Through A Different Lens {Marina/Maya & Carina}

When The Bell Tolls (Chapter 32)

There is a reason why firefighters like to call fire stations a firehouse. It's a second home to them, a place they spend a majority of their time. They grow close to the people within their home, they grow close to their family.

Losing family is, and will never be an easy task to accept. It's like ripping that last block from the jenga tower, allowing the building blocks to crash to the floor. It always feels like the end, like there's no way back up from this major loss, like no matter how long you keep the knife in your gut to prevent blood from escaping...it's still going to cause damage, it's still going to hurt.

The only way to escape that feeling is to know when to pull the knife out. To allow yourself to see more than just a sharp, foreign object in your gut. Loss will always leave a scar, and occasionally that's why removing the knife is so hard to do... because you know by the end of it, you're going to be left with a scar, a reminder of the pain you went through.

However, scars can also be a good thing. They don't only show the suffering you went through, but they show that you healed from it, that you were strong enough to heal from what felt like the pits of doom. What once felt like the end was actually your beginning.

Living with loss brings along emotions that you may have not even acknowledged before. Sometimes it's sadness or anger. Sometimes it's denial or even regret. Losing something doesn't have to always be surrounded by sadness or sorrow. Though it can be hard to believe, you are allowed to feel okay. You are allowed to reflect in the past and see the positive, or the negative. You are allowed to see the things that brought a smile to your face, or a tear to your eye. Everyone processes loss differently, you are allowed to heal in whatever fits you.

What isn't allowed, is conducting how another individual should feel during a time of loss. That's not your place. No one will ever be able to read a person's mind in a state of loss. No medical field or hypnotist will ever be able to read your coping mechanism. All they will be able to do is guide it out of you. And that is thoroughly up to you whether or not you want to let them in.

It's hard to witness what was once a home to several generations of firefighters, now crumble to ashes.

Maya was immobile. She stood still, hands by her side as the flickering flames reflected off her blue iris. There was nothing she could do. The irony was, a fire station was on fire and they weren't able to put it out. The interior had already succumbed to the flames and the first floor had caved in.

"Captain!" Maya heard her role being called but her head didn't move. Though this was not her own station, and instead was station Eleven, she still couldn't help but feel devastated from the loss of another firehouse. Four stations in four weeks. One burned to a crisp consecutively every Tuesday.

Maya isn't sure she could feel happy that the police had caught the man responsible for the tragic loss. Even though he was highly likely to go to prison for life, he still brought down four stations with historical and nostalgic memories with him. He still severely injured two firefighters who had both received information that they wouldn't be able to return to active duty.

He had ruined lives. He ruined them because the fire department had failed him. He lost his wife and two kids in a fire two months ago, but the fire station that had attended the scene declared the building as unsafe and it was left to burn.

They tried their very hardest, but their hardest caused several firefighters to be admitted to the ER with smoke inhalation and broken clavicles from falling supports and heavy debris. No matter how painstakingly hard they tried, they just couldn't reach the family that had locked themselves in the lower basement.