Reading Time: 121 Minutes

Title: All My Time Is Yours
Series: Like Stars Aligned
Series Order: 1
Author: Bythia
Fandom: 9-1-1
Genre: Contemporary, Established Relationship, Family, Femslash, Romance
Relationship(s): Hen Wilson/Karen Wilson
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: *No Mandatory Warnings Apply. Minor character death, discussion of canon content: addiction (Bobby and Eva), suicidal ideation (Bobby), sexual assault (Dr. Wells)
Author Note: This series has been a little different from what I did in the past. In some places, the two stories are running parallel, with scenes referred to in one story that are happening in the other story. But I think with the help of the wonderful starlitenite I managed to create two stories that can be read separately or even just as a stand-alone if one or the other isn’t your cup of tea.
Beta: starlitenite
Alpha: FaerlyGraceful
Word Count: 57,092
Summary: When Bobby asks for help after his relapse, Hen gains a new perspective about her past journey with Eva. It pushes her to finally face Eva’s attempt to push herself back in Hen’s life. Hen and Karen have spent nearly a decade now building their family, they won’t let Eva threaten that life they’ve built.
Artist: penumbria
Artist Appreciation: I love the art you created for my stories. I have gone back to look at it pretty often over the past couple of weeks, just to feel a little bit better about life.

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Chapter 01

“Maybe ask for help sometimes?” Buck suggested, his face crestfallen and his whole posture screaming his discomfort and helplessness with the situation.

Hen had a lot to say about their probie on any given day, but one thing that had never been in question was that he had his heart in the right place. As overwhelmed as he clearly was by the situation they had found Bobby in, he was just as clearly desperate to help — even if he didn’t know how to. Hen loved him a little bit for his soft and open bluntness where she hadn’t been able to clearly articulate anything, where she had gotten lost in a metaphor about trees bending with the wind to grow tall and strong.

Bobby sobbed and barely managed to get the “Help!” out before he seemed to break completely before their eyes.

Hen and Buck both rushed to sit down beside him. They embraced Bobby in a tight hug and rocked him back and forth slightly, letting him cry but showing him that they were there. For the moment that was all they could do, but Hen’s thoughts were already racing about what to do in a couple of minutes once Bobby had calmed down enough to talk again.

They had promised help and Hen knew Buck would look to her for guidance in this. She recognized the way he had looked at her earlier from the way he turned to her or anyone else for help at work: determined to do the job but not sure how and so clearly afraid to make a mistake. It had taken their crew time to earn his trust so that he would turn to them for help. Hen hadn’t even noticed how difficult it was for Buck to trust them until she had finally earned a little of it three weeks after he had first shown up at the 118.

Hen didn’t know what to tell Buck even if Bobby weren’t sitting between them, making that kind of conversation impossible for the moment. She didn’t know how to help, didn’t know if they were even the right people to help.

Hen closed her eyes and leaned her head against Bobby’s, allowing herself a moment to battle her own ghosts so they would be gone when Bobby was ready to face the day ahead. She didn’t know if she could be the person to guide Buck in this, the person to help Bobby in any way.

Because she had failed before.

Hen had failed Eva in this same exact situation, and the pain of that failure still burned deep in her heart even though she had moved on from the relationship a long time ago. She didn’t know how anyone could expect her not to fail again, not to make the same exact mistakes again when she still didn’t know why she had failed with Eva.

Hen gritted her teeth and shook her head. This time around she had a support system of her own aside from Eva. It also wasn’t the person she thought was the love of her life who needed help. Most importantly, though, she couldn’t remember that Eva had ever actually asked for help — on the contrary, Eva had continued to claim she had everything under control and there was no problem she needed help with even after being arrested.

Maybe it wasn’t appropriate to think of Eva while preparing to help her captain. But hopefully her experience with Eva might still help Bobby after all.

“Are you in any kind of program?” Hen asked, long after Bobby had fallen silent.

Bobby shrugged. “Yeah.”

Hen nodded. She had expected as much with the way Bobby had known down to the exact day how long he had been sober. For a moment she wondered if Bobby’s last relapse had been before or just after he had come to LA, but now wasn’t the right moment to ask about that.

“Do you have a sponsor?” Hen asked.

Bobby sucked in air through his teeth and nodded.

“Okay.” Hen nodded, a plan slowly forming in her head. Buck and she were on shift. Bobby was supposed to be on shift, though there was no way they could get him into shape for that in time. They couldn’t sit around here much longer ignoring their duty to the LAFD without getting in trouble for it. “I’d like you to call them.”

“I…” Bobby trailed off and stared at the cup of tea that sat forgotten on the table.

“Or you can unlock your phone for me and tell me which contact to call,” Hen suggested softly. Sometimes people were just so overwhelmed that they froze and were unable to do anything, move in any direction. She could be the one to act for Bobby, at least in this moment. “Buck and I need to get back to work. And you need to call in sick. But I’m not comfortable leaving you alone for the next twenty-four, Cap.”

Bobby didn’t react for several seconds but then he gestured towards the dining table — still set with the untouched plates he hadn’t wanted to explain. Buck jumped up and hurriedly grabbed the phone from the table to bring it to Bobby. He unlocked the phone and brought up a contact, but then just held onto the phone, staring at it.

Hen sighed and rubbed one hand over Bobby’s back while grabbing the phone. The contact read ‘Wendall’ — no last name, no other description. While Hen hit the call button, Bobby reached for the cup of tea and wrapped his hands around it tightly, not that it did much to stop their shaking.

“Bobby?” A deep, worried voice answered the call after the second ring.

“This is Hen Wilson. I’m one of Bobby’s firefighters.”

The man on the other side was silent for a moment. “He’s talked about you. Why are you calling me from Bobby’s phone?”

“He said you’re his sponsor,” Hen said softly, watching Bobby out of the corner of her eye. He had paled even more than before and looked as if he would like nothing more than to flee. “You probably heard about the plane crash night before last.”

“Yes.”

“We were there to help. It was … as ugly and heartbreaking as you’d expect. I think Bobby needs your support right now but he wasn’t in a headspace to call you himself.”

“Are you at his apartment?”

“We are,” Hen agreed.

Wendall sighed. “I can be there in an hour.”

Hen bit her lip and watched Bobby for a moment. “That should work. Buck and I will need to leave soon, but I think Bobby will be fine until you arrive.”

“Buck?” Wendall asked.

“Our probie,” Hen said softly. “We’re officially on shift as of half an hour ago.”

Bobby’s head whipped around and he stared wide-eyed at Hen.

“Ah. I’ll hurry,” Wendall promised. “Thank you for looking out for Bobby.”

“Of course,” Hen said and ended the call after a short goodbye.

“I need to get ready for shift!” Bobby said suddenly and moved to stand.

Hen grabbed his arm and pulled him back down onto the couch. “You’re in no shape to work today. Reynolds is covering for you at the moment, and Buck and I are officially on a welfare check right now because it’s the first time you weren’t at the station at least twenty minutes before shift change since you came to LA.”

Bobby swallowed. “I can’t…”

Hen shook her head and held Bobby’s phone out to him. “You need to call in sick. You aren’t able to work with this hangover. If you try, I’m not going to support you. I don’t even care what you tell HR about the reason you need to miss work today, but you will call in sick.”

“Hen,” Buck whispered forlornly.

Hen threw him a quick glance and shook her head. After a moment longer, Bobby took his phone. She kept sitting beside him until he had dialed and put the phone against his ear before she stood and took the nearly empty mug to brew another cup of tea. When she returned, Bobby was just ending the call.

Hen held out the mug and Bobby took it, wrapping both hands around it. He sighed deeply and looked up at her wearily. “Thank you.”

Hen nodded slowly. She sat down on the table in front of Bobby and watched him intently. “We’ll need to have some rules and boundaries here, Bobby.”

Bobby nodded silently.

“I want to help you,” Hen began slowly, carefully. “You are a great captain. I went through a lot of captains over the past nine years, and you know about the first captain I had to deal with. I really don’t want to have another captain.”

Bobby nodded again and Buck watched her with a frown.

“Buck will tell me what you told HR about calling out sick today, and I’ll support whatever excuse you came up with. But this will be the only time I’ll lie for you to the LAFD. Next time I notice that you are drunk or high while we are supposed to be on shift, I’ll report your ass. I won’t support you endangering anyone on our crew or our victims.”

“I understand,” Bobby said quietly and lowered his gaze.

Buck frowned and glared at her. His grip on Bobby’s shoulder tightened visibly, but at least he didn’t protest or say anything.

“Good.” Hen smiled, hoping to take away some of the blow of her last words, not just for Bobby but also for Buck. “Outside of the job I’m prepared and happy to help with whatever you need. You’ve clearly already put in a lot of work to get back on an even keel. I’d like to help you work out a better support system here so your first reaction after the next bad call won’t be to grab the closest bottle but instead to go to someone for support.”

Bobby sucked in air through his teeth and for a moment Hen thought he might protest, but then he nodded.

“We are off for four days after this shift,” Hen continued. “I think the three of us” — she waved her hand between them in a circle — “should all sit down together and have a serious conversation. I’d be happy if Wendall could join us, too. I think we could all benefit from that.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said hoarsely. “I’ll talk to him.”

Hen nodded, smiling more confidently. “Great. I’ll talk with Karen about meeting at our home. Do you mind if she knows why, or should I keep it vague?”

Bobby stared at her for a long moment. Eventually, he shrugged.

“Okay. You have time to think about it.”

“I don’t want to impose on you or your wife, Hen,” Bobby said hesitantly.

Buck shifted around, looking uncomfortable.

“You aren’t,” Hen promised. “I’d have suggested another place to meet if that were a problem. Buck and I need to head back now. I’d like to be back at the station before the person arrives who’ll take over for you today. Will you be okay on your own until Wendall arrives?”

Bobby inhaled deeply. “Did I only buy the one bottle?”

“As far as I saw,” Hen said. She thought it was a good sign that Bobby was trying to make sure his ability to drink was restricted as much as possible. She also wasn’t surprised that he didn’t seem to remember much of the previous day.

Buck jumped up and Hen thought he looked relieved at the opportunity to do something. “I’ll check the cupboards in the kitchen to make sure!”

Bobby bit his lip as he followed Buck with his gaze. After a moment he turned to look at Hen with a question in his eyes she wasn’t sure she completely understood.

“We’ll figure this out,” Hen assured him. “You aren’t alone.”

***

“I hate this!” Chimney hissed and threw away the pen he had barely been able to hold onto while filling out the meal plan for the hospital.

Karen smiled sadly. She had offered to mark his choices for lunch, but he had stubbornly refused. The hospital offered two choices each day and the nurse had left a sheet for Chimney to choose his meals for the following week. Karen thought it was disheartening that they expected Chimney to stay another full week, but then she looked at his shaking hands and was glad he wouldn’t be home alone where he had no one to help him deal with his impaired motor functions.

“Your body needs time to heal,” Karen reminded him softly. “The shaking has already gotten a lot better since you woke from your coma.”

Chimney huffed and glared at her.

“I know patience isn’t your strong suit, but in this case, it’s what you need,” Karen said. “You will get better. You’ve already seen it. But your body needs time to do that.”

“It’s just so frustrating,” Chimney muttered and turned his head away. “And I don’t want to stay here for another week just because they want to monitor me for fear of another stroke. It’s already been a week and a half since they transferred me from the ICU. They promised a week then!”

“I’d rather they’d be more careful with you than have you pay the price if they let you leave too early,” Karen said with a sad smile. “I’m just so relived you’re still alive, Chimney. You scared the hell out of me with that accident!”

Chimney shrugged. “I don’t want to stay, but I also don’t want to go home knowing Tatiana won’t be there anymore. She hasn’t even called me once. All I know is what Bobby told me about their conversation the day after the accident!”

“I’m sorry,” Karen said with a deep sigh. “Not just that she hasn’t come by to at least end things in person, but also that she isn’t the person you hoped she was.”

Karen had other thoughts about Tatiana, and about Chimney’s relationship with her, too. She had shared those thoughts with Chimney in the past, tried to make him see that lying to Tatiana wouldn’t lead to anything good. But he hadn’t wanted to listen to her, had never listened in the past either when he had built other relationships based on lies, but now was not the right moment to bring it up again. The last thing Chimney needed right now was any kind of argument, and so for that reason it was probably good that Tatiana hadn’t shown her face here.

Chimney grimaced. “Just the story of my life, right?”

“You’ll find the right woman eventually,” Karen promised.

She knew that first he would need to learn not to lie to the women he was dating anymore. Karen considered Chimney a good friend, but that aspect of his personality had always bothered her, especially since he had once aimed it at her in a horrible way. Karen had made sure that he knew never to lie to her that way again, but she wasn’t sure if he would ever consider her advice beyond that.

“Do they have any idea how long the shaking in your hands will stay?” Karen asked.

Chimney gritted his teeth as he shook his head. “No. They can’t even promise it will go away. Which is bullshit. As long as it’s there I won’t be able to go back to work. What am I gonna do with all that time?”

“Has someone from the LAFD been here to talk with you about your options about that?” Karen asked. “If not, maybe you should reach out to them about it. There have to be things you could do while you can’t work as a paramedic and firefighter.”

“I talked with Bobby some,” Chimney said slowly. “He said I should look into taking some classes. Keep my certificates up to date while I don’t need to work around my schedule for that.”

Karen chuckled. “Sounds like a good plan. Last year, when Hen had to take some of those courses to keep her certification, she cursed horribly about the timing of the classes with your shifts.”

Chimney made a face. “It’s a pain in the ass every single time, and I don’t understand why they can’t be more considerate about it! Everyone involved in the planning and execution of those classes is a firefighter or paramedic themselves! They should clearly know how our shifts work better than anyone, but somehow they won’t schedule classes that work with them.”

Karen laughed. “Ever thought about becoming a teacher for one of those classes yourself?”

Chimney glared and pointed a finger at her. “You talked with Bobby! He set you up to this!”

“Oh, so Bobby had more suggestions than just taking classes?” Karen asked with a grin.

“I’d be a horrible teacher!” Chimney complained. “Also, I wouldn’t be able to teach some things as long as I’m not fit for duty.”

Karen laughed. “I didn’t talk with Bobby. And you wouldn’t be a bad teacher. Hen told me you taught her everything she knows about being a paramedic.”

“That’s different,” Chimney muttered petulantly. “That’s teaching a partner in the field. Not standing up in front of a whole class!”

“It still shows you’re able to teach,” Karen said. “I think it’s worth thinking about. You should call HR soon to make some plans for the next little while. Being proactive in this will be taken as a good sign.”

Chimney rolled his eyes. “I know, I know. Still sucks that I even need to think about it.” He fisted his hands and glared at them. “If they would just stop shaking already.”

“I’m sure they will soon,” Karen said. “And I’m sure you’ll excel at any work that’s needed to get there. I expect you not to be lazy here, Chim. Hen needs her partner back. I don’t like her working with a new stranger every other shift!”

Chimney chuckled. “It’s amusing to hear her stories about it, though.”

Karen grinned. “I can’t argue with that. But I don’t feel she is as safe working with them as she is working with you. And you made me a promise to keep her safe!”

Chimney nodded and then sighed deeply. “Thank you for coming by. I mean, I seem to always have someone here, but it really means a lot, you know?”

“You have a lot of friends,” Karen said. “I’m not surprised you’re rarely alone. You aren’t alone with your recovery, and you won’t be when you are finally discharged. Your freezer is full of food. Hen and Bobby spent hours organizing it so everything would fit. And Hen still brought a couple of boxes home to store in our freezer until you’ve made a dent in yours. And you’ll have visitors there all the time, too.”

“It’s difficult to remember sometimes,” Chimney admitted quietly. “It hasn’t always been this way.”

“But it is now,” Karen said softly and took Chimney’s hands to squeeze them. “You could also stay in our guestroom, either for a couple of weeks or a couple of days or even a couple nights every week. And Hen and I will shamelessly take advantage of your sick leave to have a babysitter available for date nights whenever we want!”

Chimney laughed. “Sounds good. Spending time with Denny is always great.” Then he sighed deeply. “I’ve got an appointment in half an hour to work on the motor control in my hands. It’s really great to have you here, but…”

Karen nodded. “You need some time to yourself before the appointment, understood. I’ll come by tomorrow again, together with Hen and Denny.”

Chimney grinned widely. “Looking forward to it.”

“If you think of anything you need, text me so I can bring it,” Karen said. “We could stop by your apartment tomorrow on our way here.”

“Oh!” Chimney nodded. “I’ll do that. Might turn into a whole list with me being stuck here for another week.”

Karen nodded and hugged Chimney goodbye. She always felt bad about leaving Chimney when visiting him at the hospital, even if he had been the one sending her away like had happened now. She had been there back when Chimney hadn’t had many friends yet and she and Hen had been among his few visitors when he had been in the hospital. Chimney was clearly not the only one who still hadn’t gotten used to his many friendships even though it had been more than six years since then.

Karen was so lost in thoughts about the past and about how much some things had changed that she ran right into a broad chest when she left the elevator without looking first.

It was a familiar voice that laughed away her apology. “I’m happy to see you, too, Karen.”

“Tommy!” Karen laughed. “You’re here to visit Chimney?”

Tommy Kinard had been at the 118 for longer than Hen or Chimney had, but had left the station a little over six months ago for another station where he could work as a pilot again. It had been an emotional and impactful change for both Hen and Chimney at the 118, because Tommy had been the last one left who had gone through all of the changes the 118 had experienced with them, and one of few of the original crew they had become friends with during that upheaval.

“Of course,” Tommy said.

“I’m starting to think we need to create a shared calendar to coordinate visits for Chimney,” Karen said. “He just asked me to leave because he has an appointment soon.”

Tommy sighed. “That’s unfortunate. I’ll still go up, just to say hello and ask when would be a better time to visit. We could get coffee?”

Karen nodded. “Sounds like a great idea. I’ll wait here and set up the calendar. You’ll need to help me figure out who I need to send the link to!”

She didn’t have to wait long for Tommy to return. They walked to a coffee shop not far from the hospital and, by the time they were done organizing the calendar for Chimney, they were both halfway through their second cup of coffee.

“It’s good to know that there are so many people ready to help Howie,” Tommy said with a sigh. “Starting over at a new station has really reminded me how … lonely and isolating those first couple of years at the 118 were until Hen joined.”

“How?” Karen asked. “I thought you were getting along great with your new team.”

“I am.” Tommy nodded. “But that’s exactly the point. I was greeted with open arms. And when it comes to the flying, I’m practically a probie again. I haven’t flown for more than just pleasure since I left the Army. So, experiencing how it can be to join a new team really highlights how shitty that experience was under Gerrard. And it was even shittier for Chimney and Hen than it was for me, because I could at least successfully pretend to be one of Gerrard’s club.”

Karen huffed. “I’m not sure that made it easier for you to deal with. It just created different problems for you than what Chim and Hen had to face.”

Tommy shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I’m glad your new team is good to you,” Karen said softly. “You deserve a good team. You deserve to be happy.”

Tommy rolled his eyes and took a sip of his coffee.

“You have pretty good contacts with the firefighter union, right?” Karen asked. “And with HR?”

She knew that Tommy was the guy anyone could go to if they needed to get in contact with anyone anywhere in the department. Tommy just knew people, and he was always prepared to help his friends get in contact with whomever they needed. Karen knew it was a habit he had started after Gerrard, though he had never told her why.

Tommy raised his brows. “Are there problems I need to know about?”

Karen chuckled. “Nothing like that. Just Chimney struggling with the prospect of being laid up for longer than originally expected. They’re already keeping him much longer in the hospital than was first expected. Maybe you can put together a list of other things he could do within the LAFD until he is ready to return to full duty at the 118?”

Tommy leaned forward and asked worriedly, “Were there more complications than the stroke during the surgery?”

“I don’t think so. Just … it might take longer than first expected for him to overcome the normal symptoms of the brain damage he suffered. Chimney was barely able to hold onto his pen to fill out his meal plan earlier. And he only needed to check a few boxes. I’m not sure he can even write right now.”

Tommy made a face and dragged his fingers through his hair. “Fuck. That’s not good.”

“It should go away with time and exercise,” Karen said softly. “That’s what we’ll all have to hold onto, I think. But Chimney also needs to see and, I think experience, that not returning to being a firefighter paramedic wouldn’t be the end of the world. That he’ll still have a place in the LAFD. I tried telling him he’d be a good teacher, but he didn’t seem very convinced of that.”

“He would be,” Tommy agreed thoughtfully. “I’ll make a list of possible jobs I think Howie might be interested in, and also look up what kind of training he’d need. I’m going back to visit again in three days when I’m off shift again.”

“That reminds me, shouldn’t you be on a shift today?” Karen asked with a frown.

Tommy laughed. “Yeah. I swapped shifts with Riley from B because his daughter has a big school event tomorrow. This way he won’t miss it.”

“But you’ll pull a 48!”

“Not the first time, and won’t be the last.” Tommy smiled reassuringly. “I can handle it. And all three captains at Harbor work with anyone on a 48 to make sure they’re safe and don’t work themselves to exhaustion. I’ll be punished for my generosity by being man behind more often than I’d like.”

Karen frowned and huffed, but didn’t try to argue. Being married to a firefighter and having a bunch of firefighters as friends had taught her very early on that the only one she was allowed to argue with about shifts was Hen. And even that had only been allowed since they had become parents and there was a small human relying on them to consider in everything they did. So, while Karen might hate the thought of any of her friends pulling a 48-hour shift, she knew better than to argue with them about it.

 

Chapter 02

Hen frowned when she came up to the loft after returning from a medical call late in the evening and found Buck sitting on one of the couches, reading a self-help book about addiction. She glanced around just to make sure that no one else was nearby — unnecessarily since she already knew everyone else had retired to the bunks and the only reason she had come up here before heading to the bunks herself was to get a bottle of water.

Hen got the water but then sat down beside Buck instead of heading to the bunkroom. “Where did you get that?”

Buck jumped a little and closed the book hurriedly. “You’re back!”

Hen raised her brows and watched him silently.

Buck sighed and lowered his gaze. “I went to pick up dinner earlier when the pizza place let us know that the order was ready, but they couldn’t send it at the moment, right?”

Hen nodded.

“I made a stop at this little bookstore around the corner from the pizza place and asked them for something that could give me some pointers for helping a friend who was struggling,” Buck explained quietly. “Because … I had no idea what to do earlier. And you were so confident. I mean, I think you were pretty harsh a couple of times, but somehow it seemed to be the exact right thing to do or say.”

“Oh.” Hen exhaled slowly and turned slightly so she could wrap one arm around Buck’s shoulders. “You’ve got a good heart, you know? No matter how hot-headed and impulsive you are sometimes, you’re just a really good human being.”

Buck huffed.

“This … situation will need time,” Hen said slowly, unsure about how to give Buck direction for the time ahead of them. “Neither the two of us nor even Bobby will be able to solve it with a snap of our fingers or by reading a book. Though, the book might give you some hints about what to do and what to avoid. But Bobby has a long road ahead of him and there isn’t some shortcut we can find for him. We can only help him to stay on that path.”

“You know a lot about this,” Buck said.

Hen hummed. She didn’t feel like she knew anything. “I … tried to help someone with a similar problem in the past.”

“Oh.” Buck nodded slowly. “Did they get better?”

Hen swallowed. “No. But … they also never really asked for help. I knew they had a problem, and I wanted to help them get away from it. It took me a very long time to accept that they just didn’t want to get away from it.”

Even now, it often wasn’t easy for Hen to remind herself of that. Deep down she knew that the real problem with Eva and the drugs had always been that Eva didn’t want to let go of them. She had managed to stay sober during her pregnancy with Denny just fine, and Hen would be forever thankful for that on Denny’s behalf. But Hen also knew that despite being in prison Eva had been high again even before Hen had picked Denny up.

Buck watched her with a frown.

“But that’s not what it will be like with Bobby,” Hen promised, despite knowing she shouldn’t make any promises. Especially not about things she had no way to control. “He asked for help. He knew how long he had been sober. I think that shows that he wants to get better.”

Buck nodded slowly.

“The plane crash was a tough call for everyone,” Hen said softly.

Buck sighed and shrunk in on himself. Hen watched him out of the corner of her eye for a moment but decided to let it go for now. She’d notice if Buck continued struggling with what they had seen and experienced there, and she could bring it up again should it still linger in a couple of weeks.

Hen cleared her throat. “After what we saw with Bobby this morning, I think it was something he needed a support system to deal with. One that isn’t just his sponsor. And he clearly doesn’t have that here yet.”

“Bobby’s not been in LA for very long, right?” Buck asked.

“As far as I know he came here because the Chief was looking for someone from outside to fill the position of captain for our shift,” Hen agreed. “Because people from inside the LAFD just weren’t … cutting it. Bobby doesn’t have any attachments to anyone in the LAFD, he doesn’t have any connections. And that meant he didn’t continue with some of the bullshit that we just couldn’t get rid of before him.”

Buck frowned and picked at the corner of his book. “You mentioned your first captain this morning. And that Bobby knew how that guy was.”

Hen sighed. “But you don’t?”

Buck shrugged. “You guys don’t talk much about the past. The only things I’ve heard about are people’s experiences at other stations. But all I’ve ever heard about the 118 so far has been that the station was cursed and it’s still up in the air whether the curse has been lifted.”

Hen chuckled. “Okay, fair. We really don’t talk much about it anymore. Because it’s behind us.”

“Is what happened in the past ever truly behind us, though?” Buck asked in a subdued voice.

“Wow, you’re a real ray of sunshine tonight,” Hen muttered. She wanted to poke, wanted to find out what Buck was thinking about. Now wasn’t the right time, but she would remember that comment for the future. “What do you want to know?”

Buck shrugged. “What was your first captain like?”

“A bigoted asshole who lived to uphold pretty much any form of -phobia and -ism you can imagine,” Hen said. “He didn’t want me. He hadn’t wanted Chim either, but Chimney out-stubborned him.”

Buck laughed lightly. “Sounds like Chimney.”

“Right?” Hen grinned. “No easy years for Chimney, though. And he learned some bullshit to blend in during those years that I had to get out of his head again once Gerrard was gone.”

“How’d you get rid of this Gerrard guy?” Buck asked.

“He grudgingly accepted me as part of his shift,” Hen said slowly.

There were parts of that whole situation that ran far deeper than any official report about Gerrard in the LAFD would reveal. Hen always struggled with drawing the line between what she could say and what she shouldn’t. Most of it she only knew through her friends and it wasn’t her story to tell.

“But he tried to get rid of me at every turn. Didn’t hold back his opinion about me being a woman in a job he was convinced could only be done by a man. He had this whole lecture ready about how much money the LAFD wasted on every single woman who joined the academy.” Hen sighed. “And I guess all those complaints that had piled up over the years regarding his treatment of Chimney finally got some notice when people started to complain about his behavior with me, too.”

Buck leaned to the side to look at her with a deep frown. “That sounds like a load of bullshit!”

“It is, but that’s what it was like,” Hen said. “Racism was somehow okay to be ignored. Misogyny, when they were actively recruiting more women into the LAFD because the existing numbers weren’t good PR, was not okay to be ignored. And, oh, now suddenly all these complaints about his racism really came in handy to get him fired from one day to the next.”

“And you and Chim stayed with the LAFD despite being treated so horribly?” Buck asked, sounding disgruntled.

Hen laughed. “We both fought for our places here. We wouldn’t give that up, especially after getting rid of one of the biggest problems here in the station.”

“You shouldn’t have needed to fight, though!” Buck said.

“Sometimes your age and privilege show, Buck,” Hen said. “There is no place in this world for either Chimney or me that we wouldn’t have needed to fight for. You’re right, we shouldn’t have to fight for anything, but that’s not the world we live in.

Buck flinched. “I’m sorry.”

Hen sighed. “No reason to apologize, really. I wanted to be here, wanted to be a paramedic and a firefighter. And I knew going in that I would need to fight against the usual prejudices and bigotries. The important thing is we got rid of Gerrard first and most of the mindset he stood for over the years.”

“But not all of it until Bobby came along,” Buck said.

“Yeah, exactly. Gerrard had friends and connections in the LAFD. And half the people who worked here under Gerrard didn’t see anything wrong with how he acted,” Hen explained.

Buck looked around, though they were still alone in the loft. “How many of the people from back then are still here?”

Hen chuckled. “Just Chimney and me. We got rid of the guys who shared Gerrard’s opinions first. The rest slowly moved on, looking for a more stable environment than our shift’s constant parade of captains. Or they moved on because they were looking for career advancement they couldn’t get here. Like using their pilot’s license on the job.”

“Pilot’s license?” Buck asked confused.

Hen grinned. “The last guy to leave, the one you replaced actually, was Tommy. And he left to join the 217 because he could fly there.”

She was happy for Tommy because Hen knew he was happy in his new position, but that didn’t mean that she had gotten used to the fact that Chimney and she were practically alone now.

Buck hummed. “I guess if I knew how to fly anything, I’d want to do that on the job, too!”

Hen made a face. “I’d love to say something about men being crazy, but I’m unfortunately married to a woman who is just as fascinated about anything that flies.”

“Flying to space is different than flying a plane or a helicopter, though,” Buck said grinning. “Did Karen ever go to space?”

“No. It’s a dream she gave up a long time ago.” Sometimes Hen wondered if Karen regretted giving up on it, but she had never dared to ask. “I asked Tommy to let her fly his helicopter a couple of times. With him sitting right beside her to take back control, of course, but it was nerve-wracking. Then he went and dared my wife to get her pilot’s license.”

Buck laughed. “And she did?”

Hen rolled her eyes. “Of course Karen did. Because she is a little crazy. No matter how much I love her, I’m very capable of recognizing her faults. I’m not sure how I’d feel about Karen going to space.”

Buck bumped his shoulder against hers. “But you’d support her if she ever got a chance though, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d hate every single moment, but of course I’d support her,” Hen said with a smile.

Buck sighed. “You really think we’ll be able to help Bobby?”

“We’ll be able to offer help,” Hen said slowly. “Whether he takes that help, that’s his decision. I’m hopeful he’ll take it, but we really don’t know a lot about him so it’s difficult to say.”

“We’ll just need to not give up,” Buck said. “And get to know him.”

Hen sighed, a little envious of Buck’s youthful eternal hope. “Yeah.”

She suspected he’d demand they make some plans for Bobby and how to help him, but before she could wonder how to distract him from a question that she had no answer for, the bell rang. A moment later the speakers in the loft crackled and dispatch announced a caved-in floor at a wedding.

Hen made a face as she rushed down the stairs closely followed by Buck. A call like that would take hours to work and would once more come with too many people injured and dead. Hen had hoped after the plane crash that they would be spared another call like that for at least a little while.

***

Karen came home after an exhaustingly long day at work. She knew Denny would already be in bed and she always hated missing his nighttime routine. She had never been able to understand how Hen managed to skip that part of Denny’s day so regularly, but it had probably been something Hen had prepared herself for ever since she had known about Denny.

This time Karen had lost a whole Saturday with her son, and she hated it. But the previous day one of their experiments had gone very wrong and it had become clear right away that there had to be a mistake in the initial data they had used to plan the experiment. At the moment they were running on a tight schedule, so Karen’s whole team had sacrificed their Saturday to find the mistake.

Hen sat on the couch, holding an envelope in her hand and staring at it so intently that she didn’t even notice Karen. Karen watched her wife with raised brows and dropped her work backpack by the door. She sat down beside Hen and wasn’t surprised when she jumped as soon as Karen put a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re home?” Hen asked, blinking confused.

“I’ve been home for a couple of minutes,” Karen said slowly. “But you were clearly absorbed in thought.”

Hen sighed deeply and gave Karen the envelope, which she took without a word. It wasn’t opened yet, Hen’s name and their address were printed on the front and the return address said it came from the California Institution for Women. It took Karen a long moment to remember what that was.

“This is from Eva?” Karen asked.

Hen exhaled slowly. “Probably. I haven’t opened it yet, so I can’t be sure. But I don’t know who else would write to me from prison. I don’t know why she’d suddenly write to me.”

“Did she ever write to you before?”

“No!” Hen huffed and gave Karen a look. “I wouldn’t keep that from you. I gave you that promise twice and I’d never break it!”

Karen smiled sadly. She suspected Eva would always be a sore spot for both of them. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry, baby.”

“The last time I had any contact with Eva was the week before Denny was born, when she tried to dictate what we should name him.” Hen shook her head and pulled her lips between her teeth.

“There’s just one way to find out what she wants,” Karen said and held the envelope out to Hen.

But Hen shook her head. “We could also just throw the whole thing away.”

Karen chuckled sadly. “No, we really can’t. We are also going to make an appointment with Mark, show him this letter, and figure out if there is anything we should or could do legally to protect our family from her.”

Hen frowned. “You think that’s necessary?”

She sounded weak and uncertain, something that Karen was very used to whenever Eva came up. Luckily, that didn’t happen often anymore. When Eva had been pregnant with Denny, she had been a topic between Hen and Karen nearly weekly, not least because she had demanded a lot of Hen’s time during those months. Eva was a difficult topic for Hen, and Karen knew there were still some unresolved feelings and misplaced guilt stuck in Hen’s head.

Karen had hoped they’d have a few more years before Eva became a thorn in their side again. She would eventually be released from prison, but Karen had spent years telling herself that that was far in the future.

Hen sighed deeply and nodded. “Yeah, okay. You’re probably right.”

She took the envelope back and opened it, her fingers shaking slightly. Karen put a hand on Hen’s thigh and squeezed reassuringly while Hen unfolded the paper.

“‘My dear Hen’,” Hen read aloud and huffed. “Yeah, fuck you, Eva. I’m not your dear anything anymore.”

Karen chuckled and leaned against her wife. “I’m sure she knows that just as well as we do. Which doesn’t stop her from dreaming of a different reality.”

Hen huffed and continued reading, “‘It’s been quite some time since we’ve last seen each other. More than a year, I think.’” Hen growled lightly. “Make that seven years! What the hell is this?”

Karen sighed and pulled Hen into a hug. “We both know how manipulative Eva is. That right there is a pretty obvious manipulation.”

“Why would she pretend I ever visited her?” Hen asked.

Karen sighed, wondering where Hen’s confidence in dealing with Eva had vanished to over the past years. It had been Hen who had taught her everything about the way Eva manipulated the people around her. Karen had never met Eva herself, only knew about her through Hen. There had been times when she had clearly missed whatever she had once had with Eva, but most of the time Hen had been very disillusioned about everything Eva did and was angry about her ongoing attempts to manipulate her.

“Probably in case I opened this letter for some reason,” Karen murmured. “Or to eventually gaslight you into believing there was some kind of contact since Denny’s birth. Maybe both.”

Hen swallowed audibly. “We should’ve just burned this fucking letter.”

Karen sighed and pressed a kiss against the spot under Hen’s ear. “No. We need to know what she wants. Should I read it?”

Hen shook her head and took a deep breath. “No, I’m good. ‘It’s been quite some time since we’ve seen each other. More than a year, I think. How are you? How is Diesel? I miss knowing about your life, knowing about our son’s life, miss hearing your voice or even just seeing your handwriting. I know you don’t want her to become suspicious and that you need her help while I’m stuck here, but I wish it didn’t mean so few letters and visits from you.’”

Karen huffed. “She’s laying it on thick, huh?”

Hen continued reading without comment, “‘I’ve worked hard on me. I promised you I’d get clean, and I know you were horribly disappointed when I couldn’t keep that promise after giving birth. Being separated from our son without being allowed to hold him even once hurt so much. And for a while, I turned to drugs to deal with the pain of being separated from both of you.’”

Hen paused and shook her head. “Bullshit. You didn’t want to hold or even see Denny! I spoke with the nurse who brought Denny to me.”

“More lies and manipulations,” Karen said.

“Yeah.” Hen cleared her throat. “‘I’ve been completely clean for four years now. And in that time, I’ve worked hard on myself. One day I’ll get out of here and I know I’ll need to be able to support you and Diesel once that day comes. I’ve taken classes and my teachers here are full of praise for me. Two of them have promised to help me find a job once I’m going to be released.

“‘I’d really like to see you, my heart. It has been such a long time and I’m not even sure I remember what your voice sounds like anymore. Please come and visit me soon? There are some things we need to talk about that I don’t feel comfortable putting in a letter. I really need to see you. Always yours, love, Eva.’”

“Wow,” Karen muttered. “What a load of crap.”

“It’s been seven years, why’d she want to see me now?” Hen asked with a frown. “Why this sudden contact after so many years? And why pretend there has been contact all along?”

“Probably to make me angry at you,” Karen said. “Because she has no idea about our relationship. She probably doesn’t even know we’re married, right?”

“I don’t know who’d have told her,” Hen murmured. She threw the letter on the table. “Clearly no one told her that we didn’t go with the name she wanted for Denny.”

“Or she knows and chose to ignore it.”

Hen made a face. “Yeah, that’s possible.”

“Mark might be able to find out if anything is going on with Eva,” Karen said. “Which is one reason why we’ll meet with him. It might be that she’s just trying to push herself back into your life.”

Hen sighed deeply and rubbed her hands over her face. “Which you thought from the very beginning would be the case.”

Karen bit her lip. This wasn’t a moment for an ‘I told you so’, but she had feared Eva would do exactly that. It had been Karen’s biggest fear in the beginning when Hen had brought up adopting Eva’s child. Their relationship had been so new, and Hen was so clearly still hanging onto something with Eva despite her anger at her. Back then, when Eva had demanded Hen visit her so frequently while she had been pregnant, Karen had often wondered if eventually their relationship would break from the stress and the obstacles Eva would put in their way.

Over the years, Karen had grown out of her fear that Eva would swoop in and snatch her family away because Hen and she had worked hard on building a strong relationship where they could trust each other. Karen had never once regretted agreeing to adopt Denny from the very first moment she met him. But she had still made it a condition for Hen that they go to couple’s therapy and that Hen go to individual therapy to work through everything she had experienced with Eva.

“But why now?” Hen asked. “There are still some years left on her sentence, I think.”

Karen shrugged. “I don’t think speculating about that will do us any good.”

Hen sighed. “You’re probably right. I’m not going to visit her. No matter what Mark says, no matter if that might be the only chance to find out what she truly wants.”

Karen couldn’t even put into words how relieved she was about that decision. And at least for the moment she also didn’t want to share that relief with Hen.

For a little while Karen just held onto her wife as they sat there in silence. Hen kept staring at the letter, back stiff and overcome by small shivers from time to time. Eventually, Karen stood and gathered letter and envelope from the table. They had a binder for everything concerning Eva high on the top shelf of the bookcase where Denny couldn’t reach. Karen filed the letter away in the binder and made a note in her phone to remind her to call Mark’s office the next morning.

“The letter arrived nearly two weeks ago,” Hen admitted quietly, watching Karen warily. “I didn’t want to deal with it, so I shoved it among some other paperwork so you wouldn’t see it. Because I knew you’d make me deal with it.”

Karen chuckled. She had noticed both the date on the postmark as well as the date Eva had written on top of the letter, so Hen’s confession wasn’t a surprise. “What made you change your mind today?”

Hen sighed and lowered her gaze. “Bobby didn’t show up for the start of our shift.”

“Is he alright?” Karen asked in alarm.

“Yeah, more or less.” Hen nodded slowly and sighed. “After that plane crash, he apparently fell off the wagon. Buck and I found him unconscious in his apartment. An apartment that doesn’t look lived in at all.”

“Oh,” Karen exhaled slowly and sat down beside Hen again.

“We dragged him into his shower and woke him up,” Hen whispered. “He said he’d been sober for 18 months. Five hundred and something days. I forgot the exact number. Anyway, when he asked for help, I realized that that’s something Eva had never done.”

Karen made a face. The parallel Hen had drawn was one she really wasn’t all that comfortable with.

“Anyway, I called Bobby’s sponsor and set some ground rules about providing the help he asked for,” Hen said. “Bobby wasn’t fit to work, so he called in sick. I told him it would be the only time I’d support the excuse he came up with, that if he was ever under the influence of any drug again while on shift, I’d report his ass.”

“That’s very generous of you,” Karen said hesitantly. She trusted Bobby every day with her wife’s life, and now she had to wonder if he deserved that trust.

“I don’t want to deal with yet another captain!” Hen said agitatedly. “For the most part, he is a really good captain! The plane crash was hard on all of us. I’m not surprised someone in Bobby’s situation would relapse. He mentioned that he has children and a wife, but they’re not here in LA with him. I think that he doesn’t really have a support system here other than his sponsor.”

“You’re gonna help him create one,” Karen said.

“I’ll try, at least.”

Karen swallowed and wondered how much of that was about Eva instead of not wanting to get a new captain.

“I kind of invited Bobby and Buck and Bobby’s sponsor to meet here soon,” Hen said hastily. “To make some plans about how to help Bobby.”

“We’ll need to arrange a play date for Denny,” Karen said. “I don’t want to have him in the house for that kind of conversation.”

Hen nodded. “Yeah.” She looked at Karen with a sheepish smile. “I might have already called around his friends to see if he can spend the afternoon with one of them the day after tomorrow. Samira’s mom was happy to agree to those plans.”

Karen chuckled and kissed Hen’s temple. “Great. Can I be here for this or should I stay away?”

“I’d like you to be here,” Hen said softly and laced their fingers together. “As the first step of that support system we’re going to build. Also, I went by Bobby’s place in the morning after my shift and we talked some about all of this. He gave me permission to share all of this with you.”

“That’s good,” Karen murmured. “I don’t have any experiments or meetings scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I’ll try to work from home that day. After today’s overtime, it really shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Thank you,” Hen whispered and took Karen’s hand. “There is still dinner waiting for you in the kitchen, we’ll just need to reheat it.”

“We ordered pizza once it became clear we’d had to go through that whole dataset again,” Karen admitted. “We were all so frustrated once we had an idea where the mistake might be and what kind of work we’d need to put in to prove it. But we also knew we needed to find it today, otherwise we’d have to reschedule all the experiments for next week! It was one big mess!”

Hen chuckled. “Sounds like you very much needed that pizza. Let’s put your dinner in the fridge then. But you’ll have to eat it tomorrow so you can give Denny feedback on his emerging cooking skills. He cleaned and cut the potatoes and bell peppers and dutifully stirred everything once it was in the pan.”

“I’m not old enough for Denny to learn how to cook by himself!” Karen complained. Denny had been insisting lately that he should help with the cooking, so they had slowly started teaching him.

Hen laughed. “I think we still have many years before he’s at that stage.”

“Decades!” Karen demanded. “We should have decades before he’s at that stage! It feels like we just brought him home the other day, and now he is suddenly learning how to handle sharp knives? That doesn’t seem right.”

Hen watched Karen with a wide grin, shaking her head. “Okay, tell me all about that mistake you chased for the whole Saturday!”

“I need wine for this,” Karen decided, and then she plunged right into sharing how they had nearly missed an error in their data that could have ruined nearly half a year’s worth of work if they’d missed it for just a couple of days longer.

 

Chapter 03

“Hen is full of praise for your cooking,” Karen said, laughing quietly. “I’m pretty sure she’s started judging my cooking more harshly since you started cooking for the 118.”

Bobby laughed and turned to look at her from his place at the stove. He had carried in a whole bunch of groceries when he had arrived with Wendall a little while ago and asked for directions to the kitchen. Karen had been startled and just pointed in the right direction. She hadn’t expected him to take over the kitchen, not even when he had asked if it was okay for him to cook in there.

“Is that something I need to apologize for?” Bobby asked.

Karen grinned. “Maybe. But what I meant to lead to is that you don’t need to cook for us today. You’re a guest.”

Bobby sighed and turned to stare into the pot on the stove again. “This … gives me something to do. Distracts me. It will make it easier to talk, I think.”

Karen nodded slowly. “Okay. That’s … I can live with that.”

They were here to help Bobby, and Karen knew that would mean he had to open up to all of them more than he might be comfortable with. She knew from Hen that Bobby really hadn’t opened up about much of anything despite fitting in very well with their crew. If Bobby needed the distraction cooking would provide to get through his nerves, Karen wouldn’t protest it any further.

“I could teach you,” Bobby suggested.

Karen huffed. “You can teach Hen, and she can cook for the family whatever you teach her. Otherwise, she’ll just have to live with my cooking when she’s home.”

“I never complain about your cooking!” Hen protested. “There is nothing to ‘live with’ about it. Your cooking is great!”

“Not as great as Bobby’s, apparently,” Karen muttered under her breath.

Hen laughed and pulled Karen into a hug, pressing a kiss against her lips. “I never said that!”

“No, but you went on for weeks about Bobby’s meals once he started cooking for your shift!”

“That’s because we never had decent meals during a shift before,” Hen said, rolling her eyes. “And especially not meals that we shared together. It changed the dynamic among all of us a lot when Bobby started insisting we eat together for at least one meal during our shift.”

“So, other stations don’t do it that way?” Buck asked as he sat down in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “Anything I can do, Bobby?”

“Not right now,” Bobby said.

“I’ve never seen it when I picked up extra shifts at other stations,” Hen said. “For the longest time not even the other two shifts at the 118 followed Bobby’s example. They only started around the time you joined our team because they had become jealous of what they saw from Bobby.”

Buck made a face. “So, it’s better not to take extra shifts at other houses?”

“No, you should definitely volunteer to cover extra shifts if you have the opportunity,” Bobby said and sent Buck a look. “You’ll get different experiences there, and that will do you some good.”

“And you’ll build connections with other people in the LAFD, too,” Hen said. “And that’ll come in handy eventually when you’re looking for someone to cover one of your shifts someday.”

“I’m just really comfortable with our shift,” Buck murmured, lowering his gaze.

“That’s great, kid,” Bobby said. “And a compliment I’m sure everyone appreciates. But you still need different experiences and should take any opportunity to get those.”

“Have you been taking extra shifts at other houses since you came to LA, Bobby?” Wendall asked from his place at the table where he was nursing his tea. So far, he had mostly been a silent observer.

Bobby huffed. “It’s a little different for a captain than for other people. The LAFD prefers to temporarily promote people from inside the house as interim captains instead of bringing someone in from the outside. Only if there is no one who wants to or has the necessary qualifications will they put someone else on that shift as captain. So, there haven’t been many chances for me to take on extra shifts. I think it’s happened twice since I came to LA.”

“What have you been doing on your days off?” Hen asked, and the way the tension shifted in the whole room immediately showed Karen that everyone knew they had now reached the reason they were gathered here.

Bobby shrugged. “For a long time, I’d drive through the city or walk through certain parts of the town. Having all of you laugh about my lack of knowledge about LA traffic once was bad enough.”

Hen grinned. “We only laughed because you didn’t believe us! We did warn you!”

“I remember,” Bobby said with a huff.

“I’ve been to a lot of places,” Buck said, his fingers tapping nervously against the table. “I think the only place where I had to fight with traffic in a similar way to here was New York. But I was only passing through with no intention of staying there. I nearly went to look at fire departments elsewhere halfway through the academy because the traffic was getting on my last nerve!”

“I’m glad you decided to stay in LA, kid,” Bobby said.

“Don’t you have any hobbies you do in your time off?” Buck asked.

Bobby shrugged. “Cooking just for myself doesn’t have much of a point.”

“And when your kids come to visit you?” Buck asked.

Bobby flinched violently and inhaled deeply. Karen shared a worried look with Hen, but everyone stayed quiet, waiting for an answer from Bobby. Karen worried her lip between her teeth, wondering how long it had been since Bobby had seen his kids and if his addiction had cost him his rights to see them.

“They’re dead,” Bobby said eventually, so quietly it was nearly inaudible, and Karen’s heart broke.

“I’m so sorry,” Buck murmured, pale and wide-eyed.

Hen patted his shoulder but watched Bobby’s back carefully. “I’m sorry for your loss, too, Bobby.”

Wendall cleared his throat. “Thank you for sharing that with us.”

Bobby stayed quiet and turned to the vegetables on the counter to start cleaning and cutting them. He was careful to keep his back to them at all times and Karen felt utterly helpless as she watched him work with shaking hands. She had only met Bobby a couple of times before today, and while her instinct was to gather him in a hug to comfort him, she suspected such a gesture wouldn’t be welcome from a near stranger.

“Is that the reason for…” Buck waved his hand.

Bobby huffed. “No. The alcohol and pills are the reason they’re dead.”

Karen turned to look at Hen. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so out of depth.

“The fire was ruled accidental,” Wendall said quietly. “You showed me your copy of the report, Bobby. And I read it very thoroughly. The space heater was faulty and not a single safety measure in that building was up to date. Half of them didn’t work at all.”

Bobby threw the knife on the counter and turned to glare at Wendall. “I left that space heater running because I was too high to think about it! And then I locked myself out because I was too high to remember to take my keys! The fire wouldn’t have happened without me!”

“And this accidental fire would have never been as devastating as it was if the owners of that building hadn’t cut corners, starting with the materials used in the construction,” Wendall said, surprisingly calm. “If the fire alarms had worked as intended, people could have evacuated long before the fire was bad enough to trap them. If the fire suppression system had worked, the fire would never have gotten as bad as it was in the end. If the fuses in that apartment had worked as they should’ve, the fire would never have started in the first place. Those things are all things you had no hand in. You couldn’t have known that all of those things were faulty in that apartment building.”

“Those are things a normal tenant wouldn’t notice not being up to building standards,” Hen said softly. “A fire marshal inspecting the building would have seen parts of the building a normal tenant would never get to. And they’d have to run tests to see if those things worked, they wouldn’t just know they didn’t work from walking through the building. You had no chance to see they weren’t working, Bobby.”

“The fire wouldn’t have ever started without me!” Bobby said again through gritted teeth.

“That’s the number in your book,” Buck whispered, face pale and hands shaking.

Bobby flinched and turned his head away, grabbing the edge of the counter tightly.

“What are you talking about?” Wendall asked.

“Bobby has a notebook with a list of numbers in it,” Buck said quietly, staring at Bobby as if he was seeing him for the first time. “It has 148 numbers in it. And a list of names of people he saved, I think. I recognized the last two names on that list. You’re counting how many people you’ve saved. What are you going to do once you have saved as many people as were lost in that fire?”

Bobby shook his head and turned away from them, continuing to cut the vegetables. Karen suddenly wasn’t sure she would be able to eat whatever Bobby was cooking, no matter how good it was. After this revelation, she wasn’t sure she would be able to eat anything for the rest of the day. She couldn’t imagine how Bobby had managed not to drown himself in alcohol until he wouldn’t wake up anymore with the crushing guilt of feeling at fault for so many people’s deaths, especially as his children had clearly been among those victims. Karen was pretty sure she knew the answer to Buck’s question.

“Are you seeing a therapist, Bobby?” Hen asked quietly.

“I’m going to meetings,” Bobby said through gritted teeth. “Nearly every day I’m not on shift.”

Karen looked first at Hen then at Wendall. “That’s a good start to manage your addiction,” she said slowly, not sure about where the line she shouldn’t cross with Bobby was. She barely knew him, but maybe that meant she was allowed to say more than Hen and Buck, or maybe even Wendall. “But that’s not a place where you can … work through that trauma, Bobby.”

“There is nothing to work through,” Bobby said darkly. Karen was sure she wasn’t the only one to hear ‘I don’t deserve to work through it’ in his words.

“It’s a horrible thing what happened,” Buck whispered. “But you deserve to … keep living your life, Bobby. And to learn to enjoy your life again.”

Bobby shook his head silently.

“Buck is right,” Wendall said. “You deserve more than your life being nothing but work and penance.”

“And that means doing something in your free time you enjoy,” Hen said softly. “Take up some of your old hobbies again. Make friends outside of work. Find people who can become part of your support system here in LA. You said you had been sober for 18 months. That means you see something worthwhile in being sober.”

“Being drunk or high only means endangering people again,” Bobby muttered. “And potentially losing my job.”

“That sounds like something worthwhile,” Karen said. It might not be the most positive thing, and his focus on his job probably came from his self-imposed task to save as many people as he felt he had killed, but it was a beginning. From there they’d somehow find a way to help Bobby find some joy in his life again now that they knew how much he needed it.

“How many of the touristy things have you already done around here?” Buck asked. “Because I have a whole list, but somehow I never get to start working through it. Most of those things would be strange to do alone, right? Who goes to a place like the Santa Monica Pier by themselves?”

“I’m not much for amusement parks,” Bobby said.

Karen eyed Buck. “And I don’t want to rain on your parade, Buck, but you’ll be too tall for half those rides.”

Buck grinned. “Still leaves the other half, though!”

“You could take Denny during the next school break,” Hen said. “Gives Karen and me a day for ourselves, and you wouldn’t need to go alone.”

Buck grinned brightly. “That sounds like a great idea!”

“Only if you promise not to win any of those huge stuffed animals!” Karen said immediately. “You look like the kind of person who’d figure out how those games are rigged and how to beat them.”

Buck laughed. “I worked at a carnival once for a couple of months. You are right, I made it my goal to learn how the games are rigged! I don’t make any promises about huge stuffed animals. If Denny asks for it, I’ll do my best to help him win one.”

Karen glared at Hen. “This was your idea, you’ll deal with it!”

Hen laughed and shrugged, turning back to Bobby. “Okay, the Santa Monica Pier is out for you, Bobby. But there are a lot of other things to see and experience here. Have you done any of those?”

Bobby shook his head. “I always preferred to visit the places tourists usually don’t see.”

Hen grinned. “Karen and I can come up with a list of places you have to see and experience as someone living here now. Wendall can probably add some things, too.” She turned to him. “You’re from here, right?”

Wendall laughed. “I can add my wisdom to complete that list, yes.”

“Do you surf, Bobby?” Buck asked.

Bobby huffed. “I’m from Minnesota!”

“So, that’s a no?” Buck frowned. “You could still try it out.”

“Minnesota probably means he is into hockey,” Karen suggested.

“Probably not much luck with that around here,” Buck said with a frown.

“We do have some ice-skating rinks in the area,” Wendall said.

“I’m not sure I’d trust those,” Bobby said. “You people here don’t know what ice or cold is.”

“Winter is plenty cold here,” Hen muttered.

Buck laughed. “You need to go someplace that has snow at least once during winter before you’re allowed to make that kind of judgment, Hen.”

“I’m very happy with a snowless life!” Hen said and made a face, shuddering.

“Hen has successfully avoided any winter holiday my parents keep inviting us to,” Karen said, amused. “Denny wouldn’t know what snow was if it weren’t for my parents regularly taking him with them on their ski vacations. Because you won’t get Hen anywhere near snow if she can avoid it.”

“I’m convinced humans weren’t made to live in snow!” Hen said.

Buck laughed. “I fully agree! And I spent my whole childhood and teenage years in a place where we had snow very regularly. I’ll be happy to never see snow again!”

Bobby turned to look at Buck as if he had lost his mind. “Did you get hit on the head on a call and not tell anyone?”

“Snow sucks, Bobby!” Buck insisted.

Karen chuckled and carefully prodded the conversation back to a place where they talked about things Bobby could do in his free time and those that they could do together with him. Bobby remained reluctant for most of the conversation, though he eventually caved and started talking about hobbies he’d once had. When Bobby mentioned hiking Buck’s whole face lit up, and there were a couple of other things Karen carefully made a note of to come back to.

An hour later they all sat around the kitchen table, enjoying Bobby’s delicious meal — fried pasta with an assortment of vegetables Karen couldn’t all identify. While eating, Karen decided that she might ask Bobby to teach her some of his cooking, after all. Hen clearly hadn’t exaggerated about his talent and knowledge in the kitchen.

The conversation had flowed naturally from one topic to another. For a while, they had talked about plans for how Bobby could handle reaching out to any of them the next time he was overcome by the urge to seek out alcohol or drugs, but they had moved on from that before Karen truly felt comfortable with the solutions they had come up with. It would be a work in progress for some time and it was better not to make too many plans at once, Wendall had assured her in a whisper while Buck and Bobby had been busy with the final preparations for the meal and Wendall helped Karen set the table.

“The plane crash was tough for everyone,” Hen said. “I’ve been struggling with what we saw there for the past couple of days. It might be a good idea to ask everyone who was there to make a couple of appointments with department therapists. Barely anyone will do that unless you tell them to, Bobby. You know how they all are about going to therapy after tough calls.”

“I don’t know if that’s necessary,” Buck muttered into his food, staring down at his plate.

“You just went to see a therapist,” Hen said softly. “Didn’t that help you deal with losing Devon?”

Buck rolled his eyes. “Maybe. Probably not all that much. I mean, I’m really trying to not sleep around so much anymore. And I’ve been good the last couple of weeks!” He threw a wary look at Bobby saying that. “If I want to have sex, Tinder is an easier and faster way than setting up another appointment with Dr. Wells.”

Karen had to swallow hastily so she wouldn’t choke on her food in reaction to that statement. She stared at Buck wide-eyed.

“You slept with Dr. Wells?” Bobby asked, his voice hoarse.

Buck flinched a little and Karen thought he had probably misunderstood Bobby’s harsh tone and shaking voice.

“I remember your whole lecture about disrespecting women with my behavior,” Buck bit out.

Karen turned to glare at Bobby and found him staring at Buck, pale and mouth agape. She suddenly understood why Buck might have misunderstood Bobby’s reaction. Karen wondered about it herself now, though she was still pretty sure Bobby had sounded worried for Buck rather than angry at him.

“I deleted Tinder that same day!” Buck continued, sounding defensive. “And I’ve been good except for that moment with Dr. Wells!” He huffed. “All I meant to say is that therapy clearly is really not helpful for the problems I have. And now I realize I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all.”

With that, Buck stood and practically fled through the door to the backyard.

Karen stood and took a deep breath. “I’m going to take care of Buck.” She pointed a finger at Bobby. “And you get your head out of your ass. Whatever you said in that lecture to Buck, I don’t even need to hear the details to know you were out of line!”

Karen didn’t wait for a reaction from anyone before she followed Buck. She found him standing at the corner of the house, but on the wrong side of the yard to leave. The gate in the fence was on the other side of the house, but people unfamiliar with their property always turned to the side with the garage to find the gate.

Karen stopped beside Buck, far enough away she hoped he wouldn’t feel crowded. “How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know why I’m suddenly this angry,” Buck murmured with a deep frown.

“I might have an idea,” Karen said softly. “If you would like to hear it.”

Buck shrugged.

“Whatever happened in that therapy session, it wasn’t your fault,” Karen said, watching Buck carefully. “You aren’t the one who made a mistake there. Dr. Wells violated your trust and used your vulnerability against you. I’m not surprised you feel angry about that.”

Buck huffed and rolled his eyes. “She didn’t. You don’t know me, how I am.”

Karen chuckled sadly. “You’ve been with the 118 for five months now, right? Don’t tell me you’ve missed how much of a gossip my wife is!”

For a tiny moment, a grin flashed over Buck’s face.

Karen nodded. “Believe me when I tell you I know all about you taking the ladder truck out on a prolonged joy ride when you were sent out alone on a maintenance run. I know you enjoy sex and aren’t quiet about that.”

“Bobby’s not the first one to tell me I enjoy it too much,” Buck muttered.

“Did he really say your behavior was disrespectful to women?” Karen asked.

Buck shrugged. “Yeah. The second time I was sent out with the ladder truck and took the opportunity to get laid.”

“That’s a load of bullshit,” Karen said. “Having sex with a consenting adult is neither disrespecting them nor anyone else. But some people think sex is something that shouldn’t be casually enjoyed, that shouldn’t be sought out just for the joy of it. I don’t know Bobby’s background, but from his age alone it’s very likely he grew up learning exactly that. I think it’s bullshit. As long as you and your partner enjoyed the sex it’s perfectly fine to engage in it.”

“Yeah, but I clearly have a problem with it,” Buck whispered. “I mean, I couldn’t even say no to it in a therapy session.”

“Did you want to say no?” Karen asked quietly, holding her breath.

“I should’ve, right?” Buck asked, rubbing a hand over his arm and turning his head away. “That wasn’t what I was there for. So, I should’ve told her no.”

Karen swallowed, wondering how to continue with this conversation. It felt like she was on dangerous territory where a single wrong word could cause even more damage than the whole ordeal had clearly already caused Buck.

“What do you think would have happened if you said no?” Karen asked after a moment.

Buck just shrugged.

“You clearly think it would happen again if you returned to that therapist,” Karen said. She bit her tongue to not add that something like that wouldn’t happen. This Dr. Wells needed to be reported, but that was clearly something Buck didn’t recognize yet.

Buck stayed silent once more and looked as if he was working through something. So she left him to his silence, standing quietly beside him and turning to the part of the backyard Buck was studying in his musings. She frowned at the yard work she saw looming in every corner, and wondered if Buck noticed those imperfections, too.

“I don’t know if I wanted to say no,” Buck whispered eventually. “I-I barely remember how we got there. One moment she was across from me, then she sat in front of me touching my knee, and I asked her if she had friended me on Facebook because it was bothering me that her face seemed so familiar. Then she was in my lap. And then, after, she suddenly got horribly agitated, talking about how we shouldn’t have done it and that I needed to leave immediately. I tried to reassure her, but I don’t know.”

Karen exhaled slowly. For her, that sounded as if Dr. Wells had experience with approaching her patients in this way. Buck had clearly picked up a vibe from his insistence that it would happen again if he returned to her, even if he didn’t seem to understand what a part of him had already recognized.

“Two days later I got an email from her, suggesting a follow-up meeting to our last appointment. And I really couldn’t do it. So, I ignored it. And hoped she wouldn’t push it or tell Bobby I wasn’t fit for duty after all.”

Karen huffed. That was probably exactly the reason Buck hadn’t dared or even thought about saying no in the first place. “Yeah, you’re not going back to see that person again. We’re going to report her and, at the very least, she should lose her license by the end of that.”

Buck turned to her with a frown. “What?”

Karen smiled sadly. “Buck. It’s illegal in California for a therapist to be intimate with their patient. Even outside of a therapy session, but especially during an appointment.”

“I didn’t say no,” Buck said.

Karen sighed. “That really doesn’t matter. You were in a vulnerable situation with her, you were her patient. You were in a situation where she had all the power. By the law of this state that takes away your ability to consent to any kind of intimate contact with her.”

Buck inhaled shakily. “I’m not … I didn’t…” He shook his head, and the way he watched her was so desperate that it broke Karen’s heart.

“What you said earlier makes me believe you haven’t had any sex since that appointment,” Karen said slowly, keeping a careful eye on Buck’s reaction. “When you very much enjoyed sex before that. And I don’t think that has much to do with whatever lecture Bobby gave you.”

Buck bit his lip and lowered his gaze.

“Am I wrong?”

Buck shook his head. “I … I had phone sex yesterday, but that … No, you’re right. That felt strange.”

Karen raised her brows. “Oh, really?” she asked curiously. “Sounds like a little bit of an adventure.”

Buck rolled his eyes.

“No, really! I’m curious now!” Karen said.

“You want to know about my sex life, really?” Buck asked confused.

“I love gossiping with people about their sex life! Or mine if they want to listen.”

“I’m pretty sure Hen would murder me in my sleep if I said I wanted to listen,” Buck murmured. “And we share a bunkroom on shift. She wouldn’t even have to break into my home to do it!”

Karen laughed. “Maybe. But I had a life before Hen and I’m happy to share my memories.”

Buck watched her for a moment, then he sighed. “I’ve been talking on the phone with this woman. Abby. She’s a dispatcher and got my phone number during a call when I didn’t have a radio. So, she called after Devon because she was worried about me, I guess. And then a little later she asked me out on a date. But I … It’s nice talking to her. And I didn’t want to ruin it. So, we kept talking on the phone. Until her mom went missing yesterday. She’s got late-stage Alzheimer’s, and Abby came home from an exhausting shift, forgot to lock her door, and when she woke up her mom was gone.”

“Oh.” Karen frowned worriedly. “Did she find her?”

Buck nodded. “Eventually. But first, she sent the missing person poster to her whole contact list. So, I went over to her place and helped her search for her mom. We talked about a lot of things during that time. Someone else found her mom and brought her to a hospital, actually. And then Abby was alerted about it. So, when I was back at my place, I thought about a couple of the things she’d said and thought maybe phone sex might be a good way to help her relax. So, I called her. And I’m pretty sure she enjoyed it. That’s the important part there, right?”

“I think you enjoying it would’ve been just as important,” Karen said softly.

Buck frowned and shrugged. “I did in the moment. But later it was … strange.”

“Do you see the point I’m trying to make?” Karen asked quietly. “Therapy is there to help you. During that appointment, she should’ve talked with you about Devon, about how you felt about the rescue during that moment and afterward, she should’ve talked you through possible coping mechanisms to deal with what you were feeling and what you were struggling with. None of that happened. Instead, she made you feel even worse.”

And took away one of his coping mechanisms, Karen thought. But she didn’t feel she was in a position to bring that up with Buck. Maybe, if she managed to get to know this young man, she would be in a position to discuss that part with him in a couple of months.

“Have you ever been to therapy?” Buck asked.

“A couple of times,” Karen nodded. “When my great aunt died because she had without question been the most influential person during my childhood. And before that when I gave up on my dream of becoming an astronaut, because I couldn’t live a lie and I was so angry that being a lesbian somehow made me even more unfit to become an astronaut than being a woman or being Black. And I was already angry about those two things somehow making me less in so many people’s minds. So, my great aunt dragged my ass to therapy.”

Buck stared at her and blinked.

“It helped, every single time,” Karen continued. “It was difficult and there was a lot of work included, but it did help. But not a single time did any of the therapists I saw touch me for more than a handshake in greeting. Sometimes not even that. Not even when part of the therapy was some exercise. One time I did yoga during my appointments, and while my therapist instructed me in the exercises, she never touched me. Correcting my poses was left to the yoga instructor I saw a little later. Because the exercise during therapy wasn’t about doing everything right but about giving my brain something different to focus on while I worked through some emotions and thoughts.”

Buck swallowed audibly, his shoulders hanging down and his fists tightly clasping the hem of his sweater. This was a very different problem they had to deal with than what Karen had expected when they had invited over Bobby, Wendall, and Buck, but she was determined to help this young man in front of her who looked so utterly lost. Even if she needed to have a word with Bobby and maybe even Hen first to pull their heads out of their asses concerning some of the issues.

Chapter 04

The kitchen was eerily silent for nearly a minute after Karen followed Buck into the backyard. Hen stared at Bobby and tried to make sense of what they had just learned from Buck. She didn’t know if she was more shocked about what Buck had revealed about his therapist or about his clear lack of trust in Bobby’s reaction.

“What did you tell Buck?” Hen asked eventually. “In that lecture he mentioned, I mean?”

Bobby sighed and shook his head. “I had to tell him some harsh truths about his behavior. How can I expect you or other women he works with to trust him if he doesn’t know how to show respect to women in general?”

“Bullshit!” Hen snapped. “That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard, Bobby!”

“He uses women whenever he has an opportunity!” Bobby said, lowering his gaze to Hen. “You can’t tell me it doesn’t grate on your trust in him when he spends every call flirting with a different woman and then goes and hooks up with them the first chance he gets.”

“And you think those women are just so overwhelmed by Buck they don’t dare to say no?” Hen asked. “If you had really watched Buck when he flirts on calls, you’d have noticed he’s always doing it to distract our victims from their situation and help them relax a little.”

Bobby frowned and shook his head. Hen had suspected before that Bobby probably didn’t notice that Buck flirted pretty indiscriminately. Bobby was clearly the kind of person who just didn’t notice that kind of thing no matter how obvious it was as long as it wasn’t pointed out to him directly. She had to bite her lip not to point that out, though. It wasn’t her place.

“And Buck always knows when to back off if the victim isn’t responding to it in a positive way that would help us,” Hen continued. “He also backs off if they’re too enthusiastic about it because he knows that wouldn’t help us either.”

Bobby made a face. “He stole the ladder truck a second time and went back to the snake lady!”

Hen raised her brows. “We really need to stop claiming that.”

“What?” Bobby frowned.

“That Buck stole the ladder truck,” Hen said. “It was a joke to rile him up when it happened, but somehow we all seem to have forgotten that he really didn’t steal it. Johnson sent him out to do a maintenance run by himself after working on the engine, both times. As if that makes any sense.”

Bobby made a face and inclined his head.

“You reprimanded Johnson for that in private, but you reprimanded Buck in public in front of everyone. I’m not sure if he is even aware that Johnson got reprimanded for it at all or that he shouldn’t have told Buck to take the ladder for a drive to check if there was still a strange sound. But somehow it feels like everyone, including you, has forgotten that Buck didn’t really steal the ladder truck, he just prolonged the drive while it was offline anyway for maintenance.”

“He still went to have sex while on shift,” Bobby said.

Hen shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, and none of the rest of us has ever done that before.”

Bobby sent her an appalled look that told her he actually might never have done that.

Hen laughed and shook her head. It probably wasn’t the right time to discuss that part with him in depth. “Why do you think having sex between consenting and eager partners is a bad thing, Bobby? Buck’s not disrespectful to anyone with that. Women enjoy sex, too, you know? Women enjoy sex for the sake of sex without any attachment. There are a lot of women who deliberately seek out that kind of sex.”

Bobby huffed. “I know that!”

“So, act like it,” Hen said with raised brows. “Don’t tell someone who provided those women with what they’re looking for that he doesn’t respect them. I’ve seen Buck be disrespectful of someone or something several times, but that never had anything to do with how he treats women when he flirts with them. He is always really sensitive to how they react and is careful to respect any boundaries that are set. Extrapolating from that, I’d bet he isn’t ever disrespectful of them when he has sex with them either.”

Bobby frowned and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Buck clearly expects you to blame him for what happened during his therapy appointment,” Hen said, watching him carefully.

Bobby flinched. “Yeah, I saw that.”

“That’s a pretty huge way for your lecture to backfire,” Hen said darkly.

Silence followed that statement until Wendall asked, “What will happen regarding that therapist now?”

Bobby sighed. “I’ll have to report her. From there it depends on some things. How much Buck will cooperate with any kind of investigation, for example.”

“Right now, I don’t think he’ll understand that it’s not him being investigated,” Hen said. “And that’s not all on you, Bobby.”

She knew that her own behavior hadn’t been much better. Chimney and Hen had often teased Buck about his hookups, and even his lack thereof later on when he hadn’t mentioned any for a while. She made a face when she realized that she didn’t even remember how it had started, and how much they all might have egged Buck on to talk about it while they were on shift. It clearly hadn’t helped Buck to feel comfortable coming to any of them when he had needed help.

“Most of our society teaches us that a man can’t be the victim of a woman, especially not concerning sexual assault,” Wendall said. “I’d assume that’s more the problem here than Bobby’s opinion about casual sex.”

Bobby bit his lip and frowned. “I should probably talk to Buck.”

“Yes,” Hen agreed. “Tell him you’ll report Dr. Wells. And maybe give him a chance to do it himself. But not right now. I think Karen needs a little time to get him to a point where he won’t misunderstand everything you say on principle, Bobby.”

“He’s good at turning anything around and claiming it’s his fault,” Bobby murmured.

Hen nodded. That was really one of the first things they had learned about their new probie, right after the fact that he was all too happy to take stupid risks to save others even if that put him in danger. “Makes you wonder about his family, right? Especially as he never talks about them.”

Bobby rubbed a hand over his mouth. “I messed up.”

“We all did,” Hen said softly. “All we can do now is put in the work to make it right. I didn’t lie the other day when I told you that you’re a good captain, Bobby.”

Bobby huffed and shook his head as he stood.

“I think you should give Karen some more time with Buck,” Hen said.

“Yeah,” Bobby nodded. “But I need some time to myself.”

Hen bit her lip and watched him warily, then she nodded. “Sure. The living room is yours. Wendall and I can take care of cleaning up here. Should I pack up any of the leftovers for you to take home later?”

Bobby just nodded and turned, leaving the kitchen without another word. He closed the door behind him, and when Hen turned to Wendall she found him staring after Bobby with a deep, worried frown.

“We put all the alcohol away for today,” Hen said slowly. “I didn’t want to put any kind of temptation right in front of him.”

“And that without even knowing what kind of mess we’d stumble into with your young friend,” Wendall said. “Buck’s not the only one taking on blame that’s not his to bear. He’s probably found his match in Bobby there.”

Hen made a face. “Right. And Bobby sent Buck to that therapist so that won’t be a big leap, either. Do you think this will give Bobby something to focus on or make it more likely he’ll fall off the wagon again?”

Wendall turned to her and stared at her with a look she couldn’t interpret. “I think for the moment it will give Bobby something to focus on. It’s difficult to know with him sometimes, though.”

Hen sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I figured.”

“Can I ask you something?” Wendall asked.

“Sure.” Hen shrugged.

“It is very unusual to find a colleague — or even a friend — as open regarding an addict’s recovery from the get-go,” Wendall said. “In my experience, most people react first by judging the addict when they learn about it. It takes time for them to learn what kind of support they can offer.”

“Sounds like you already know your answer,” Hen muttered. She stood and turned to the cabinet with the Tupperware so she could start sorting out the leftover food.

“Would you tell me about them?” Wendall asked.

Hen sighed. “She was my partner for six years. We lived together for four. She was an addict for all that time, but I didn’t know about it for half the time we spent together. It took me a year after we moved into the same apartment to get a clue.”

Wendall hummed. “We tend to be good at hiding. Because we are ashamed of our weakness and we know how others will react to it, how they’ll look at us once they learn about it. And, of course, because we don’t want to deal with people telling us we have to stop.”

Hen made a face. “Yeah. I really tried to help her. I told her, whatever she needed … You know what she never did, even once?”

“What?” Wendall asked.

“She never once asked for help,” Hen murmured. “I didn’t even realize it until the other day after Buck and I found Bobby and he asked for help.”

Wendall hummed.

Hen huffed and put the empty pot down with a little too much force. “For years I tried everything I could to help her find coping mechanisms so she wouldn’t go back to the drugs! And I kept failing and failing over and over again and I didn’t know why! And now I…” She shook her head and turned to Wendall. “When she pretended to go along with all the things I suggested it was just to placate me, to string me along.”

Wendall sighed. “There are those who do that, yes.”

Hen stared at him in silence for a while. Then she lowered her gaze. “For the longest time, it was a good relationship. She was there with me through some very difficult and exhausting times. I thought I had managed to be there for her just as much.” Hen shrugged with a huff. “Eventually, she started dealing. Not because she needed the money. She had a job. I had a job. It was the thrill of it all she was chasing. Until the night we were woken up by the police storming our apartment with a warrant.”

Hen swallowed and stared at the ground before her feet. “Something broke in me at that moment. She’s repeatedly accused me of…”

“Addicts are manipulators,” Wendall said softly. “Some of us are aware of it and try to overcome that habit. Others are aware of it and use it, hone it into a tool they’ll use to get their way in everything, not just with the drugs.”

Hen nodded slowly. “I know. I especially know that about her. Doesn’t make the voice in my head go away, though. The one asking what else I could’ve done, what else I could’ve given, if I shouldn’t have sacrificed even more than I already did.”

Realizing how much she had sacrificed for Eva had been a difficult road. It had started with being hit in the face by the reality that she had nearly sacrificed her relationship with Karen for Eva, followed by a slow unraveling of so many other things. Somehow, even now it was still difficult to remember all those sacrifices and how little Eva had valued any of them in the end.

“Is that the reason you’re trying to help Bobby?” Wendall asked softly. “To make up for not being able to help your ex?”

“No!” Hen shook her head. “I’m trying to help Bobby because, out of all the captains I’ve had over the past nine years, he’s the best. Even recognizing how much we all screwed up with Buck. And I think Bobby could be a good friend. I don’t want to lose that chance.”

Wendall watched her with raised brows.

“I wonder if I’m the right person to try to help, though,” Hen whispered, meeting his gaze head-on. “Because I failed once before.”

“You saved yourself when you recognized that was all you could do,” Wendall said. “At least, that is how I understood your tale. You offered help and that help wasn’t accepted because it wasn’t wanted. Not everyone wants to get a grip on their addiction. I’m sure you’ve met plenty of people through your job who didn’t want the help you offered.”

Hen swallowed. “Yeah.”

“You can’t force someone to give up drugs,” Wendall said. “If they want to, they’ll always find a way around you to get high. And in the end, that’s their choice. If you want to help Bobby, that’s the first lesson you need to remember. It’s Bobby’s choice.”

Hen inhaled sharply.

“It was your ex’s choice,” Wendall continued with a sad smile. “That’s not your fault. That doesn’t mean you didn’t love her enough or that you didn’t care enough or that you didn’t do enough. Even though she probably told you all of those things.”

“She did,” Hen agreed.

Wendall nodded. “Where is she now?”

“In jail,” Hen sighed. “She sent me a letter recently, trying to tell me she’s sober and working towards our shared life after she’s released.”

Wendall frowned. “That’s…”

Hen nodded. “I know. Karen and I have an appointment with our lawyer to talk about that. I’m not trying to make up for failing in the past by helping Bobby now. I’m really not.”

“I believe you,” Wendall said.

***

“Hey,” Karen whispered as she sat on the bed beside Hen, who had already curled up on her side.

Hen sighed and kept staring at wherever she was looking while lost in thought. She had been quiet ever since Bobby and Wendall, and shortly later Buck, had left. Their afternoon had been much more exhausting than Karen had expected. She was still rattled from her conversation with Buck, but she had been able to pull herself together enough to serve as a mediator between Buck and Bobby later on.

“I feel so lost right now,” Hen murmured. “I think we’ve made great plans for Bobby to help him settle down here. But … learning about his children,” she sighed deeply.

“I’m not sure how he survived it,” Karen whispered.

The fear of losing Denny had been with her ever since they had first brought him home. But it was mostly a fear of not having any rights as his mother in the beginning, and later on the fear of losing the rights she’d had to fight the courts so hard for until her and Hen’s domestic partnership had finally cut that process short. The fear of Denny dying was much more distant, much less real.

“Even he probably doesn’t know how sometimes.” Hen bit her lip. “If Buck’s right about his book … then he is trying … or maybe waiting for the moment when he’s saved as many people as he believes he killed.”

The implication was sad and horrifying, and Karen hoped they’d be able to pull Bobby back from the edge he was clearly balanced on. For Bobby’s sake, of course, but also for Hen’s and Buck’s because Karen didn’t know how either of them would react if Bobby chose to end his own life eventually.

Hen rolled onto her back and clasped Karen’s hand. “How was your conversation with Buck? He was quiet after the two of you and Bobby came back into the house.”

Karen sighed deeply. “He is struggling, and I don’t think he truly realizes that. He was very confused about my insistence on reporting Dr. Wells, and even more so when Bobby told him he’d report her. I convinced Bobby to wait a little while to give Buck a chance to make up his mind about it.”

“She needs to be reported!” Hen said with a frown.

“Yeah, I know,” Karen said. “And I know that Bobby’s report to Professional Standards would probably be enough to have someone investigate her. But that also means someone will force Buck into a conversation about her whether he is ready or not. I really think we need to give him some time to be ready for that. I think Buck needs to get there on his own.”

“And if she targets someone else in the meantime?” Hen asked quietly.

Karen huffed. “That’s not Buck’s responsibility. If he isn’t ready to talk and nothing comes from an investigation of that report, the next person might just have a more difficult time reporting her. I also … don’t think Buck was the first.”

Hen frowned and sat up abruptly. “What?”

Karen shrugged. “He shared a little of what happened and how he’s felt since. And from just the bit that he said I got the impression she knew exactly what she was doing.”

Hen rubbed her free hand over her head. “Fuck.”

“Do I wish someone had reported her before? Yes,” Karen said softly. “Am I going to blame any of her earlier victims for not reporting her and putting her in a position where she could harm Buck? No. That’s on her, not on any of her earlier victims. Buck thought she might tell Bobby he wasn’t fit for duty if he told her no.”

Hen flinched. “Is that what she told him?”

“I’m not sure.” Karne shrugged. “Buck was pretty vague. I’m surprised he told me as much as he did considering we only met for the first time today.”

Hen nodded slowly, a deep frown on her face.

“I honestly think he was burning to talk about it with someone but didn’t know who or how to start that conversation,” Karen said. “He could’ve dismissed the idea of going back to therapy earlier with any kind of excuse. But he didn’t. Instead, he brought up not wanting to go back because he didn’t want to have sex with Dr. Wells again. Even if he framed it differently and blamed himself for the whole situation, I really think it was a cry for help about that whole situation.”

Hen nodded slowly and bit her lip. “I hate that my own behavior with Buck led to him not confiding in anyone about this earlier.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Karen said softly.

“I know it is,” Hen said. “Chim and I … Really, everyone on shift kept needling him about his sex life. Buck’s a natural flirt and everyone noticed that right away.”

“Yeah?” Karen asked though she was sure she knew most of it.

Hen had talked and complained a lot about their newest probie, but that wasn’t any different than any other probationary firefighter the 118 had had since Karen knew Hen. Complaining about the stupid stunts probies pulled while figuring out their place in the firehouse was one of Hen’s dearest hobbies. Karen had learned over the years that the more Hen complained, the more she cared for the probie.

Hen shrugged and lowered her gaze. “Sometimes I’m not sure he even notices that he’s doing it. But then again he’s always aware enough of it to pull it back when it’s not well received. And he uses it a lot to calm down our victims, give them something else to focus on besides the panic and shock of their situation.”

Karen nodded.

“So, maybe he is much more aware of it than I give him credit for,” Hen said. “Then anyone gives him credit for. I’ve been thinking a lot about his oversharing concerning dates this afternoon, you know?”

“Why?” Karen asked softly.

“Because I think he only did it because Chimney and a couple of other guys prompted him to,” Hen admitted. She shook her head with a deep sigh. “He mentioned a date pretty early on when we were talking about our free day ahead of us. He asked for advice on where he could take a date. I think he only came to LA shortly before joining the academy. The next shift Chimney asked him about it, and the guys needled him until he overshared. Then a little while later someone asked him if he’d had another hot date. And from there it became a habit.”

Karen sighed. “So, you all saw a young, good-looking guy who was open about dating, and put him in a neat little box then treated him accordingly and he responded in kind. Prime example of confirmation bias, huh?”

Hen made a face and nodded. “I ripped Bobby a new one about his bullshit of Buck not respecting women because he sleeps around.”

Karen laughed. “Yeah, I figured. Bobby was pretty downcast about that whole topic. He didn’t apologize to Buck, but I think that was mostly because he didn’t feel it was the right moment for Buck to hear that. And I agree. Buck would’ve probably misunderstood such an apology if it had come right on the heels of talking about reporting Dr. Wells.”

“This whole situation is so fucked up,” Hen muttered.

“It is,” Karen agreed. “But neither Buck nor Bobby has to deal with it alone. We’ll be good friends and help them through it. We’ll make sure they’ll get through this.”

Hen smiled hesitantly. “You’re right.”

Karen grinned and leaned forward to kiss her wife. “You know,” she whispered against Hen’s lips, “I think I know how to take your mind off everything you’re worrying about right now.”

Hen hummed and looked at Karen with a gleam in her eyes. “I think I can get on board with that plan!”

***

Hen watched Athena thoughtfully as she took a sip of her beer. Athena looked tired, but there was also still the edge of anger in the tension of her shoulders and the near-permanent frown of the past couple of months. She had been struggling with her marriage falling apart since the day Michael had come out to her, and it had only gotten worse over the past few weeks since May’s suicide attempt.

“How is May?” Hen asked softly.

Athena sighed deeply and stared into her wine. “She is home again. That’s a huge relief. I hated that she had to stay in a group home. I don’t understand how anyone could think that was helpful. She should’ve been home with her family.”

Hen smiled sadly. “In your case that’s true. In others, it could’ve been the exact wrong thing to send the child home again. The social worker needed time to figure that out.”

Athena made a face and took a sip of her wine.

“You didn’t really answer my question,” Hen said. “You’re glad May is home again. But how does May feel?”

“She’s avoiding talking to me,” Athena admitted. “Her therapist says I need to give her some time. She is my child, she shouldn’t hesitate to talk about anything with me!”

Hen chuckled sadly. “That’s a pipe dream, ‘Thena. She is fourteen, there’ll be a lot of things she won’t want to talk about with you. Did you run to your mom with any kind of trouble you had, or about any fight you had with friends or other people at school?”

Athena glared at her.

“What are you going to do about the school?” Hen asked.

“May won’t participate in any conversation about a new school,” Athena murmured. “I don’t feel good about sending her back to her current school, not with that girl still there. Especially since the school isn’t doing anything about her.”

Hen nodded slowly. Athena hadn’t exactly helped that situation by showing up at the girl’s home and arresting her just because she could. But the school should still act on what had happened with May, and they should have done so long before May had been so desperate that she had gone through her parents’ medicine cabinet to find some relief.

“And again, all the therapist had to say was to give it time,” Athena continued darkly. “Changing schools in the middle of the term won’t be easy anyway, and I fear May will be held back a year if she doesn’t return to school soon.”

“So what?” Hen asked. “Maybe keeping up with her schoolwork isn’t the most important thing right now, ‘Thena. Give her the next couple of months to get back on an even keel. In the long run, it won’t matter whether she finishes school a year later than planned.”

Athena frowned at her. “It will matter for her college applications!”

Hen shook her head. “College won’t matter at all if May doesn’t heal and find her mental and emotional balance again.”

Athena sank down in her chair a little.

“May is an intelligent and driven girl,” Hen continued. “I wouldn’t put it past her to make up the year eventually. On the other hand, she might fall behind anyway if she doesn’t have enough time to concentrate on healing because she feels she has to concentrate on schoolwork above all else.”

“I know you’re right,” Athena said darkly and shook her head. “But … I’m so angry that this girl might ruin my baby’s future and she won’t face any consequences for it.”

“May is alive,” Hen said. “Whatever her future holds for her, it’s not ruined! That’s your mother’s voice in your head! Whatever May chooses to do with her life, this moment right now won’t be more than a blip on her radar eventually. At least as long as you and Michael make sure it doesn’t grow into a lingering problem instead of helping her cope with it.”

Athena frowned.

“Do you think your life is ruined?” Hen asked.

“Of course not!” Athena snapped.

“I’m pretty sure your mother would argue differently,” Hen said softly. “Because you didn’t go the route she envisioned for you. Don’t fall into the trap your mother fell into. May will do with her life whatever makes her happy. Don’t force her to have to fight you on that like your mother forced you to fight her.”

Athena huffed. “I hate you.”

Hen laughed. “No, you don’t. What are best friends for if not to confront you with uncomfortable truths?”

“Talking about best friends,” Athena said with raised brows. “How is Chimney?”

Hen huffed about her friend not even trying to be subtle in the change of topic. “Getting there. He’ll be released from the hospital later this week. Karen and I will take him home. And my wife created a whole schedule for everyone visiting Chimney. He won’t be able to drive for a while, so Karen has made it her job to make sure there’ll always be someone available to drive Chim to his appointments. She set up an online calendar, with reminders via email and text for everyone.”

“You can’t be surprised about that,” Athena said, chuckling. “That’s exactly what I would expect from Karen.”

Hen rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know. Karen the problem solver is in her element. I just wonder how long it will take for Chimney to snap at her.”

“I’m sure he knows better than to do that,” Athena assured.

Hen waggled her head. Chimney could be short-tempered, especially when he was frustrated. And everything about his situation frustrated him.

“So, I’ll have to assume it’s not Chimney you’re looking so broody about,” Athena said. “Where is the trouble brewing?”

Hen pursed her lips, then she took a sip of her beer to buy some time thinking about an answer. “I just realized that I don’t know either Bobby or Buck very well. And by that, I mean that I didn’t make much of an effort to get to know them outside of what they freely shared. And that backfired a little bit.”

“What did Buckley do now?” Athena asked with a frown.

“He didn’t do anything!” Hen snapped, feeling unexpectedly protective of her probie. Or maybe it wasn’t quite that unexpected.

Athena raised her brows in surprise but didn’t say anything.

Hen glared at her. “You know, we all made the same mistake. Judging him on the way he looks and for how outgoing he is in some cases.”

“He tried to refuse care to a young girl in serious medical need,” Athena said.

“He tried to protect the victim of an attempted murder from her attempted murderer,” Hen shot back. “We never should’ve put the baby and her mother in the same ambulance. It’s pure dumb luck that she didn’t try to kill the baby again.”

Hen shook her head. She knew that, had recognized it while writing up her report on that whole thing. She had talked with Chimney about it, who had been chagrined and grim about the mistake they had all made, but also joked about Buck having a death wish by trying to argue with Athena. Hen hadn’t talked about it with Buck, and she didn’t think anyone else had either. It was just another oversight regarding their probie.

Athena frowned deeply. “She reconnected with her baby instead. That’s a major win.”

Hen shook her head. “But we couldn’t know that would happen. She could have just as easily lashed out again. In the tiny space of the ambulance, she’d have probably hurt everyone who had been back there with her in the process. We should have requested a second ambulance.”

Athena shook her head, and Hen knew it would probably take a much larger argument to convince her friend of their own wrongdoing in that situation.

“Anyway. I preemptively judged Buck and held onto that picture of him I had drawn in my head. Treated him accordingly. And I did the same with Bobby, really. And now that I’ve recognized it, I just want to kick myself in the ass. I treated both of them unfairly and I’m not sure how to make it up to them.”

Athena cocked her head. “How much do you know about anyone from your shift besides Chimney? How many of them do you spend time with outside of the job?”

Hen made a face. She figured this was payback for the way she had challenged Athena about her thoughts regarding May, so she really couldn’t complain now. Getting confronted with some uncomfortable truths sucked.

Usually, the 118 A-shift, along with their families, spent at least one afternoon together at some kind of party every other month or so. At least it had been like that for the last four or five years, but there hadn’t been a party since shortly after Buck had joined them. Somehow, they hadn’t managed to schedule one.

There were Chimney’s game nights, but not everyone from their shift was included in that by far. Some people invited didn’t want to go, and some Chimney didn’t want to invite, preferring instead to invite people like Tommy and Sal and some others who had left the 118 over the years.

“No answer to that?” Athena taunted.

Hen huffed. “I hate you, too.”

Athena laughed. “When’s the last time you went out for drinks with anyone other than Chimney?”

Hen tapped a finger against her glass and glared at Athena.

“The couple of times you invited me to come along to have drinks with anyone from the 118, it was mostly you, Chimney, and Tommy there. If others joined, they were from the old crew, not the new people who joined over time.”

Hen lowered her gaze and sighed. She knew she couldn’t argue that point. There had been a lot of turnover after Gerrard had been ousted from the 118, and somehow it had been easier to connect to those who had worked under Gerrard and stayed once he had been gone. Then again, any new additions had only been there temporarily at first, and they’d all known it, so they hadn’t invested any time in those people. And by the time that had changed it had somehow become a habit to stay in their little bubble even while they tried to establish at least one semi-regular team event.

“We did invite Bobby to join us!” Hen said, grasping at straws. With her knowledge now, it really hadn’t been a good idea to invite Bobby to a bar, but the thought still counted.

“And he joined you how often?” Athena asked.

Hen sighed. “Once.”

Athena nodded slowly. “There’s an energy between all of you that’s difficult to penetrate. I think that’s still there between you and Chimney. And I’ve wondered if that is the reason the two of you are also the only ones still at the 118. Everyone else moved on to other places to also move on from the shadow of your first captain.”

Hen bit her lip. Athena didn’t even know the half of it about Gerrard, at least Hen didn’t think so. The LAFD had made sure it stayed very quiet that Gerrard had gone to jail for the negligent homicide of three firefighters, entering a plea deal after a lengthy investigation. Hen had spent her first year supporting Tommy and Sal and several others going through the process of being questioned about anything they knew about Gerrard and the firefighters that had died under his command in suspicious circumstance. Athena was right, that experience had formed a bond between them that had been difficult to penetrate.

“What happened that made you think about this?” Athena asked.

Hen shook her head. “That’s not my tale to tell.”

Athena hummed.

Hen sighed. “I guess I’ll just have to put some effort in to get to know all the people I work with a little better.”

“Things as they are have worked just fine for you so far, haven’t they?” Athena asked. “You don’t need to be friends with all the people you work with.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hen agreed. “But maybe I want to be friends with at least some of them! Or at least I want to know them well enough, want them to know me well enough, that they’ll reach out if they’re struggling with something. And I clearly need to put some effort into making sure everyone knows they can count on me.”

“So, your captain and your probie both needed some kind of help?” Athena asked. “Now I’m really curious.”

Hen rolled her eyes. “You’re incorrigible.”

Athena grinned. “You know how I am. Hazard of the job!”

Hen shook her head. “Doesn’t mean you need to know everything.”

“What does Karen have to say about you meddling in your co-workers’ business?”

Hen grinned. “My wife and I are on the same page, as always. Don’t worry. Also, this might be a good way to distract both of us from Eva.”

Athena frowned. “Eva? What’s she got to do with anything?”

Hen rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Nothing. Other than that she wrote me a pretty creepy letter. Talking about preparing for our shared future once she is released from prison. Asking me to visit her.”

“You didn’t, did you?” Athena asked sharply.

“Of course not!” Hen huffed. “Karen and I sent a copy of the letter to our lawyer. I’ve no idea what she wants from me, but I’m not going to visit Eva or have any other contact with her.”

“I could look into her,” Athena suggested. “Maybe I can find out what she’s up to.”

“Aren’t you still on desk duty for abusing your position to harass that girl who bullied May?” Hen asked sharply. “You really shouldn’t risk adding another violation of the rules to that.”

Athena glared at her darkly.

“You already know my opinion about your stupid decision to do that,” Hen said. “Don’t expect me to start sugarcoating anything. You made a huge ass mistake, and I’m not going to enable you to repeat that any time soon.”

“That girl had it coming,” Athene said through gritted teeth.

“Yeah, and all you’re teaching both her and May is that they have to be the bigger bully, have to be the person who presumably has more power, to be allowed to get away with things.” Hen shook her head. “If you want to argue about this again, I’m more than happy to try to get your head out of your ass. But we probably shouldn’t do it here. The beer is good, and I don’t want to be told not to come back because we disrupted everyone’s evening by getting too loud.”

Athena shook her head. “We don’t need to argue about it at all.”

Hen shrugged. She wouldn’t let go of the topic. Eventually she’d make Athena see reason and convince her that the important thing was to focus on taking care of her children instead of going after that girl at May’s school.

Chapter 05

Chimney sat down on his couch with a groan. “Home sweet home!”

Karen could see that the drive had taken a lot out of him, though she suspected he wouldn’t be ready to admit that any time soon. It wasn’t easy for Chimney to accept help and even harder for him to admit that he needed help. He always insisted on being able to do things by himself when it was about his health.

“Thanks for picking me up,” Chimney said. “It sucks that the doctors suspended my driver’s license in additional to everything else!”

“Even if you were medically cleared to drive, you don’t have a car,” Karen said with raised brows as she put Chimney’s bag down beside the couch before sitting beside him.

“I know!” Chimney crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the dark TV with a deep frown. “Buck lied to me about that!”

“He didn’t want to agitate you,” Hen said and sat down in the armchair. “Which was the right choice. You could have hurt yourself if you got too upset. Your car was the last thing you should’ve been worried about.”

Chimney scowled. “I loved that car! And now I have to wait for the insurance to come through before I can get a new one. But that still won’t get me my car back!”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Karen said.

She worried a little about how intense Chimney seemed to be about the car. It wasn’t the first time since the accident he’d brought it up, and Karen didn’t know if he focused on it as some kind of coping mechanism or if there was a darker edge to it. Chimney hadn’t really seemed to care that much for the car in the past, had always only seen it as a means to an end. But now he was so focused on it as if it had been his most valuable possession.

Karen knew he wasn’t seeing a therapist about the accident despite his doctor’s recommendation — Chimney insisted he was already seeing too many doctors as it was. So, she was left wondering if Chimney’s single-minded focus on the car was because he couldn’t bear to deal with the trauma of the accident and the kind of injury he had sustained. But for now, she didn’t feel it was a good idea to bring that worry up with Chimney. Maybe his focus would naturally shift as soon as he settled down at home and regained some of the independence that he had been lacking for a little over four weeks now.

“We’ll find a new car for you,” Hen said. “You can drag Buck along when you go to the dealership, make him suffer with you through those negotiations.”

Chimney chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not sure he’d be a help with that. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who knows how to talk money and cars. Didn’t he mention he got that Jeep he drives from his sister when he left his hometown?”

“I think he did,” Hen said, grinning. “And that’s a fair point. If he’s never bought a car by himself before, he might just ruin any kind of deal you try to make. But we both know he is good at research, so that might be an advantage.”

“You could ask him for help looking into cars you might be interested in before going to any dealership,” Karen said. “I think he might appreciate you asking him for help.”

Chimney frowned and turned to look at her. “When did you meet Buck?”

“Hen invited Buck and Bobby over to our place for lunch a couple of days ago,” Karen said. “The three of them got stuck inside that plane just before it sank. The best thing about them working out their angst over that bonding experience was that I got to get a taste of Bobby’s cooking.”

Neither Bobby’s nor Buck’s problems were Chimney’s concerns, and so Karen had insisted on coming up with a cover story about what the meeting at their house had been about if anyone on their crew asked. They had talked about it with Bobby and Buck, too, and it had been a little heartbreaking to see the relief both felt.

Hen frowned a little and bit her lip, but she didn’t contradict the story. She didn’t have many secrets from Chimney, not even about their marriage, and Karen had come to terms with that a long time ago. Thankfully, Hen still knew where the boundaries were here.

Chimney leaned back, his arms crossed over his chest. “I heard about the plane crash. Why do the interesting things always happen when I’m not there?”

“It was more heartbreaking than interesting,” Hen said quietly. “There were too many people we couldn’t help anymore.”

Chimney lowered his gaze and sighed. “Yeah, I know. I still wish I could’ve been there with you and the rest. Maybe that one pair of hands more could’ve made a difference, right?”

“It would’ve,” Hen agreed. “There was this mother trapped between the seats. Her legs were stuck and we had a bit of a fight to get her son out of the plane so that we could help her. And then we ran out of time, but Bobby stayed and nearly went under with the plane because he couldn’t let her go. I don’t know how, but somehow he dragged her out, after all.”

Chimney stared at Hen with wide eyes and Karen felt a shiver run down her back. Suddenly she understood much better how the plane crash had led to Bobby relapsing. She usually didn’t ask Hen for any details about calls and Hen often didn’t share any either, though Karen was always there to listen to her.

Hen shrugged. “There’s a reason I grabbed Bobby and our probie for lunch at home to make sure their heads were screwed on straight again. Buck’s still struggling a little with Devon, and we had a lot of people dying this time. He stayed and helped with the recovery of the bodies afterward.”

“This kind of death is different than what happened with Devon,” Chimney said softly. “He knew Devon’s name, he talked to him, pleaded with him. The people on the plane who didn’t make it, they’re nameless faces. As horrible as it is, that makes it easier to let them go.”

Hen nodded slowly. “I’m still waiting for the horror of that lesson to hit Buck. But of course, you’re sitting at home being lazy and I have to handle our probie learning life lessons all on my own!”

“There’ll be plenty of lessons left for him after I’m back,” Chimney said and patted Hen’s shoulder. “I’ll take over the care of our probie in those. And eventually there’ll be another probie after Buck.”

Hen grinned and nodded. “Fair.”

“Though, I’m jealous about missing out on Bobby’s cooking!” Chimney said.

“There is really no reason for that.” Karen gestured towards the kitchen with a chuckle. “Your freezer is full. As in, we had to play Tetris to get it all put away, and still had to take some of it home and put it in our freezer, where it’s waiting for you. Of course, only half of it is Bobby’s cooking because everyone brought something over, but you won’t need to worry about getting more than the basic groceries for weeks. Everything is labeled with instructions about how to prepare it, too.”

“Oh?” Chimney sat up straight, eyes glowing. “Really? I was worried Tatiana had taken it all when she left.”

Hen huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “You think I’d let her take anything? I made sure she only took what was really hers when she packed her things!”

Before the conversation could devolve into a bitch-fest about Tatiana, Karen interrupted. “And when you run out of frozen food, no one will blink an eye if you show up for lunch at the 118.”

Karen had her own opinions about Tatiana that were vastly different from what Hen and Chimney thought about her. She had always thought Chimney hadn’t treated her fairly and she still couldn’t understand how her friend had thought a proposal was the right thing to do. But she also already knew she would only meet deaf ears if she brought it up. Chimney and Hen could complain about Tatiana all they wanted when Karen wasn’t there so she wouldn’t have to bite her tongue about it.

Chimney shook his head. “I’m not sure I’ll have time for that. Only on weekend shifts, maybe. Next Monday Il start teaching at the academy. I already hate it, but it’s better than just sitting around, right?” He made a face and huffed. “Gonna teach three days a week because the other two days I’ll have PT appointments and all that bullshit.”

“That bullshit will help you get back to the 118,” Karen said with raised brows. “You better not slack on your work there for whatever reason. I told you, I need you to have Hen’s back again soon!”

Chimney laughed. “Yeah, I know. And I’m doing the work, I promise! Doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it, though. Because it is horrible! You know what I think? People who become physical therapists like to torture others and found a way to do it legally!”

“That’s definitely true!” Hen agreed wholeheartedly. “Do you remember the one I saw after I broke my leg?”

“Didn’t you call her Captain Grumpy, or something?” Chimney asked gleefully. “At least my guys like to talk. Can’t imagine doing that torture if the only thing I heard from them were the instructions about my exercises.”

Karen laughed. “She did! And if I remember correctly, during that time, Hen was the grumpy one!”

“Hey!” Hen protested. “You do not remember correctly!”

Karen just grinned and then turned to Chimney. “So, what’s the roadmap like for the next couple of weeks concerning physical therapy and everything?”

Chimney bit his lip. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Denny is probably already waiting for you. I can understand that you didn’t want to bring him along as long as I’m like this.”

“Denny is enjoying a grandparent weekend,” Hen said. “He’s not going to miss us.”

“And there is no reason why he shouldn’t see you,” Karen said with raised brows. “He loves you, and he was just as worried about you as everyone else. You’ll get babysitting duty soon enough now that you are out of the hospital.”

Chimney chuckled. “I’d really like that. Wait, isn’t grandparent weekend always when the two of you spend the weekend at some spa or something?”

“Only when it’s not a weekend where Hen has to work,” Karen said. “There are plenty of weekends Denny spends with my parents where we’re just staying at home and catching up with all the chores we’ve neglected.”

“Our next spa weekend is in six weeks, mid-March. Somehow we’re always ending up with at least one shift on the weekend over the next couple of weeks.”

“Well, that’s not quite true,” Karen interjected. “We could have had a spa weekend in two weeks, but Denny’s school has an event that Saturday that he insisted we attend.”

“Usually, I don’t even remember Saturday and Sunday are weekends!” Chimney said. “That will be a strange change with the academy, too. Even in the hospital the days just all blurred together.”

“Are you avoiding my question about your recovery plan for a specific reason?” Karen asked softly, trying to steer the conversation back.

Chimney sent her a look, but then he deflated and shook his head. “It’s just frustrating, okay? I’ve already been working really hard in PT, but somehow it doesn’t seem to make a difference!”

“Your accident was only four weeks ago,” Hen murmured and put her arm around Chimney’s shoulder. “That’s not long in the grand scheme of things. You need to give your body a little bit of time!”

“I know.” Chimney rolled his eyes, but then he finally answered Karen’s questions and walked them through the plans his therapist had made for him, telling them what kind of progress was expected over the following weeks and what the plan was should that progress not be met.

***

“Hen, Karen! As always, it’s great to see you!” Mark greeted them with a wide grin and shook their hands before leading them into his office.

Hen grimaced. “I have to admit, I’m not so happy to be here this time.”

She liked their family lawyer. He had been a great help when they had adopted Denny, and again later when Hen and Karen had first gotten their domestic partnership and then married after it had become legal in California. So in the past, coming here had always been for something good, for something Karen and she had been looking forward to.

This time was different. They had forwarded Mark the letter from Eva a week ago, and Hen was honestly surprised they had heard back from Mark so quickly. He had asked for permission to read one of their investigators in on the case and Hen had expected that investigation to take some time.

Mark smiled. “Understandable. This is Evelyn Cortez, one of the PIs our law firm regularly contracts with, especially in cases of custody disputes.”

Karen lowered her gaze. “There is no custody dispute to be had here!”

Mark nodded. “Not yet. But I decided, after reading Eva’s letter, to treat it as her contesting your adoption. Just so that we are prepared for whatever she throws at you eventually. Her letter has me very worried.”

Hen squeezed Karen’s hand and held the other hand out to greet the investigator. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Cortez, no matter the circumstances.”

“Please, call me Evelyn.” Her smile was warm but tight and Hen felt a knot build in her stomach.

Karen and Hen sat down at the small conference table in Mark’s office. Water and freshly brewed tea stood in the middle, but they both ignored it.

“So, what did you learn?” Karen asked.

Evelyn grinned. “Straight to the point, I like it. I looked into Eva’s prison record first. She has a parole hearing next week, and I assume from some other things I found out that she would expect you, Hen, to be a character witness for her during the hearing.”

Hen made a face and shook her head. “There is not a single chance I’m showing up for that!”

Karen’s grip on Hen’s hand tightened. “I was honestly a little surprised she is still in prison. I think when we talked about adopting Denny, she had said something about looking at 3 to 5 years. Or 5 to 7, I’m not sure anymore.”

Evelyn shook her head. “From everything I found about her trial, it was always 10 to 15 years she was looking at. She didn’t just deal drugs, she manufactured them, too. Not alone, of course. But it wasn’t the first time she was arrested for drugs, and she wouldn’t give up her accomplices. She got 12 years in the end, so there’s still slightly less than five years left.”

“So, how likely is it that she’ll get parole?” Hen asked.

Eva being involved in manufacturing drugs was news to her, but then she had never looked into Eva’s trial. She had tried to cut Eva off after her arrest when she hadn’t taken a single bit of responsibility for them being woken up by the police in the middle of the night, for Hen being treated as just as much of a criminal as her that night. It had been months before Hen had been able to sleep through the night again at her new apartment because every little sound had made her expect another raid by the police.

When Eva had reached out, Hen had still answered her call. Looking back now, Hen couldn’t even explain that to herself anymore. It had taken some time and a lot of therapy for her to be able to see Karen’s point in that situation, but by now she couldn’t remember her own point of view anymore.

“Pretty likely,” Evelyn said. “She has a good record in prison, she’s been clean for many years. She took some classes so she could get a job once she gets out. I heard she has a chance of getting into a rehabilitation program that will provide her an apartment and a job if she gets parole.”

Hen made a face. “So, she really doesn’t need me at the hearing.”

“No,” Evelyn agreed. “But I talked with a woman who was released a couple of weeks ago. She and Eva spent a lot of time together. Eva apparently likes to brag about the love of her life waiting for her out here, raising their son. When questioned why the love of her life never came to visit her, she spun some story about her partner dating an unsuspecting woman for the moment to provide for her and their child.”

“She is insane,” Karen muttered.

Evelyn nodded slowly. “At least very obsessed. And maybe trapped in that fantasy life she is clinging to with you and your son, Hen.”

Hen rubbed a hand over her face and shook her head. “She was always … possessive. But not in that creepy kind of way.”

“Is she a danger to us or to Denny?” Karen asked tightly.

“That’s where we enter the realm of speculation,” Mark said. “As of right now, we have no indication of that, other than the letter.”

“And that’s not an indication?” Karen hissed.

Hen sighed and pulled her into a one-armed hug. “Eva isn’t a violent person.”

Karen huffed. “Ten years ago, maybe!”

“There are no records about her being violent in prison either,” Mark said. “But you’re right, Karen. We’ve enough to be worried about her. And that means we’ll take precautions. The first time she shows up anywhere near you or Denny, we’ll get a restraining order against her. I’ve already prepared the paperwork for that. We’ll fill out the date and have a restraining order in no time.”

“But we can’t do that preemptively?” Hen asked.

Mark shook his head. “Her letter is not enough. It will be if she shows up anywhere near you since it was agreed in the adoption process that she wouldn’t have any contact with Denny as a minor and afterward only if he asked. But that’s about Denny, not about writing you a letter, Hen, even if the content of the letter is concerning.”

“I don’t like this,” Hen murmured.

“Then you probably won’t like the rest of my investigation either,” Evelyn said with a sigh. “Mark and I talked about what Eva could do to contest the adoption. There is a possibility she might contest because the child would have been taken away from her regardless as she was going to prison. But she doesn’t have a great chance with something like that because she contacted you personally about it and arranged the adoption on her own terms.”

Karen nodded slowly. “We talked about her possibly changing her mind back then. I think we went through all the scenarios of Eva trying to argue she had been forced into the decision. Especially as she didn’t want me to adopt Denny together with Hen.”

Hen bit her lip. “She really doesn’t have an argument here, right?”

“Eva doesn’t,” Mark said. “But the biological father might. And that’s what Evelyn has been looking into.”

“Eva said she didn’t know who the father was!” Hen said.

Karen turned to her. “And have you ever really believed that?”

Hen wanted to argue, but eventually, she shook her head. “So, you looked into who the father could be?”

Evelyn nodded. “Yes. Eva was in court-mandated rehab around the conception date. And she was expelled from that program around the time her pregnancy became known, at which point she was transferred to the prison instead.”

“You think she was expelled because of the pregnancy?” Hen asked with a frown.

“No, not directly at least. There were times when she was allowed to leave the rehab facility, so she could’ve hooked up with someone outside the program and gotten pregnant. But the most common reasons for expulsion from such a program are getting high or hooking up with someone else in the program.”

“So, Evelyn and I have come to the conclusion that Denny’s biological father was in that rehab program at the same time as Eva,” Mark said. “We think it won’t be too difficult to find him. And we should probably do so before Eva reaches out to him.”

“To what end?” Karen asked in a clipped tone.

“So that he learns about Denny on our terms,” Mark said. “It isn’t without risk; I’ll freely admit that. He could protest the adoption since he didn’t know about Denny. And depending on his situation, the court could decide on mandating some kind of regular visitation. But Denny is already seven years old, so it is unlikely anyone would think about dissolving your adoption.”

“Unlikely but not impossible,” Hen whispered.

Mark sighed. “Yes. But that is one more reason why we should try to find this man and reach out to him. Because then we can ask him to consider Denny’s mental well-being before he decides to disrupt the life Denny has with you. Eva could tell him any number of things that would set his mind on trying to sue for custody of Denny before he ever even met you.”

“So, you want us to trick him into doing what we want before Eva can trick him into doing what she wants,” Karen said.

Mark shrugged. “That is maybe a little harsh, but not far from the truth.”

“How will the court react to us not trying to find him sooner?” Hen asked.

“It wasn’t our responsibility to find him,” Mark said. “Eva promised she didn’t know who the father was, and at the time we trusted her word. It’s the letter she sent that made us question whether she had told the truth or if she might have held back information deliberately. No one will be able to prove otherwise.”

Hen bit her lip. There had been some doubt about Eva’s truthfulness concerning Denny’s biological father, but they had never written anything down or made any other record of that as far as she remembered.

“It’s your choice in the end whether Evelyn will go and try to find him or not,” Mark said softly. “I’d very much recommend looking for him, but we could just as well wait to see what her move will be.”

Karen shook her head. “No, we aren’t going to let her dictate anything!”

Hen exhaled slowly. “I agree with Karen. It’s better if we’re the ones who craft the narrative with him instead of Eva. She’d probably tell him I’d promised to wait for her if that’s what she is talking about in prison already. And she’ll play the victim, claiming I betrayed her trust and stole her child.”

Karen huffed and glared at the table.

Evelyn nodded. “Good. I’ll continue with my search tomorrow, then. To be honest, I already have a list of possible men. We’ll want to get a DNA test to confirm paternity, so we’ll need a sample of Denny’s. And we’ll only contact you again once we have a positive test back.”

Hen swallowed. “Yeah, I think … that’s good. I don’t want to know any names only to wonder about every single one of them if they won’t matter in the end.”

Karen nodded. “Same. Do what you have to do, and we really don’t need a breakdown of how you got your results.”

Evelyn laughed. “Honestly, my favorite kind of client is the one who only wants to know the results.”

***

Karen felt emotionally exhausted by the end of the day. Picking Denny up from school and going through the afternoon routine with him hadn’t really lifted her mood after their meeting with Mark and Evelyn that morning. It rather reminded her that her role in Denny’s life wasn’t as secure as she had come to expect over the past couple of years.

“I’m sorry,” Hen whispered and pulled her into a hug in the middle of the living room.

Karen leaned her head against Hen’s shoulder with a sigh. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“You warned me,” Hen said. “You said right from the start that Eva would use the baby to get back into my life. Or to just stay in my life. And I scoffed at that idea.”

“We were both right, though,” Karen murmured. “Our baby deserves a chance to grow up with parents who love him no matter where he comes from. Parents who won’t use him like Eva is intent to do.”

“I hate her,” Hen whispered. “Which is so strange because part of me still … misses the person she once was. Or that she once pretended to be. Maybe I didn’t lose that person to the drugs after all, maybe she was always like this and I just didn’t see it.”

Karen bit her lip. She didn’t have the kind of ex in her past that she was still hung up over, and more often than not she didn’t know how to deal with Hen’s thoughts and emotions about Eva. It had taken many appointments of couple’s therapy until Karen had even reached a point of just accepting it as part of Hen without being threatened by it.

“I want her to have a good life where she can be happy,” Hen murmured. “Far away from you and Denny and me, though. Her letter is proof that she won’t go for that, right?”

“Yes,” Karen agreed softly. “We’ll have to deal with her. And if she really is granted parole, that will happen soon.”

“What are we going to tell Denny?” Hen asked quietly.

Karen swallowed. “I don’t know. He is still so young. And … what if he asks to see her if we bring it up?”

Hen hugged her a little more tightly. “At some point we’ll have to have that conversation with him.”

“But not when he is seven and she’s just come out of prison!” Karen hissed. “Ten. We agreed to put any questions he might have off until he is ten. And he hasn’t even really asked so far.”

“That’s just three years,” Hen murmured. “We probably should start thinking about how much we want to tell him and how we want to tell him once he starts asking. We shouldn’t face those questions without a plan.”

Karen groaned. “I know. Is it so bad to wish our baby wouldn’t grow up so fast and won’t start asking questions about things we don’t want to talk about?”

Hen chuckled. “We can wish all we want. But we still have to face reality.”

“And that reality might be that we won’t even have enough time for him to start asking questions,” Karen whispered, leaning heavily against Hen with those words. It broke her heart that some random guy might force them to talk with Denny about his biological parents when he hadn’t shown any curiosity about them yet. And that this random guy might even be able to force his way into their family.

“I think our first step should be to go back to therapy,” Hen said. “So that we have a safe place where we can talk about this without bringing too much of it into this house. I don’t ever want Denny to overhear us talking about this.”

Karen nodded. “Yeah.”

In the months before Denny had come to them and for nearly two years afterwards, they’d had monthly appointments with a therapist. Karen was sure that they wouldn’t be where they were now if they hadn’t done that, because neither of them had really been prepared to adopt a child or to commit to the kind of relationship they had committed to by adopting Denny. There had been a lot of roadblocks and hang-ups for both of them, but none of that had become a lingering problem in the end because they’d had help working through it.

“We’ll make the call first thing tomorrow morning,” Karen decided.

Hen kissed Karen’s forehead. “We’ll get through this. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else in my life, Karen. You’re the family I want and crave. Nothing is going to take that away from us, okay?”

“I know,” Karen whispered. No matter what was coming their way, she trusted Hen and she trusted in the relationship they’d built. “I love you, too.”

Karen raised her head and kissed Hen, forcefully pushing all her fear and exhaustion away. They had fought to get where they were: Karen had fought to overcome a host of insecurities concerning Hen’s past and her own place in both Hen’s and Denny’s lives — she wouldn’t let Eva rip that all away from her again.

Chapter 06

Karen tapped her fingers against her knee, too nervous to concentrate on her book. At the moment Buck was talking with someone from Professional Standards with the LAFD after Bobby had filed a complaint against Dr. Wells. It had taken Buck a week after blurting out what had happened with Dr. Wells before he had told Bobby he was ready to support that kind of report, and then it had taken another week before Buck had been asked to come in.

Karen wasn’t quite sure why, but Buck had called her as soon as he had learned about the appointment. He had clearly been uncomfortable, and so Karen had offered to accompany him. She hadn’t been allowed to attend the appointment, so now she was sitting in a generic and pretty uncomfortable waiting area in the middle of LAFD headquarters.

“Karen?”

She looked up to find Tommy staring at her quizzically. Karen chuckled, “Looks like the universe is trying to tell us something. We don’t manage to get together for our usual wine nights three weeks in a row and we promptly start running into each other all the time.”

“Is Hen in any kind of trouble?” Tommy asked with a worried frown.

“Oh!” Karen shook her head hurriedly. “No one is in trouble! Hen’s new probie witnessed something that needed to be reported and asked me to be here for moral support.”

Tommy still frowned as he sat down beside her. “Why would he ask you?”

Karen shrugged. “Hen invited him and Bobby over to lunch to work through that plane crash thing together, and I guess Buck just liked me. Or maybe it was easier to ask someone he doesn’t directly work with.”

Tommy hummed and nodded. Before he could ask anything, though, Buck trudged down the hall, a dark look on his face. Karen was out of her seat before he reached them.

“Hey, how did it go?” Karen asked softly.

Buck stared at her, a strangely empty look in his eyes. “This was a bad idea from the start. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut.”

Karen frowned and put her hand on Buck’s arm. “What? That’s not … That’s bullshit, Buck!”

Buck inhaled deeply. He sounded bitter when he said, “Mr. Turner was very clear in his opinion. And pointed out that if I insisted on making so much fuss about something that only happened in my head, it would most likely lead to my probationary period ending early as I’m clearly not cut out to be a firefighter.”

“Excuse me,” Tommy said softly. “You’re with the 118, right?”

Buck flinched a little as he turned to Tommy. “And you are?”

“Oh,” Karen sighed. “Buck, this is Tommy Kinard. He was part of your shift until shortly before you joined.”

Recognition dawned on Buck’s face. “The pilot, right?”

Tommy chuckled. “Yeah. Went to the 217 so I could fly on the job again.”

“Tommy, this is Evan Buckley,” Karen continued. “Hen’s new probie.”

“I’m not sure I’m Hen’s probie, exactly,” Buck muttered.

Tommy cleared his throat. “Your appointment was with Turner? Was he aware of which station you’re working at?”

Buck frowned and shrugged. “Yeah. What about it?”

Tommy’s face turned dark. “He shouldn’t have even talked to you. He’s banned from investigating anything to do with the 118. And I think your reaction to your conversation with him just proves that it’s still necessary.”

Buck turned to Karen, hurt clearly written all over his face. “Did you tell him…?”

“No!” Karen promised softly.

“I’ve no idea why you’re here, Firefighter Buckley,” Tommy said hurriedly. “Karen is a friend and I just stopped to say hi. Would you be open to having that conversation you just had again with a person who isn’t biased against the 118 as a whole and doesn’t have a history of dismissing anyone from that station out of hand?”

Buck’s eyes grew wide, and Karen turned to Tommy. “There is someone working here who would behave like that?” she asked sharply.

Tommy shrugged. “Bringing change to an old system takes time. Turner holds a very well-known grudge against the 118. But otherwise, he usually does a good job. I know some of the people working here, Firefighter Buckley, and—”

“Evan,” Buck corrected, and Karen raised her brows but didn’t say anything.

“Evan,” Tommy agreed with a smile. “I’m positive I can find someone who’ll sit down with you right now and talk with you about whatever you witnessed with a much more open mind. Do you have any preferences about who you want to talk to?”

Buck shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know anyone here.”

Tommy smiled. “Okay. Just wait here for a moment, okay? It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.”

Buck nodded slowly and bit his lip as Tommy turned around, vanishing in the opposite direction of the hall where Buck had come from. Karen watched Buck carefully.

“I’m so sorry you had to deal with an asshole,” Karen whispered.

Buck chewed on his lip. “Do you really think someone else will react any differently?”

“Yes,” Karen said, full of conviction. Not because she trusted everyone in this building implicitly anymore after hearing Buck repeat what he had been told, but because she trusted Tommy to know the right people. “Reporting what happened is the right thing. It should not have happened. And no one should just dismiss it.”

Buck swallowed and nodded. Karen pulled him into a hug and he practically fell into her arms. They stood there like that until they heard steps approaching and Buck hastily took a step back from her.

“Rachel Sorenson is waiting for you in room 209, Evan,” Tommy said.

Buck hesitated for a moment and Karen wondered if talking to a woman about what had happened with Dr. Wells might be a problem. But then he nodded without any protest and walked down the hall.

“How long has he been on the job?” Tommy asked softly, not taking his eyes off Buck until he vanished into a room nearly at the end of the hall.

“Just since September,” Karen said. “And he’s had some pretty difficult calls already.”

Tommy nodded. “He was on the news for that roller coaster incident, wasn’t he? I recognized his name when I talked with Rachel.”

“Young hot guy, and the one to climb up that roller coaster.” Karen rolled her eyes. “Hen said that someone higher up the chain of command than Bobby ‘asked’ that Buck give that interview.”

Tommy made a face. “Great. So, the department is well on the way to chasing away a promising firefighter because first they use him for PR and then he runs into the biggest asshole in the place when he tries to do the right thing?”

Karen pursed her lips. There really wasn’t much she could say about that, not without revealing more than Buck would feel comfortable with.

“Want to sit down again?” Tommy asked. “I’ll wait with you until he comes back out.”

Karen nodded. “Good thing you were here. I’m not sure I’d have been able to convince him to come back for another appointment with anyone once we left. What’s that guy’s problem Buck talked to?”

“All comes back to Gerrard in the end,” Tommy said darkly. “So far he’s never done anything that could get him in trouble, but he’s held a grudge against the 118 ever since Gerrard was fired and he hasn’t been quiet about that.”

“He wasn’t just fired, though,” Karen said. She hadn’t known Chimney or Hen yet when all of that had gone down, but she had heard stories about it afterward.

“Doesn’t matter to some people,” Tommy murmured. “Anyway. Rachel didn’t say much when she pulled up the information about Evan’s appointment, but her face said enough. Turner’s not going to have a job by the time Rachel is done with him. But your friend is in good hands with her, don’t worry.”

Karen smiled. “Thank you.” She sighed deeply. “The past just keeps raising its ugly head lately.”

Tommy cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

Karen rolled her eyes. “Eva wrote Hen a letter from prison. She has a parole hearing in a couple of days and that will probably be granted. She’s already made it clear that she won’t stay out of our life once she is out.”

Tommy made a face. “Wow, fuck. I’m sorry you and Hen have to deal with that. Is there anything I can do?”

“Not right now,” Karen said. “Though, the next time we have time for a wine night, I might spend all of it bitching about her. I knew it would happen, but I still feel completely unprepared now.”

Originally Hen had introduced Karen to Tommy because he was the proud co-owner of a helicopter and he had offered to take them on a flight. He had started teaching Karen how to fly during that flight, and somehow it had evolved from there. After Tommy had dared Karen to actually take the tests required to get her pilot’s license, their friendship had evolved from just flying and instead expanded to other things. One of the things they did quite regularly was to meet for a quiet night over a shared bottle of wine and all the gossip they could think of.

“I’m happy to listen to your rants,” Tommy promised. “You’ve listened to a lot of shit I’ve unloaded on you, too.”

Karen grinned and leaned forward. Tommy’s rants were very entertaining for the most part. But even when they hadn’t been entertaining, Karen had just felt honored that Tommy trusted her as a sounding board while he had figured out how to live his life without hiding a huge part of himself. “And you haven’t had a chance to tell me about your date yet!”

Tommy rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, though it looked more like he was hugging himself than anything else. “There isn’t much to talk about anyway. A lot to complain about, but this is not the right place for that.”

“Wine night, this week!” Karen said and pointed a finger at him. “No excuses this time, Mister!”

Tommy laughed. “And to think I doubted Hen when she told me once how bossy you were.”

Karen frowned at him because that was not an answer to her question.

“Friday evening?” Tommy suggested.

Karen nodded slowly. “That works. It means no more than two glasses of wine for me, though. Denny has this school thing on Saturday.”

“Great. I’ll be at your place at the usual time,” Tommy said. “And again, if there is anything you and Hen need, just call.”

Karen shrugged. “There isn’t much we can do right now but wait. We can only speculate about what Eva might do. Though, we have an investigator looking into finding Denny’s biological father. Just to make sure Eva didn’t lie about not knowing who that was and tries to use that guy against us now.”

Tommy frowned. “Using him against you how?”

“To contest our adoption,” Karen muttered, lowering her gaze.

Every time she thought about it her heart constricted painfully. She suddenly wished they had done more about the unknown biological father right from the start. They hadn’t, though, and at least for Karen, that decision had been made for completely selfish reasons. She hadn’t wanted to deal with the possibility that this unknown man might want to take Denny if he learned about him. She hadn’t considered then that the situation wouldn’t change at all should he learn about Denny later on.

“Bullshit!” Tommy said. “You and Hen are Denny’s parents!”

Karen shrugged. “But the law gives him rights because he didn’t know about Denny. And we were naïve enough … or maybe willfully blind enough about Eva possibly lying. Anyway, we have to deal with that now because Eva remains obsessed with Hen even after more than seven years of no contact between them.”

Tommy reached out to take her hand. “I…” He sighed. “There is probably nothing I can say right now to make this any easier or better. But I’m here for you and Hen.”

Karen smiled shakily. “Thank you. It sucks. And I’m terrified. But we’ll get through it somehow.”

Tommy smiled sadly and nodded.

“I could really use a distraction,” Karen said quietly and wiped away the tears that had escaped her eyes. “I’m here to support Buck, after all, not to break down over the bullshit happening in my own life.”

“Okay, so maybe I should tell you about my horrible date, after all,” Tommy said, squeezing her hand.

Karen’s breath hitched in her throat, but she nodded with a grateful smile. Tommy might have been much more open about being gay since he left the 118, but he really didn’t like talking about it much in public. Despite that, he didn’t hesitate to use his catastrophe of a date — one which had seemed so promising the last time Karen had talked with him about it — to distract her now.

***

“When did you start to learn to cook?” Hen asked amused as she carried half of Bobby’s purchases to his car.

Showing Bobby parts of LA he hadn’t seen before had somehow ended up with them scouting out several farmers’ markets. That hadn’t exactly been Hen’s plan in the beginning, but one day Bobby had complained about the quality of the vegetables they had gotten from the local grocery store they used to stock the 118’s kitchen.

That had pulled nearly half their shift into a discussion about where to find the best fruits and vegetables in town, and different people had argued for different farmers’ markets. Hen had been surprised about how strong the opinions of many of her colleagues were about the different farmers’ markets, but she hadn’t missed Bobby’s interest in the whole topic. So, she had decided to take Bobby to all the different markets and let him form his own opinion about them. It was a good start to show him more of LA and maybe build some trust between them outside of work.

“Out of necessity at first,” Bobby said. “My parents were very traditional, so I didn’t learn how to cook from my mother. But then I was alone with my father for a prolonged time once, and neither of us really knew how to reheat anything, let alone how to make it from scratch. That lesson stayed with me, and once I left home I started to teach myself how to cook. And learned along the way that I really enjoy it.”

“And we all enjoy the results of your cooking!” Hen said, grinning.

Bobby laughed, and for the first time since Hen and Buck had found him, Hen thought it didn’t sound guarded. “Yes, I’m very well aware of that. It’s a relief that I’ve finally found someone in Buck who is actually interested in learning how to help in the kitchen instead of being a hindrance.”

Hen pursed her lips. “We would all be happy to help if your standards weren’t so high!”

Bobby just raised one brow and looked at her. They put the bags with their purchases in the back of his car, and then Bobby locked the car again and pointed down the street. “When we came here, I saw that spot by the park with several food trucks. Let’s go take a look at those. My treat.”

“I’ never say no to free food!” Hen laughed.

“This was not quite what I expected when you threatened to show me more of LA.”

Hen slapped him slightly on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “It wasn’t a threat! And I have to admit, this is a side of LA I haven’t seen a lot of either. Despite growing up here. Mama wasn’t one for farmers markets when I was growing up. And Karen and I only go to the two closest to home. There is really no reason to take on a bigger drive than that.”

Bobby grinned. “I think that assumption has already been proven wrong.”

Hen huffed. “You promised not to tell Karen where we found that cheese the other day. She’d expect me to drive there at least every other week to get her new cheese! It’s enough if it’s a treat three or four times a year.”

Karen loved all kinds of cheese, but she was also very picky about its quality. On Hen and Bobby’s first tour of three different farmers markets near each other a couple of days ago they had found a booth selling high-quality cheese for an acceptable price. Karen was exhilarated about it, but so far Hen had managed not to tell her wife where she had found the cheese.

Bobby raised his hands. “And I’ll keep that promise.”

“You better!”

Bobby grinned. “You might want to re-think your decision about helping me in the kitchen, though. Didn’t Karen tell me to teach you some of my skills?”

Hen rolled her eyes. “That was a joke. You might be my captain when we’re on shift, but my tolerance for you ordering me around ends at setting the table. Not sure how Buck can bear your teaching style in the kitchen.”

“I’m not that bad!” Bobby protested.

“I didn’t say you were bad,” Hen said. “You’re just very … particular about anything happening in the kitchen.”

Hen was grateful when they reached the food court at that moment and the discussion was interrupted by them inspecting the different food trucks and what they offered. They ended up ordering from two different trucks — Hen the Korean BBQ and Bobby some traditional Jamaican dish — and met up again at one of the tables a little while later.

“Tell me something about one of your children,” Hen said softly as they dug into their food.

Bobby flinched violently. “I…”

“When’s the last time you talked about them?” Hen asked.

Bobby shook his head, face pale and sweat gathering on his forehead. “I have no right.”

Hen frowned. “Who’d have a right to remember them if not you, Bobby? And they have every right to be remembered!”

Bobby inhaled sharply.

“I am so sorry that you lost them, Bobby,” Hen said. “But you have every right to remember them. And to talk about them. I honestly think you owe it to them to remember them.”

Bobby shook his head slowly.

“Who told you that you have no right to their memory?”

“Marcy’s parents,” Bobby said quietly. “They were so angry at the funeral. And afterward.”

Hen hummed. “They were dealing with their own grief but that didn’t give them the right to minimize yours, Bobby.” She bit her lip. “I looked up any information I could find about the fire.”

Bobby turned his head away.

“Your name never appears. Not even in the report that was eventually published about the cause of the fire,” Hen said. “And I did manage to get the report attached to the criminal case against the company that owned the building, so don’t tell me someone cleaned up that report to protect you.”

“The chief promised no one did that,” Bobby agreed quietly. “But I still know that it’s my fault. I don’t need a report for that. And neither do Marcy’s parents. Or probably anyone else who lived there and survived.”

Hen frowned. She didn’t know how anyone outside of those who’d had direct contact with Bobby could know about the guilt he felt over the whole situation, but she decided not to question him about it. She didn’t want him to think about the time after the fire, she wanted him to remember the time before it.

“So, tell me something about your children,” Hen said. “Some of their little habits that made them who they were.”

Bobby inhaled deeply and just ate quietly for a long while. Hen was glad she at least hadn’t spoiled his appetite with her question. She had been trying to find a good moment for the questions for days now, but it had just never seemed to be the right time.

“Brook hated reading,” Bobby whispered when he was done with his food. He folded his arms on the table and stared down at his empty paper plate. “She loved hearing stories, but she hated it if we read them to her. And she hated the whole idea of learning to read until we managed to convince her that she’d need the skill for other things, too. She always said stories shouldn’t be written down because then they couldn’t be changed anymore. She used to say we couldn’t trap any story like that. And she loved changing the stories, either by taking over the story herself or by asking us what would’ve happened if a character made a different choice.”

Hen chuckled. “Storytimes have to have been an adventure!”

“Such an adventure,” Bobby agreed. “We never knew where the evening’s story would lead to. We could start with Snow White and end up on a treasure hunt in the mines of the dwarfs with no prince or even a stepmother to be seen anywhere.”

Hen grinned. “There really is no need to always have a prince come to the rescue!”

Bobby chuckled. “Yeah, Brook thought the same.”

“And your imagination could keep up with that?” Hen asked. “I’d be so lost if Denny started having similar expectations of my storytime!”

Bobby grinned. “Marcy could keep up much better than I. But Brook was always happy to help me when I struggled.”

Hen smiled softly. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

Bobby watched her warily. “Thank you for asking. I don’t think … anyone has asked me to talk about my children since the fire.” He blew out air through his teeth. “It’s easier and … better to talk about them than I had expected.

“Any time,” Hen promised with a soft smile.

Bobby was always very closed off whenever his family came up back at the station. She remembered so clearly now how Chimney had used that as a way to attack Bobby in his anger about Tatiana’s reaction just before his accident. People wondered about Bobby’s family because he had mentioned being married and having children but never anything more, and in Hen’s experience most firefighters were gossips at heart. Knowing what she knew now, Hen wished that they’d all speculated less and that Chimney had never used it as a weapon.

She was still trying to find a way to make everyone else take a step back even without revealing the tragedy of Bobby’s past. Athena had been right when she had questioned Hen about how much she really knew about either Bobby or Buck because no one at the 118 had really bothered to look past the front either of them presented. Hen knew it was Bobby’s decision how much he wanted to tell anyone about his past, but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be a way to make everyone else be a little less hasty in judging their new people by the little breadcrumbs they showed them.

“Can I ask something else that’s maybe a little more … depressing?” Hen asked.

Bobby shrugged. “As long as I don’t necessarily have to answer.”

“That’s always a given,” Hen said hurriedly and frowned. “And I mean that, Bobby. If I poke too much, I will never be put out if you just tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”

Bobby nodded.

“About that book of yours,” Hen said softly. “I know it’s a sore spot. Your reaction to Buck sneaking around to look at it made that pretty clear.”

Bobby lowered his gaze. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

Hen wet her lips. “Him looking at it or your reaction?” Both shouldn’t have happened, and she suspected Buck had learned his lesson. The question was whether Bobby was aware he had crossed a line he shouldn’t have ever crossed.

“My reaction,” Bobby muttered. “I’m lucky no one made an official complaint about it.”

“Did someone make an unofficial complaint?” Hen hadn’t heard anything about it, and she was pretty confident that someone having a problem with anyone in the station would talk with her about it.

“Tanika cornered me about it,” Bobby said. “And she was right to. Said the only reason she didn’t file a complaint right away was that she talked with Buck first. But she wouldn’t let it slide a second time no matter what … my victim would say about it.”

Hen nodded slowly. That sounded like the kind of blunt thing Tanika would say. She wasn’t someone to sugarcoat her words. Hen felt a little guilty that she hadn’t called out Bobby on his reaction. Tanika shouldn’t have been the only one to do that.

“I’ll be right behind Tanika,” Hen said. “We have put up with too much bullshit on our shift in the past to let it slide again when anyone crosses a line, Bobby.”

Bobby nodded. “I appreciate that. I … enjoy working with you. I’m sorry I’ve been spiraling more than I noticed.”

“Did you notice you were spiraling at all?” Hen asked.

Bobby shrugged.

“Probably not, huh?” Hen said softly. “Your notebook won’t help you hold on to … whatever you’re trying to hold onto forever, Bobby. I don’t think anyone missed what you implied about your plans the moment you filled it up.”

“I don’t have plans,” Bobby denied.

Hen hummed. “Yeah, I think you don’t really want to take your life. Otherwise, you’d have tried to do that already instead of finding a way to put it off.” That was the only reason she hadn’t been hounding Bobby to get into therapy or even forced him into a psych hold. He might have suicidal ideations, but he wasn’t in imminent danger as far as Hen could tell. Instead he had invented a way to hold on to his life, had found an excuse to go on for the time being. But that was a short-term solution at best. “Have you looked into seeing a therapist since we talked about this?”

“I have,” Bobby said slowly. “I have a first appointment next week with someone. I’m not sure how much it will do.”

Hen couldn’t say anything to that. Therapy was difficult from everything she had experienced with it, and in the beginning it had never felt as if it was really helping. And then, she hadn’t noticed for some time after it started to help. She couldn’t say if it would be the same for Bobby, though.

Bobby sighed. “After what happened with Chimney and Buck, I know I need to be in a better place to be the captain you need when we are on shift.”

Hen nodded and swallowed her protest down. In the end, Bobby needed to heal for himself, not for any of them, but maybe for the moment that was enough. Leading him to that realization wasn’t her place, that would be his therapist’s job. Her job was to be his friend and to show him that life could still hold happiness for him.

“I’m glad you’re taking that step,” Hen said softly. “And proud of you for doing it. And I’m here if you ever need to talk about anything.”

 

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