I had always known that I would become a firefighter eventually. Ever since I was a little kid, I just knew that it was my calling. I wasn’t sure when or how I would get there, but I was willing to place money on the fact that I would get there one way or another. Even in my little kid heart, I just knew. Something about the idea… it just felt right for some reason. And now, I was living the dream.


Fire 12 responding.

Ten-four.

Pulling into the station, I was the first one there. That happened a lot, but it meant that I got to pull the truck I liked, and would already be pulling out the door to grab some more guys by the time the rest arrived. Sliding my feet into my bunker gear, I reached towards the ground and pulled it smoothly up and hooked myself into the gear. Yanking on my jacket, I grabbed my helmet and headed for the truck as the door was flung open and the other guys hurried in.


It was a structure fire, one of the biggest that I had ever worked before. Grabbing the hose, a few of the guys started unrolling and I headed towards the doorway, which had yet to be consumed. We had pulled all the trucks and requested two ambulances for standby as we worked, just to be safe since it was such a big fire.

Spraying myself a path, I looked around and started calling. Witnesses had stated that there could be three or four people still in the house, so that was the reason I was going in. we would’ve tried to contain it from the outside if there hadn’t been that chance.

Listening to the roar of the flames and the pounding of the water on the outside of the house, I stopped for a second and took a deep breath, and then shouted to see if I could hear anybody calling for help back. Hearing what I thought was a voice, I left one of the other guys in charge of the hose and headed into a room to the right.

Looking through everything I could find, I found nothing and called again. Maybe the next room over? Tearing through the house, I searched the downstairs as quickly as possible. I was in the last room, the living room, with no signs of life.

Something went wrong. I heard the house creak, and then felt the shift of the walls, and heard the captain scream over our radios to get out. Dropping the blankets I had grabbed to look through a closet, I turned and heard a shattering crack.


I had been playing my guitar for eight years now, and it was starting to pay off in cheap bar gigs around the country. It was awesome to watch my songs and music grow in popularity with the few fans that we had begun to stockpile in the last year or so. I loved the adrenaline from the shows, and was always looking for more gigs. Nothing could stop me; the stage loved me.

After the show we would go to Benny’s house and hang out, drinking and maybe doing another few rolls of weed. I knew I would get trashed. I had already been drinking before the show, and anything after would just add to the adrenaline for a little while and then suddenly crash around my ears, making me feel so wasted that I wouldn’t even be able to move from the living room into my room, six feet away.

I would wake up without remembering what had happened, and have a few shots while I cooked some food, waiting for the other guys to wake up. The best cure for a hangover is to not stop drinking, which I had learned well in the past few months.

In two weeks I would be eighteen. It would be great.


Opening my eyes, I looked around myself blurrily. Everything hurt so bad that I shut my eyes again to try to ward off the nausea. My helmet laid about a foot away from my head, and I looked around for my oxygen mask. My throat was on fire, and I couldn’t breathe.

Seeing the mask, I forced my arm to move and grabbed the mask, putting it on my face. The fire was out, I knew that, because I couldn’t see it or feel its heat. I couldn’t hear anything, but due to not being able to get up I wasn’t willing to trust my hearing right now. I looked again at the radio, praying silently that they would come get me.

A beam was laying over my legs, pinning me to the ground, but other than that I could see some of the sky through a few cracks, and everything had made a sort of cave over my head.

Hearing the crackling of a radio, I listened closer and heard static. At least I could hear. Closing my eyes, I held the mask to my face and tried to breathe, letting my head fall heavily back to the ground.


Waking up the next morning, I looked in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and glassy, as always. I hadn’t remembered anything from the night before. I didn’t even remember getting on stage and playing or singing. My voice was scratchy, and I looked like hell.

I was killing myself.

Slowly and surely, I was killing myself.

With all the weed and the booze, I was going to put myself six feet under.

Dropping my eyes, I examined my black jeans and leather vest that I wore quite frequently for gigs. They looked like I had gone on stage, rumpled and worn.

At the same time, I had also slept in them.

I didn’t even remember pulling them on, honestly. This was a regular occurrence lately. I would wake up and start drinking right away, and then I wouldn’t remember past about noon or so. Then, I would wake it up and not do it quite to that extent for a day or two and then do it again.

Sighing, I looked at the calendar. No gig tonight. Looking at the bottle of whiskey I usually started my mornings with, I turned back to my room. Pulling on a clean t-shirt and jeans, tennis shoes and a jacket, I headed outside, dropping sunglasses over my eyes when I stepped out of the door.


Coming to for a few seconds, I heard shouts and calls above my head, and heard moving boards. What was going on?

My tank was running low, but I could at least breathe a little bit easier. Not worried too much, I took another deep, full breath and closed my eyes again.


I hadn’t known where I was going, but somehow I ended up standing in front of the house I had moved out of when I was seventeen. I hadn’t spoken to my mom since that night. She had been screaming and crying as I walked out the door, my bags in my hand. I hadn’t even looked back. She had told me to never come back if I continued to walk, and I had flipped her off over my shoulder.

She hadn’t protected me from my father, so I didn’t really give a s*** if I never saw her again. She had let him beat the living s*** out of me for years, until he left when I was fifteen. We hadn’t seen him since. He had beat me so badly that sometimes my friends would ask what happened, and I would just laugh and say that I had gotten into a fistfight with my brother.

I had been so angry with everything back then. And now I found myself back at the front door.

Taking a deep breath, I walked up the sidewalk and knocked on the door.

Nobody answered right away. And then, from somewhere deep in the house, I heard a voice call that they were coming.

The door swung open and my mom appeared. She looked good. Her red hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her green eyes sparkled in the sunlight. She paused, comprehending who I was, and then she pulled me to her, wrapping her arms around me tightly. She didn’t even say anything.

After a few minutes, we parted, and she ushered me into the house.

“Come on in. I’m almost finished with breakfast. You look like you haven’t eaten in a while.”

I shook my head in the negative. She sat me down at the kitchen table and then went to the stove, turning off the pan and grabbing another plate from the same cupboard they had been in a year ago. I watched as she dished up two plates full of food, then grabbed another cup of coffee and served it up.

“Here you go, sweetie. Eat up.”

She sat down next to me, in her usual spot, and started eating. I did as she told me to, and started munching. This was better than anything I had eaten in quite a while. It was mostly greasy bar food, and then runny eggs and toast in the mornings and whatever I could scavenge in the afternoons.

After finishing, I got up and cleared the table for her; I hadn’t done that since I was seven. She smiled, gratefully, and then I rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. Sitting back down, I took another drink of my coffee. I could already feel the need for alcohol coming back.

I glanced over at this woman who hadn’t asked a single question of me since I had gotten here, and who had fed me breakfast even though I had flipped her off and yelled at her the last time I had seen her.

“I’m sorry, mom.”

She smiled and patted my hand.

“That’s ok, baby. I’m just glad you’re home. I’ve read the newspaper articles about your band. It sounds like it’s really going good.”

I nodded, ashamed of how my life had headed down the toilet in the past few months.

“Are you still enjoying it?”

“For the most part. It’s a good setup we’ve got, and we’ve gotten the kinks wired out of it for the most part. It’s getting harder, though, more stressful.”

She caught something in my tone of voice, and looked at me, raising her eyebrows.

“Is there something that you want to tell me?”

I shook my head, closing my eyes. She waited out my silence. Without opening my eyes, I spoke.

“I need to change, mom. For the past four days I haven’t even remembered if we’ve made the gigs.”

Silent still; she was good.

“I’m an alcoholic, mom.”

She was quiet for a minute, and then spoke.

“Ok. What do you think you need to do to fix this?”

“I’m going to quit the band. Maybe move out of town for a little while.”

Tentatively, she spoke.

“Why don’t you move back home?”

I thought about it for a minute, and then spoke quietly.

“I didn’t think that you would want me.”

“Of course I do, baby. Come home.”


Sometimes things happen, sometimes they aren’t exactly what we wanted for the reason we wanted. I wasn’t sure why I had gotten the crap knocked out of me by that house, but I had. And I had survived, thankfully. Waking up in the hospital wasn’t exactly a great way to wake up, but whatever. And all the memories of those few days of my life when I was eighteen, it just made me miss my mom more.

I had made leaps and bounds throughout the last few years, but nothing could heal the pain of losing my mom three years ago.

And life went on.