Chapter Text
Leaving is not an easy choice to make. Most of the time, when someone chooses to leave, they have good reasons, and it happens when others expect it the less. No grand gesture; nothing loud or dramatic. Just a quietly pulling away after something small but always significant. Lots of people who see others leave would think “oh so it’s all it takes for this one to back out and let everything behind?” or something like “first thing not going your way and you quit… you stop fighting at the first complication and leave everyone who counts without even turning back”, “you leaving just means you don’t care enough to stay”. Lots of them even have the audacity to say (or think at least) those sentences; thinking that resilience and tolerance are something you can teach your kids and that they have to have those characteristics.
Excepted that… those qualities cannot be taught, even to the most willing ones. Those are learned throughout experience, difficulties, and failures. They are somethings one wins, not acquires in great speeches or lectures. And one could not even fathom what it takes to walk away; what courage and bravery one needs to say stop and choose not to fight anymore, for their own peace of mind.
So, most of the time, when someone leave everything, they have behind them, they have reached their limits. They most probably have experienced the little things one sees and look over once a thousand times before and just swallowed it back, kept their mouth shut. They probably have endured those things one calls nothing, and worse more time than someone else could live down before they even started thinking about leaving.
So, no Paige did not regret buying a unique plane ticket from Minnesota to California. She did not regret packing all the stuff from her childhood bedroom she could put in three suitcases, while on a call with her friend KK, finalizing the plans of her arrival and saying she had accepted the job offer she got a month ago too. She gladly accepted when her friend told her she could come and live with her for the time she needed to settle in Los Angeles. And she only cried once when she said goodbye to her little brother Drew, just before announcing to her dad she was leaving, both the exact same day she had planned on leaving.
She barely texted her mom to inform her that she was flying out to the other side of the country and was not planning of returning any time soon; she just thought that the woman would talk to her ex-husband if she needed more information, exactly like she always did when she wanted to know things about her oldest daughter’s life; never asking directly, always sneaking and digging around to discover things Paige would have told her herself if she asked, and then accusing her of not sharing anything with her.
And like that she left.
Took a uber to the airport.
Checked-in her three suitcases.
Called KK twice: once to plan her arrival, and the second just to laugh with her and Ice about everything and nothing and to have her two best friends to tell her how excited they were to have their group reunited.
Then she passed security.
And there she was sitting at her gate, waiting the thirty minutes before the boarding time, a Subway sandwich in one hand and a coffee in the other, looking around while she ate, and playing a game of what is everyone travelling for.
She had put her phone and iPad down for a little while, putting the worries and all the messages from everyone away for some time. She just wanted to relax before the plane took off and isolating her mind was a great way to do so.
She found her first target: a man in his mid-forties, wearing a class navy-blue suit with a white well-ironed shirt underneath. He had a small briefcase on the seat next to him and was writing franticly on his phone. He didn’t seem to be bother by the noise or anyone around him and Paige found it nearly funny.
Businessman! Works in a big company from LA or close around and is coming back from family time in Minnesota for spring break. He probably couldn’t touch his phone much in the last few days because his mother chided him for not being present during family time and had now three hundred e-mails to respond to.
She smiled finding this made-up backstory pretty accurate to the impression this man gave off.
Next one.
She scanned the place, looking slowly at all those people she would very likely never see again and wouldn’t even know their name.
Found her.
This time her attention was on a woman, blonde and her skin so pale one could nearly see through it, early to mid-thirties, dressed in some sort of floral long skirt and a plain white t-shirt. She was bend over a small kid – around two or three years old – who was fussing and crying. On the seat right next to the little kid was an older girl maybe around eight years old, side-eying the youngest one like he had personally offended her at each scream he made and then focusing back on the screen in front of her. A couple of second later a man came up to them, seated next to the girl, gave her a small snack, and looked distractedly at the screen. He then looked at his on phone and didn’t even address a word to the woman who was still struggling to calm down the toddler.
Family trip to Cali with asshole of a husband who can’t even bother to help his wife with the kids he co-created. Probably one of the rare trips she went to since she had the second kid, seeing the lacking tan and she won’t relax a minute with a jerk like that.
Wishing you great vacation stranger! And… maybe an early divorce too with someone like that.
She snorted bitterly to herself and tried to focus on someone else.
She looked around a couple of more time; found an elderly couple who must have been together since World War two, a guy who looked like a bad surfer from those cliché teen movies and a group of teenagers who looked too young and too excited to be travelling alone. Probably their first trip without their family she thought.
After another round, she looked at the time on the screen above the gate – twenty minutes left to wait before she could escape this state.
But then her eyes came back down, and her gaze landed on a new person. She didn’t search for anyone else to be the next target of her little game. This girl or rather this woman got all her attention the second she came in her line of sight.
Ok this girl has to be a model or something.
She looked like an absolute goddess.
She was leaning against a charging station for phones down the row of seats Paige was on, head down, focus on the plug-in phone in her hand; approximately twenty feet away from her. A tall, dark-curly hair, heavenly-built black woman that looked exactly her age but exuded the confidence of someone ten years older.
She was absolutely gorgeous, in a way Paige heart could not bear, and it didn’t even seem like she was trying to.
She was wearing soft-looking gray baggy sweatpants and a fitted white tank top that let her shoulders and arms completely bare. And those arms, lord those arms… Not only her arms and shoulders, just her everything. In Paige’s opinion, one could search fit, muscular, athletic, and strong as hell in a dictionary and they would land on a picture of this woman’s body. And although her body looked incredible (don’t even get Paige started on the magnificent ass of this stranger) what stood out to her was her face.
She had the most insane face card one could have imagine (truth be told one could not even have imagined it seeing how perfect it was in her opinion), and this while Paige couldn’t even see her eyes due to the sunglasses she was wearing.
Her jaw was sharp, but not in a cutting way, more like… in a perfectly honed and utterly devastatingly rightfully shaped. All of a sudden Paige’s incapacity to see seemed far away and completely futile.
Her lips and nose were wrecking by their own delicateness. The formers were this faint pink shade and seemed as smooth and warm as velvet under the mix of neon natural light of the airport waiting area, as the latter was so perfect with its round tip it made her side profile the most lethal one Paige had ever seen. And the blonde didn’t even try to pretend she wasn’t looking because she was wholly and definitely enraptured by this woman presence and the way the mid-day sunlight that came from the full-length window behind her glowed on her side profile, contouring her, and making her appear as an angel inadvertently fallen from Heaven.
Oh my gosh Paige thought.
She was having her biggest ever gay panic in a damn airport.
At the same time Paige thought her heart could not be wrecked any further, the woman lifted her glasses from her eyes, seemingly to have a better look at something on her phone and two perfectly shaped dark brown pearls came into view. Five seconds later she was smiling at her phone and dimples appeared on her lower face.
Paige was fucked. That was the gayest details she could have noticed, and she absolutely had and was gone for it.
The stranger lifted her nose from her phone and looked up and around her, and that was Paige cue to wake up from the trance she had been in. She ripped her gaze from the woman and scrambled to search something she didn’t need in her bag.
After a couple of seconds of fake searching for an item in her backpack she tentatively looked up again, more discreetly this time.
She was still in the same place as before, but this time the stranger wasn’t looking at her phone. Exactly like Paige had before, she was observing the gate and the people crowding it.
The blonde fearing the eye contact hastily took her phone out of her pocket and tried to distract herself from looking up again.
Feeling her heartbeat not pacing down, she fidgeted with her cap and put it back in its place a few times before she decided she needed to talk about the life-changing experience she just had with someone (or sometwo in her case) who could relate or at least would hear her out. So she opened up her group chat with KK and Ice and typed a couple of texts in quick successions.
Paige: omg guys!
Paige: I just saw THE MOST GORGEOUS WOMAN EVER
Paige: hands down
Paige: I’m dying actually…
The typing bubbles from both of her friends came nearly immediately. And while she waited for their texts to be send she casted another look in the woman direction. She got a better look of her back, given that she was now facing away from her, and observed her bag she had slung over one of her (very muscular) shoulder. It was a simple dark blue backpack, but what caught her eyes was the dozen stickers and pins on it. Lots of them from different sort of place or for different causes. However, Paige noticed one thing: eighty percent of them were from somewhere or something you could find in LA or Cali (those golden state colorways were hard to miss).
So, a California girl it is. She told herself. Yeah, she definitely is a model from LA. Probably gone to a shooting, cause, why would a woman like her go in place like Minneapolis?
Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she brought her gaze back down.
KK: Man you’re not even in the plane yet and you’re already falling in love with some girl. Don’t you wanna wait and find one in LA?
The next message was just a lot of laughing-crying emoji faces. Paige huffed before she started typing back.
Paige: I don’t think you understand… That’s like a goddess I’ve never seen a woman looking that pretty even less in a fucking airport-travelling outfit. She looks like a model has to be one
Paige: but not in the artificial kind of way… if that make sense.
Paige: Anw she just looks divine I can’t…
Ice: Omg I’m dying… dw P we have a lot of girls in LA too
Paige: Bro she is a Cali girl. She’s in the same plane as me and everything on her just screams “I live in LA”
Paige: I think I won’t survive LA if all the girls look like this…
Paige took a deep breath and thought of every choice she made in her life to arrive to this point of patheticness. Gushing over a random girl in an airport not even two hours after she cried her eyes out while finishing packing. Lame.
KK: Bro send a picture
For a second she considered it, lifting her phone and taking a picture swiftly of this woman. But the fear made her come back to reason and the fact that it was 2pm a Saturday at the end of spring break and that the airport was packed. Anyone could see her do this and she would become one of those creep that took pictures of random people in the street to do some dubious things with it after.
Nope… Paige was definitely not a creep.
Paige: girl I’m not taking a picture of this girl that’s too weird even for me
Paige: Just imagine a tall curly hair black girl, caramel color skin, insanely fit and with the face of an angel
She hesitated and then added.
Paige: and dimples…
In the meantime, the gate had opened, and people were starting to board group by group, so the blonde got up to her feet too. She stood at the momentarily end of the line and gazed in front of her to see the unknown woman. She was closer than before; this time they were only separated by a few people and Paige looked at her more closely. She was even more pretty. Breathtakingly so.
The vibrations from her phone hadn’t stopped since the last text she sent.
Ice: I think we lost her…
Ice: to deadly dimples
KK: yeah R.I.P. Paige you will be missed
Paige: Guys I’m just praying she’s not to close from me on the plane cause that could actually kill me
Paige: but on the other side I’m kind of bummed, cause that’s probably the last time I see a woman that georgius
Paige: I can’t decide which one is worst
She got her passport out and her plane ticket as she reached the security staff checking the passengers in and only glanced back down at her phone once she was waiting to enter the plane.
KK: Don’t worry girly pop based on the description you gave us you won’t have problems finding another georgius woman… That’s like eighty percent of the Cali girls
Ice: omg idk which is funnier Paige having a type or Paige’s type being an LA girl next door
After that last text Paige just put her phone out. Yeah she was definitely not responding to KK and her lame joke on Paige spelling problems and even less so to Ice moldy ass teasing.
---
She didn’t see the woman again; not in the plane – even though she kept glancing around in hope to apperceive a messy high bun of curly dark very good-looking hair; not when she passed security ten minutes prior to this moment; and not even when she was waiting for her suitcases to come up on the conveyor belt.
So, the least to say was that she was not in a very good mood. Even though she probably wouldn’t have done anything if she saw that woman again, she would have loved to have such beauty grace her eyes on more time.
When she finally got out of the airport, she easily found the families area and her eyes landed quickly on the two girls she had been dying to see for months (even though she pretended she didn’t miss them that much). KK and Ice had jokingly printed a paper with her entire name – Paige Maddison Bueckers – in large letters that they forgot about as soon as they saw her too. She speed-walked to them as best as she could with her suitcases trailing behind her and when she was close enough, she got completely tackled down by her two best friends.
“P booger!!!” KK squealed in her ear. “Oh my gosh girl we missed you so much.”
“Yeah, seeing you every six months was definitely not enough” Ice added.
“Yeah, I missed you too I guess” Paige giggled feigning disinterest but still embracing them tighter.
The three girls made their way to KK’s car, the latter catching the blonde up on all the things that happened while she was still in her home state with a lot of exaltation. They talked about the friends Paige knew from the city for a bit before she began to tell them about how everyone at her last station came to her or sent her a goodbye message when they learnt she was transferring a couple of days ago. Which Paige had not expected to be honest. She had like a lot of her coworkers – lots of great firefighters that had dedicate their life to save others, but in her previous fire department most of them were nearly twice her age and it created a big gap that had stopped her a lot of time from really getting close to anyone. However, it looked like she was still appreciated by everyone. And it had warmed her heart a bit to see it before she left.
Besides, this age gap and lack of friendship were some of the reasons for her to choose to transfer to LA department. Working with people she tolerated and wasn’t close to would have been fine for her if those same people weren’t the same ones who had her life between their hand and weren’t the people she spent the biggest part of her time with. Excepted that they were, and she couldn’t keep it like that. Not anymore after nearly three years in the fire department.
So, LA seemed like the right choice.
The solution to lots of her problems.
She knew a lot of the people there thanks to KK and Ice and had become friends with nearly all the girls who worked with them through visits and parties she went to. She even kept contact with a couple of them like Nika, Jana and Aaliyah who were the closest to her two best friends and with who she bonded over their past in basketball. Because of course those two first friends’ group had to be mostly composed of ex-D1-basketball players like them.
So yes, Paige had been surprised with her former coworkers’ reactions; she had been touched deeply. But now she was ready to start anew; to start better, in a place clean of everything and with the best people she had in her life.
KK who hadn’t stop talking while she was driving, then told her how everyone was so excited to have her here, in a friend way, but as a coworker too. Paige was a well-trained firefighter and had several degrees in sciences too which made her a perfect fit in this team. She knew that their station had been looking for a paramedic like her since one of theirs retired. And for the engineering part: well, every station loves to have highly cable engineers coming in. So, it ended up being two birds in one stone for them.
All of this was quite enough reason for everyone she knew there to vouch for her when Chief Auriemma had started looking and asking around about new potential recruits.
And Paige was aware that was one of the main reasons he chose her and not anyone else after. The highly ranked firefighters loves when their team gets along well.
Surprisingly, the first person to mention this new post offer to her was Ice. Ice who was the quieter one in their little trio, but who knew everyone of Paige struggles back at home. She was Paige confidant just like KK was, but in a quieter and more listening way.
She called her first thing in the morning when her shift ended that day and explain to her how it would be an opportunity for them to reunite, but also for her to just leave the family cocoon for good after months of her looking around for a new place.
Even though she was already twenty-five and had been employed for nearly three years now, Paige had still been living at her dad’s to this day and she had been looking at apartments and even collocations for months now; from the moment she realized she was making enough money to leave and have her own place to be exact.
So, when Ice told her she had heard that her chief was looking at new recruits with some experiences, she had convinced Paige to ask for a transfer and send her candidature for the job. She had ramble on how incredible it would be to be together again and how she would love the weather in California. And well, Paige’s had been so miserable for the last years that she accepted. She sent it and filled all the papers she had to without thinking much about it.
And three weeks ago, she got her answer: approved.
She had taken a couple of days before saying anything to Ice and KK. Thought about it as a real option and not a hypothetical life she wasn’t even sure she could have. She had weighted the pros and cons, looked at places in LA and what her life there could really resemble.
It was like a dream at the time. The freest life she could have.
However, before she made her decision for good, she had needed to have a discussion with her parents.
Not about leaving for the other side of the country (that she had already made her mind up in reality).
No, she needed to tell them about who she was. Be transparent to them about the only thing that she really wished (delusionally) her parents would accept without even thinking about it.
She came out to them.
Told them about the two girls she dated that they thought were just really good friends. Explain to them how it had taken her some time to accept it and not to see it as a problem in her faith. How she was comfortable being who she really was now and how she needed them to know even though they probably couldn’t and wouldn’t understand.
It had been the last straw. If by some miracle they had reacted well or not badly at least, it would probably have made her reconsider leaving; it would have given her a glimmer of hope, she was sure of it.
But as she had feared it hadn’t gone well. Her mother had talk about God and the bible and how the new generation was twisting everything written in it. She rambled about a lot of things Paige hadn’t even listen to. And her dad? He kept his mouth shut, regard blank, expressionless. He probably didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to upset his ex-wife… as usual.
And Paige wasn’t even mad at him for not standing up for her. In reality the only thing she cared about was if he was ok with her liking girls or not. And he had not said or shown anything that helped her understand him.
And just like that her already made-up mind chose the only possibility she still saw and the next day she called KK and Ice and told them she was coming.
In a week, she accepted the job, arranged with KK to live with her for the first few months, until she found a place of her own, bought a plane ticket, packed everything she had, said goodbye to everything she knew and left.
And there she was.
At peace for the first time in a long time and rightfully so.
She leaned her head on the window of the passenger’s side and stared at the Californian sunset. Her first one and she still planned on seeing a lot of them.
---
The first three weeks literally breezed through. She settled at KK’s place: her best friend had only one bedroom in her apartment (one of the cons of a young firefighter salary even in LA), but she still cleared an entire part of her closet for Paige’s belongings, and her convertible couch was actually really nice. It was a big L-shaped couched and the part that opened in a bed was actually firm enough not to destroy Paige lumbar.
A win was a win at this point.
The blonde acclimated quickly to the new city. Thanks to all her friend there. She went to the station to finalize the details of her upcoming job two days after she arrived and began working there not even a full week after. Everything went smoothly, and she could not be happier.
It was just awesome.
She was on the team A, with everyone she knew: KK, Ice, Jana, and Nika were her teammates, and as she had learned not even ten minutes after she met up with KK and Ice, that Aaliyah had been named lieutenant not long ago and was in charge of the team on the field.
On her first day she met the guys of the team who she had not been familiar with: Alex was Aaliyah second in command. He was a really nice guy, mostly quiet, not in a shy way, but in a calm and appeasing way. And if Aaliyah wasn’t such a strong presence of authority in the room, this guy’s poise would have made him first lieutenant for sure.
Then came Jaylen, Jacob, and James: the three musketeers as everyone called them. They were all very fun to hang out with, it never felt as an obligation to be in their presence during training or lunch and dinner times. They were full of life and brought so much energy to the team in a way that change Paige sight of what shift life was supposed to be.
In two and a half weeks of her coming to the station she never got bored or overwhelmed by anything or anyone. And given how many times it would happen in her last place; how many crash-outs she had to swallow back bitterly at times; well, it looked like a damn miracle, a salvatory team.
Even Geno (who she had stopped calling Chief Auriemma three days after her debut) was nice to her.
He led his teams firmly but anyone staying a day with them could see how much love he had for anyone and how his station worked as a unit, one big family. This plus the fact that everyone had noticed he had a sweet spot for Paige hard-working-smart ass. He was constantly humoring her and playfully mocking her during the day, and she would give him back everything as good as she got and better. The whole station loved the show.
During her working time there, Paige spent the majority of it with Jana. She was the other paramedic of team A, so Paige and she went to a lot of minor interventions together. The most current type of call they had, were elderlies who had fallen, or some sort of minimal health problems and it never required to go to the hospital to this point, which the blonde had been grateful for. Plus, she was already used to those. They happened everywhere.
And well spending a lot of time with Jana was very entertaining, the girl was very funny and Paige and her had already been good friends before the blonde even came in. So, Paige would certainly not complain about it.
However, and surprisingly, the person she grew really closer with outside of KK and Ice was Nika. The Croatian girl was the main engineer of their team and had connected with Paige since her arrival on the subject.
The brunette had a bachelor in physics and another one in chemistry, while Paige’s bachelor was in biochemistry. Where Nika could see and analyze a risky environment, Paige took notice of the chemicals or gas and how they should move around them to prevent anything going sideways. They would probably become one of the most efficient working duos once they went on the field.
At the time the two of them hadn’t had the occasion to work on an intervention of any importance yet but their complementarity was already noticed by everyone. They talked a lot about old famous cases in the fire department, judging and criticizing how the firefighters on those interventions fucked up or did really good (the former more often than the latter), and everyone around was often lost on everything given how their brain understood each other so easily.
They were so comical to be around that Geno came up with a nickname for them – the twins or evil twins (depending on the situation) – in a week or so.
All in all, everything was going well thanks to her very good social skills and the great people she had around her. And Paige just loved her new friends, her new life.
---
It was mid-May now, and as usual on a shift day, she woke up at six thirty with her alarm, groggy but ready to start her day. She folded the comforter she used and stored it on the side table with the other blanket KK kept in between the TV and the couch in the angle of the room. She didn’t bother putting the couch back in its usual format – she had stopped when KK told her for the sixth time not to trouble herself with it and that she would tell her if they had people over and needed it sorted.
The sun was now rising slowly, casting its pink, orange glow on the back of the couch through the window of the kitchen. Warming up the atmosphere of the space.
The living room/kitchen was one “big” area: the TV was posted against the far wall of the room on a white TV stand next to a window – who wasn’t really of any use because she always was on the shadowy side of the building. Circling it was what KK loved to call her chill zone, which was her L-shaped couch – the “foot” of the L was the part against the wall, a love-seat angle sideways toward the screen, and a bean bag. All of those were disposed in a circular arc that constricted the television and created this kind of intimacy and security that was reassuring. Paige really liked it; it could have made her feel like she had her own room.
She got up and crossed the room. On the other side of the room and to the back of the couch was the famous window she loved to watch the sunrise through. Most of her mornings, the blonde would prepare coffee for her and her best friend, open the large window, and sip her first mug of the day, leaning on the windowsill, while she waited for KK to finally get up – and stop snoozing her alarm.
For real, who puts on their alarm fifteen minutes before they needed to get up just to snooze it three times before finally getting up. Paige found it ridiculous.
She padded across the floor and started her routine: opening the window, then the fridge, took the milk out and everything else she needed for her breakfast, got to the base of the U-shaped kitchen laid her cereal box on the kitchen island which was separating the space from the living room and finally turned on the coffee machine.
Then her ritual: the windowsill, silence except for the waking city noise beneath her, and the gentle breeze cooling the room.
It felt grounding. The calm before the storm that would be her day.
KK walked into the room, ten minutes later (right on time), sleepy headed but not for long. They chatted a bit, plan a couple of things for their off-day tomorrow – ninety percent of the time firefighters’ shifts lasted twenty-four hours and they would have the next forty-eight for themselves.
The smaller girl was on a visit craze those days. She wanted to show Paige all the good places in LA; in the last week they had gone out more time than the blonde could count, most of them with the others, and twice just the three of them with Ice. She didn’t complain though.
When they visited the city, she also showed Paige the purely capitalistic and worst places for which she had absolutely no interest in. She pointed them out and said: “if you don’t want to look like a damn tourist don’t go there, ok?” And Paige listened, they’d joke about the people there, and Paige would feel like she had been in this city for years. It was both really refreshing and usual at the same time.
They ended their breakfast on KK telling her, they should go to this new bar the girls at the station loved with Sarah – one of KK’s oldest friends from here who worked at the nearest hospital and who Paige had already met before.
From there, the pace sped up. They got ready methodically, KK dressing and doing her hair in her room and Paige in the bathroom, then switching. And just like that they were leaving twenty minutes later to pick up Ice at her own place.
The three of them arrived at the station fifteen minutes after. Just short of 7:50am and right on time for their 8am shift.
“Hey guys!” the blonde greeted her team as she and KK entered the common space first, already in their LAFD shirt and navy-blue pants, black reinforced boots the cherry on the top of their work attire. They were greeted back, and the room buzzed gently with the slow motions of a starting shift.
“Pleeaaase tell me you left some coffee for us” pleaded Ice as she came in last. She woke up late, therefore hadn’t eaten yet, and had complained about it in the car the all the way to the station.
“I’ve got some right here if you want girl” responded Aaliyah, holding out a mug she was clearly making for herself in the first place but probably took pity on her friend, and relented to give her and get another mug out for her own use.
“Oh my gosh you’re a gift from heaven Lili thanks” nearly moaned the other girl when she took it. She grabbed a couple more things from one of the fridges and took place next to Alex at the table.
The day went on as usual. They had briefing first at 8:15 with Geno and then training in the back court for an hour. Grampa made them do circuits for most of it and Paige loved it. Not the cardio part of course but the different skills it required, balance, power, and of course the main one being strong as fuck. It was also in those circuit that the mechanism of teamwork would smooth the most. Through grind and repetition, they would oil the gear, and it would permit them to be the most effective on interventions.
When Geno had closed their session an hour and a half later, most of them simply went about their business. Paige, her, went to the station gym with Aaliyah, both of them wanting to add some brief weightlifts to their day.
“You know, I wouldn’t have peg you as a gym rat” joked the older one as Paige was finishing her third set of dumbbell rowing.
“Should I be offended?” asked the second one with a smirk as she dropped the weight and sat down on the bench.
“No girl, like you look strong as hell, like you’re buff” rectified Aaliyah while laughing. “Just wouldn’t have expected you to spend most off your shift lifting, because you look more like the efficient kind of strong. The type that comes with team training and on calls”.
Paige smiled at that.
“Oh, I totally used to be like that when I was playing basketball in college. I would avoid the weight room like the pest. Only ever training with a ball in my hand. I looked like a stick back then”.
The lieutenant giggled.
“Yeah, I can see that.”
It was then her turn to do her set and she let the place become silent for a couple of second.
“What made you change though?”
Paige mused on the question. She didn’t really know herself what changed it, during her last year of college. A little bit of everything maybe.
“I don’t know really, it just happened, I started going because my coaches forced me after an injury. At one point that was the only thing I could do, and then I began to like some part of it, the grind, feeling stronger, everything felt easier, and it was great to see my own progress. And what’s funny is that I only started going everyday once I realized I didn’t want to play professionally…”
Aaliyah looked at her quizzically. She was going to ask something else when a voice cut through the calm of the room.
“Don’t let her fool you Lili, she just wanted muscles to impress the ladies” teased KK as she came in with Nika. “that’s why she tried the army too, right P?”.
KK was mocking her gently now in good camaraderie, and the three others were just laughing.
“Bro, stop, it wasn’t like that. I tried it because I wanted to help people and didn’t know what to do.” protested Paige in good spirit.
KK joked again on the fact that the army was still a good way to impress or attract women, but that it had apparently failed the blonde given that the last girlfriend she had was back in college, and the two others snorted, while Paige only responded with an obvious eyes-roll.
“Yeah whatever… says the girl who spend a whole semester wearing a parfum she didn’t like because her uni crush told her she it smelled nice ONCE.” Paige retorqued putting emphasis on the “once”.
“Girl boo, you said you wouldn’t tell anyone.” Pouted KK embarrassed by that college anecdote.
The room dissolved in laughter and as she looked at her best friend, Paige knew she was racking her brain for more ammunition. KK had that reminiscing face on, and this always meant she was on for a good time.
To the blonde surprise, Nika intervened first.
“Yeah, no I don’t think you can talk P with your little airport crush.”
KK beamed at that, shocked by what seemed to be a very interesting intel, and Aaliyah looked at the two of them confused.
“Oh my gosh you told Nik’ too?!”
“Wait what?” said the second one.
Page’s face turned red, flaming hot red. She thought what she was saying to Nika while they were only the two of them would never be brought up again. To be honest she had been convinced the Croatian wasn’t really listening to her yapping and thus had not expected her to remember that.
She would have to specify to Ice and Jana not to talk about it (if it was still of any use after what was to come).
“This girl right here, who self-proclaims as ‘very nonchalant’” said her friend air-quoted, “is the definition of a simp. She saw a girl once in the airport three weeks ago for maybe ten minutes and has been talking about her ever since.”
KK dissolved into a full belly laughter now, a hand on her stomach as she couldn’t believe her hears.
“Oh, that’s so good, I thought I was the only one getting my ears busted by her nonstop talking, but ‘guess not.”
“Ok that’s enough can we not?” Paige tried to cut it there, heat beginning to creep up her neck.
“No, no, no, I want to know what’s up now, you guys can’t just stop here” interjected Aaliyah, her attention clearly picked.
And that’s all it took for KK to launch herself in the story, starting on the messages she and Ice got, and narrating how ever since Paige brought that girl up nearly every day: while they were eating at home or outside, when they were chilling in front of a reality show and a typic Cali girl came on the screen, and Paige would scoff and say “that girl from the airport was like ten times prettier, a hundred times even”, or jut anytime something made her remember this “light-skin goddess”. She recounted the events and mimicked Paige a few times which made Aaliyah and Nika burst in laughter. The latter added her own version with small complements – that once again Paige had supposed she would not have recalled.
To Paige’s dismay, they kept on going until Lili was completely up to date with the story and all the details, and even worse now the three of them knew exactly how much she talked about that woman.
It was so embarrassing.
“Ok so let me get it straight” finally said Aaliyah. “You saw this girl back at the airport in Minnesota, you found her pretty, ogled her for ten maybe fifteen minutes, like a creep, and just like that you’ve been obsessed with her ever since even though you never saw her again, don’t know her name or if she even lives in Cali? Did I get everything?”
KK and Nika agreed.
Paige corrected.
“No, I know she must live around here, maybe even in the city. She had pins on her backpack.”
“Oh right… my bad sorry” apologized the oldest girl even though she was smiling. “Well… That’s cute Paige.”
Paige deflated. She passed a hand on her face – probably still tinted red – and her hair, fixing her ponytail that didn’t need to be fixed.
“Bro that’s not… It’s embarrassing, lame even” she admitted in a groan.
“It’s ok booger, everybody has their own shameful moments” reassured KK.
And it was a shameful moment, story, or anything really. Because who the hell got stuck on a woman they saw once in an airport for not even half an hour and didn’t talk to her at all. Well Paige apparently and this was the paragon of lameness really.
“You could try to find her insta and dm her” suggested Nika.
Paige looked at her eyebrows high on her forehead.
“And how am I supposed to without any name, location, or just any type of information on her? There’s like trillion of profile in there.”
Nika pursed her lips in thought, before she answered.
“Well, we all know a lot of people around here and you said she look our age, maybe by any chance she’s a friend of a friend, or a friend of a friend of a friend. You know what they say you’re seven handshakes away at most from anyone in the world so finding someone in California or the US should not be this hard…”
“So, you want me to look at hundreds of your friends or acquaintances’ insta friends in hope that I would find this woman?! There are like– like 40 million people in this state. That doesn’t even make sense.”
The other girl shrugged but did not let her idea get diminished by Paige defeatist mentality.
“Maybe it doesn’t but I’m not the one who’s obsessed with this girl and I’m trying to help you out here.”
That had the effect of shutting Paige up. She thought about what Nika said, really thought about it and well sure it was like looking for a needle in a haystack without even knowing if it was in there. Because she could have been wrong on her being a model, she could as well be one of those people with no socials at all, and an inexistant digital footprint on the internet side of the world. She could be… But everything must start somewhere, right?
---
For the next hour after their lift session, Paige checked the station material with KK, ensuring everything was intact and functional. They didn’t talk about Paige’s unknown crush or Nika’s suggestion again, and once they were finished, they got up to the kitchen and ate with the others.
“It’s calm today” pointed out Jacob while twirling is spaghetti around is fork.
It was true, Alex and James were the only one gone, and it had been for a child stuck in a swing at the park. The park in question was at the angle of the street, and they could have as easily walk to get there. So yes, it was a calm day, but it was a tacit rule not to voice it out loud.
And just ten second later the interventions alarm blared in through the microphones.
Station 41, engine 5, paramedics and hazmat to 7021 on Emmerson Avenue and 83rd street. Suspected CO intoxication in household.
Paige, Jana, and KK all glared at him at the same time, as they jumped to their feet to go to the ambulance, all cussing him under their breath.
“Such a jinx” said KK as she ran behind the two tall girls
Jacob looked sheepish.
---
On the road to the house, they contacted the central via the radio, getting clarification on what they would find.
A panicked daughter had called them after having found her mother unconscious in her home while she was checking on her. They said the woman in question had been described as a healthy elderly seventy-one years old, living alone, and that she was between different states of consciousness during the call. What put them on the CO intoxication theory was the daughter herself who had learned that three other houses had had leaks in the past month in the same neighborhood.
Once they arrived at said house, the two women were in the entryway with a middle-aged man too.
They presented themselves and went to work to assess the situation.
First thing first Jana put on a cervical collar around the old woman’s neck, the procedure in that case. Paige started taking vitals: bpm, blood pressure, and did a quick head-trauma test too. Methodical, efficient.
The woman was groggy but still responsive enough to answer simple question. It was a good sign, and it immediately settled them all.
KK went to talk to the daughter and her husband apparently, keeping them a few feet away to let Paige and Jana work smoothly. She asked about the heating system location and disappeared inside for a couple of minutes before coming back out with her carbon monoxide detector in hand and showed it to Paige.
“First guess was right, CO levels are at 500 ppm, she will need a trip to the ER to check that everything is alright.”
Paige nodded and looked at Jana putting on an oxygen mask on the woman’s lower face.
“Ok can you call the central and tell them to relay the info?”
“Yep, on my way” responded KK as she skipped down the small patio, they were on to go to the ambulance.
Jana got up too to fetch the stretcher, and in the meantime, Paige turned to the couple waiting anxiously.
She resumed them the situation, explaining with simple words and care, wanting them to understand everything clearly to avoid excessive panic. She told them that her colleague – while referring to KK – would give them a contact to call to restore the heating system, but that for now they had to go to the hospital to check for any abnormality in cerebral functions, which can happen when the brain is not well enough fed in oxygen. She still reassured them by saying that the toxicity level was not high enough to kill someone and that there were few possibilities of further complications, the trip to the ER was only protocol.
Once they were both as calm as one could be in that situation (which was not that much for the daughter), she and Jana strapped the elderly woman, whose name they learned was Nicole, and wheeled her to the ambulance.
As soon as everything was set, Jana and KK went to the front of the truck, and Paige stayed with the intoxicated woman and her daughter in the back.
Paige had always liked the people she helped… Most of the time. She knew how to settle them down, talked to them calmly while they were distressed and even cracked a joke or two if she saw that they were receptive to it. Most of the time they were easy.
The families though. They were stressing her, talking too much, invading space they should not. And don’t get her wrong, she understood that they were worried about the person they loved. But they were not helping when hampering her work. Quite the opposite really.
Plus, she had always been bad at informing them on the situation, always second-guessing if she was being too cold or not stable enough while she talked. Having tact was not always one of her qualities when she was annoyed or focus on her work.
With time she had learned to do it, but she still didn’t like it.
And Nicole’s daughter was no exception. She was overprotective and asked tones of useless questions Paige and KK had already responded to. She was hovering above Paige’s shoulder while she was checking on the old woman, yapping about things the firefighter didn’t bother to listen to, and the blonde had to tell her to fasten her seatbelt more than once during the seven minutes drives to the hospital.
When she felt the vehicle slow down to a stop, Paige sigh in relief. Almost over she thought to herself.
Those simple interventions were sometimes the most exhausting.
The truck shook as the two girls in the front got out, and Paige heard the familiar commotion outside of the back doors. Two or three nurses’ voices added to the mixed noise, as she turned to the disoriented woman lain down on the stretcher, and put a calming hand on her shoulder
“Hey Nicole, our little trip ends here” she informed her kindly, an appeasing smile on her face. “Nurses and doctors will carry on helping you, but don’t worry…” The double door opened as she was still talking. “They are just going to take you through a couple of scans and tests, it’s just casualties to make sure you’re good to go home safely, ok?”
The elderly nodded in understanding as they were unloading her.
Two pairs of blue-gloved hands helped move the stretcher, as one of the nurses began to resume the new patient case (information that Jana must have given her) and ordering which exams and scans should be done.
As the stretcher rolled away Paige finally lifted her head from the woman she was talking to seconds before. Her eyes landed on the talking nurse: a tall – unusually taller than her – brunette with pale skin and soft expression that did not reflect the firmness with which she spoke. A firmness gained through years of practice and repeated work, that scream confidence and knowledge.
And as her gaze switched side of the rolling bed. She paused. Recognition hitting her.
Same soft caramel-honey skin, same strong stature, same brown curls, same perfectly crafted jaw… The girl she had been gushing about to Nika and KK and Ice (anyone really) for three weeks was walking through the door of the ER in blue-slightly-loose scrubs while taking over on what she had been doing moments ago. Reassuring Nicole with the most delicate and soothing voice the blonde girl had ever heard, a devastatingly gentle smile gracing the side of her face, or what the blonde could see of it from behind her. The firefighter was nearly sure it was her, even though she couldn’t see her front.
Paige froze.
She had turned her head just the slightest bit.
The movement was so little it didn’t add anything to what Paige could see from her place. Well, nothing except–
Those same fucking dimples…