So how do you get people out of burning buildings?

You drag them.

That’s what I did with Owen.

Bunker gear even comes with a built-in strap behind the coat collar for that very purpose. Pull it, and webbing in the coat tightens around their body. I’d never had to use the strap before, but I found it in seconds and pulled.

The rookie weighed a thousand pounds, but I didn’t even feel it. I stayed low and leaned all my weight back in the direction I needed to go, dragging him after me in short yanks, using every fiber of strength in my thighs, butt, torso, and shoulders to push us backwards like a machine and pull his dead weight behind me.

We made it to the exit just as DeStasio did, too.

“I told you to stay put,” I said.

“I don’t take orders from women,” DeStasio said.

Guess how much time I had for that nonsense?

The sliding doors were still pried open, and together we dragged Owen out into the open air.

Backup had arrived, big-time. The scene outside was an absolute carnival of medics, pumpers, and rescue personnel. As soon as they saw us, they leapt into action. Some took DeStasio, and some came for me, but I deflected them.

I was fine.

A couple of medics grabbed Owen and hoisted him onto a rolling gurney.

I barely had time to get a good look at him before medics started working him right there, but I will never forget what I saw. His helmet was melted, and so was his mask.

His bunker gear was smoking, too.

There must have been a flashover when the ceiling fell.

The crew moved like lightning—ripping off his mask and helmet, pulling off his air tank, ripping open his gear, feeling for a pulse. I could see soot around Owen’s nose and mouth—and second-degree burns at the edges of where his mask had been.

It’s true that firefighters never run, but I knew this crew didn’t have a cyanide kit on their box, because we were the only crew in Lillian that had one. Somebody needed to get it—stat—and that somebody was me.

I took off sprinting, grabbed the kit, and then sprinted back, just as a medic jumped on the gurney, straddled Owen, and started pumping compressions for CPR. “No pulse,” he called out. “No respiration.”

I glanced at Owen as I ripped open the kit box with my teeth, used the transfer spike to add sodium chloride, and rocked—but did not shake—the vial to mix the solution. Unconscious. Unresponsive. He was most likely in cardiac arrest.

I heard somebody say Life Flight was inbound.

Real CPR in a real emergency is nothing like anything you’ve done in a class on a dummy. It’s ugly—almost brutal—and this is especially true when firefighters are working on one of their own. They don’t hold back.

Another medic checked the defib monitor to see if we could shock him with the paddles. Yes. The rhythm was right. Everybody stepped back. Three quick shocks, and then they were back to CPR.

I grabbed Owen’s arm and found a vein. I got the IV started, a perfect stick. The antidote can’t be given in one injection. It has to enter the system slowly, over a period of ten minutes.

But no way was I going to stand there and hold an IV bag, especially not when the medic next to me, trying to pump air into Owen’s lungs with a hand-squeezed bag, was having trouble. He listened to Owen’s lungs with a stethoscope.

“Nothing’s going in,” he reported. “No movement.”

“Tube him,” I ordered, and he turned to find an airway kit.

But I stopped him. I handed him the antidote IV bag. “Hold this.”

“I have to tube him!” he protested.

“I’ve got it!”

He stepped back, and I pulled out a pediatric airway kit. If the rookie’s airway was burned, it could be swollen, and it’s hard enough to intubate a normal airway.

The medic on top of him was still working his chest.

Others had removed Owen’s bunker pants and were wrapping his lower half in a cold gel blanket to try to bring down his body temperature.

In my memory, this whole scene always replays itself in slow motion. I can see every detail, hear every word, stretched out and slowed down. In reality, it lasted barely a few minutes, and everything happened at once.

I stepped in, tilted the rookie’s neck just right, started working the tube.

I heard Life Flight arrive, but I stayed focused.

The medic doing compressions kept his eye on me. “Come on, come on,” he whispered.

It’s hard enough intubating people—without the added pressure of it being another firefighter, a guy with your same job. A guy you know.

And if you happen to have slept with the person you’re trying to tube? Even harder.

Anybody could find it freaky.

Fortunately for the rookie, I’m not anybody.

I eased the tube in like a pro. Three seconds flat.

I told you. You just know when you’re good.

Another medic was listening with a stethoscope. “We’ve got air,” he called out, just as Life Flight settled to the ground in the parking lot beside us.

With the air came the heartbeat.

“We’ve got a rhythm,” the medic with the stethoscope called next.

It was only a short distance to the Trauma Hawk, and we all pushed the gurney toward the Life Flight crew. They took it like a baton in a relay, and we followed, shouting stats and information about his situation—explaining the cyanide poisoning and antidote protocol, handing off the IV bag, making sure they knew everything.

As they loaded him up in the chopper, I took one second to find Owen’s hand and give it a squeeze.

And then I had no choice but to let him go.

Twenty-six

LIFE FLIGHT TOOK Owen to Boston, and all I wanted to do was follow.

But there was still a fire to put out.

Our shift wasn’t over.

The medics from Station Three treated DeStasio, who turned out to have a broken collarbone, and transported him to Fairmont Methodist. I was fine, and once they cleared me, I got back to work.

We still had a job to do.

No one else on our shift was injured. On the other side of the building, separated by that concrete wall and a faulty radio, the rest of our guys had followed the captain’s orders, which had never changed: No internal operations.

It took four hours to put out the fire, even with crews from Gloucester and Essex pitching in. When it was out, there was still overhaul to do—making sure no pockets were still burning, and securing the site.

We were still on shift, after all.

Once word got out we had injured crew members, off-duty crews started showing up at the scene and then, later, at the station. That’s what firefighters do. They show up. They offer relief. They look after each other. They help.

We got back to the station around four in the afternoon and found a makeup relief shift waiting for us. We couldn’t have left to go home, or check on Owen or DeStasio, if they hadn’t shown up.

I’ve never been more grateful to see anyone in my life.

Gray with soot, caked with salt and sweat, I knew that as soon as the adrenaline wore off, I’d collapse. There’s nothing on this earth more exhausting than a big fire. Every foot of hose weighs eight pounds when it’s full of water. We’d hauled 250 feet of hose that day, working the flames, feeding the line. No CrossFit regime or “fireman’s workout” can even compare to what you’re really doing when you work a fire. You come back blistered, chafed, and dehydrated from the inside out—with your shoulders, back, hands, and basically every cell in your body stinging and aching.