Here comes the rain (Buddie) - English

Chapter 6: Kids these days...

The entrance of the former Wallmart parking lot, to the west of the city, at the intersection of Crenshaw and Leimert Park, begins with a slightly raised sidewalk and concrete littered with potholes. It is flanked by two two-meter-high barriers to prevent transient campers or truckers from occupying the area at night and ends on a ground dotted with shell craters left by the weather and lack of maintenance. As a result, the truck and ambulance of the rescue team are forced to go around the neighborhood to find a way in.

It was Chimney who spotted the small path blocked by an iron chain on which a sign prohibiting access had been hung. The alley was narrow, apparently inhabited by a family of cats who fled when the truck entered the alley and passed along the makeshift wall of old sheet metal surrounding the parking lot, which had become a place for budding graffiti artists in the neighborhood to express themselves. Chimney got out of the ambulance, unhooked the chain from the electric pole into which a kind of small hook had been screwed, and let it fall to the ground. As the truck rolled over it, the tires screeched and squealed before sinking into the potholes left by the old crumbling concrete.

The hundred meters in the narrow path are more eventful than the seven-minute drive to cross Los Angeles. Clinging to the edges of the doors and the handles above their heads, Eddie, Chimney, Hen, and Bobby enjoy a restful silence. In the driver's cabin, Bobby occasionally observes them, wondering if today will be one of those days when one of his men will submit his resignation letter to his office.
He knows how much each of the three firefighters sitting in the back of his ladder truck loves his job and probably wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world. But he himself had thought about hanging up his boots more than a dozen times. He had already done it twice and had changed his mind just in time for a third time.

Hen had nearly had to surrender her badge involuntarily when she became the focus of a police investigation for professional error. She would probably have accepted her fate if her wife hadn't made her realize that without this job, she was nothing but a shadow of herself, and at home, Karen needed her to be whole. Then the verdict came, the light was green when the ambulance crossed the central intersection and collided with the sixteen-year-old girl's car. The young violinist was on her way to her musical performance with her orchestra at the opera. She was playing the solo part of Vivaldi's "Winter." She had studied it for countless nights, forgetting sleep and hunger to be ready for the big day. The performance had caused her so much stress that she had made a mistake ordering her macchiato coffee at Starbucks. Not only was her name completely butchered, but on top of that, it was a macadamia nut flavored long coffee. The surprise made her spit it all out, and she got it all over her white top that she planned to wear for the performance at the conservatory. The distraction made her forget to press the brake pedal, and she crossed when the light was red.

The impact was violent. Suspended in time, it was as if one could see the bodywork deforming, while the small car spun on itself, like the drum of a washing machine.

In the ambulance, the cabinets opened, the stretcher lifted off the ground for a split second. The sound echoed for more than two hundred meters, and the sirens of the emergency vehicle, suddenly interrupted in their howling, dropped a heavy and worrying silence in the alley, where the headlights of cars watched the scene like their drivers, horrified.

If Evelyn hadn't been killed instantly, Hen probably wouldn't have had to fear for her career. But when her heart stopped beating, as the commotion returned and asserted itself, as her sheet music flew in her car and her coffee spilled on her passenger seat, Hen still believed she could save her. Believed she was going to be saved.

The way Hen collapsed into Athena's arms, who had rushed to the scene upon hearing the news, caused so much grief in the hearts of all the members of the 118 that many began to cry with her. Then when they realized what it could mean, that their friend might lose her job, be expelled from all emergency services, dismissed from the medical academy, and perhaps even prosecuted, the tears turned into suffocating anxiety. The kind that grips the throat and turns the stomach. Which only fades once the storm has passed.