Honey and Glass

~11~

        Hottest day of the year. Yippy. Every year LA would reach insane temperatures and every time things would go horribly wrong. Last year was a youth soccer team with about 80% of their players passing out from heat stroke, year before that, not even a week into my working with the 118, a pressure burst with the water tanks that flooded a whole neighborhood.

We pulled up onto a call and we all ran to get out of the truck. Buck lead the way over toward a ledge and the rest of us followed. A tour bus had gone off the road and crashed through the roof of a house. We'd gotten down to the car and managed to get the ladder truck down with us. I'd gotten one of the saws and me and Buck went at the bus doors. The two us of pulled off the door once it was loose enough and we helped pull passengers out of the car.

We'd treated injury after injury until the scene had been cleared out and all the injured were being sent to the nearest hospital. The next call had been at a pool party. A manhole cover had flown into a pool along with a man's leg. Hen, Chim, and I got to treating any wounded and passing out cold waters while Buck fished through the pool for the leg with a pool skimmer.

"I got it!" He announced grabbing the leg.

We'd gotten back to the station and it was the longest we'd gone all shift without a call. Bobby had been in the best mood I'd ever seen him in for the past few weeks and Hen had put her money on a secret relationship Bobby hadn't told us about.

"You are cheery," Hen observed after watching Bobby compliment everyone he passed on his way over to us.

"Why shouldn't I be?" Bobby asked as I made my way over to them.

"I don't know, maybe because you've been like this for weeks and it's starting to get on my nerves. What's going on with you?" Hen asked before Buck came over to us with a grin on his face.

"I got another DXA scan, and guess who dropped another half percent," He said holding up his phone.

"What?" Hen asked.

"A DXA scan measures your body fat. You can see your percentage in every part of your body," Buck explained.

"Oh yeah? They measure the fat in your head?" Chim asked coming up behind us.

"Ah, see, that would be funny but we're about a week away from submissions being due for the Hot Days, Smoldering Nights: Men of the LAFD wall calendar and I'm already at my goal weight, so it seems like my head is clearly working perfectly," Buck said with way too much enthusiasm.

"That's where you're wrong, Buckley, it's funny regardless," I told him patting his back.

"And do you really need to use that whole title?" Hen asked. "You could just say "that idiotic, reductive, sexist calendar that insults the dignity of this organization and furthers the myth that all firefighters are male."

"Amen to that sister," I said as the two of us high-fived. Buck leaned closer to Hen.

"Yeah, that's not any less words."

"Hen, come on, it's for charity," Bobby told her.

"No. Bobby, you too?" Hen asked as the two of us exchanged a look.

"They say a man is at his sexiest when he reaches 50."

"It's a woman. He met a woman," I said putting my hands up.

"Is that what they say? That's what they say?" Hen asked before Chimney intervened.

"Okay, you're both wrong. All right> You see, I think sorority houses all across this great nation are ready for a new Asian sex symbol. It's our time," Chimney said, popping a biscuit into his mouth.