Chapter 13

13

ELLE

T he sun was quickly going down, diminishing visibility on the scene. Elle felt her jaw tremble with strain from unconsciously tightening it. Every step was a gamble at this height, and they'd gone in too quickly to prepare harnesses. It was a risky choice, she knew, but the captain felt helpless in the face of the number of victims trapped by the upper layers of the building.

They were looking for survivors without dogs this time. It would be too difficult to get them up there. So the group moved carefully, probing every possible space with a camera. They were tired, and Elle could see that. One firefighter, however, somehow retained all her energy. She was an addition to this operation from another department, and a kid, really—twenty-one or twenty-two years old, Elle couldn't remember. Her overeagerness could get them into trouble, however. Uncareful steps could collapse the building on one of the survivors.

"Eh, Maria!" Elle tried calling her over. "Maria, come over here."

The young rescuer swiftly approached, repeating exactly the thing Elle had been worried about.

"You can't walk this way here. Who taught you this?" Elle quickly realized Maria might take the question literally. "No don't answer that. Walk the same way I do, all right? We don't want to collapse it further."

"I didn't know I was doing it wrong," Maria earnestly answered, looking at Elle. "Thanks."

Elle nodded, going back to her position in the search. Now and then she'd hear an indelicate step and knew exactly whose it was. What is she doing here? She grew angry. This was certainly no place for rookies, even if the city was desperate for help. There was no way this girl had any previous experience in this type of field, and she could certainly compromise the mission.

Elle got on the radio. "Captain Hunter?"

"Rodriguez."

"Firefighter Maria Smith is unfit for this operation. She's inexperienced in this type of a rescue operation."

There was silence on the line. Perhaps Hunter was asking around who this firefighter Smith was. But just as Elle heard her radio fire up again, the worst of her fears came true in a terrifying instant.

Many sounds came to her seemingly at once. A slipping stone. A scream. A crash. Shouting from below. Hunter commanding them from the radio to come down at once and pause the mission. Elle's head spun, trying to follow it all with a string of thought, to somehow tie together the hideous reality in a bow of understanding.

She was down on solid earth again but didn't remember having come down. Everything happened around her so fast. There were thin streaks of dried blood on the pavement next to the building. The moon was showing its head from above the buildings, and the cold sheets of moonlight rendered everything in Elle's surroundings even more absurd.

"Rodriguez." Captain Hunter wanted to continue, but the sentence seemed to lump in her throat. She came up to Elle and embraced her. "Our department will have to take over completely now, Smith's--" she stumbled, "Smith's department will have to take care of…the death."

Death echoed around Elle's mind. "What death?"

Hunter looked at Elle in concerned. "You're in shock."

"Did Maria die?" Elle knew someone had fallen, but she didn't know where that had led, or at least her mind was shutting it away.

"Yes. She slipped and unfortunately died on the spot."

A wave of something that could only be described as unreality overcame Elle. The you should go home for now, Elle, sounded as if from behind a thick wall—distant, irrelevant. What a terrible thought that a firefighter was actually dead on this mission. Her feet felt glued to the ground. That had never happened to her before. No firefighter she knew had ever died, and definitely not right in front of her. Everyone around her moved hurriedly from place to place, arranging another rescue operation or talking about letting the proper offices know about the death. Elle didn't know what to do with herself. She wanted to be close to the other ones who'd been on the roof, but she realized they were from the other department—the one which was now in mourning.

After some time passed, she couldn't tell how much, she realized Hunter had dismissed her for the day. She felt strange being treated this way, as if she had the right to mourn a firefighter from another department who she had known for half an hour before the death. She was in shock. She knew it. She ordered an uber, which took time to go around the blockades. She had to run up to him from a long distance due to the police barricading the scene.

She still had her firefighter's jacket on, everything besides the helmet and tools, in fact. She looked ridiculous inside the small car.

"Is everything all right, ma'am?" The driver smiled shyly in the rearview mirror.

She nodded, not knowing what to say Elle was nauseated and was focusing all her strength on not vomiting inside the car. The task surprisingly helped her calm down, the singular thought only of do not vomit kept her mind in a unified stream.

She got out of the car in front of her house, weak-legged and feeling as if everything around her was unreal. Standing there for some time, she realized she had no keys with her. Her bag was still at the station. This completely overwhelmed her. The station seemed so far gone she diddn't even know where to begin.

Her phone rang, dragging her out of the daze.

"Elle?" Maya's voice was gentle.

"Mhmm." Elle nodded.

"Are you okay? Where are you?" Slight worry rose in Maya's tone, but it remained steady and calm, and Elle wished she would just keep talking, keep the flow of her words like the steady rise and fall of the sea.

"I'm standing in front of my house."

"Why not inside of it, Darling?"

"I don't have my keys." Elle's own voice sounded to her as if from a deep well in the ground, abstract and wobbly.

"..Can I drive up to get you? I'm just finished for today, and I feel as if something bad has happened to you."

"Something bad has happened." Elle nodded . Something very bad has happened.

"I'm on my way. Wait for me. All right? I'm coming."

Elle heard the sound of the call ending, and she simply nodded at the night air all around her. Tired, she sat down on the lawn in front of her house. The dewy grass wet her pants, but they were so thick that she didn't notice. She probably wouldn't have no matter what. The moon appeared gigantic, as unreal as the whole evening. A car parked right in front of her, and its light had a blinding harshness to it.

Elle sat at the corner of Maya's couch wearing Maya's t-shirt and her underwear. Maya had thrown all Elle's clothes besides the thick, outer uniform into her washing machine, which was now spinning them in endless circles, bubbly and moist.

Elle was holding a cup of chamomile tea with milk, and through the thick fog she hadn't managed to get rid of, bubbles of nostalgia kept showing their little heads and then disappearing again in the depths of anxiety.

"Can I help you?" Maya sat at the other end of the couch, worried but compassionate.

Elle shook her head. "I heard her scream when she fell. Her name was Maria, and it's so much worse that I knew her name."

Maya nodded. "That sounds horrible."

"It is horrible. She was twenty-two, or maybe even twenty-one." Elle looked at Maya. "No one should die this young."

"No, they shouldn't." Maya spread her arms. "Would you like to come closer?"

Elle nodded. She crawled toward Maya, resting her face against Maya's chest, making herself comfortable in her embrace. Their breathing soon unified, a constant flowing up and down, up and down. Elle knew she wouldn't sleep. Her body felt jittery and on edge.

"You can go to sleep," she said to Maya. "Thank you for this."

"Are you feeling better?"

A thousand thoughts flashed through Elle's head, and she felt she was, indeed, regaining clarity of mind. Her thoughts were nothing pleasant, however. Elle felt as if there had been a clear way for her to prevent the accident. She also felt out of place in her grief, since she hadn't known the firefighter. She decided to keep those thoughts to herself, not burdening Maya with them. She needed to get back on track and back to work.

"I need to get back to work."

Maya's embrace tightened around her.

"Elle, you don't have to go to work right away."

"But I do. That's exactly what happens. She wasn't even from my department, and they will all be working tomorrow." Elle twisted her head to look up at Maya. "That's what it means to have this job during a crisis."

Maya brushed Elle's hair from her face in a gentle gesture, and Elle felt herself melt into this newly established kindness. They remained silent for a while, simply appreciating their breaths mingling together.

"Can I tell you something serious?" Maya asked quietly after a while.

"What is it?"

"It wasn't your fault the girl fell."

Elle stirred on the couch, quickly rising from it. Her heartbeat quickened, and she was trying not to shout.

"Don't tell me that," she looked at Maya intensely. "I appreciate you driving me here and everything, but don't pretend to know what happened."

Maya sat quietly, her chest rising and falling in rhythm with her quick breaths. "I don't want to argue with you," she said after a moment.

"Then don't lie," Elle snapped, sitting down in the middle of the couch. "Don't lie, because it was my fault. I saw that she wasn't prepared, and I should've gotten her down before. Or I should've watched her more closely. But I told Hunter too late, and now she's gone."

She sighed deeply, adding, "But it doesn't matter now, does it? She's gone. I need to bear this guilt until the end, but it's my own thing to deal with. I hope her family is all right."

Maya sat still.

"That's stupid. I know they aren't," Elle added, feeling her speech grow more erratic and nonsensical. She no longer knew what she had wanted to say. She only knew she didn't want to scare Maya away. She really needed her close. "Maya," she said in a whisper, because her throat had grown tight. "Could you come close again?"

And she did, embracing Elle again, uniting their breathing.

"Would you like to move to my bedroom?" Maya asked after a while.

Elle nodded. "But I can also sleep on the couch, if you'd prefer that."

"Why would I prefer that?" Maya smiled.

"Well, I don't know. I still don't know what you think about me now."

Maya looked at Elle, understanding. "I think that's a conversation for another night."

And Elle understood.

They fell asleep quickly, both exhausted and infected by the feverish atmosphere of grief. Grief for Maria, and grief for all the victims as well, nameless to their minds yet still carrying the weight of death with them, the silent thickness of tragedy in the air. Their sleep was of the deepest kind, the kind children experience. The type that bodies craving restoration spin at night, covering the minds of the restless with a thick web of dreams, elaborate images that stretch and pull on the mind, the kind one forgets in the morning as soon as a window gets in the way.

Elle showed up to the station struggling to harness the disarray of her state. She arrived late in yesterday's half-dried clothes, with yesterday's conversations on her mind. She soon realized that everything appeared out of joint—the firefighters as well as the captains appeared equally distracted, overcoming some internal chaos.

There was word going around about the deceased firefighter—various hypotheses and rumors, spread about by those absent from the scene who had heard through the news and word of mouth. Those who had been on the scene tried quieting the rumors down, tried swallowing their own grief like a pill without any water to help it go down. Elle understood that their work was to become even more difficult than it had been before.

She noticed a bunch of her friends talking in hushed voices around the corner.

"I heard she was the daughter of so-and-so, and that's how she got to be on such a high-risk mission so early…"

Elle came up to them from the back, saying, "Johnson, you always make so much sense, don't you? I'm sure it makes sense for a father to make his daughter take part in situations where she's more likely to die. That's so clever of you to say!" She was getting ahead of herself but was oddly enjoying the ride and the release it provided.

"That's just what I've heard, anyway." Johnson shrugged.

"Don't parrot random shit that you hear, then." Elle wasn't done. "It's offensive to speak of the dead this way, so if you have nothing respectful to say, I'd rather you'd just stay quiet."

"Jesus." Haley sighed, essentially putting the last nail to her coffin.

"The fuck do you roll my eyes at me for?" Elle's face grew redder.

"I didn't-"

"Did you know that she was younger than you?"

Haley clearly didn't. Her face froze, and she slowly shook her head.

"Yeah. Significantly younger, like twenty-one. Died on the spot. So shut up about her. Just shut up. I don't want to hear you--"

"Rodriguez!" Ramirez's voice cut through the argument.

"Yes, captain?" Elle turned around to face her.

"Come with me to my office, now."

Elle nodded and left Haley and the crowd without another word. She obediently followed Ramirez to the office, closing the door behind her as instructed. She didn't know what to expect and didn't much care. Her mind was so on edge that she barely could understand the consequences of anything. They sat down facing each other.

"Why are you starting fights with your fellow firefighters?" Ramirez began with no bullshit, as was her habit.

"I wasn't starting a fight, captain," Elle asserted. "I was trying to stop the festering rumors from spreading."

"People will always talk, Rodriguez. Let them talk. We have more important--"

"More important things than respecting to dead in the line of duty for our fellow firefighter?" Her eyes welled with tears, but she bravely tried to contain her voice in one piece.

Ramirez understood something then, something that had apparently been lacking before. She slowly nodded.

"You were there, weren't you?"

"Did you not know?" Elle felt anger and irritation spread all around her limbs.

"No. I'd left by the time the tragic accident happened. But you were still there?"

"I--" Elle felt her throat tighten again, but she pushed through, "It was my fault that she fell."

"What do you mean?" Ramirez leaned in toward Elle. "What do you mean exactly?"

"I saw that she wasn't well prepared for this situation, and I called Hunter too late. I could've kept a better eye on her."

Ramirez quickly stopped her, raising her hand. "Elena, you need to cut this out. What happened, happened. It's a hideous reality, but it happened. You know that's not truly your fault. You went above and beyond in informing the captain of your suspicions. That's all you could've done."

She got up from her chair, and Elle swiftly followed.

"But now we need to get back to work, kid," she said in a gentler tone. "We all need to get back to work."

Out of the office, Elle passed by Haley without a word. Soon, a meeting would be called to establish a new plan of action regarding the structures still affected by the earthquake. Sitting through a meeting was the last thing Elle felt she'd want to do. She was restless, her bones itching for movement, for action. Her hazy four-hours-of-sleep mind called for fresh air. They were all going insane with the effort, and adding to that grief, Elle could see their strength waning. But there was no one else to put the city back together. No one else could do their job, even though departments from all neighboring cities were being driven to Phoenix Ridge day by day. They'd need to establish a system of cooperation.

During the meeting, her thoughts briefly jumped to the night spent with Maya. She barely remembered it, as if through fog. The sounds of the washing machine tumbling her clothes about, the scent of chamomile tea with a generous portion of milk, Maya's steady heartbeat against her face. She felt lucky that Maya still cared about her that much. Or perhaps not s till. Maybe they'd begun caring for each other anew?

"Rodriguez, focus." Captain Hunter called her back to the meeting. Her gaze was kind, however. Their shared part in the tragedy had quietly brought them closer to each other, a thread of understanding tying them together.

Elle nodded and remained attentive throughout the remainder of the meeting. There was a team to be dispatched to secure a cluster of buildings on the verge of crumbling and help safely evacuate the inhabitants.

She knew the task was simple, yet Elle couldn't stop her fear. She knew she had to choke down the feeling, eat it up and never bring it back, but when her hands trembled, it felt difficult. Even while driving, she felt wrong. Her body was refusing to perform its usual tasks, making it difficult to focus on the road, but she had to do it. They were very close. Everything felt like an effort for Elle, but she knew herself to be strong. She trusted herself to handle it.

The three buildings had been built according to the old safety standards and were now incredibly unstable due to cracking caused by the earthquake and the vibrations that followed. They still cropped up here and there throughout the city. Not even twenty hours had passed since the accident. Elle kept thinking, kept counting the time. What for? She couldn't say.

Huge arms of machines were put in place to help hold the buildings, their imposing size eclipsing all the fire trucks around. These machines would be of some help, though they couldn't hold the buildings together from the inside, which was now the main concern.

The rescue teams received information that the staircase in one building was damaged, trapping some residents inside. The firefighters were preparing to go in, including Elle, when a large chunk of the wall fell down right next to them.

"Fuck." Elle stood frozen, looking at the wall fragment lying dangerously close to her. There was a huge commotion, captains ordering the firefighters back.

"This is too dangerous." Captain Hunter shook her head. "You're not going in."

The team was stopped, and everyone went back to a safe distance from the collapsing building. It was a race against time once more.

"We're going to evacuate them out the windows." Captain Ramirez nodded. "We need to prepare the truck ladders. All the drivers, get inside the trucks."

Elle listened, going into the truck. She would have to spend a long time maneuvering to get to the perfect position. The people would have to walk down the ladder. She was hoping everyone could.

Ramirez was giving her instructions, which window to target, what distance. Elle strained her eyes, looking back and to the sides with an intensity she had not had to employ before. Her understanding of the car from all the years driving had to come through. But she managed. Hhe stopped the truck. The ladder began reaching out to the third floor window.

A young woman with a child tethered to her back began walking down. The child was crying loudly, and the sound echoed from the building nearby, creating an even more nervous atmosphere. But the woman finally safely reached the pavement. She was quickly taken care of by the medics, not because she was injured but because of the shock all inhabitants had suffered. Elle kept the ladder stretched out until all the third floor residents were safely down on the ground. They huddled in blankets given out by medics and watched as their house cracked, held together by mechanic claws. What would happen once the machines were removed?

The second floor went just as successfully, and the first floor was reached by a normal ladder leaning against the building. Everyone was successfully evacuated, and the question of what would happen to the building would find its resolution.

"It will have to be destroyed," one of the engineers began explaining to the terror-stricken crowd. "We have to do it before it falls apart and causes more damage."

Elle's crew was moving to help the next one out of the three, but she couldn't help listening in. These people had thought they were lucky having escaped the earthquake's first wave, and now they were learning that their home must be destroyed.

What a time . She shook her head, joining the rest of the crew.

The next buildings were rescued similarly. Elle twisted and turned her head to maneuver the truck around, the people went down on ladders, and the day was neared evening. As the sun began to set, and Elle sat behind the wheel waiting for the victims to descend the ladder, she thought about Maria's family. Maria would get the full honors funeral, with trucks, apparatus, orchestra, and everything. Some family members from abroad would come, kids who probably had never even known her and would not feel the grief that her parents would have to endure throughout the entire ceremony.

"RODRIGUEZ!" Hunter was suddenly at her window, startling Elle.

"What, Captain?"

"We've been trying to reach you for the past five minutes. This is unacceptable. Get a hold of yourself and get out of the truck!"

"Yes, Captain." Elle got out of the truck.

Her face was on fire. She had never failed something as simple as hearing instructions, and the taste of shame on her tongue was as new to her as it was infuriating. O'Malley replaced her as the driver. The whole way back, Elle felt her heartbeat in her throat. She couldn't understand what was happening to her, why this weakness wouldn't go away.

"You need to get a grip on this, Rodriguez." Hunter touched Elle's back in a gesture Elle guessed was supposed to show understanding, even if it mainly came off as pity. "It's difficult for everyone who was there, but we still have work to do."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Captain," Elle said coldly. She was fed up with this situation and Hunter's pitiful looks.

"I think you do."

The rest of the way back to the firehouse was spent in silence.

Back home, Elle could finally change, and the scent of fresh clothes made her feel cleaner, more whole. She wanted to check the news coverage of Maria's death but changed her mind. She didn't need to see what others were saying. She'd been there. She knew everything she had to, and now she simply had to forget it all.

She found a bottle of whiskey in the fridge. p Perfect, she thought while settling on her couch. Her limbs felt heavy and sore, as if gravity had doubled and was keeping her glued to the spot. The ice in her glass popped, a familiar, lonely sound, and she finally, truly felt at home.

Until her ringtone cut through the silence. She let the sharp, steady ringing sound around the house for a while. She sank deeper into the couch, knowing that sooner or later she had to pick up, but not just yet.

The ringing ceased.

"Fuck this." Elle grunted, getting up to get to the phone. It was Maya. Elle decided to call back.

"Hi," she said when Maya picked up in the span of a second.

"Hey," she heard Maya's eager, though tired, voice. "I wanted to ask how you're feeling after yesterday."

"Are you at work?"

"I'm on a break, but yes, I'll be working until late."

Elle exhaled, thinking how much she wanted to be completely honest with Maya, and on the other hand, how weak that would make her feel. She didn't know how to have this conversation.

"So, how are you?"

"Had a bit of tension with Hunter today," Elle admitted despite herself.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. What happened?" Maya's voice was so patient that Elle's own thoughts became less confused and tangled. She felt ready to tell her everything.

"I guess I'm… I wasn't very attentive today. I don't know why I can't get a grip. I don't hear people well, and I keep drifting away."

"Elle, this is serious. You can't be working in this state, you know that?"

Elle shook her head violently. "No, don't say that. I'll be better tomorrow."

"Oh, honey." Maya sighed. Elle felt strange, hearing all these mannerisms and words directed at her again, as if they'd gone back in time, as if the past years hadn't happened. "It's not your fault for feeling this way. It's a completely normal reaction. You can't control it."

Elle sat down, not knowing what to say anymore. She felt as if she'd stepped into quicksand out of which no one could help her out. "I'd like to just forget about all this, go back to the way it was."

"You'll feel better with time, but you need to take it slowly now."

"I can't, Maya. I have to work. I don't get special treatment, I wasn't the only one there."

"Well, it doesn't matter. You're a danger to yourself and others now." Maya's voice grew suddenly stern. "You have to take a break."

"What did you just say?" Elle was shocked.

"You're a brilliant firefighter, Elle, and the strongest person I know. But you've been traumatized by what happened and can't focus. Isn't that deadly in your line of work?"

Elle took a few gulps of whiskey. She knew Maya was right, and she knew that arguing with her would prove utterly useless. But she also felt that admitting to that, admitting that she couldn't work, would put her in an impossible position, threatening everything she'd worked so hard for.

"I don't want to argue with you," she said quietly.

"I don't want you to keep being afraid of seeming weak. Having problems is not being weak, Elle, ignoring them is. I thought you'd work that out by the time you were thirty."

"Whatever. If I can't open up to you, just say it," Elle threw into the conversation carelessly, feeling that to expect a good outcome out of this conversation would be like tossing a six-sided die and praying for a seven.

"That's manipulative."

They fell silent. Elle was afraid of that word, afraid of seeming like her father, behaving like him. She knew she could sometimes, and she knew she did it now.

"I'm sorry. You're right."

Maya sighed. "I know this is a sensitive subject for you. I don't want you to feel like I'm overstepping or trying to seem like I know best. But this situation right now is serious, and I know that you see it, too. Please think about this and talk to your superiors if necessary. I need to go now."

After saying goodbye to her, Elle felt completely depleted. There was not much she felt she could do besides finishing her drink and going to sleep. At a time like this, no one would take Maya's concerns seriously. They were still in the middle of dragging the city out from the disastrous effects of the earthquake and needed every firefighter on deck. Besides, she hadn't even known Maria closely. She hadn't even been from her department. She had no claim to this grief.

The journal lay on the edge of the coffee table, staring at Elle. She felt there were no words she could put in there to help herself now, nothing that could soothe her besides pretending nothing had happened. Tipsy, she went to take a long shower, feeling the water hit her back in pleasant streams. Feeling pure again. At home, she felt as if nothing had to be real. Everything concerning the outside world floated away into obscurity.

She began thinking about her relationship with Maya in recent days. How worried and caring Maya had been, and quite effortlessly so. She wished it could be this way not only in times of crisis, that they would carry it out of this difficult time and into normal life. Most of all, she wished she could care for Maya too right now, instead of what had been happening for the past two days. But then again, she knew she would always feel bad receiving help.

Seeing her bed, she remembered the previous night at Maya's place. The repeated sounds of screaming and crashing against the pavement had woken her up throughout the night, causing her to sweat and disorienting her. She tried thinking it would be different in her own bed, that they would pass. Closing her eyes, she already knew that wouldn't be true, but the exhaustion in her body dragged her to sleep nonetheless.