Page 59 of Igniting Her

It did nothing.

Ellie’s words had entered Cassie’s body and refused every boundary she put around them. I’m falling in love with you. They waited beneath the ordinary work of the station: apparatus checks, staffing notes, a grocery argument between Mo and Teak. Cassie could call her Ridge, keep six feet between them, and speak only when command required it. None of those measures altered the memory of Ellie asleep against her or the tears Cassie had wiped from her face.

Ellie did not ask for an answer. That made the absence of one more visible.

Late in the afternoon, Station 12 returned from a small fire aboard a fishing boat in the harbor. The deck blaze had been contained before it reached the fuel tanks, but diesel smoke had worked into their collars and left a dark streak along Ellie’s jaw. They had barely set the thermal camera on charge when the medical tones sounded.

“Engine 12, Rescue 12. Cardiac arrest. Seventy-nine-year-old female, not conscious, not breathing. Caller performing CPR. Two-eighteen Mariner Lane.”

The crew moved.

Mo took Engine 12 with Cassie, Ellie, and Jamie. Teak drove Rescue 12 behind them with Priya in the passenger seat. Mariner Lane ran uphill through a row of small postwar houses, each one close enough to the next that neighbors already stood on their porches when the apparatus arrived.

The front door was open. A woman’s voice counted from somewhere inside, too fast and breaking around every number.

Cassie entered behind Ellie with the monitor bag in one hand. The living room was narrow, crowded with framed photographs and furniture accumulated over a long life. An elderly woman lay on the rug beside the coffee table. Her wife knelt over her with both hands in the center of her chest, arms shaking as she tried to follow the dispatcher’s rhythm from a phone on the floor.

“Fire department,” Ellie said. She dropped to her knees beside them. “You did exactly right. I’m taking over.”

The wife lifted her hands only when Ellie’s were in position. Cassie caught her beneath one arm and moved her back far enough to give the crew room. Ellie began compressions. The monitor’s metronome joined the room, steady and indifferent. Jamie exposed the patient’s chest and placed the pads. Teak opened the airway bag. Priya took the patient’s head and gave the first two ventilations through the mask.

“Pause for rhythm,” Priya said.

Ellie lifted her hands. The monitor showed a nearly flat line, one small wandering artifact from movement.

“Asystole. Resume.”

Ellie went back to compressions. Teak took the mask while Priya established intraosseous access and Jamie controlled the monitor. Mo moved the coffee table against the wall, cleared the path to the front door, then took the wife’s abandoned phone from the rug and ended the dispatch call.

Cassie stood where she could see the whole room. “How long was she down?”

The wife stared at Ellie’s hands moving over her spouse’s chest. “She was pouring tea. She said she felt strange, and then the cup broke.” Her own hands opened and closed against her thighs. “I called right away. I did what they said. Please don’t let her go.”

“We’re working on her,” Cassie said. It was the only promise the room allowed.

The first dose of epinephrine went in. Two minutes passed by compressor strokes, ventilations, and the monitor’s count. Ellie’s shoulders stayed directly above her hands, arms locked, recoil complete between each push. At the rhythm check, the line remained unchanged. Teak placed a supraglottic airway during the pause, and Priya connected the capnography before compressions resumed.

“Switch,” Priya ordered.

Jamie replaced Ellie without losing more than a heartbeat. Ellie moved to the patient’s head, checked the mask seal, and took over ventilations from Teak. The wife stood against the wall beneath forty years of photographs: two women younger in each frame as the row moved backward, arms around each other at beaches, graduations, a courthouse, a garden exploding with red tomatoes.

She reached toward her spouse and stopped because every part of the body seemed occupied by someone else.

“Can I touch her?” she asked.

Cassie looked at the narrow space beside the patient’s left foot. “You can sit here. Stay clear of the equipment.”

Mo brought a dining chair close and steadied it while the wife sat. She put one hand around her spouse’s bare ankle. Her thumb moved over the skin in a small, repetitive stroke.

“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Please. Not yet.”

The words entered the rhythm of the code. Compressions. Breath. Medication. Rhythm. Don’t go.

Priya listened for the report, checked pupils, confirmed the airway, and asked about medical history. The wife answered without taking her hand from the ankle. Heart failure. Diabetes. A hospitalization in the spring. No advance directive in the house. She kept a list of medications inside the kitchen cabinet, taped to the door. Mo found it beneath a postcard and handed it across.

Another rhythm check. Asystole.

“Resume.”