“The Nose Knows”

By Ross

Captain Hank Stanley, and the rest of his five-man crew from LA County’s Fire Station 51, watched and waited, as a Special Weapons and Tactics team surrounded a single-storied, wooden-framed structure in a quiet residential neighborhood.

The police where present because four armed-robbery suspects were, supposedly, ‘holed up’ inside the house.

The Fire Department was standing by on the scene, with hoses in hand and air-packs in place, because the cops were planning to lob tear gas into the building.

Tear gas canisters come equipped with an incendiary device, which detonates upon impact. The pyrotechnics heat up the shell of the projectile, causing the irritating liquid it contains to become an irritating mist.  Turning the liquid to a mist allows the offensive chemical particles to cover a much broader area.

Unfortunately, if a deployed tear gas canister should happen to come into contact with a combustible material—such as shag carpeting—the incredible heat that is being generated could also cause a fire to occur.

So the six firemen stood—safely—by, in the shadows of their trucks, and waited for ‘events’ to unfold.

When the cop in charge finally informed the dwelling’s current occupants that they were surrounded, and ordered them to surrender, the four heavily armed robbers responded with a barrage of bullets.

Hank and his crew hunkered down even further and continued to watch, as one of the cops took careful aim at one of the home’s unbroken side windows.

“Fire in the hole!” Chet Kelly quietly declared, as the police officer’s finger tightened on the weapon’s trigger.

The rest of the guys glanced at one another and grinned.

Even the Captain couldn’t help but smile.

Kelly’s quiet comment had managed to ease the ‘tension of the moment’—considerably.

The sound of more glass shattering was closely followed by a whole lot of shouting and cursing. 

After the initial shouting and cursing, came even more cursing—accompanied by a great deal of coughing.

The tear gas had apparently taken all the ‘fight’ out of the four felons because, when they were ordered to toss their weapons out and then exit the home—with their hands on their heads—the quartet of no-longer-hardened criminals did so, and were immediately taken into custody.

Hank saw his paramedics exchange a pair of extremely relieved glances.

The two men were tremendously relieved that their medical expertise would not be needed—this time.

Once the four coughing, crying criminals were all carefully frisked, hand-cuffed and accounted for, and two gas-masked members of the S.W.A.T. team had thoroughly inspected the house, the cop in charge gave Station 51’s Captain an ‘all clear’ signal.

Hank passed the signal along to his Engineer.

Mike Stoker promptly primed Big Red’s pump.

His five fellow firefighters lowered their facemasks snuggly into place.  Then they redonned their helmets and started carting their limp hose lines toward the now-smoking building.

The firemen entered the single-storied structure and found the home’s living room already well involved.

Stanley raised his handheld radio and requested that their lines be charged.

Within a matter of moments, the hoses started to stiffen in their hands and their cracked nozzles began to spit and sputter, as the air was flushed from the lines. 

With water now at their disposal, the Captain and his crew went to work.

Even though the fire had a good fifteen-minute headstart on them, it proved to be no match for the capable crew of Station 51.  In less than five minutes, the raging blaze had been deemed ‘under control’.

The carpeting was thoroughly doused, but the freely-burning fire had had ample time to work its way down into—and through—the living room’s floorboards.

Hank, and two of his men, began ‘salvage and overhaul’ operations.

The Captain ordered the other two members of his crew to go ‘down below’ to check for fire extension. 

“I found it!” firefighter/paramedic John Gage exclaimed, upon discovering the opening to the building’s crawl space. 

The tiny, boarded-up opening in the foundation’s concrete blocks was hidden behind some thorn-bearing bushes, directly beneath one of the living room’s shattered windows.

By the time Kelly got there, Gage had already removed his air-pack. 

Chet saw the size of the entryway they were gonna hafta crawl through, and started sliding his SCBA off, as well. “After you…” the fireman invited, and waved his arm toward the tiny opening, with a flourish.

“After you-ou…” Gage gallantly countered.

Neither man relished the idea of having to face all those Black Widow spider nests and cobwebs.  So neither of them moved.

“Short stick goes in first,” the paramedic determined.  Then, before his unhappy pal could protest, he snapped two ‘undetermined’ lengths of twigs off of one of the nearby bushes and placed them behind his back, to ‘mix’ them up.  “Ouch! Ou-ouch!” the foxy fireman declared, as his fingers kept finding the thorns.  Finally, John held out his hand, so Chet could pick his stick.

Kelly gave Gage a wary glance and, reluctantly, began reaching for one of the semi-concealed objects.  Midway to the twig on the left, he changed his mind, and ended up picking the right stick, instead.  At least, he hoped it was the ‘right’ stick. 

That left the ‘left’ twig for John.

Kelly stared down at the extremely short stick in his hand and frowned.

“Ah-hah!  Ah-hah!” Gage gloated, and gave his stick a quick toss, before the length of the two twigs could be compared.

“You probably cheated,” Chet griped, pulling a flashlight from his coat pocket and flicking it on.  “Both sticks were probably short,” he sourly surmised, and slowly started sinking to his knees, all the while looking out for shards of broken glass.

‘Probably,’ the still-grinning paramedic silently conceded, and carefully dropped to the ground, as well.  He knew his mustached amigo was just sore cuz he hadn’t come up with the ‘short stick’ idea first.

His still-grumbling buddy began fumbling with the chintzy chunk of crumbling plywood that was only partially obstructing the crawl space’s extremely small opening.  He got the flimsy board detached and gave it a toss.  ‘Sheesh!  God only knows what could a’ crawled in there!’ he thought, with a shudder, and, regrettably, began inching his way into the cramped—and creepy—crawl space.

Gage waited until his buddy’s booted feet were well out of the way, before poking his helmeted head into the hole.  He had made it about halfway into the dark, dank cavern, when his friend suddenly pressed his posterior—rather forcibly—into his face.  For some reason—as yet unknown to him—his buddy was beating a hasty retreat.  The paramedic didn’t waste any time asking questions.  He just threw it in reverse.

John backed out of the crawl space and then waited for his friend’s feet to appear in the opening, before finally speaking. “You’d better have a good reason for backing your butt into my fa—” the paramedic heard his companion gagging and paused in mid-threat, his irritation instantly turning to alarm.  “What’s the matter?  You okay?  Did you inhale some of that tear gas?” he anxiously pondered, and pulled his obviously distressed associate out of the hole.

Kelly, who was still too busy gagging to be able to reply verbally, simply blinked his tear-streaming eyes and shook his cobweb-covered head.

The paramedic’s already elevated panic level shot up several notches.  “Hey, Ca-ap?!  Ro-oy?!…Somethin’s wrong with Chet!” he went on to explain, as both his Captain’s and his partner’s heads promptly appeared in the open window, directly above them.

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” Kelly assured his worried shiftmates, when he could finally speak again. 

His concerned coworkers exhaled simultaneous sighs of relief.

“A cat—or somethin’—must a’ crawled in there and died,” Kelly quickly continued.  “Ma-an!  I tell yah! The smell of putrificating flesh was really overpowering!”

“P-Put—Putrificating?” Gage somehow managed to repeat, between suppressed snickers.

Chet’s watering eyes narrowed and his mustached mouth formed a frown.

Judging by the muffled snorts coming from inside the house, John was not alone in his amusement.

“It is so-o-o-o not funny!” Chet assured his seemingly heartless shiftmates. “And there’s a puddle a’ puke in there to prove it!” The fireman’s frown deepened, as his latest admission only succeeded in increasing his fellow crewmembers’ mirth.

Stanley struggled desperately to keep a straight face.  “Did you see any signs of fire extension?”

“Sorry, Cap…” Kelly sheepishly replied.  “Guess I was too busy gagging to notice.”

“We can’t leave here, until that crawl space has been inspected,” their Captain informed them, “a-and I expect the two of you to do the inspecting.”

“Ah-uh, Ca-ap,” Chet pouted.  “It really stinks in there—somethin’ awful!”

His Captain was sympathetic, but unyielding. “So-o put your mask back on.”

Kelly continued to plead his ‘no go’ case. “Bu-ut, Cap, the space is barely three blocks high—even less, with all the wires and pipes dangling down.  I’m tellin’ yah, there just ain’t enough room to be draggin’ an air bottle around under there.”

“Then I suggest you hold your nose,” Stanley stubbornly stated.  He and his senior paramedic disappeared from the open window, and resumed overhauling the living room.

Gage and Kelly traded distasteful glances and reluctantly returned to their assigned task.

John latched onto the back of Chet’s turnout coat, just as he was about to reenter the extremely stinky crawl space.  “Don’t go anywhere,” he requested.  “I’ll be right back.”  The paramedic scrambled to his feet and went jogging over to where Squad 51 was parked.  He removed something from the truck’s glove compartment, and then came trotting back up to his still kneeling—and still complaining—coworker.  “Here…try some of this.”

Kelly stared down at the little blue glass jar he’d just been handed—in complete and utter confusion.  “Vi-icks?”

His companion nodded.  “According to a couple a’ guys from the County Coroner’s Office, smearing a big gob of Vicks under your nose helps. I guess the camphor is supposed to blot out obnoxious odors…or something.”

Chet stared disbelievingly, first at the little blue bottle…and then at his buddy.  “Since when do you hang out with guys from the Coroner’s Office?”

“From time to time, Roy and I are called upon to perform welfare checks on people who haven’t been heard from in awhile.  Some of the folks we check up on ain’t faring very well…if you get my drift.”

Kelly’s mustached face contorted into a grimace.  Oh, he got Gage’s ‘drift’ all right!  “That’s disgusting!”

Gage grunted in agreement.  “Believe me, it smells every bit as disgusting as it sounds.”

Chet twisted the lid off.  Then he pulled the leather glove from his right hand and dipped two of his fingers into the jar.  The desperate fireman removed a big dollop of the little blue bottle’s greasy, gooey contents and began smearing it under his nose.

Which prompted his companion to start snickering…again.

“No-ow what’s so funny?”

“It looks like…like you got a…a whole bunch a’ boogers…on your mustache,” Gage somehow got out, between giggles.

“Oh yeah?  Well…just for that, you get to go first, this time.”

“You gotta go first.”

“Why-y?”

“Because you are the only one who knows where the ‘puddle a’ puke’ is.”

Kelly looked even grumpier, but ceased his griping—for the moment.  He offered the open jar to his grinning companion.

John took the jar but didn’t dip into it.

“Aren’t you going to put some on?”

“I, uh, thought I’d wait and see if it works, first.”

“Great!” Chet grumbled beneath his breath, as he turned back toward the crawl space.  “Gage just made me his guinea pig!” The fireman reentered the ‘hole from hell’ and was just approaching the ‘puddle a’ puke’, when the Vicks’ vapors suddenly merged with the stomach-turning stench of ‘putrificating flesh’.  The poor man was overpowered by the gosh-awful smell—once again—and immediately began both to gag…a-and to retreat.

John watched as his friend came backing out of the hole he’d just crawled through.

“I should a’…known better…than to…trust you…and your Coroner friends…Gage,” Kelly grouched, between bouts of gagging.

“I take it the Vicks didn’t do a very good job of blotting out the obnoxious odor,” Gage glumly surmised.

“It didn’t help a bit!  Only, no-ow, it smells like a cat—with a really bad cold—crawled under there and died!”

The sound of Gage giggling—and Kelly complaining—came wafting through the living room’s open window.

If they were ever going to get out of there, Hank realized he was going to have to take ‘matters’ into his own hands.  He exhaled a weary sigh and began heading for the front door.

The Captain was relieved to see that several members of the S.W.A.T. team were still on the scene.  He straightened his sagging shoulders and went stepping up to them.

“Here yah go,” Stanley told his two non-moving men, and handed each of them a gas mask.

“Gee…Thanks, Cap!”

“Yeah…Thanks, Cap!”

 The two men stared down at their borrowed gas masks for a few moments and then turned to face each other. “What a great idea!” the pair proclaimed, in unison.

“Of course it’s a great idea.  All of my ideas are great.” Hank directed his right index finger toward the crawl space’s tiny opening.  “That is why I am the Captain!”

The two men took their Captain’s hint and immediately began donning their respective protective breathing apparatus.

“Oh…and…Kelly, try not to get any a’ that goop on the gas mask there, will yah, pal?”

“Right, Cap!” Chet assuredly shot back, and swiped the snotty-looking substance from his mustache, with the sleeve of his turnout coat. He snugged his gas mask’s straps up and then eagerly disappeared back into the no longer ‘raunchy’ smelling crawl space.

“Where’s that puke puddle?” John suddenly inquired, his anxious question somewhat muffled by his mask. “C’mon, Chet, where is it?” Gage asked again, before reluctantly following his friend’s booted feet through the hole in the cement blocks.  “Che-et?”

“Ain’t payback a bitch?” came back Kelly’s equally muffled reply.  

Hank Stanley stood there for a few moments, smiling down at the now empty opening.   It was beginning to look like they were never gonna get outta there. The Captain gave his head a few quick shakes, and then went right back to work.

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