Report From Engine Co. 82 - Dennis Smith [79]
I am sitting at the housewatch area talking to Billy-o who is on duty there.
“Listen Billy,” I say, “Benny and Carolyn are coming up to my place next Saturday, why don’t you and Cathy and the kids come up for the day. It will be a nice day. Kelsey and Knipps are planning to stop by.”
“Geez, I’d really like to, Dennis,” Billy-o says, “but I just made an agreement with myself that I’m not going to do anything on my days off until after the Lieutenant’s test. I’ve gotta give this thing a good shot this time, and the only way to do it is to discipline myself.”
“God, the Lieutenant’s test is nine months away,” I say.
“I know, but that’s nine full months of studying ahead of me, and I’m determined to make it.”
Many men in the firehouse feel as Billy-o does. They take a big chunk out of their lives, and dedicate it to one hundred multiple-choice questions. Carroll and Knipps are also studying hard, but they have been studying constantly for the past two or three years. They can find time to take their families out for the day.
To be a Fire Lieutenant a man must read and be responsible for about the same amount of knowledge required in a four-year college course, but a firefighter can blow it all, all that time, all those books, all that energy, in a four-hour examination. It’s a bad system, but justified by the city’s Board of Examiners because it precludes any kind of political patronage or favoritism.
Billy-o is smart enough to recognize the precariousness of the system, and he knows that he is giving up more than he should, but he also knows what he is forced to do if he wants to become an officer in the Fire Department. And he needs the two thousand dollars difference in salary.
Suddenly there are wailing screams coming from the street, and Billy-o and I jump from our chairs. As I step into the street I am met by a young girl. She runs into my arms, crying uncontrollably. Her feet are bare, and all she is wearing is cotton panties and a bra. The straps of her bra hang from her shoulders so that one of her breasts is free and exposed. She is covered with blood, and the red liquid runs over her deep brown skin from gashes across the side of her neck.
Her body goes limp in my arms. She is about seventeen or eighteen years old, and slightly built. I pick her up, and carry her back to the kitchen at the rear of the apparatus floor. There, I sit her on a plastic-covered kitchen chair as Billy-o gets the first-aid kit from a side compartment of Ladder 3i’s truck. The girl is conscious, but her face shows great fear, and her eyes are closed in pain.
Carroll, Knipps, and Royce are in the kitchen, and I ask Benny to call for an ambulance and the police. As Billy-o returns with the first-aid kit, the bells start ringing. Box 2412. He runs from the kitchen yelling, “Eighty-five and Seven-twelve goes.” Royce opens the first-aid kit, and hands me a bunch of gauze pads.
It is not only her neck that has been cut, but the top and the back of her shoulder also. I wipe the shoulder clean as gently as possible, but she winces whenever I approach one of her wounds. I stroke in short, quick movements over her small stained breast, and up over her chest and shoulder. The wounds are large, but they are not deep, and I see tiny bits of glass reflecting from them.
Knipps has gone upstairs for a clean sheet, and he returns with it. The girl is still whimpering, and tears are falling from her full, brown eyes, but she has settled down some, confident that she is being helped. “You’ll be okay now, there’s nothing to worry about,” I keep telling her. Knipps covers her with the sheet, and she holds the end of it over her naked bosom.
“Thank you,” she says, almost in control of herself.
An old woman enters the kitchen, crying, “My baby, my baby.” It is the girl’s grandmother, and upon seeing her the girl collapses again into a fit of tears. The old woman puts her hands around the girl’s shoulder, and the girl screams in torment.
We can hear a voice