Under Suppression

She Needed More Than Me

There's something quite distinct about the smell of burnt flesh. It's a smell that follows you for hours, sometimes even days. You'll smell it when your home, after you've showered, when your trying to sleep, it's always there, and the image of the body will remain vivid in your brain every time.

My eyes were glued to the ground in front of me, the body of Betty Jones now completely unrecognizable as all the life had been suffocated by the hardened shell of her burnt flesh.

Betty was a frequent flyer in our city. Always calling for falls or preventable injuries, and refusing help from any nursing programs that could have taken better care of her, but who could blame her? She wanted to be independent.

But now she was here. And as much as our department had been frustrated with her abuse of the system, she was still a person.

She didn't deserve this..

"Jenkins! Are you good?"

I tore my eyes from the lifeless body, raising my gaze to my lieutenant who gave me an apologetic look. I knew that the lack of water wasn't his fault, our engineer should have known better to have someone tag a hydrant. But Joel had a respectable mindset, the idea of the captain going down with the ship. But he did not fail our crew.

"I'm fine," I shook it off, brushing myself off as I stood to my feet. "I'm going to grab a new bottle. Do you want a second line?" I offered, and Joel agreed, requesting a defensive attack on the other side of the building.

I sent a hard glare at our engineer, Eric, when I returned to the truck, to which he just rolled his eyes, and my lips parted in preparation to give him my two cents, when I felt a buzz underneath my turn out pants.

I decided to brush off the gesture, squatting as he swapped out my SCBA bottle while I dug into my pants, finding my phone.

Matthews
Hey J, if you transport here next call, do you mind checking on Alycia? I think somethings up.

Shit.

Me
Yeah of course, I'll head over the first chance I get it. Thanks for letting me know.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket, pushing past the anxiety that I felt rising up my chest.

If I had one negative thing to say about my job, it would probably have to be situations like this. Being stuck at work when your world at home was falling apart was overwhelming, it felt helpless. Here I am, taking care of strangers and solving their problems when I can barely handle my own.

She needs me, and I'm here.

Tears stung my eyes as I pulled another line, stretching it to the Bravo side before securing it between my legs and opening the bale. It was a fairly common practice to attack from both sides of a fire, it was a way to protect possible exposures, preventing the fire from spreading.

As simple as the concept was, I realized how the idea could be applied to other things in my life. Pain.

Pain was much like fire, it wanted to spread, suffocating as many people as it possible could until we were all up in flames. We could try to suppress it, to get rid of the fuel that allowed it to brew, but I found that we were often too late. Much too often.

And by the time we realize something is a problem or dangerous, the fire has already managed to take too many.

After a while, we began the overhaul process, tearing open walls and pulling ceiling in search of any leftover embers. The work was tiring, but it used to be more fun to me, the stress and danger was pretty much gone, allowing us to let our guards down a bit, but I just couldn't get into it today.