Rita heard the front door swing open, and Mitch thudded in wearing his heavy boots. He stopped in the kitchen doorway and leaned against the jamb. His hair and uniform were a crumpled mess. "Hi," he said. "Something smells good."

"How does lasagna sound?" Rita said.

"Sounds real good. We saved a couple kids today."

Rita wiped her hands on a thin dishtowel and turned directly towards him. The circles under his eyes were very dark after the long shift, but his eyes still danced. "Yeah?"

He smiled, his teeth bright. He had missed a dark smear of soot near his ear. He almost never talked about work. There were bad days - when an apartment building burned to the ground, or a civilian got burned up, or a firefighter was injured or worse - and the last thing in the world he wanted to do was come home and relive the horrible events he sometimes had to experience.

When they were first married, she had tried to get him to talk. He would slog home, slump into his overstuffed armchair, and for fifteen minutes he would drink beer and stare at the television. "Nothing," he would snap, "nothing happened."

At first she was hurt by his reticence, but she slowly realized it was probably better this way. He needed home to be a haven, a place where the bad never intruded. Six years later and he still dropped in front of the TV after his shift, although he didn't drink beer any more. Mitch and Andrew Spears got together and agreed to give up alcohol, so they would be more alert for their jobs.

Rita was a firefighter's wife. Julie Spears, Andrew's wife, told her once that wives had a job too, an important support role. Mitch and Rita were newlyweds at the time, invited over for a barbecue. The women were inside cutting up vegetables for hamburgers. Julie's eyes were pink from slicing an onion. "If it wasn't for us," Julie said as she wiped a tear with the back of her hand, "they wouldn't be able to go out and do their jobs day after day. They couldn't stand it."

Eventually, what Julie said began to make sense. So, instead of complaining, Rita just worried.

The worst days were the ones when someone was seriously injured or killed. The sickening news speeded along the phone lines among the wives and girlfriends. "Somebody from the 164th died, have you heard who?" "I heard it was the 112th. Have you heard from Mitch? If he calls, ask him if Andrew is OK." And then the long, sleepless night, waiting for someone to find out what really happened, watching the TV news, desperately hoping to see Mitch's image captured by a news camera.

And then, when he finally came home, the enormous relief. And then Mitch's maddening silence.

But Mitch was bursting to talk today, a mood Rita had not seen in years. "So what happened?" she asked eagerly.

"We got to this old house and it was already almost fully involved, smoke everywhere, big flames coming out under the eaves. A teenage girl was running around crying and screaming. She said her brother is still inside. Cap was trying to get her to explain where exactly they were, but she was hysterical, and we couldn't get anything out of her.

"The other crew was getting ready to get up on the roof, and I was waiting to be second on the water line, but they were having trouble with the hydrant connection. Cap told me I needed to get in there and see if I could find the boy.

"I grabbed a mask and air bottle and went through the front door. I'd been in houses like this one before, so I found the hallway right away. But the smoke was really bad. It seemed to be coming from everywhere. I knew the fire was in the attic, and it could drop down on me at any minute. Then the door at the end of the hall just blew open, and I could see the master bedroom red with flames. I had to duck into another bedroom to get out of the heat.

"The smoke was terrible. I wasn't even sure I'd found a bedroom. For a minute, I thought I heard crying somewhere, but there was so much smoke I couldn't see a thing and it was so loud I wasn't sure if I wasn't just hearing things. I felt around for anything, but I kept bumping into walls and dressers. 'Hello! Can you hear me?' I yelled out, but I couldn't even hear my own voice, the fire was too loud. Then it got real hot real fast. I was about to give up and get out of there, when I nearly tripped over the bed.

"I felt around on the mattress and I found his foot. A little kid's foot, right there on the bed, with his socks on. He wasn't moving at all, and I hoped I wasn't too late. I snatched him up, and he didn't weigh anything. Just then I heard something up on the roof, and I knew I had to get out of there. Either the fire was above me, or the crew was about to vent it open. The fire was getting even louder. I could hear it in the next room, pounding, like it was trying to break down the wall.

"And the kid started crying. 'Lucy, Lucy, Lucy, ' he was crying.

"I ran out and gave the kid to an EMT. They took him off in an ambulance, but I heard he's OK. A little smoke inhalation, but not too bad.

"And then Cap came up to me. 'The girl here says there's another girl inside, ' he said.

"I told him I was going back in, but he said no, wait for them to vent the roof. But I knew it would be too late by then. Hold them off just a little longer, I told him, I had been in there, I knew exactly where the rooms were. If she was still alive, I could find her.