Haunted By The Past - A Surrera Story

Chapter Thirty-Three

A/n: sorry I haven't updated in so long, I've been busy with school and stuff, also I've been writing some other fanfics too. I decided to do a flashback chapter of when Andy first joined station 19, I hope you all like it!

Andy's pov
As I walked up to the station, I felt numb. This was the moment I had been waiting for my entire life, and yet I felt numb.
It had been two weeks since Robert and I had fought, two weeks since we've even had a proper conversation. I saw him at the graduation ceremony at the fire academy, but we barely said a word to each other.
I couldn't help but think about how things could be different. If Robert hadn't of told Ripley, or if I hadn't of reacted like I did. If things had gone differently, he might be here with me now, wishing me luck, telling me what a good firefighter I'm going to be. Or even if he wasn't here, he would've said all those things before we both left in the morning.
But here I was, my first day at station 19, my first day as a firefighter, and I was all alone. There was nobody stood beside me to savour this moment with, there was no messages on my phone wishing me luck. Instead, I was just stood outside the station, thinking of what could've been.
"You must be the new probie, Captain Herrera's kid, right? I'm Victoria Hughes, but you can call me Vic," I heard someone say. I turned to see a woman dressed in the same uniform I was wearing, smiling at me.
"Right, yes. Andrea Herrera, but everyone calls me Andy," I introduced myself.
We walked into the station, Vic doing most of the talking, me giving short answers whenever she asked me something. I didn't want to seem rude, so I asked a few questions too every now and then. When we got in, everyone else was already there, so my dad called us all for lineup.
He introduced me to the rest of the team: there was Vic, who I had already met, Maya Bishop, Travis Montgomery, Dean Miller and Lieutenant Jack Gibson.
Not long after, we got a call to a small apartment fire downtown. I was on aid car with Maya, and to be honest, I was kind of disappointed that I wouldn't actually get to run into any fires this shift.
When we got to the scene, there were already some civilians who had made their way out of the building, so we started to treat them for smoke inhalation and burns.
Seeing how many of them there were, I remembered my training in the academy. My training with Robert. Trying to push him to the back of my mind, I turned to Maya.
"Should we set up triage? There was bound to of been a lot of people in the building, so that might make it easier," I suggested.
"Good idea," Maya said, and she passed me some tags: green for minor injuries, yellow for a bit worse but not life-threatening, red for life-threatening injuries that need immediate attention, and black for those that were too far gone for us to be able to save.
I grabbed a handful, and made my way to start treating patients, because there was a lot of them.
Thankfully, most of them got green or yellow tags, but I gave two people red tags, and one black.
On the way back to the station, Maya was driving, and I was sat in the passenger seat.
"So, tell me about yourself," she said, and I shrugged.
"What do you want to know? There's not much to tell," I said, laughing slightly. At the minute, this job was the only thing I had. Robert and I haven't spoken in two weeks. My dad and I were fighting, when he found out about me and Robert, he wasn't very happy, to say the least.
"Do you have a boyfriend? Husband?" She asked, and I blinked back a few tears, turning to look out the window so Maya wouldn't see.
"Nope, you?" I answered, not wanting to go into too many details.
"Nah, I'm not good with relationships, I prefer one night stands," she said, and I forced myself to laugh.
All I wanted to do was crawl into my bed and cry. Or run into Robert's arms and tell him how much I love him, but there's no way I can do that.
I had been staying at a hotel since the fight, seeing as we had been living together, and I knew I had to find my own place soon. Now I officially work there, I can stay at the station when I'm on shift, but that's not a permanent solution.
When we got back to the station, I went straight to my bunk. I could see the rest of the team throwing me questioning glances, hear them whispering as I walked away, but I ignored them. I needed to be alone.
I locked my door behind me, sliding back against it into a sitting position. As quietly as I could, so that nobody would hear me, I put my head in my hands and cried. In the past two weeks, I've probably cried more than I have in my entire life. This is breaking me. I don't know much longer I can take not being with Robert. I love him, he is the only person I feel safe with, the only person that can make me feel. And now he's gone. He probably hates me, and thinks that I hate him too. But I don't. In fact, it's the exact opposite. I still love him.
I still wear the necklace he got me. Now, I pulled it out from under my shirt, and smiled sadly through my tears. It made me happy, thinking of all the amazing times we had had together, but it also made me sad, thinking about how there might not be anymore.
That night, when we were all in our bunks between calls, I couldn't sleep, just like every other night. It's almost like before I met Robert. I never used to be able to sleep, my thoughts kept me up, and then when I finally slept, I was awoken with nightmares. But with Robert, that all changed. I could fall asleep in an instance when I was in his arms.
Now, however, I was here alone. No arms wrapped around me, holding me close. And I couldn't sleep. I was terrified that the nightmares would come back, terrified that they'd be worse this time.
But I must've fallen asleep eventually, because I woke up to the sound of the alarms calling us out to a car accident. I wiped my hand across my cheeks in an attempt to get rid of the tear stains, and then rushed into the barn.