Out of the Blue Read Free

see the question behind them. Why didn’t you save me?
    My blood froze, my knees buckled, and my heart stopped. In the dream I didn’t say a quick prayer for the victim like I had the night of the accident, instead I pulled Jake out of the car and cradled him in my lap while I rocked and cried to the night sky. I had just lost my best friend and soul mate.
    I woke covered in sweat, screaming Jake’s name. I struggled to breathe, and I smelled the gas fumes and death all around me. I was emotionally wrung out and the pain and loss followed me like an ominous dark cloud.
    Tired and irritable, I snapped at Jake when he came home from work, and when I saw the hurt and confusion on his face, I apologized quickly. “I’m sorry, babe, you didn’t deserve that. I’m just a little tired, I think.”
    Jake raised an eyebrow.
    “I’ve been a little strung-out these last couple of days. When I start day shift, my body will get back into the swing of things and I’ll be back to normal, you’ll see.” Jake’s expression said he didn’t believe me. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately, which was the biggest reason why I hated night shift. He was sleeping as I was working and vice versa. I’d be walking in the door as he was walking out. We would have brief conversations but our interaction was minimal at best and at the moment, I welcomed it. I didn’t know how to tell Jake what I had witnessed.
     
     
    I couldn’t find relief from the images in my head. I thought I just needed sleep. I thought if my body wasn’t so tired after a run of night shifts, I would feel better and the images in my head would, maybe not go away, but lessen some. It wasn’t unusual for images to stick around for a little while after a bad call, but they wouldn’t usually affect me for more than a couple of days.
    There were a lot of calls I never told Jake or my parents about, and some of the images still lived inside my head. I wanted to protect my family from the world of suffering and pain that firefighters see every day. Jake knew there had been an accident on the freeway and that some people lost their lives in the pileup. It was on the news so I couldn’t hide it from him, but I never went into specifics, like ages or injuries. Who wants to hear about how a kid died? Jake didn’t need to know what burning flesh smells like, and I wasn’t going to tell him. What I could hide were the graphic images that played in my head day in and day out.
    I was a SFFD Firefighter, for Christ’s sake. I’ve been called a hero, but in reality I was just a man doing his job. My job just happened to be saving people’s lives.
    So why did the image of this young boy, James Montague, make me breathless with fear? Yes, he looked like Jake, the one man I couldn’t live without, but he wasn’t Jake. Logically, I knew that. But when I closed my eyes, it wasn’t James Montague in the car with a piece of metal protruding from his neck.
    During our brief conversations, I struggled to get Jake to see reason. We didn’t need a car. Anyone who lives in San Francisco will tell you, you don’t need a car to get around. Buses, trolleys, and cabs can get you anywhere you need to go. Jake walked to work most days and took a trolley when it rained. I walked to the fire station, and some days I would run if I wanted an extra workout. There were a couple days where I would drive but only if I was running an errand on the way to or from work.
    Our car cost us money sitting on the street. Sure, we used it when we went shopping—it was handy to put the bags and boxes in the trunk—but stores delivered, right? Jake was stubborn, though, especially when it came to seeing his Aunt Cece in Napa.
    For the time-being the car stayed. I just wouldn’t let him drive it.
    We shared breakfast before Jake went to work and I went to bed and when I looked at him, a smile would play across his lips when our eyes met, but I would ruin it by turning away. I had trouble meeting