I had stepped outside when the first page came. When I came back inside, he was racing upstairs, pulling his t-shirt on and looking for shoes. He still had on the cartoon lounging pants we'd bought him for Christmas last year. He's 24 years old, 6'4 and 230 lbs, but he still spent weekends bumming around in Scooby Doo lounge pants and playing video games.
"What is it?" I asked, as he pulled his shoes on. The scanner near the fridge was silent.
"Don't know, they just said some code and paged the fire department! Where's Dad?" he asked.
"Go without him!" I said, knowing his father, also a firefighter/First Responder, was out of town on errands and wouldn't be joining him on this call.
He nodded and ran out the door. The pitbull he had rescued from fighting as a puppy was down in his room, began howling as she did every time she heard his scanner or any type siren race by on the highway nearby.
As his truck raced down the road to make the 45-second trip to the fire station, his little brother, 12, ran into the house and asked if he could go down and play his brother's video games?
I nodded, as the scanner sparked to life.
A second page went out for the fire department. A 10-79 at the town's senior citizen apartments.
I cringed.
My years as a reporter covering courts/crimes, I knew most 10-codes, especially ones like 10-79.
"Notify Coroner".
A body had been found.
Though the summer had been cool, the past week had seen high heat and humidity, with indices topping 100. If there was a body, it wasn't going to be in good shape, considering this particular apartment complex was located right on the swampy edge of the lake.
He'd been a firefighter for over a year now, and was going to school to get a degree in fire sciences, to realize his life-time dream of being a career firefighter. He was to start his EMT classes in a few weeks. In addition to the structure fires and wildland fires he'd been fighting several times a week, he'd also been to several car accidents, including a recent one where a young woman, about his age, sustained severe head injury. Among the first on scene, before any other First Responders had arrived, he'd been drafted into service by a First Responder to hold the young girl's head immobile so a neck brace could be put on. When he returned to the station, he realized that he had cerebral matter on his turnout gear.
That had been as gory as he'd ever seen.
Today, I had a feeling, would be worse.
When he returned home two hours later, he was pale and obviously had showered at the station. He was still wearing the Scooby Doo shirt and lounge pants, but gone was my sweet and innocent boy ... the boy who had seen many things in his life, but had never seen death before a mortician had changed the look of it.
He walked into the kitchen and sat heavily in the stool across the kitchen island where I was flipping through the cookbook for recipe ideas. I'd already decided the baked lasagna I'd planned on wasn't going to be appealing to him.
I waited for him to tell me.
"That was bad," he finally said, putting his head into his hands.
"What was it?" I asked, gently.
He looked up, then looked out the patio doors at the lush cornfields and tree-covered bluffs beyond our back door.
"A dead body," he said. "Dead a few days. Died in the bathtub."
Then he shook his head, trying to shake the visuals I knew were flooding his mind. He suddenly jumped up and ran into the bathroom off the kitchen. I expected to hear him retch, but, instead, I heard him spit a few times, then run water.
I'd never seen a body in that condition, but I had watched enough crime documentaries, and shows like NCIS and CSI to know what happens to a body in those conditions.
He came out, his face more pale than before.
"I can't get the smell out of my nose," he said. "I can almost ... taste it."
I handed him an ice cold beer from the fridge.
"It's not what I like but anything will do," he said, as he began to tell me what had happened.
After a few more trips to spit, he finally grabbed a scented candle from the counter and held it to his nose. I sliced a lemon and handed half to him.
"Under your nose," I told him. When I was pregnant with him 24 years ago, every smell aggravated my morning sickness. The only cure was a sliced lemon under my nose. I walked around with a zipper bag filled with sliced lemons for four months.
He held the lemon to his nose as continued to tell me what had happened.
Finally, after he'd recalled all the details he cared to recall, he stood up and threw the lemon into the garbage disposal. He hugged me, thanked me, and announced he was going to take another shower.
His father arrived home just as he was tossing his dirty clothes and wet towel into the laundry room off the kitchen. I moved quickly to do his laundry and erase any further evidence of what had happened.
As he told his father what happened, furnishing further details that he'd left out for me - details that revealed the extent of decomposition of the body, and the efforts that were required for the four firefighters to remove the body from the tub. Hearing of what he was required to do, as the biggest and strongest in the group, I realized he had left childhood behind forever.
Yes, he'd been an adult for years. I mean, he'd worked full-time since he was 18, he'd gotten and paid off two car loans, paid his own tuition and he'd managed his money so well, he was able to buy his own house three weeks before he was old enough to buy beer.
In fact, the only reason he was living with us again was that his house burned down due to faulty wiring.
So it wasn't like he'd lived a pampered or sheltered life.
But still, having to see and do what he'd had to do this day... they were images few people, other than law enforcement and his fellow firefighters, ever see.
I listened to him share how the four veteran firefighters who had responded to the call with him handled the situation, and helped him through it. I listened to how they set the example for respect and sobriety while dealing with this poor soul, by not making jokes or distasteful remarks. I listened to how they waited until they got back to the station, to ease tension a little by teasing him about being in his "Scooby Doo jammies ... again" and playing video games when the call came in. And how they followed up by patting him on the back and telling him that they were proud of him, of how he stepped up like a man and had never once let them down during the whole thing.
I felt tremendous gratitude to these men, these men who were there with my baby boy as he stepped into a nightmare, and made sure he came back out okay.
"I have no appetite for dinner," he said. Words he had never, in my memory, ever uttered.
We left a few brats for him, hoping he'd change his mind. But he didn't.
It took the smell of his baby brother's original recipe chocolate chip-caramel-pecan cookies baking in the oven to lure him back upstairs a few hours later.
"I baked them just for you," said my youngest, handing him a plate full of cookies that had been set aside just for him. "I don't know what happened today but you look like you could use them. Mom said you could eat them even though you didn't eat dinner, which sucks, but..."
Smiling, my oldest son took a bite of cookie. Then ate the whole thing. Four cookies later, he was pouring a glass of milk and asking where the brat buns were.
A little while later, I heard the two of them downstairs playing video games. I heard my oldest cheer and my youngest boo, and I realized that he was on the right path for his life.
He'd run into burning buildings and run back out.
He'd climbed into mangled cars and climbed back out.
He'd done all the sexy and exciting things firefighters do, fearlessly pushing forward, confident in his decision.
And today, he'd learned that the other part of what he'd chosen to do – the part where there are no cameras, and it's not sexy or adrenaline-fueled, the part where he will quietly go in and quietly go out, and get no cheers or accolades – that he can do that part of the job too, and still love being a firefighter.