Proof of Angels (2 page)

S
EAN FELT THE COOLNESS OF THE AIR WASH OVER HIM
as he descended. There was no time to think about the fall when he jumped. He just knew he had to do it. To resist. To fight. To go back. Everything was behind him now. And the impact was coming. For a split second the realization hit him that he was going to land feetfirst. His body was so large and heavy there was no way for him to tuck, roll, or switch positions in midair like a diver. If he survived, his legs would be shattered.

Sean never felt his femur bones snap, the vertebrae in his lower spine compress, or his head hit the pavement when he landed.
Legs, back, head
. Later people would tell him how lucky he was he had not landed headfirst, that if he had, he would be dead. His legs and girth had spared him.
Lucky is one of those relative terms
, he would often joke. But it didn't seem funny after the fall. Not much did.

After several minutes of being unconscious once again,
this time on the ground, Sean came to and heard the commotion that surrounded him. Several people were talking to him at once. There was a flurry of activity in the alley. He heard both men and women shouting orders at each other and into radios. He couldn't see what was happening, but he could tell what they were doing. He had been on the other side enough to know.

It took several of them to cut the tank straps, remove the clothes from his body, and slide him onto an orange board. He opened his eyes to look around him, but he couldn't see anything. He knew his eyes were open, but he couldn't see.

“I'm blind. I can't see. I can't see. I can't see,” he gasped under a small oxygen mask that now replaced his melted one that lay beside him in a heap with his uniform.

“Magee. We got you. You're gonna be fine,” the medic said, placing Sean's head into a neck brace.

Another was strapping Sean's upper arms to the side of the board. “Hang in there, buddy. Hang in there.”

“Where did she go?” Sean weakly muttered.

“Sean, there was no one else. You came out alone. You're gonna be fine, Sean. You're gonna be fine. We got ya, man,” his friend James reassured him, patting his chest.

“I . . . saw . . .”

“Save your strength. You in any pain?”

“Uh-huh,” Sean said, trying desperately to see what was going on around him. His blue eyes were bloodshot. Blood flowed out of his nose and ears. His face was black with soot save for the tracks of blood that cut tiny tributaries over his cheekbones and square jaw. The flesh on his hands was blackened
and charred and smelled like overcooked steaks. Sean caught a whiff of his own burned flesh and his stomach contracted. Vomit forced its way up his esophagus and he began to choke.

James snapped the oxygen mask off Sean, and then with the help of three other men took the orange board and lifted it sideways.

“Oh god, oh god,” Sean gasped, “oh god.”

When Sean was done retching, the men flipped the board again and laid it flat on the ground.

“Goddammit. Goddammit,” Sean whispered.

“We'll get you something for the pain, man. We'll get you to the hospital and get you something. Stay with me,” James shouted nervously.

“I can't . . . ,” Sean said weakly, barely audible and whispering toward James, who knew his secret. “I can't take anything. I am not supposed to take anything.” Yes, nearly burning alive and then falling from a window did not pose as much of a threat to Sean's life as did the possibility of jeopardizing his sobriety. He would rather die than go back to nursing the bottle or sneaking pain pills.

“Man, you're gonna need a whole lot of something. Trust me. We'll take care of you,” his friend James said now, nervously, feverishly patting his friend on the chest. “Don't worry about that bullshit now. Stay in the moment, man. Booze is the least of your worries. You make it out of this, you have a free pass to drink for the rest of your life. You got me? You're gonna live. You got me? We'll be hitting the swells together. You and me. Back on the boards in no time and we'll
be fishin', too. And after that, we'll hit the clubs and start dancing with all the ladies. Just like ol' times. You just hang on. You just hang on, man. Hang the hell on.”

“No. No. You're not listening to me . . . No . . .” Sean shook his head and started to shake. If he had been on the other side, he would have thought the patient was in shock. But Sean was not in shock. He knew exactly what was happening.

James grabbed his upper arm, the only part of Sean that was not burned. “You listen to me, brother. You're not going anywhere. Not today. Not on my watch. You got that? You shut up and quit fighting me on this one.”

Sean couldn't see James's ruddy, round, and panicked face. He didn't need to. He knew what that fear looked like. He didn't need to see what he knew James was feeling. His friend was desperate. Afraid. Sean had been there, too. Sean had been the one to grip tightly, hold on, shake, beg, and plead for someone to come back. All Sean wanted in this moment was to assuage his friend's anguish. He wanted to make them all feel better. He wanted to tell them it would be okay. He wanted to thank them. He understood his nephew Colm now.
It's okay, Uncle Sean. It's okay. Just let me go. Please just let me go
. He understood it so well. To want to hang on. To not let anyone down. Even when it hurt so badly. And Sean didn't want anyone to suffer. Not on his account. In fact, that's all he'd ever wanted—to relieve others' suffering. He wanted to help people. He wanted to see some proof that he was making a difference. A smile, a lifted finger in appreciation. A pulse. A heartbeat. Some proof. Not proof of heaven. Not proof of something beyond him. That was always his sister's and nephew's quest, not his. He just wanted proof of what
was right in front of him. He wanted proof of life. It made all the difference in the world. He wanted to do that for his friend James especially, who at this very moment was yelling at someone about a falling heart rate and low pulse–oxygen level. He wanted to give James a little grin. Tell his friend,
Thanks, I'm doing great
. But instead, he said, like his nephew had just three years earlier, “Just let me go, please. Please. I've had a good run of things. Just let me go, James. It's all right. It's all right.”

With the last bit of energy he could muster up, Sean smiled and closed his eyes.

W
HEN
S
EAN AWOKE IN HIS HOSPITAL ROOM ONE
morning, two weeks after being revived from an induced coma to heal his brain swelling—which came four weeks after recovering from five surgeries to reset his back and legs, not to mention the skin grafts from his stomach for his hand and face and neck—he noticed the union president, his battalion chief, the Light Force engine captain, and his buddy James all standing at the foot of his bed.

As foggy and confused as he had been these past two weeks since waking, doped up on pharmaceutical cocktails of morphine and oxycodone and whatever else they had to numb him into a state of sweet oblivion, he still had the wherewithal to understand what was about to happen to him. He knew the union president didn't take time out of his busy day to make small talk. Sean had a feeling the men were here to tell him what he had heard them tell other firefighters Sean had witnessed in similar situations—lying on their backs in hospital
gowns, burned, or otherwise damaged beyond repair. Sean took one look at them and knew he was getting his walking papers. The union owed him. Disability. Permanent retirement. This was the drill. He had seen it all before.

“Look who is up: our miracle boy,” the captain said cheerfully. “How ya feelin' today?”

“Like I just fell off a three-story building.”

“At least you haven't lost your sense of humor. John Davis is here to talk, Sean. You up for it?”

“Guess so. You guys have a captive audience. Whatever it is: Shoot. I can take it.”

“All right, Sean. We'll only be a minute,” the union president announced, pulling out some files from a worn satchel.

Sean was grateful that the captain wasn't apologizing today. He had been coming every day with James and others from the department to make sure Sean wasn't angry with him for sending him up into the middle of a tinderbox.

Sean took in the surroundings. He had witnessed this scene play itself out: people standing in the doorway talking about what to do with the patient next. It felt like déjà vu, only it wasn't. It was real back then, with his nephew lying helpless in a bed, and Sean looking for the right time to get the hell out.

Before this accident, he hadn't set foot in a hospital in over three years. The last time, he was with his sister, Cathleen; her son, Colm; and his best friend, Dr. Gaspar Basu. They had arrived together in L.A. after a cross-country trip from New York City. They had all come to help save Colm by getting the boy the medical help he needed for his unpredictable heart, a heart that for seemingly no reason just ceased to beat and sent him into cardiac arrest seven times in seven years.
They all entered the hospital in L.A. as supposedly one unit, but they each came out of the journey different people. When they returned to New York, Sean decided it would be best if he left his position in the FDNY and struck out on his own somewhere else. And even though he was seemingly light-years away from his nephew now, L.A. somehow made him feel closer to him. Though that wasn't what he'd told his sister when he'd decided to move.

“I love L.A. Hot chicks, beaches, cars, and no more crappy winters or familiar watering holes begging me to come back in,” was how he'd sold it to Cathleen to make the move easier on her. But Cathleen was no dummy. She knew Sean better than he knew himself, and she knew exactly what her brother was doing. He was running away. Again. He had done it before. He had dropped out of school and gone to Italy after their mother died. And then when something had happened in Italy, which to this day Cathleen had no idea what it was, he came running back to New York. And so, Cathleen knew, Sean was once again on the run.

“You're always welcome home, Sean. You know that. I'll always be here for you,” Cathleen told him. “Don't be a stranger.”

But that's what he had indeed become.

L.A. swallowed him whole. Not in the way that New York did or could, but in an entirely different way. In L.A.—away from his family—Sean could essentially be alone, and alone was what he wanted. It's what he'd wanted more than anything else. He wanted to start
over
in a place that welcomed re-creation and self-reinvention; a city where people literally could and did change their faces. He wanted to be where
people could go entire days on their own, where they hid inside their cars and drove to work, the mall, school, wherever in complete isolation, not butted up against each other breathing in each other's air on subways, not sitting skin to skin on packed bus benches, not huddling under awnings keeping dry and warm on rainy, cold days, and not pushing through doors en masse. He didn't want to be involved in people's lives and he didn't want them involved in his. He didn't want his sister just
popping in
anymore. He didn't want her to worry. He didn't want to worry about her. He'd had his fill of loving and losing. And seeing her with Gaspar and their now happy family made it all the more real.
He didn't belong anymore
. It was best that he kept his distance. In fact, if he had to be completely honest, the past eleven years since his mother's death and his ill-fated trip to Italy had been too painful, too hard. And then came Colm. The beautiful boy with the broken heart, who, no matter how much Sean loved him, he could never fill the place of the boy's missing father. Sean could never fix him either. New York was no haven for the brokenhearted. It was a living scrapbook. Every moment of Sean's life there had been cut, pasted, and pressed indelibly into the pages of his memory. New York. New York. New York. Home of his dead mother and father. His sick nephew Colm. Every time he turned a corner he saw them as they had once been. Alive. Beautiful. Walking. Laughing. Hoping. It was impossible. Impossible to stay.

And there was another reason, a reason that he could barely speak aloud. It had always been there—his unspoken desire to be free. It came in gnawing aches in his stomach and sometimes full-blown panic attacks. Sean had always, since he was
a boy, felt trapped in the tiny apartment where his mother raised him and his sister. He spent countless hours in the tight space as a boy and often imagined he could fly—spreading his arms out, he dreamed of crashing through the walls and flying out of his apartment, out of New York, and out of his own skin. And as he grew, the buildings, the people, the noise in New York surrounded him and crushed him. In elevators, in stairwells, in subways, in hospital rooms Sean felt like howling:
Get me the hell out of here! Just get me out of here
. When he drank, the panic he often felt dissipated. He felt in control. The rooms seemed manageable. The people in them did not seem so oppressive, so loud, so overwhelming. But when he was sober the spaces caved in on him. He wanted grand expanses. He wanted mountains. Valleys. Oceans. He wanted distance. He wanted to be as far as possible from the old life. And when Sean had stood on the shore of the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica with Colm, his sister, and Dr. Basu three years before, he knew. He knew this was where he would build his life. His new life.

A new life
, Sean thought to himself now. That's what he'd wanted when he'd moved to Los Angeles. And he sure as hell was going to get it. An
entirely
new life. Once again forced to start all over from zero. As if he had nothing left to lose, because he thought there was nothing left that life could possibly take from him. Only there was always more to take.
Always
. “Don't get too comfortable, Sean,” his Irish-Catholic mother would often say. “That other shoe, well, it's always waiting to drop.”

Sean didn't want to have to call his sister and tell her this.
He didn't want this.
This new life
. Whatever this new life without the fire department meant.

“So give it to me straight, Davis. What am I dealing with? Disability? Pension?”

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Sean. We came by to see how you're feeling. You've been out six weeks. And you're awake now, so we can talk. It's just standard. They were able to fix your back and your leg will heal. It's your head everyone is worried about.”

“What's new about that?” Sean said with a grin.

“Back to yourself. I like to hear that,” the captain said again, nervously.

“I am looking at my legs in traction. I have steel rods and screws inserted into my back. My hands—under these gloves—look like leather mitts. From where I am lying, I am calling this one as I see it.”

“We can give you a dispatch position. Or you can train to become a marshall or a training officer. Or you can take the full pension for disability.”

“How much time do I have to think about it?”

“After your short-term disability expires.”

“So no more riding on the engine? No more fires? No more runs?”

“No, Sean. Would you want someone like you to have your back in a fire?”

Sean inhaled and didn't respond. He didn't need to. He'd been here for six weeks. Short-term disability lasted only a year, and it came with strings. He would be examined constantly. And he knew what the doctors would report: He
was unfixable. He wasn't going to be able to go anywhere in
three
years on his legs, let alone one. He shook his head. Even though they were giving him options, he knew they wanted him to be the one to say it, to be the one to come to his own conclusion, and relieve them of the dirty work of taking away a man's life. Because that's what it was: a life. Every firefighter knew it. This wasn't just a job. It was a life.
A life
.
His life
. The only one he saw fit to live.

“I am not fit to do anything else. I don't know what else to do. I'm a firefighter. It's all I know how to do. It's all I want to do,” Sean said to no one in particular.

“Come on.” The captain walked over and put his hand on Sean's exposed shoulder. “I know this is hard to take. But you're going to be okay. Do you know what a lucky break you just got? You fell three stories and survived. You're a goddamn tank, for Christ's sake. You're lucky you're going to be able to walk. This is one of life's wins. Take it.”

“So I've got no other options?”

“Sean, you know we can't put you back on an engine or a ladder. You can still be in the department. You'll always be a brother to us. You'll get full benefits. You'll be able to feed yourself. Take care of your family.”

“I don't have my own family to take care of,” Sean said curtly.

“Well, now you'll finally find some time to change that, won't you?”

Sean swallowed hard. He was thirty years old. He hadn't had a serious girlfriend in eleven years. Most of his buddies in the department were married and had kids already or were on their way. He'd spent his twenties taking care of his nephew
with his sister—and he was well aware it was her family, not his. Besides, she had married and moved on. And what were his chances now of starting a family? Of even thinking about it? Who would find him attractive now? Useful? His face and neck were half burned off. His hands were basically useless to him now. If he wasn't in so much pain, he'd laugh. So he joked instead.

“Yeah sure, Captain. I'll get right on that. I am sure girls will be lining up down the hall as soon as they hear a disfigured burn patient who can't walk is ready to start a family. Get me a profile started on Match.com.”

“Sean, I didn't mean to . . . ,” the captain said, trying to apologize.

“Nah, it's all right. I am joking. I'm joking.”