Run Sheet
00/02/06
Conversations with the enemy.
A hundred years ago or so, I became a Firefighter.
I was twenty years old, rough, mean, angry, and driven. I joined the Fire Department to escape the pattern I had set for myself because I could see it leading to a grave or a prison. I was driven to pay back the society I had abused by giving it my sweat, blood, and time. I went looking for a fight and found the perfect one, it was black and white, no grey area at all. Fire was evil and I would fight it, so I must be good, simple as that, pure and crystal clear.
I wanted to fight the good fight, I wanted to save lives and fight fires, I wanted to battle the dragon like a knight of old. I set forth to hate fire and death and to know them for my nemesis.
I loathed them, I did everything in my power to hold them in the deepest, darkest corner of my heart. Fire was out there destroying the lives of my neighbours and death was lurking in corners pouncing on our loved ones, ripping them from us and I, by god, was going to put a stop to that.
In the first ten years of my carreer I loved the big fires. I fought like a demon and rampaged through houses searching it out, snuffing it mercilessly, I'd pursue it relentlessly into the walls and ceilings, tearing out the sheetrock with my trusty Halligan or axe. I was the Rhino, as my buddies called me. Nothing could stop me, I was the master of forcible entry, the leader of the attack team and the king of the blitz line.
Fire was an enemy, but death was no less despised, I worked my mind and hands as well to learn and excel at first aid and rescue. The first dead human I saw was an old man in a grocery store, he had had a heart attack while standing in the checkout line. I performed CPR compressions while the rest of the crew went about their work, we never brought him back. He was dead when we got there and dead when we left.
I worked myself tirelessly, obsessively, and constantly to become a human weapon against those forces.
Many years, hundreds of fires and hundreds of deaths have passed since those days. I have crawled low into pitch black and furnace-hot houses, I have wondered in split seconds if these were my last moments of life, and other times been clamly certain that they were. I have looked into countless dead, grey faces and pulled dozens of bleeding, whimpering people from their wrecked cars. I've made mistakes that nearly killed me and my crew, I have been nearly killed by other's mistakes. I have watched idiocy and misfortune ruin people's lives. I have lost some and I have won some.
Somewhere in all of that I lost my hatred of fire and death. Somewhere in all of that smoky and bloody mess the day came when I knelt in a living room that was flashing over, I felt the sweat in my gear turn to steam and blister my shoulders yet again. I knelt there getting my hose into action. I greeted the fire and suddenly realized that rather than enemies, we were now comfortable acquaintances, we'd never be friends but we weren't enemies anymore. It had tried to kill me and I had learned its tricks. It would keep trying to kill me and my neighbours and I'd keep fighting it. When it kills me there would be more to take my place.
Somewhere in a twisted car, upside down in a ditch where the stink of vomit, blood and spilled beer was thick, where a young woman whimpered and screamed with her dead boyfriend I discovered that I could never hope to be the avenging angel I had tried to be for so long. All I could hope to do was to do my bit to save this one life, right now. Death was here again, just like I was and would be the next time and the time after. Once again I greeted it, not welcoming it but no longer loathing it. Knowing that it would still be here when I was long gone. I had learned something.
What I had learned was respect.
I had learned that there would always be fire and death and people like me would always be there to fight them, each of us would win battles, but the war would never end.
I'm still fighting fires, and trying to save lives. I don't do it with hatred anymore. Today along with fighting the fires I train the new crews, I try to introduce them to their enemy, to help them learn to respect it like I had to. Every year I look into the eyes of young, driven, youth who fiercly believe in the clarity of purpose they have in their job, who revel in the awesome vision of good and evil that they can see right before them. They think there is something wrong with me because I don't see it quite that way anymore.
These are the youth that I was, driven, obsessed warriors who refuse to believe that one day they too will come to recognize and accept the constancy of fire and death.
Youth who believe that their enemy is to be destroyed, not conversed with.