Page 11 of Igniting Her

He glanced at the cover. “You’ve read that three times.”

“It got worse.”

Mo followed the direction she was carefully pretending not to look in and had the decency to say nothing, which only made it more humiliating.

The station went dark at eleven.

Ellie lay beneath the thin blanket with one arm outside it, every muscle making a separate complaint. Teak slept across the aisle with her bandaged hand on the pillow. Somewhere near the windows, Jamie snored once, stopped, and started again with greater authority.

Below the bunk room, a chair rolled across the captain’s office. Ellie opened her eyes. Footsteps crossed the floor, paused, returned. Objects shifted. A desk drawer opened and closed. The sounds traveled strangely through the old station, faint but distinct beneath the soft tick of cooling pipes. Cassie was still working. Ellie imagined the office without permission: the lamp on, reports arranged in two exact stacks, Cassie bent over the desk, her hair loosening from its twist. She imagined those careful hands resting on the pages. Then she was angry because the image arrived too easily, and angrier because she couldn’t make it leave.

She turned onto her side.

The office chair moved again.

One floor, one ceiling, and far too little distance separated them. Cassie had basically called her reckless, corrected her ladder carry, and defeated her in front of the crew. Ellie had spent the day wanting to prove the woman wrong. Now she lay awake listening for every movement below. Ellie rolled over and glared at the wall as if it had arranged this. It was going to be a very long night.

4

CASSIE

The tones dropped at 3:18 on Thursday afternoon.

“Cliff rescue, Coast Road, mile marker seventeen. Adult hiker over the edge. Caller reports the patient is visible and moving.” Cassie was out of the day room before dispatch repeated the location. At the lockers, the crew stepped into their turnouts in a practiced blur of pants, suspenders, coats, helmets, and radio straps. Mo took the wheel while Cassie climbed into the officer’s seat. Priya, Teak, Jamie, and Ridge strapped into the rear cab.

The bay door lifted. Engine 12 cleared it in seventy-two seconds. The quint climbed north with the siren pressing traffic against the guardrail. Cassie requested the county technical-rescue unit, a second medic, and law enforcement for traffic control. In the rear cab, Teak pulled the rope-cache inventory up on the tablet while Priya questioned dispatch. Jamie checked harnesses. Ridge sat opposite her, already fastening her gloves.

The Coast Road had been cut into a bluff that had never agreed to hold it. Cassie knew the shoulders that disappeared after winter rain, the sandstone that shed rock in summer, and the places tourists stopped because the ocean was beautiful and they forgot gravity was still operating.

Ridge’s name had been on the ladder-record board for less than a week. Cassie had erased Teak’s time from the whiteboard herself and written Ridge’s in its place. Thirty-six point seven. She waited until the gym was empty. She disliked remembering that now.

“Patient is approximately forty feet down,” Priya said. “Adult male, possible leg injury. Caller reports the ledge is crumbling.”

“Access from below?”

“Negative. Incoming tide and no beach access for two miles.”

Cassie looked through the windshield. The Pacific appeared and vanished beyond the bends, bright enough to hurt. Wind drove low fog against the cliff and tore it apart. Two cars had stopped at the turnout. A man in hiking clothes waved from the guardrail while a woman stood beside him with one hand over her mouth. Mo angled Engine 12 across the northbound lane to protect the scene. Cassie requested a full road closure and approached the edge on the inland side of the rail.

The bluff dropped nearly eighty feet to a strip of dark water and broken stone. Halfway down, a shelf interrupted the face at an angle. A man lay there on his right side, one leg caught beneath him. Each time he tried to move, loose earth spilled past his boots toward the sea.

“Evan!” the woman called from behind Cassie.

He lifted one arm. Alive. Conscious. Too far down to hear instructions over the wind.

Cassie keyed her radio. “Engine 12 on scene. Coast Road bluff rescue, one adult male approximately forty feet below grade on an unstable ledge, conscious and moving. Engine 12 establishing Coast Seventeen Command. Continue the technical-rescue unit and second medic. Shut down Coast Road in both directions.” She lowered the radio and assigned the operation in the same level voice. “Teak on the lower. Priya, medical. Jamie, edge. Ridge, rigging with Mo.”

Ridge’s eyes lifted to hers. “Copy.” No humor. No argument. It should not have felt like a concession. Cassie backed from the edge. The road offered little working room: asphalt, a shallow drainage ditch, then the rising wall of the inland cut. The guardrail posts nearest the fall stood in fractured soil and couldn’t be trusted as anchors. Engine 12’s frame would carry the load. The aerial’s rated rescue eye could provide a clean high point above the edge and keep both lines off the sandstone.

“Fixed high directional,” Cassie said. “Twin-tension system off the engine. Keep the aerial inside its rescue load. Edge protection at the rail and a separate attachment for Jamie.”

The crew moved.

Mo set the outriggers and chocked the wheels. Jamie and Ridge pulled two life-safety lines from the cache. Their hands worked across the asphalt in quick opposition: one feeding rope, the other building the anchor plate and checking gates. Teak shrugged out of her coat, stepped into a Class III harness, and tightened it over her turnout pants. Priya packed a pelvic binder, splinting supplies, oxygen, and a patient harness into two compact bags.

The county rescue unit was twelve minutes out.

Evan’s ledge lost another shallow sheet of dirt.