The Burning Desire to Save

Chapter 7

August 5, 2023

"So your top fell off when you were just getting the dog on the beach?"

"Yeah," Naoko told Tomoko and Shiori as the three of them waited for Kana to come back from work in the middle of the day. "It was fucking embarrassing."

"Talk about bad luck," Shiori added, having been the one who asked the question. "And in front of a boy, too."

"Shit happens," Tomoko shrugged. "It's not a big deal, Naoko-san. What matters is that you, Yui-san, Ayumi-san, and Nojima-san saved that man's life and his dog. That's something to be proud of."

Naoko nodded, admitting, "Yeah, true. I guess it's not a big deal."

Shiori pointed out, "So what if he saw your boobs anyway? It was an accident. It's not like he touched you or anything."

Then, they saw Kana walk in, having gotten off of work that day. She smiled and said to Naoko, "Hey there, hero."

Naoko blushed slightly, telling her, "Ah, it's nothing."

"Just to let you know," she then told her as she walked over to her locker nearby to put her car keys inside. "You and the others may get awards for it. The lieutenant on Engine-Aerial 4 that night put a recommendation in for you guys."

"No shit," Naoko replied, feeling good about herself upon hearing the news. "Do the others know yet?"

"No, but they soon will."

Tomoko then asked Kana, "How was overtime?"

"They put me on the second engine out of West Yoshimatsu for the six hours of overtime I did today," Kana explained. "So I wasn't too busy. We only ran one call in those six hours, which I'm not gonna complain about, especially since I was on the first-out ambulance for my normal shift and we got hammered with calls. I took a three-hour nap during the day since I barely got any sleep the night before."

"So now that you're here," Shiori then asked her. "What did you need help with again?"

"We gotta go through and replace all the drugs on the ambulance," Kana explained as she held up a large plastic box full of medical supplies and vials with a clipboard on top. "I got all the supplies while I was at work. It's a bit time-consuming since we have to go through every single one of these and log them in the system. What I want you guys to do is take all the drugs out of the two medication bags in the ambulance and throw them away, and then I want you guys to write down on this clipboard the serial numbers of each drug before putting them in the bags. Take note of where you take each old drug out, because the exact same new drug from the box has to go in that spot. Understood?"

"Yes, Lieutenant," replied Tomoko with a bow.

"Good. I'll be in the office for a bit doing some paperwork for the new drugs." As the three student firefighters took the box and clipboard from her to begin the work on Ambulance 33, Kana walked into the officer's office and sat down at a computer, logging in and opening up a program to start logging all the new medications and take out all the old medications. As she began to delete the old medications from the system, she felt her phone vibrate with a text, prompting her to take it out and read what it said. She sighed and said, "Alright." She then dialed Masako's number in.

"Hey there," Masako said on the other end of the line.

"You wanted me to call. What's up?"

Masako sighed and explained to her, "Me and Yasuhiro argued pretty bad today. I confronted him about barely being home after work, and we shouted at each other for a few minutes."

"How bad did it get?"

"Well, it's been about two hours, and we haven't apologized to each other at all. My son is pretty scared."