Always On The Job

Liza steadies her breath, forcing her legs to keep moving forward, despite every warning system within her body screaming at her to turn around. She intimately knows the feeling, the screaming kicking up every fire they respond to, but at least then she knows what they’re warning her against, but as she stands in the middle of the park, she can’t for the life of her figure out what could possibly be setting off the bells. She continues to her destination, the ring of trees just in the distance, the memorial that the city had dedicated to those lost in the fire a year ago. She walks around the outside, letting her hand glide over the trunks of the trees, steadily have grown over the past year, the lowest branch just gliding over the top of her head. She stops at the fifth tree, lowering herself to the ground and resting her back against the solid wood. 

“I can’t believe it’s been a year,” she mutters, wiping away a tear. She reaches into her pocket, withdrawing the paper she had safely secured in there before leaving her apartment. Unfolding the sheet, she presses her fingers into the seams, trying to smooth the lines breaking up the team’s photo, the one taken only a week before the accident. She glides her pointer finger over the faces, hesitating on Cecily, Liza’s eyes leaking at the brilliant blue of her eyes, clear even in the photo.

A cough pulls Liza out of her thoughts, folding the photo back up and tucking it into her pocket. She pushes herself up, falling back down. Her entire body shakes, staring at the man in front of her. Even if she hadn’t just been looking at the photo, she would’ve recognized him. Despite the year, he hadn’t aged, still rocking the outgrown buzz cut, a few centimeters shy of regulation. He tilts his head, in confusion at the reaction of the woman in front of him. Liza presses her hands against the grown, standing to full height and moving forward, right past him. Her feet keep moving until she reaches the concrete of the firehouse, her body instinctively searching out the only place that feels like home anymore.

Standing in the living room, the walls the same uniform shade of gray, the kitchen a mess from the interrupted breakfast this morning. She shakes her head, calming herself. She rationalizes that it’s been a year since the accident, emotions are high, she just imagined the guy in the park looked exactly like Thom.

“Liza,” a voice calls, his voice. She spins around, Thom standing in the doorway, dressed head to toe in his uniform, mask hanging loosely around his neck.

“No, no, no, not now,” she mutters, clutching at her head.

“You were thinking about me,” he says, stepping forward, instinctively reaching out to calm her, but she scrambles backwards, her the backs of her legs bumping into the couch.

“You don’t deserve what I did to you, did to the team,” he admits. She opens her mouth to speak up, a weird combination of a knee jerk reaction to ease him of his guilt and just shut him up, but he continues, his words rushing out quickly as if he can’t get them out quick enough. “I lied before when I said I didn’t know why I did it, I knew exactly why, I just-”

Liza shakes her head, scoffing and rolling her eyes. “So you’ve finally figured out why you ruined my life? Destroyed the team? What the afterlife not have ESPN?” 

“I’ve always known, even before I really pieced it together myself, I just couldn’t,” he says, running his right hand through his hair, one of his nervous habits, one that apparently even death can’t make him part with. “I ran into burning buildings for a living, and I was scared,” he laughs, “of my feelings for you, of us, of what we could’ve had, what could’ve, might’ve happened if I’d stuck around,” he admits. She leans forward, resting her elbows on the coarse fabric of the couch. She knew where he was going, words that he’d never spoken aloud when he’d been alive, but being dead suddenly giving him the courage. She reaches down, absentmindedly tracing an invisible pattern into the brown fabric. “You loved Cecily with your whole heart and still made room for me when I had no one,” he says, averting his gaze to the movement of her fingers. “And then something shifted and I would’ve done anything to keep it, I did do anything,”

She snaps her head up, fire already building in her mouth, vile words that she’d never use in most circumstances, suddenly working their way up. “What are you saying?” she asks, forcing the fire to stay just behind the barrier of her teeth.

“I’m the one who put Cecily up for the promotion,” he said. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with the urge to reach out and strike him across the face. She tried, but her hand passed through as if he was smoke. He hadn’t dared to laugh, knowing that if he’d been corporeal, that would’ve felt like a ton of bricks against his cheek. “I can’t-”

Liza shakes her head, moving around the table and out the room. Thom silently follows behind. “If you weren’t already dead, I’d kill you myself,” she practically growls, pulling open her sedan door with so much force she’s surprised the entire car doesn’t shake. Thom appears in the passenger seat, looking at her solemnly. She sits down, slamming the door shut behind her. “You killed all of them,”

“It was her call,” he says, cringing at his own words. The call to stay, to push forward into the building had been all Cecily’s, but she would’ve never been in the position if he hadn’t challenged her several hours earlier to prove that she was capable of making the hard decisions. He leans back, letting his head fall back against the headrest. “I fell in love with you the first moment you entered the house, everything after that was just building on it.”

“We never would’ve-” she starts, her anger shifting into confusion and sympathy. She knew that unrequited feelings were painful enough on their own, let alone if they were for someone that was never a possibility. 

Thom shakes his head, “I know, you think I don’t know that? I just couldn’t stand to see you two,” he says, his words dropping off. He could’ve been more specific, that he didn’t want to see them huddled in the corner laughing, subtle touches and glances, but it all boiled down to he didn’t even want to see them in the same room, so one night he got drunk and filled out the application in Cecily’s name, putting her up for the open lieutenant position at House 54, which she’d gotten, set to leave the day after the accident. “I’m sorry, more than I can express, I should’ve been the one to leave, and none of this would’ve happened, I tried to tell you that day, apologize, hell, I tried to tell you when I was still alive. Do you remember the party we had at the bar a few months into you coming to 67? I tried to-”

“And I asked if you knew if Cecily was seeing anyone,” she says, remembering how she’d cut him off as they’d talked over a drink, her eyes stuck on Cecily at the bar, laughing with the bartender. “If you’d told me all these years ago, maybe none of this would’ve happened, maybe I wouldn’t have hated you much. If I’d let you. I think part of me always knew, just brushed it off as being friends, but I saw the way you looked at me sometimes, I should've said something.”

“Chalk it up to human error?” he questions, a sincere smile on his lips.

“Whoever said you can’t make amends with the dead,” she chuckled, wishing she could reach out and hug him, at this point would settle for even a joking punch in the arm, just to prove her words, to him at least. She knew she’d never truly forgive him, but maybe if he could forgive himself, she’d never have to live through the pain again. She forces a smile, offering him a silent goodbye as he fades. Her head falls forward, resting against the steering wheel, muttering a curse to herself. She pushes backwards, laying on the horn to cover her scream.

 Inhaling deeply, she forces herself out of the car, going back into the house. The team has returned from the call, everyone unloading the gear and going through the motions. Sad glances are spared her way, the remaining members of the squad avoiding her out of not knowing what to say to the only person to have made it out the fire alive or how to react that the girl they got back isn’t the same one they’d known, the new members avoiding her out of confusion at the rumors and whispers, not realizing that as she is haunted by the ghosts of the job, she haunts them. She slinks to the barracks, collapsing on her cot, closing her eyes, hoping that Cecily’s burned face doesn’t haunt her tonight.