the station needs a mascot?”

“Shut it down, rookie,” I said, as menacingly as I could.

But he held the puppy up to me. “Look at that face.”

That was it. I drew the line at puppies. “I’m out,” I said, walking away.

When the rookie caught up with me a minute later on the front walk, I did not turn back to look. “Tell me you don’t have a puppy in your arms.”