By Ross
He opened the door and peered inside. His flashlight’s powerful beam probed the haze-filled office. The firefighter’s eyes confirmed what the back of his ungloved hand had already told him: this room was not on fire…yet. Gage breathed a silent sigh of relief and quickly slipped inside. “Ro-oy?!” he called out through the clear plastic shield of his facemask.
“Over here, Johnny!” his partner shouted back, from somewhere across the pitch-black void.
The fireman’s light was flashed in the vicinity of his friend’s muffled voice. Gage exhaled a second sigh of relief, as his previously missing partner’s familiar form finally appeared.
DeSoto was standing in front of one of the building’s steel-shuttered windows, holding their HT in his raised right hand. “Cap’! Johnny just arrived!”
“Okay, Roy!” their Captain came back, relief evident in his voice. “Just give us five minutes! We’ll get a ladder into position and get you guys out a’ there! Hang on, pal!”
“Right, Cap’!” Roy signed off and slowly lowered their radio. “I sure hope I counted right!”
“Third floor?” John double-checked. “North side?”
His companion nodded.
“Six doors from the front—or, four doors from the back—of the building?” Gage inquired further.
His buddy’s helmeted head bobbed again.
John heaved his third sigh of relief in as many minutes. But his relief was to be short-lived.
Over the loud ‘swooshing and swishing’ of their regulated breathing, ‘snapping’, ‘crackling’, and ‘popping’ could clearly be heard, coming from out in the building’s burning hallway. The two trapped firemen turned in the ominous sounds’ direction and then swapped a couple of unseen, anxious glances.
The place was already going all ‘Rice Krispies’ on them!
The people the pair had been sent in to rescue were beyond help. Now, it seemed their rescuers soon would be, as well.
John ran his light over their obstructed escape route. "Man! We are so-o screwed!" he suddenly realized, and frantically began flashing his light’s beam about the room. "We gotta get outta here!"
“You heard the Cap’!” Roy told his panicking companion, sounding a whole lot calmer than he actually felt. “They’ll be coming through this window in less than five minutes!”
“I know! I know!” His partner pointed to the room’s only other exit. “But the fire’s gonna be through that door—and this floor—in less than three!”
DeSoto didn’t argue. He knew his frantic friend was right. The air was becoming hazier by the second and the room’s temperature was rising—rapidly! “Yeah. Well,” the paramedic motioned to the thick chain links and padlock that were preventing the window’s steel shutters from swinging open, “unless you got a pair a’ bolt-cutters in your back pocket, we’re not gonna be goin’ anywhere, anytime sooner than five minutes!” The frustrated fireman glanced down at his feet and gave a busted chair—which he’d just tried to use as a battering ram—a swift kick.
John smiled, as his probing light pierced the smoky haze, illuminating an air-conditioning vent in the ceiling tiles, directly over their heads. “That’s your problem, Roy,” his partner lightly pointed out. “You don’t think ‘outside’ the box!”
“Are you kidding? My brain is so parboiled, I can barely think ‘inside’ the box!” his companion confessed and glanced glumly up at the ceiling. “That opening looks a little small…”
The roar of the fire was growing louder and louder by the moment. The air temperature in the room was becoming downright unbearable.
The firemen could feel the intensifying heat through the soles of their feet.
“We won’t know for sure—until we try,” his partner calmly came back and crossed over to a nearby desk.
“Forget it!” DeSoto advised. “It’s bolted to the floor. They’re bolted to the wall,” he tacked on, as his friend turned toward the office’s filing cabinets.
An annoyingly loud ‘clanging’ sound suddenly filled the super-heated air, as the ‘low pressure’ alarms went off on both men’s SCBAs—almost simultaneously. The firemen disconnected the hoses from their air regulators and shoved them inside their bulky turnout coats. Their heavy, nearly drained air bottles were quickly discarded.
Roy pulled their handheld radio from his coat pocket and re-thumbed its call button. “HT 51 to Engine 51! Cap’, the fire’s closing in and we just ran out of air! We’re moving up to the fourth floor, via a ventilation shaft. Once we get up there, we’re gonna try to make it to the room right above this one!”
“Roger that, Roy!” Hank Stanley solemnly responded. “The stabilizers are down on 123’s and we’re just about to raise the ladder! Good luck, you guys!”
“Thanks, Cap’!” DeSoto replied and re-pocketed their radio. “We’re gonna need it,” he added, just beneath his labored breath. Even filtered by his coat, the super-heated air he was inhaling was irritating the hell out of his lungs. The paramedic pulled his flashlight out and flicked it on.
Gage stepped back across the now spongy feeling, slightly tacky, smoldering floor, to stand directly under the AC vent, again. One of them was going to have to make it without a leg up.
As predicted, the fire quickly burned its way through the office’s flimsy door. In fact, flames were now popping up everywhere.
John pocketed his light. Then he leaned forward and locked his gloved fingers together, forming a step for his partner.
“You’re younger,” DeSoto determined, and refused to lift a foot.
“You’re prettier,” his partner promptly shot back.
“You’re lighter,” Roy tried again, changing tactics.
“You’re shorter,” Johnny stubbornly replied—er, lied. He knew they were both 6’1”.
DeSoto shot his exasperating partner an unseen glare of extreme annoyance. He knew Gage would never give in. Fortunately, for the both of them, Roy knew when to. The paramedic placed his left foot in his infuriating friend’s locked hands, latched onto Johnny’s shoulders, and was hoisted up to the hole—the tiny hole.
The fireman’s probing fingers fumbled with the vent’s slatted cover for a few moments, and finally succeeded in lifting and slipping the obstruction out of the way. Roy tossed the grate aside and stuck his arms up through the narrow opening. With much effort—and a big boost from his stubborn buddy down below—DeSoto managed to haul himself up into the AC vent.
The paramedic was pleasantly surprised, as the ventilation shaft, itself, turned out to be a lot larger than the hole in the office’s tiled ceiling. Somehow, he even got himself turned around. The fireman set his light aside. Then he tugged his gloves off and lowered his arms back into the flame-engulfed office. He might not be able to give Gage a leg up, but he could sure as heck give him some hands down.
Sweat was now streaming from John’s forehead in thick, ticklish torrents. He blinked the stinging substance from his burning eyes and stared disbelievingly out—through his fogged up face shield—at his partner’s dangling arms. ‘How in the hell did you ever manage to turn around in such tight quarters?’ he silently wondered. The fireman stashed his gloves into his coat pockets and lifted his arms as high as he could. Their fingers brushed. But, even standing on the tips of his toes, his partner’s extended wrists remained just out of reach.
Roy braced his legs against the walls of the ventilation shaft and lowered his arms further into the room. “Jump!” he urged, as the back of his friend’s bunker coat began to smoke.
Gage hesitated. He realized that he was only going to have one chance to make it. Because, if he jumped—and missed his partner’s outstretched wrists—he was pretty certain that he would go sailing clear through the disintegrating floor, when he came back down again.
“C’mon, Johnny!” Roy encouraged, as flames began to lick at his friend’s feet. “Jump!”
Johnny shoved his helmet back and pulled his fogged up facemask down, so he could get a clearer view of his intended targets. Then he crouched down and made a tremendous leap—of unwavering faith. Even if he missed, his partner would catch him. Roy would always catch him!
The two firemen grasped each other’s wrists and then hung on—for dear life!
DeSoto grimaced and gasped, as Gage’s dead weight suddenly threatened to drag him back down into the burning room. The straining fireman no sooner stopped his death slide, when he felt his friend’s grip begin to slip. Roy’s racing heart skipped a beat or two…or three…or four…or more. His own grip on his partner’s wrists tightened. “Grab onto my left arm!” he directed, through teeth that were clenched as tightly as his fists.
His buddy obeyed, latching onto his left arm with both of his hands.
DeSoto drew his right arm back up to his body and then used it to shove himself further down the ventilation shaft.
In the slow, deliberate, exhausting process, his fitfully coughing partner was pulled up out of the flaming office and into the narrow shaft, as well.
“Thanks!” John breathlessly declared, between coughs.
Roy flashed his panting partner a broad grin. “Now I’m taller!” he teased.
Gage returned his grin and quickly replaced his facemask and helmet.
The metal ventilation shaft was becoming too hot to touch, and the air inside it was becoming too hot to breathe.
“I can see why you wanted to move,” DeSoto continued to tease. “It’s a lot cooler up he-ere!”
“Oh-oh quit complaining,” Gage groused, between coughs. “We’d both be a couple a’ charcoal briquettes by now, if we’d a stayed where we were, and you know it!” The panting paramedic paused to squint the salty streams of sweat from his blurry, burning eyes again. “Sheesh! It is a lot hotter up here, ain’t it!” He locked foggy gazes with his friend. “Whose dumb idea was this?”
The two trapped rescuers traded grins again.
DeSoto somehow got himself turned back around.
The panting pair redonned their protective gloves and began crawling off, in search of the nearest vertical ventilation shaft.
Just a few feet down a ways, the crawling searchers found one, and then used it to get to the fourth floor.
The two men started to retrace their route.
“This should be the right room,” Roy announced, when they’d reached the required distance from the vertical ventilation shaft. He pulled the grate from the ceiling opening and dropped it down through the open hole.
The duo got themselves turned around and then slipped down through the hole, as well.
Suffering from heat exhaustion, and a lack of oxygen, the still trapped rescuers were now too whoozy to stand.
Both men immediately dropped to their knees and then sprawled out onto the office’s carpeted floor—face first.
Gage lay there like that for awhile, coughing…and groaning. Then he slipped his helmet off and rolled over, onto his back.
“What’s wrong?” his concerned companion queried, and raised his slightly reeling head up off the floor.
“Nothin’,” John assured him. “I was just done on that side…is all.”
Roy rolled his watering eyes and allowed his dizzy, helmeted head to drop back down.
Gage grinned up through the haze, at the gaping hole they’d just dropped through. “What’s that ‘quaint’ expression…Kelly says his cousin’s boyfriend is always sayin’?” he inquired, between coughs. “Poke me with a fork, and call me cooked?”
DeSoto’s parched lips formed a slight smile. “Well, stick a fork in me and call me done!” he obligingly corrected.
John snickered, and then coughed—some more. “Yeah…that’s it! I love that!”
Roy mustered the where-with-all to raise himself up onto his elbows. He reached down and dug their radio out of his coat pocket. “HT 51 to Engine 51…”
“Engine 51!” their Captain quickly came back, relief once again evident in his voice. “Go ahead, Roy!”
“Cap’, we made it! We should be in the room directly above the one we were just in!”
“Great! We’re almost there! We’re gonna be using the Jet Ax to get through those shutters. So you two had better move away from the window…”
“Right, Cap!” Roy acknowledged.
But the pair just continued to lie there, like a couple a’ limp noodles.
John coughed and exhaled a weary sigh. “We should probably move, huh…”
“Probably,” his partner conceded, sounding equally weary.
Gage groaned and reluctantly began to roll off across the carpeted floor—away from the window.
DeSoto struggled up onto his hands and knees and managed to crawl a few feet from the danger zone, himself—before collapsing back down onto the carpeting.
Three explosions followed, in rapid succession. The first two were muffled and came from directly below them. Apparently, their air bottles had just blown. The third sounded from just outside their window, as the Jet Ax’s shaped charge was detonated, cutting a large rectangular opening in the sturdy, steel shutters.
The two rescue men looked up in time to see their rescuers climbing into the room.
51’s no longer trapped paramedics struggled to their unsteady feet. But the intense heat, and oxygen deprivation, had drained too much of their strength. The pair didn’t protest, as they found themselves being carried over to the platform of 123’s aerial ladder.
Once the duo was safely ‘out and down’, 36’s paramedics started them on 10 liters of oxygen, to flush the carbon monoxide out of their systems. Each man was also given a complete medical evaluation.
The rescued rescuers were presenting classic symptoms of heat exhaustion, and were treated accordingly. The two firemen had also suffered some first-degree burns and their lungs were somewhat congested.
Patient one, in particular, was showing signs of smoke inhalation.
51’s paramedics were ordered—by both their Captain and Dr. Brackett—to report to Rampart’s ER, for a further evaluation of their fitness to return to duty.
Not surprisingly, Gage pleaded with their boss, to be allowed to drive the Squad in. Johnny made it perfectly clear that he did not need—nor desire—to be taken to the hospital in the back of an ambulance!
Roy couldn’t help but smile.
His partner was, literally, thinking ‘outside’ the box.
*Click above to send Ross feedback
Five Minute Challenge Stories by Ross
