Broken

SCBA

Current day

"Come on, Webb! Drive! Drive! Drive!" Captain Ross yelled,urging the young fire firefighter on. Paxton had a three inch hose laced over his shoulder,running with 150 feet of it laying it out by each cuppling,time after time again.

Sweat rained from the clouds that were his pores,an angry rainstorm in the middle of a blazing desert. The sweat had throughly drenched his t-shirt beneath and was making the inside of his turnouts feel like the Amazon,humid and hot. Almost done. He confirmed having laid out the full length.

Dropping to a knee hand over hand,he pulled in the hose,arms aching from the constant shock loads and maneuvers they were required to bear. Finally he touched the last cuppling and dropped it to the concrete with a Klink.

"Good job,Webb,go ahead and roll that back up standard storage roll and put it back." He informed walking over and slapping a heavy hand on the heaving firefighter's back. He fought his lungs for air and sucked in deeply tearing off the helmet and mask,hair piked up like the logs in a camp fire.

Paxton Webb had turned out to be what someone would think as the "perfect" firefighter. He had large watery blue eyes,strong jawline and defined muscular features,smooth freckled skin,and tall probably about six foot four. Nothing recognizable from the nerdy kid he had once been.

Yet some things were still the same,Paxton was quick thinking and had knowledge beyond his years,had still horrible eyesight that he aided with contacts instead of thick lenses,and passion,his passion to be a firefighter.

Since that day a engine crew had saved him from the bullying he often endured,Paxton had been obsessed with firefighter's and anything fire. He collected as many books on engines as he could find as well as watched every movie with a firefighter in it he could rent,often riding his rusty bike to the station where they would let him try on the gear and sit inside the engine.

When he was about eleven,his brother was killed in a car accident and Paxton was taken in by none other than firefighter Willy,the one who had started his growing passion that post-school day. Willy's wife couldn't have any children though they wanted them so badly so taking Paxton in was more of a blessing then burden to them and Paxton finally got a parent figure in his life.

From there,Willy raised him like his son,teaching him physical strength was just important as mental. He took him to the gym every morning and to the station a few times a week using push-ups as punishment. By the time he was fifteen he could bench more than he weighed plus some.

Paxton's grades and knowledge only increased with age and he graduated early,getting accepted into the fire academy in Texas. From there he joined the army and served as an army firefighter for four years until settling back home, hired onto a department in his city.

Paxton was walking,breathing,living proof that you can achieve your dreams even when you started so low with so little. No one believed the skinny picked on little kid with baggy clothes and inch thick glasses could ever amount to anything bigger than the books he read,they were wrong.

Recovering for a few more minutes,he crawled down the the male end of the hose and started rolling,lifting the stack with his arms and walking to its place on the shelf,setting it next to the other rolls of hose,small rivers of sweat sliding between the muscles in his back.

Returning for his gear,he refilled and replaced his SCBA to its cosy home in the back of his seat on the engine and walked inside the air conditioned station with a sigh,parched throat begging for water like a fish in the desert.