Can We Learn to Love Again?

Where My Demons Hide

Warning: This chapter addresses suicidal thoughts. If this is not a subject matter you are comfortable reading, please skip this one or come back for part 2.

"Engine 23, Ladder 23, Aid Car 23, report to a single vehicle accident on I-5 at Pike Street."

"And so it begins," Andy muttered to herself as she ran toward the aid car.

She climbed into the driver's seat, and Theo sat beside her. While she still hated being at 23, she counted her friendship with Theo as the one positive that emerged from her transfer. Plus, it gave her some space from Robert. They could barely work together when he returned to 19 after his hearing; she could only imagine what a nightmare their working relationship would be now.

The location of the accident was only blocks away from the station, and given that it was late morning and traffic was light, they were able to get to the scene within minutes. Unfortunately, their response time didn't matter. They arrived to find a passenger van on its side, fully engulfed in flames, while two injured and frantic adults desperately tried to get closer.

As the firefighters climbed out of their vehicles, Captain Aquino assessed the scene and quickly gave the orders for the firefighters to don their SCBA units to protect them from the black and acrid smoke. At the same time, Andy saw the father attempt to approach the van again, yelling and pleading for someone to open the door, but the flames flared up and he had to step back.

"Herrera, Ruiz...do what you can to help the victims," Aquino commanded, as the rest of the team got to work putting out the flames.

Andy looked from the van to the people outside of it and said a silent prayer for those who might still be inside. It would take a miracle for anyone to survive that fire. As Theo grabbed their gear bag, she approached the couple. The woman had a nasty gash on her head. It didn't look too deep, but like most head wounds it was bleeding profusely. The man looked like he had perhaps been burned on his hands and arms, but she was too far away to make an accurate assessment.

"Let me help you," she said as she approached the couple, but the male victim made his way around her, back toward the van. Theo, thankfully, stopped him before he could get too close. Confident that Theo could handle the man, she decided to do what she could to help the woman.

"Ma'am, you're hurt," Andy said quickly, trying to do a quick visual assessment to determine if there were any other injuries. "Let me at least bandage the cut on your head."

"My children," the woman cried frantically. "My children are in the van. Please, I need to go get them."

"The firefighters are doing everything they can," Andy said, but she had seen the condition the van was in when they arrived. She knew that the chances of survival for anyone still inside were minimal. "How many children are inside?"

"Six," the woman cried. "The youngest is just a baby. Because of COVID, his grandparents had never met him. Now that the older children were all vaccinated, we were finally going to all get together."

As she spoke, the enormity of the situation must have hit the mother, because she began to crumble to the ground, sobbing.

"Oh, God," Andy mumbled to herself as she wrapped an arm around the hysterical mother, and moved her toward the back of the aid car, where she wouldn't be able to see the burning van. Aquino had called for additional aid vehicles and they were arriving on the scene, although she imagined they would have very little to do. Rather than think about the tragedy unfolding around her, she fell back on her training, carefully cleaning and bandaging the woman's wounds, while Theo did his best to attend to the father.

In the end, it was as awful as Andy expected. Five of the six children died at the scene, and the sixth, the oldest of the children, would likely not survive until the next day, given the extent of his burns. The father had explained that he had seen a piece of metal fly off a semi-truck in front of him, but he wasn't able to stop or avoid it. Andy could only surmise that the metal had punctured the gas tank, causing an explosion. While no comfort to anyone, it was a miracle the parents had managed to free themselves from the overturned van before the flames completely engulfed it.