Bear Inferno

1. Bear Inferno-2

Julie Hall sat there, letting the words sink into those sitting in a circle around her.

“That’s not true!” someone said.

“It is,” Julie said. “Brian and I were a team – and I let him down. I got myself into a bad situation. He tried to stop me from getting killed myself, but all he did was get himself hurt instead.

“And that’s my fault. I should have been smarter.”

She sat in the circle, all of the other broken people arrayed out around her.

Her sponsor, Jay Landing, shook his head and said, “That’s not true, Jules. We’ve been over this how many times before? Brian knew what he signed up for. So did you. No one is to blame. Especially not you. You were just doing your job.”

“I should have done my job better,” she muttered under her breath.

Landing looked at her for a few more moments and then said, “Anyone else want to share?” Another woman put her hand up. “Beattie, what do you want to share?”

“My husband – he cheated on me and I let him. I knew what he was doing. Instead of confronting him and stopping him or leaving, I turned to the bottle. I’ve been an alcoholic ever since.”

“How long has that been, Beattie?”

“Two years now,” Beattie said. She was an older woman with graying hair and a mousy face. A flushed face.

She’s probably drunk right now, Julie thought, then mentally chastised herself. That wasn’t fair to Beattie. Everyone handled their problems differently. Everyone was here just to talk, to listen, and to offer support. Julie wasn’t here to judge, what was the point?

If anything, everyone else should be judging her. Because no matter what Jay Landing said, it was entirely her fault that she wasn’t curled up at home next to her husband.

Well, that’s not entirely true.

It wasn’t entirely her fault that he wasn’t alive – but she did her best not to dwell on that, either.

The group talked to Beattie, telling her to keep her head up and that she was doing the best she could for herself. They told her that everyone handled stress differently. Jay Landing told her that if she wanted, he could try to help her with her drinking problem.

“I don’t got a drinking problem,” the older woman said. “I got a husband problem.”

This provoked a couple of other women to cackle and cheer Beattie on while Landing did his best to calm the group down. After a few more minutes, Landing wrapped the weekly meeting up, and everyone got up, scraping their chairs backwards.

A couple of the people in the group congregated towards the cookie and coffee table. A few others went outside for a smoke. She was the first out the door, intent on heading home.

“Hey, Julie, got a second?” she heard from behind her.

“Not really,” she told Landing. He was a big man with a flat top. He wheezed as he hurried towards her. She paused and decided she could spare a few minutes. At least she was out of the stuffy conference room in one of New York’s uncountable city halls. The weather was warm, and the evening breeze felt good against her skin.

“I’ve told you, Jules, you can forgive yourself,” he said, finally catching up to her.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” he told her. “You come in here once every week – on those weeks you don’t miss, which I must recommend you continue to show up for – and you say the same thing over and over.”

“Aren’t you here to help me work through my grief? Instead it sure sounds like you’re wanting me to give it up.”

“I do want you to give up your grief. How long has it been, Jules? A year and a half? Two?” he asked. She knew exactly how long it had been since she’d lost her fiancé in the fire – but she kept her mouth shut. “You keep dwelling on it. It’s not healthy. I’ve seen you week in and week out and you’ve made no progress. You need to move forward.”

“You’re not being a very good sponsor.”

He laughed and said, “I’m a shitty sponsor, Jules. But I’ve experienced loss before. And I know how hard it is. But I also know how important it is to finally move on. You’ve got to let go eventually. Live your life.”

How did she say that she wanted to? That no matter how much she wanted to move on, she couldn’t get Brian’s face out of her mind?

How did she tell this man that she never wanted to see him again, in the nicest way possible? Did he think that she liked coming to weekly meetings like these? Did he think she liked going to her doctor once a month to check up on how her depression was doing?

She didn’t want any of it. Julie wanted it all to go away. She wanted her life back.

But she couldn’t seem to figure out a way to get it back, so she continued to go to her shrink, continued to attend these weekly meetings – though she felt they were often useless – and continued to sit at home, often with a couple of empty beers strewn around her.

“Think on it, okay?” Landing said, turning to a couple of the other people on the sidewalk smoking. “I gotta go talk to the others.”

“Go,” Julie said, waving him away. She knew that out of the nearly 20 people here, Landing could play no favorites, and she didn’t mind finally being able to go home, so she let him go.

“We’ll see you next week,” Landing said. It was a statement, not a question, and Julie nodded and turned down the sidewalk.

She didn’t know why she even bothered with these meetings anymore. At first, she thought they might have been helping. Now, she didn’t think they helped one bit. It was part her, she knew. Landing was right: she couldn’t seem to move forward. That was no fault of his, of anyone else in the support group, or anything else. It was all her fault.

Like everything was. I ruined my life. I got Brian killed. It’s all my fault.

No, that’s not quite true, she reminded herself. Someone else shared half of the blame, though she tried not to dwell on that, either.

Julie knew she would be back to the weekly meeting next week unless something else came up, which nothing usually did. There had been a couple of weeks where she just hadn’t been able to muster up the energy to get off the couch, so she’d skipped out on the meetings.

She’d only been able to get off the couch when she realized that she hadn’t showered in nearly a week and was out of junk food to eat. Coincidentally, that day when she’d ran out of food had been the same day as one of her meetings, so she’d braved the frigid New York winter and killed two birds with one stone.

Other than that, she’d only missed a couple of other meetings. She’d missed one because her sister, whom Julie hadn’t seen in nearly five years, had shown up a couple of weeks following the accident. She’d missed another because she just hadn’t felt like going – and really, who could blame her?

Landing was right. She repeated herself each meeting. She couldn’t move on, so what was the point in even going to the meetings in the first place? They were supposed to help her, but as far as she was concerned, they were a damn waste of time.

She knew she would still go, though. Because truthfully, what else did she have to do?

Eventually, she’d have to move on. She’d have to go back to work, though she didn’t know if she could face going back to her job. A change of careers was most likely in order, but she’d cross that bridge when the time came.

Julie walked down the sidewalk, enjoying the familiar New York City sights and sounds. Not all of the sights were good, and far less of the sounds were good, and even less of the smells were good – but it was home. She’d lived in New York since she’d been born.

After she’d graduated college, her parents had moved away to somewhere in the Midwest, intent on enjoying the slower pace of life there. Her sister, eight years older than her, was long gone by that point. They’d never been close, and that was okay with Julie – she’d never felt like she’d fit in with the rest of her family.

They were safe, cautious people: her dad was an accountant, her mom a manager of a local bank branch. They’d lived in a small house bought way before housing prices went up and saved every penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar they could manage to stuff away. Then, comfortably ready to retire, they’d waited for Julie to graduate high school, sold their house for a small fortune, and moved away.

They hadn’t left her on her own, not exactly. They’d offered for her to move with them.

She’d declined.

While they were cautious people, Julie was the opposite. She’d stayed out late at night, barely passed high school, and made a fun time out of it. She, compared to her older sister, was the black sheep of the family. They’d hoped she would attend a prestigious university like her older sister had.

Julie could still see the look on their faces when she’d finally decided what she was going to do. After graduating high school, Julie had taken a long, hard look at where she was needed most in the city.

So, against the wishes of her parents, Julie had decided to become a firefighter. Her parents had warned her against it, of course. After all, it was dangerous, and she was a woman. But she’d worked hard, passed all of her classes with top honors – a first for her – and she became exactly what she wanted to be, exactly what she needed to be.

It was there, in Engine 457, that she’d met Brian and immediately hit it off. Their romance had been like a whirlwind, akin to a fire raging out of control. They’d dated for years, too busy saving lives and helping the beautiful city of New York to focus on taking things farther than that.

That had all changed when Brian had proposed to her nearly three years ago. She’d cried and immediately said yes. They took out a loan, bought a small house, and were planning their wedding.

Who would be invited? Her family? His family? The others at the department? Maybe even a couple of the police officers that sometimes responded to their calls? Would her family even come?

They’d set the date – July 1st– decided on the venue, and had just sent out invitations to all of those who they wanted to come – and then he’d died.

They’d always known it was a possibility – firefighting was dangerous work. They’d each agreed that if something were to happen, the other one should move on with their lives.

Never in a million years had Julie thought it would actually happen. So when the building started to collapse, her fiancé and fire Chief of Engine 457, Brian Denning, had pushed her out of the way and been crushed instead.

He’d died that evening.

She’d never been the same.

A fire was unlike anything else. Dangerous, unpredictable, something that most people avoided – and Jim couldn’t get enough of them. He wasn’t the thrill seeker like Haley, or even the man whose duty it was to lead those into the fire like McCready, but he loved stepping into the burning buildings just the same.

He supposed it made him a little crazy, but that was okay. He was surrounded by others who would be called crazy, so at least he wasn’t alone.