It's a Wonderful Fireman: A Bachelor Firemen Novella (The Bachelor Firemen of San Gabriel) (3 page)

A last thought flashed through his mind—he was going to die inside a Christmas store. How absurd was that?

Worse, he was going to die without ever seeing Lizzie again.

Chapter Two

A
T THE
C
HILDREN’S
Wing of the San Gabriel Good Samaritan Hospital, Lizzie Breen helped six-year-old Miles Stark unfold the piece of construction paper he was turning into a snowflake. His eyes lit up as the intricate pattern was revealed.

“Nice one, dude!” She held up her hand to give him a high five, which he enthusiastically returned, even though his leukemia had sapped much of his strength. “I think that’s the best one yet. No two snowflakes are alike, you know.”

“If we put two pieces of paper together when we cut them, those snowflakes would be.”

She tilted her head, pondering that. “Your logic is impeccable. I stand corrected.”

He grinned, so his pale face didn’t look quite as drawn. “Can we put this one on the window?”

“Absolutely.” She picked up the purple snowflake and crossed to the wall of windows that let light into the recreation room of the Children’s Wing. Outside, the December sky looked washed-out and dismally overcast.
Thanks for reflecting my mood perfectly.
She taped one side of the snowflake to the window, then paused to peer more closely at the cityscape of office buildings that surrounded the hospital. Was that smoke behind the Hanover Insurance building?

Her stomach tightened as she thought of the San Gabriel crew battling a fire on the eve of Christmas Eve. Any fire made her nervous, but ever since she and Mulligan had . . . well, whatever they had . . . her fear had gotten even more personal.

“What’s that?” Dr. Stacy Fisher, a pediatric intern and her good friend, joined her at the window.

“Looks like a fire. I can call my mom. She always has the scanner on.”

“Is your brother on shift?”

“Yes.”

“That means . . .” Stacy trailed off since everyone knew Mulligan was a sensitive topic for Lizzie.

“Yes, Mulligan’s on shift too. No, he doesn’t want to come for Christmas. Or Christmas Eve. Oh, and he thinks I shouldn’t move to Canada because it’s a foreign country.”

Stacy shook her untidy mop of curls, which were the color of milk chocolate. Once Lizzie had offered to set her up with a haircut by Cherie, Vader’s wife, but the doctor refused, saying her unruly frizz made her young patients more comfortable. “If he said that, it’s because
he
doesn’t want you to move.”

“No,” Lizzie answered gloomily. “Mulligan pretty much says exactly what he means. If he didn’t want me to go, he’d tell me. He’s not the shy type.”

“But he is a man. And you know what that means.”

A thousand images fluttered through Lizzie’s brain. All of them involved a naked Mulligan, muscled, scarred, and aroused. Nothing in her life had ever turned her on like the sight of Mulligan’s unclothed body. “Yes, I know what that means,” she managed to squeak, heat pumping into her face.

“Girl, you have got it bad, don’t you? I’m not talking about
that
.”

“Well, say what you mean, then,” Lizzie said irritably. She ripped off a piece of Scotch tape as if it were a personal enemy, and stuck it on the snowflake.

“I mean he’s confused. Men don’t know what they feel until you hit them over the head with a club and tell them. Or unless a building drops on them.”

“Don’t say that.” Lizzie shivered superstitiously. “He’s a fireman.”

“Sorry,” Stacy murmured. “Why do you want a fireman, anyway? There are about twenty doctors here who would ask you out in a red-hot second. You don’t have to worry about doctors when they go to work.”

“Except for infectious diseases and mentally disturbed patients and—”

“Do you mind?”

Stacy looked so indignant that Lizzie laughed, putting an arm around her for a quick squeeze. “I had to get you back. Sorry. Anyway, it’s not like I chose to fall for Mulligan. Like I woke up and said, I want to find the toughest, most cynical and sarcastic fireman around, and if he likes putting himself in danger, bonus for me. I grew up with that. Why would I want that?”

“Got me. I’ll take a nice peaceful man, thank you very much. An accountant or a dentist.”

Lizzie ignored that since Stacy never dated anyway. She put up too many walls, and so far not even an accountant had slipped through. “Besides, I’m in the same boat myself. I want to be a flight paramedic. Whoever I end up with will have to get used to worrying about
me
.”

“That’s true.” Stacy took the tape and ripped off another piece for her. “Well, it seems to me there’s a way out of everything. If you fell in love with Mulligan, you can fall out of love with him too.”

Lizzie plucked the tape from her finger and finished taping up the snowflake. “Yeah, well, I’ve tried.” She turned away from the window and surveyed the kids, who were all happily coloring more snowflakes. “Turns out, it’s not so easy. What are you doing here, anyway? Is your shift over?”

“Yes.” Stacy still wore her white doctor’s coat over her slim brown pants and top. “But I thought the kids might need some extra cheering up.”

“You mean
you
need some extra cheering up.”

“Yeah, well, don’t you?”

They looked at each other and laughed. Maybe it was ironic that working with the kids in the Children’s Wing made them happy, when their purpose was to make the kids happy. But that’s the way it was.

Lizzie clapped her hands. “Okay, kids, who wants to make a paper chain? We can string it all across the room like a giant spider web.”

Several hands shot in the air. Eight-year-old Angelina yelled, “I can use scissors! My mama said so!”

“Okay then, we have someone on scissors. Who’s going to tape up the loops?” More kids waved their hands. Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. When she spent time in the Children’s Wing, she never let her phone interrupt her. These kids needed to feel important, and they needed fun. She remembered exactly how it felt to have everyone around you whispering and keeping secrets that involved you. During her time in the Children’s Wing, she’d hated the moments when her mother’s phone would ring and she’d hurry off to get test results or harangue the insurance company.

So she ignored the phone and began distributing tape dispensers and scissors to the kids who were old enough to use them.

Her phone buzzed again, and again. Stacy, who was helping Angelina cut a strip of construction paper, shot her an irritated look.

“Is that your boyfriend calling?” one of the new girls asked.

Lizzie smiled down at her. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Oh. That’s okay.”

“Yes, it is. It’s just fine. But I should probably find out who’s trying to get a hold of me. I’ll be right back.” She went into the corridor, where she wouldn’t disturb anyone. The calls were from her mother. Immediately her heart started pounding and her hands shook. Trent was in Afghanistan, Jake was in Pakistan, and Zee . . . well, no one was entirely sure.

Calm down
, she told herself. Her mother had probably just forgotten to get ingredients for the plum pudding or something. Clicking the Call Back button, she held her breath for what seemed like an eternity. Trent . . . Jake . . . Zee . . . plum pudding? Her mother never made plum pudding, and what was in it besides plums, anyway? Trent . . . Jake . . . Zee . . .

Finally her mother answered, her voice urgent but not hysterical. Lizzie’s fear receded. If any of her brothers were hurt, her mother would be freaking out. “Sweetie, there’s been an accident at the scene of a fire.”

“Oh my God. Fred.”

“No, no. Fred’s fine. It’s Mulligan.”

“Mulligan?” The phone slipped right out of her hands and bounced on the linoleum floor. She dropped to her knees and crawled after it. Her mother was still talking. She stayed there, crouched on the hospital floor, the phone smashed against her head so she didn’t drop it again.

“He was venting the roof when the façade gave way. He fell inside the building. Right now he’s trapped, but they think he’s still alive.”

“They think? What do you mean, they
think
? How do they know?”

“They don’t know. But they’re going on the assumption that he is until they learn otherwise.”

Bullshit.
Bullshit!
She wanted to scream at her mother. That didn’t mean anything. Until someone got him out of there and felt a pulse . . . no, until she saw
for herself
that he was alive, nothing meant anything.

“Where?” she managed.

“It’s that strip mall over on Sierra Vista. He’s inside Under the Mistletoe.”

Lizzie started laughing. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t. But she couldn’t stop laughing, even when her stomach clenched and her ribs ached and she got dizzy and nearly threw up. Mulligan, in a store full of Christmas decorations. It was terrible. Surreal. Not funny. Not funny at all. And yet she couldn’t seem to stop laughing. Then someone was pulling her to her feet.

“Lizzie. Lizzie. Snap out of it.” Stacy brandished a glass of water in a somewhat threatening way, as if she might toss it in Lizzie’s face.

She gulped in air, trying to make the spasms of laughter stop. “Mulligan,” she gasped. “Fire. Christmas.”

Stacy snatched her phone out of her boneless fingers and spoke a few words to Lizzie’s mother. Then she took her elbow and tugged her toward the stairwell. “No time to wait for the elevators.”

“What are you doing? I have to get to Mulligan.”

“I’m going to take you. You can’t drive in this condition. The smart thing would be to stay here because if they get him out, he’ll end up here anyway. But you want to go to the fire, right?” She pushed open the heavy door to the stairwell.

Lizzie nodded numbly. They clattered down the three flights of stairs. Of course she did. She needed action. She needed to find out if she could help. She needed to be close, the same way she needed oxygen right now. She dragged more air into her lungs, and it helped. By the time they reached the parking garage, she had herself under control.

“Did my mother say anything else?”

“She said to call Captain Brody on his cell if you want to know more. He’s monitoring the situation. Everyone else is busy with the fire.”

Lizzie knew what a kindness that was. Firefighters didn’t have time to update family members while they were battling a fully involved fire. She dialed Brody’s number while Stacy drove them across town. With a chill, she realized the smoke she’d seen earlier was almost certainly from the Under the Mistletoe fire.

“Hi, Lizzie.” Brody’s calm voice instantly made her feel better.

“Is he . . . what’s . . .” She couldn’t manage to finish a sentence.

“We’re not sure how he is, because we haven’t heard from him yet. He probably got knocked out in the fall.”

“What about . . . fire?”

“We’re getting the fire under control. He vented the roof before he fell through so he prevented a flashover. More smoke got released when the façade collapsed. One thinks she heard his PASS device sounding—she has the best ears. That means he hasn’t moved. He may be unconscious, or he may be trapped. We don’t know. Our main concern is getting him out now. The façade collapse blocked the entrance entirely. They’re working on another way in through the back.”

“How long . . . how long has he been in there?”

“Only about ten minutes, give or take. We’ll get him out, Lizzie.”

“Sure.” Of course they’d get him out. But Brody didn’t mention anything about getting him out
alive
. Captain Brody never made promises he couldn’t keep.

D
ARKNESS
. R
EDNESS
. T
HE
in and out of harsh breathing. His own? Pain. Pain of many different varieties. Burning. Stabbing. Aching.

He’d fallen. Memory returned like water seeping into a basement. He’d been on the roof, and then he’d fallen through, and now he was . . . here. His PASS device was sounding in a high-decibel shriek, and its strobe light flashed, giving him quick, garish glimpses of his surroundings.

Mulligan looked around cautiously. The collapse must have put out much of the fire, because he saw only a few remnants of flames flickering listlessly on the far end of the space. Every surface was blackened and charred except for one corner, in which he spotted blurry flashes of gold and red and green.

He squinted and blinked his stinging eyes, trying to get them to focus. Finally the glimpse of gold formed itself into a display of dangling ball-shaped ornaments. He gawked at them. What were those things made from? How had they managed to survive the fire? He sought out the red and squinted at it through his face mask. A Santa suit, that’s what it was, with great, blackened holes in the sleeves. It was propped on a rocking chair, which looked quite scorched. Mulligan wondered if a mannequin or something had been wearing the suit. If so, it was long gone. Next to the chair stood half of a plastic Christmas tree. One side had melted into black goo, while the other side looked pretty good.

Where am I?
He formed the words with his mouth, though no sound came out. And it came back to him. Under the Mistletoe. He’d been about to die inside a Christmas store. But he hadn’t. So far.

He tried to sit up, but something was pinning him down. Taking careful inventory, he realized that he lay on his left side, his tank pressing uncomfortably against his back, his left arm immobilized beneath him. What was on top of him? He craned his neck, feeling his face mask press against his chest. A tree. A freaking Christmas tree. Fully decorated and only slightly charred. It was enormous, at least ten feet high, its trunk a good foot in diameter. At its tip, an angel in a gold pleated skirt dangled precariously, as if she wanted to leap to the floor but couldn’t summon the nerve. Steel brackets hung from the tree’s trunk; it must have been mounted somewhere, maybe on a balcony or something. A few twisted ironwork bars confirmed that theory.

How the hell had a Christmas tree survived the inferno in here? It was wood! Granted, it was still a live tree, and its trunk and needles held plenty of sap. And fires were always unpredictable. The one thing you could be sure of was that they’d surprise you. Maybe the balcony had been protected somehow.