Chapter 5

5

ELLE

T he kid just did not want to get down.

Elle's department had been called in to rescue a little boy stuck in a tall tree. At first, Elle thought it was a joke. Nothing like this had happened in her whole career. Roofs? Yes. Absolutely. A tree? That sounded like another made up story of firefighters rescuing a cat.

When they got on the scene, though, Elle understood the problem. The tree looked enormous, and the first half of it had no branches on w hich to climb.

"How did he even get up there?" she asked, half-amazed, half utterly surprised.

His shaken mother rushed in with explanations, while Captain Hunter organized the ladder to be put against the tree. There was some issue with the placement of their truck due to the neighboring houses standing very tightly knit.

"He and his sister found an old, wooden ladder in our garage, but when he let go of it after climbing up the tree, it fell and broke in half." She pointed to the broken ladder lying in the corner of the garden.

"And what were their parents doing while the kids nearly got deadly injured?" Chastising irresponsible parents had to be Elle's favorite leisure activity. "Why was the garage even left open for them to access?"

The mother furrowed her eyebrows, offended. "Well, I don't know whether you have kids of your own, ma'am." She looked Elle up and down. "But it's not that easy keeping a 24/7 watch over two kids under five."

"But you could close your garage, no?" Elle pointed to it still being open. "Or do you want us to come in next time to extinguish your burning house after one of your kids plays around with the gas bottles over there?"

She shook her head, leaving to join the team trying to convince the small boy not to wriggle around and let them do their job. His face was twisted with terrible fear, and he refused to do anything besides clutch onto the tree. O'Malley finally got close enough to capture him, but the challenge then lay in the boy not jerking away. Elle had no idea why Hunter had chosen O'Malley, as she had no skills with children whatsoever. The moment Elle thought this, the child started wailing so loudly even Hunter was clearly questioning her choice of firefighter for the job.

"For fuck's sake." She sighed, eyeing the parents angrily.

Finally, O'Malley managed to take a firm hold of the child. Everyone began clapping, relieved. The boy, having no other choice, clung close to her chest, and they both safely got to the ground.

The team worked smoothly to get the ladder back down and safely loaded back into its place on the truck.

"This has been the worst mission of my life," O'Malley muttered under her breath when passing Elle.

"Good job," Elle shouted, and mounted her seat as the fire truck's driver. "Let's go, everyone!"

Elle always liked driving the truck. It took real skill to drive a big truck at speed and avoid others on the road, and Elle prided herself on doing it well.

The four of them were quickly on their way back, apparently in a very talkative mood. Captain Hunter, Chief Ramirez, O'Malley and Elle. The day had a lazy feeling to it, and the clear sky put everyone in a good mood. Elle laughed heartily, though at the back of her mind swam something darker.

"You should never have kids, O'Malley." Chief Ramirez shook her head. "They're worse than a thousand fires."

Ramirez had two of her own, now well into adulthood. Sometimes her daughter would bring pastries to the station. She worked as a pastry chef in a local bakery. Easy to say, she was the delight of the entire station.

"Yeah, Chief, next time you try grabbing a crying, wriggling, snot-covered brat from a tree, we'll see how that goes."

"Oh, love, I've done that many, many times." Chief laughed, effectively shutting O'Malley up. The whole exchange didn't fail to make Elle laugh again.

"And you, keep your eyes on the road, huh?" Ramirez snapped, and Elle shut her laugh down immediately.

Elle put two teaspoons of sugar in the steamy cup of coffee, then sat back down, facing Chief Ramirez. The two shared particularly amicable relations, being the only two Latinas in their department. From day one, Ramirez had taken special care of Elle, acting as a mentor figure throughout Elle's career. She knew Elle's mother had been rather absent, so she never hesitated to lift the young firefighter up.

"Hey, what's with you?" Ramirez put down the newspaper she'd been pretending to read.

"What? Nothing." Elle shrugged, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Oh don't play tough with me, Rodriguez."

Elle's lips stretched in a little smile disguised by the cup. Whenever Ramirez used her surname, she could feel how close they'd grown. She could sense that particular tone people familiar to you use when they put on formal words, the beating flesh of affection hidden by the formal attire they dressed it up in.

"I swear I'm not," Elle protested, but deep down she knew that Ramirez got her.

Her Chief only raised an eyebrow, waiting.

"Yes, something's wrong with me," Elle exhaled the air she didn't know she'd been trapping in her lungs.

"Go on," Rodriguez nodded.

"Someone I used to know is back in the city," she began, unsure of how to put in words what lay heavy on her chest, but willing to try. "Someone I cared about deeply. She's a doctor. I keep seeing her at incidents."

Rodriguez nodded patiently. "So where is the problem?"

"We didn't part on the best… terms. Actually, we parted on awful terms. We'd broken up before she moved away. Now she's back." Elle looked up at Rodriguez.

"And you don't want to be near her now?"

"No! I really do, actually. See, I realized that she's the only one I want."

Ramirez burst out laughing uncontrollably, waving her arms in what seemed to be a simultaneous apology. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry, but I find it very difficult to believe, Elle!"

Elle's expression turned sour. "Now why's that?"

"Why's that? You go through women like plastic straws at a Malibu bar, sometimes three at a time." Ramirez calmed down. "Are you serious? What makes this one so special?"

"See, she was with me before all that." Elle's expression remained serious. "She was the only one I've ever actually fallen for. Like, truly. We grew up together. We were together for years. First love and all that."

Ramirez looked at Elle in disbelief. "Girl, you should have married her. I've never seen you like this."

Elle sighed. "If only you knew. She's all I want."

"So what's the problem? Why'd you break up?"

"

I…" Elle braced herself for the unavoidable reaction from Ramirez. "I cheated on her."

Ramirez fell silent, nodding. "I see. Well, that is a mistake, for sure."

"I have a feeling that due to my…reputation, I may have made it harder for her down the line." Elle nodded ruefully.

"You very well might've."

"So I don't know what to do. She doesn't want me back." Elle looked at her superior, helpless.

"Girl, I wouldn't want you back either, no offense."

"Offense taken."

"Let me ask you this—have you actually grieved your relationship?" Ramirez posed the question with a serious expression on her face.

"What do you mean?" Elle seemed confused.

"Have you allowed yourself to actually feel the devastation? From what I can see, you never actually allowed yourself to feel the loss. And if you haven't felt the loss, you haven't had the chance to truly feel remorseful for what you did. The whole time I've known you, you've just been going through women. Oh, and drinking. You may want to take a look at the drinking, too. Think about it. What was the first thing you did after you two broke up?"

Elle thought for a moment. "I got laid."

Ramirez nodded. "And then?"

"I got laid again, because that one wasn't fulfilling."

"And I suppose you just kept going?"

"It's not that simple, okay? Of course I respect all the women I've slept with, and wanted to have something with them, but--"

"Of course." Ramirez nodded. "But you never acknowledged the hurt you caused the person you loved most, so instead of going through a healthy process of grief and healing, you're just out here being a Casanova breaking hearts on repeat."

Elle giggled. "Is that how you look at me, really?"

"That's how you act, either way. You must allow yourself to feel the regret buried somewhere there in your stone-cold heart."

Elle opened her mouth to protest, but Ramirez shut her down. "I'm joking. I'm joking. Only don't get defensive. Think about it for a moment, maybe longer. You're charming as hell, Elle, but that won't get you very far with your ex. She already knows you, I'd guess even better than you yourself, kid. She needs you to actually work on yourself, not try to seduce her with the Rodriguez charm like all the others."

And having released this waterfall of knowledge, Ramirez got up and went to check on the new recruits.

Elle sat thoughtfully next to her cup of coffee for a long time. Ramirez was one of the only people who could talk her down like that, call her a kid . Either way, her advice sounded difficult and unrewarding to Elle. Deep down, she knew Ramirez was right, she wished she could simply charm her way back to Maya's heart. And she knew Maya enough to know Maya still had feelings for her. That lip twitching, that particular flavor of emotions she'd seen rush through Maya during their argument, had told her all she wanted to know. Maya may hate her, but you had to still love someone in order to hate them. Elle knew that. She just had to somehow get Maya to switch back more to the love side of things.

Driving home, Elle couldn't understand the idea of feeling supposed emotions seven years after the fact. And for sure, she didn't understand how feeling grief would help her be a better girlfriend. The whole situation was about that one drunken mistake, and Elle would reverse all these seven years if she could, but she couldn't, and now she was driving her car to a huge, empty house with no one in it to welcome her, no trace of anyone who would love her.

Although at least she had a great house, and at least there was whiskey at her house.

These thoughts made her feel weak. Insecure. Sorry for herself. Feeling sorry for herself was Elle's worst enemy. Other people could show their weaknesses just fine, but Elle's standard for herself had always been so high above that she sometimes lost sight of it, chasing something vaguely upward to no end. Not even a dog or cat to welcome her home. Elle loved animals, but her shifts were long, and she just knew it wouldn't be fair to take on a pet and not be home enough for it. So all she came home to was a racist neighbor and her screaming children. Not the kids' fault they were screaming. Elle would be screaming too if she had to live with that woman. Elle had always had a weak spot for children. Something about their untamed curiosity and flexibility of mind soothed her, aside their obvious gentleness.

No child could be truly cruel, and their presence made Elle feel safe. She had thought once that she'd have kids with Maya. But that hope of being a parent had died when Maya had left. No way working/womanizing/drinking Elle would make a fit parent, and she knew that. So when asked, she always said she didn't want kids.

Once home, she opened all the windows wide. She felt the need for air, to breathe in and out deeply, to release the pent up feeling of claustrophobia left from her conversation with Ramirez. She remembered distinctly how Maya would do that to let fresh air into their apartment, sometimes forgetting to close them overnight, and causing them both to wake up cold. After a while, Elle learned to wake up in the middle of the night to go around their flat and check whether all the windows had been closed. For a while after their breakup she'd still do that, startling an occasional hookup, but over the years the habit had faded away.

The memory made her feel deep sadness, an emotion she normally wouldn't dwell upon, but this time, trying to follow Ramirez's advice, she took up a pen from her desk.

I feel deep sadness.

She wrote on a piece of paper, silently swearing to herself she'd start a journal and keep it secret from everyone. Not that it would be difficult, living on her own.

I love Maya,

For the rest of the evening, she sat scribbling away. Simple statements about her day, about her feelings, things she hadn't admitted to anyone for ages, if ever. A chaotic sprawl of feeling, but in a good way. Emotions she had no idea were nested in her mind after the day of work made their way onto the page, sometimes in clumsy words or incoherent sentences, but the activity brought her some unexpected peace of mind.

She finished writing with one sentence at the bottom of the page:

" Now my father would say I am weak.