Wax

Eleven

A/N: Oh it's starting.

[Leroy]

Days off resemble that one breath you take above the surface of the water on a dive; you think its deep and long but once you're hit with the currents and the pressure of liquid in your ears, you realize—it's short. The feeling is foreign. For the past couple of years, I was the kind of person who didn't need to breathe. I was good underwater; it doused the flames entirely and there was no need to keep watch.

I liked fighting fires.

It made me realize how stupid some people were and how much worse they could be when someone important to them was caught in one. Like I said; stupid, regardless. Fire or no fire, blood or no blood, human beings were going to be stupid. They were going to run into open flames to save a neighbor they never knew. Climb a tree to retrieve a kite for their kid and break a leg on their way back down. Save a cat, bleed from its scratch.

Gotta admit—we get a good laugh out of it.

"You told her to hold that bloody-ass finger of hers under a running tap for how long?"

Jaeger was doing it again. Repeating stuff back to people just to see if they could spot their own stupidity. The manager was having trouble understanding his accent.

"Ya I already told her to wash her finger because she cut the knife."

The part-timer who'd dropped a chopper on the counter and nearly sliced her co-worker's finger off his hand stood over to the side, bawling her eyes out. It was hard enough to hear Zales over the whir of the vents they had out in the back of the shophouse.

"Alright honey, just close your eyes. Will hurt just a tiny—" She sprayed the antiseptic.

"AW FUCK—" I'd held him in place as soon as the spray bottle came within reach.

"Done, see?" Zales kept the pressure on his hand whilst ripping off the packaging of a new bandage roll. I kept the casualty still. He was close to blacking out from the pain either way. "Just a pinch."

"Fuck, you guys are monsters."

I nearly laughed. Jaeger had resorted to pulling out the EMS trusty handbook, flipped to the page on bleeding cuts, do's and don't's. With visual aids. Over to the side, a couple of service crew members peering over every now and then. Curious.

For a medium-sized kitchen, they were pretty understaffed. Hiring newcomers just out of high school with zero experience in the kitchen wasn't going to be much of a surprise. Kids were here to make some pocket money and the mandatory one-off safety course they had to attend was the kind that taught babies how to eat without making a mess. Just doesn't happen.

"Alright darling, you're good. Just keep it iced," Zales wrapped up under a minute, patting the casualty on his back and nodding towards the kitchen's back door. He remained seated on the back of the ambulance. "Oh. You... um... hospital?"

I could tell from the look on her face exactly what she was thinking. He didn't need it.

"Are you sure I don't need stitches?"

"Actually, for a cut like that, you would have stopped bleeding after a couple of minutes if you, uh, hadn't put it under running water for, like, the time we took to get here." Zales cleared her throat, raising her voice a little just in case the manager was nearby and within earshot.