East Side: A Half of Us Story

By

Arkeym N. Young

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ACT ONE

‍ ‍Smoke

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If the North Side shined as the beacon of Fairhaven, then the East Side was undoubtedly its shadow. Dilapidated gas stations, abandoned laundromats, and other tombs of commerce marred the streets between vacant lots, aging apartment buildings, and land littered with brownfields. The rest of the city had learned to look past it, except when something bad happened and reminded everyone it was there. Still, as they always did, investors saw potential in the ruin. Given enough time and money, the people who’d been surviving here would probably be priced out anyway and pushed down into some other hole. For now, the East Side lagged behind like the younger sibling, and on the third floor of one of its aging high-rises, a family was trying to make a home feel whole again.

The chipped coffee table had been pushed back to make room for all four of them to sit on the worn carpet between the couch and the television stand. Patrick Donovan Smith sat with his back to the couch, facing his youngest son, Daniel, across the scattered cards. Kelly sat to Donovan’s left, across from Donovan Jr., their seven-year-old. Better known as D.J., he was two years older than his brother and had become the de facto man of the house when Donovan had been away. He was slipping comfortably back into his role as a child again, though with some residual burden from the years he’d spent carrying more than a child should. Pixie, their basset hound, lay across the couch with her long body sunk into the sagging cushion, watching the popcorn bowl with solemn patience. A black patch covered her entire back, and her droopy brown ears completed the sad-dog look that would earn her a kernel or two before too long.

Kelly hadn’t yet taken Donovan’s last name, though they had been together almost eight years going by the first life they’d tried. A year, if anyone counted this second time around. He told her that a ring was “on the way,” but her enthusiasm was not as innocent as it once could have been after nearly a decade that included waiting on his release for over two years. Donovan saw this as an opportunity to not only show his remorse, but more importantly, his gratitude for her loyalty and patience. He still had much to prove to his woman and their boys, including a move to a better neighborhood sooner than later.

Their apartment on the third floor of the high-rise conducted the rest of the building through its walls like soundwaves in an ocean. Beneath them, an action movie drove its bass upward in dull thumps that made the floor vibrate. Above them, someone moved to music, and the ceiling gave a faint squeak now and then beneath the bounding feet. Down the hall, a delivery driver repeated a Chinese food order through a cracked doorway, confirming egg rolls, fried rice, and extra duck sauce. That was how the building worked. Everyone minded their own business while knowing too much about everyone else’s. People lived close enough to stay in the know without having to ask; it was like scrolling someone’s profile online.

In this neighborhood, in this building, race didn’t vanish, but the poverty line had more say-so, making a melting pot of the place: recovering addicts, parolees, divorcees, public-aid regulars, college graduates trying to find a foothold in life’s next transition, and mostly families trying to get by. People on the East Side tended to be avoided and forgotten by the rest of Fairhaven, except when something bad happened and reminded everyone they were there. Donovan and Kelly belonged to the last group now, trying to get by. At least he was trying to make sure they did.

He’d been home on probation for almost a year. Free enough to sit on the floor with his sons, but monitored enough to remember that freedom could dry up fast. He had missed Kelly and the boys for twenty-six months, and now that he was working again–at the dollar store on Vine and trying to get a second job at that new gas station–he wanted to prove that their waiting had not been wasted on him. Once had been enough. Violating probation and losing them for years again would never be worth the old hustle. Those street games only worked when a man avoided getting caught every time. Cops only had to catch him once. They had, and Donovan learned that shortcuts ended with longer pain.

Daniel–nicknamed Scooter–tried to fake a stretch as he leaned back to peek at his brother’s cards. He couldn’t have been more obvious even if he’d tried to. “You got any fours?”

“Scooduh, quit tryna look at my hand,” D.J. said, putting enough emphasis on his younger brother’s nickname to show that he was serious about winning this round. D.J. then leaned back and pulled his cards to his chest. “You gotta remember which cards you already asked about.”

“I ain’t lookin’,” Scooter said, already blushing from almost getting busted.

Donovan secretly laughed at both of them. Busted, he thought while checking Scooter’s look of appeal, his son’s eyes darting from mother to father, hoping this case would be thrown out due to lack of evidence. The parents both shared an amused glance. Donovan rested one arm along the couch cushion behind him and watched. Kelly sat with her legs crossed beneath her, taking in a breath before handing down the verdict.

“Alright,” she said. “Redeal. Everybody puts their cards down.”

D.J. exhaled and obeyed. “No cheating this time,” he said, eyeing his brother.

“It’s just a game,” Donovan said, looking at no one in particular. He knew Scooter was cutting corners, but he didn’t want to put him on the spot. Donovan knew the heat of judging eyes all too well, even if he was guilty. Then he added, “And we’re all gonna play fair, win or lose, right?” He reached and rubbed Pixie under her droopy chin before he tossed a couple kernels on the couch. She lapped them up, crunching and pleased that her patience had paid off.

“Sorry Bubby.”

D.J. smiled. “It’s cool, lil bro. But you gotta try if you wanna get better. It’s way funner that way.”

“I be forgetting what number I asked though.”

“Tell you what. I’ll throw you a hint once in a while if you already asked for that number, okay?”

Scooter’s eyes lit up. “Okay!”

Donovan stood and let the blood flow back into his lower half. Kelly had not yet let go of worry and asked, “Where you going?”

He picked up on her concern, hard to shed after all. “Nowhere. Just gonna stretch my legs and take a quick smoke break. No more than five minutes. Promise.” He winked at her, then with a more serious expression said, “Promise.”

“Okay,” she said, allowing her face to relax a little.

“Hey Bub?”

“Yeah, Dad?” D.J. asked.

“Do me a favor and check on those pizzas. They should almost be done. If they’re close, turn the oven off. I’ll get ‘em out when I come back up.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“Be right back,” he said, looking at Kelly before grabbing his winter coat and heading out the door down the stairwell to the lobby. The elevator would take too long, and he wanted to make sure that five minutes meant exactly that. The time was more important for her, and he owed her proof that his words and actions would continue to match one another. Besides, despite being a month into spring, temperatures would drop to near freezing for the third night this week, which meant that he’d inhale that cigarette in less than two minutes outside the building’s doors, foregoing a more leisurely smoke break.

Five minutes later, he opened the apartment door, welcomed by the heater and the smell of cooked frozen pizzas. Due to his stellar work ethic since being taken on at the dollar store, his manager offered to give them away for free, but Donovan politely declined, ultimately settling on the employee discount. He didn’t want any misunderstandings about missing inventory, and wasn’t sure if his manager had it out for him or was simply being nice. Donovan hadn’t yet found his footing on the outside well enough to tell the difference and compartmentalize the two.

The family of four stood at the counter, scarfing down those pizzas as if they’d come from Paolo’s, one of the flagship pizza places in the city for over twenty years. They couldn’t afford that though. Gonna surprise them with some Paolo’s one day, he thought. Pixie raised her head when Scooter dropped a piece of crust on the floor. She hopped her old bones off the couch, the dog tags on her collar jingling as she headed toward her snack. Then Kelly picked it up.

“Uh uh,” she said, looking at Pixie’s hopeful face. “This garlic crust’ll run right through you.”

Pixie tried to salvage a consolation lick of the splattered garlic butter that lay on the laminate floor tiles, but Kelly was two steps ahead. She snapped her fingers sharply about a foot from Pixie’s now startled face. “No! I said no! Back on the couch, girl,” she said while pointing her finger. Kelly had banished Pixie back to her lookout post.

A defeated Pixie grumbled as she hopped her short legs back up and plopped down on the warm cushion.

D.J. laughed. “She’s talking back.”

“Yeah, she getting a little sassy,” an amused Kelly replied.

“That’s right, Pixie. Don’t take no shit from her,” Donovan teased after wiping up the garlic butter with a wet paper towel.

“Oh yeah?” A playful two-punch combo from Kelly’s tiny fists found their mark on his shoulder. He fell down immediately.

“Boys help! She broke my shoulder! I–can’t–move!” Then, the theatrics began, and the smiling boys were there for the show. “Oh, you no help Daddy? Now, Daddy get everybody!” He slowly stood up stretching his arms, reaching for Kelly’s leg. He rubbed it provocatively. “Ooh, Daddy like!”

“Stop,” she giggled. “That’s how we got these two.”

“Daddy want…” He was on both feet now, beginning the zombie walk toward the mother of his boys.

Giggles erupted into laughter as they protected their mom, which mostly consisted of them running away from their dad rather than actual protecting. After a few laps around the counter, Kelly restored order in between panting.

“Alright, no more running in the kitchen.” She looked at Donovan, shaking her head and smiling. He knew what that meant: one more quick round of Go Fish so the parents could go to bed early.

Everyone sat down for another game.

“C’mon, Scooduh. Hurry up,” D.J. urged.

D.J. was sitting on a hand that would’ve been great in poker, but with only two books so far, he felt like he was falling behind. He liked to win, especially in front of his parents. What he hadn’t yet grown into was patience. In that regard, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. Like his father, he might have to learn that lesson the hard way.

“Calm down, D.J.,” his mom warned. “You had to learn too.”

Scooter studied his hand, then asked with confidence, “You got any fives, Mommy?”

“There you go, baby,” Kelly said, handing him her five of clubs.

Donovan took a sip of cola and set the plastic bottle aside as the game wound down. For a while, the room did what he had wanted it to do since he came home. The tiny apartment had made a home for two boys, a tired woman, a man on probation, an old dog, a bowl of popcorn, and a card game nobody would remember correctly later, but would somehow become part of mythology. Donovan didn’t know then that that warm night would later take mercy on some colder ones. He didn’t know then that he’d repeatedly come back to this one because it was one of the last times Kelly’s laughter blanketed the apartment with relief. That was the last day they were all together, and happy.

The next day, Kelly got the diagnosis from the oncologist. Six months later, she was gone.

***

Now the place belonged to him and the boys and to everything she’d left behind. Her robe remained on the hook behind the bedroom door; he hadn’t found the courage to move it. A half-used bottle of her body lotion sat on the dresser with the faint scent of strawberry and vanilla trapped beneath the cap. He smelled it every day, afraid that the scent would eventually fade.

The boys had changed in different ways over the months. Grief made children do small, private work. D.J. had grown quieter and more watchful. Scooter asked the hardest questions at bedtime and the strangest ones at breakfast. Donovan answered as much as he could and excused himself to the bathroom when he didn’t want to cry in front of them. He was thankful that prison hadn’t taken that human part from him.

But keeping that part of him alive didn’t pay the bills. Money was tight, stretched to the pain of a tendon before it snaps, and the hours he missed for Kelly’s appointments had cost him work he couldn’t replace fast enough. His supervisor tried to be decent until decency made scheduling difficult. The rent and other bills didn’t care that he and his boys had just lost their lifeline. Growing boys needed new clothes, field trip money, toiletries, food, and a father who was there to carry it all.

He was tempted. Probation peered over every decision he made or thought about making, but a quick hustle wormed its way into his thoughts anyway. I’ll be much more careful this time, he told himself. Different crew, different M.O. Just once to get my feet back under me. Then Kelly pushed into his thoughts. He could hear her now. I died so you could take the easy way out? Donovan cursed himself for even letting the thought enter his mind. And even that didn’t kill the temptation.

Old phone numbers began returning to his mind. He doubted that those connections still had them, since he was sure everyone switched up once he got pulled. But memory kept its own contacts, and he could probably still reach out to men he used to know in other ways. A friend of a cousin of a cousin who could move cards. A guy who needed drivers for unknown packages. A certain lady who flipped stolen identities into two months’ rent before anyone knew anything was gone. Donovan knew that world, and he knew how to fall back into it. He knew the language, the warnings, the little tests scammers and thieves gave before trusting another man with dirty money.

This other, legal road was slower and made him swallow pride in places where managers nearly half his age decided whether his past mattered more than his labor. Treating me like I’m a murderer or something. ‘Non-violent’ crime, idiot! Just gimme this chance! Pride had no place here, not with two boys depending on him. Donovan continued to fill out more forms and job applications. He stood in offices and fast-food restaurants, answering questions from people who looked at his inked forearms and only saw his tats and prior convictions. He couldn’t blame them, but he still hated them for the power they wielded.

He also knew the sound of a steel door closing behind him and the outline of Kelly’s face when she told him in the visiting room of the first time D.J. cried because he didn’t understand why his father couldn’t come home. He didn’t miss the bland, greasy food, the rat turds underneath his bunk, or the shower floors slimed with whatever fluids a man had expelled at the height of his fantasy. Prison was filthy, and it was hell. No amount of television or handball games could ever change that. Yet outside those walls, he felt like he was still doing time, something he never considered when he was doing the crime.

One Saturday night, Donovan leaned over the kitchen counter long after the boys had gone to sleep. It was the last weekend of March, and the apartment was dark except for the stove light, which spread a tired yellow across the room. He slid a bright green disconnection notice back in its envelope and placed it on top of a growing stack of others. Without a payment, the furniture rental place would be coming to repossess the living room set next week. His phone waited, turning in his palm as he weighed his options. He pictured cash in his hand by tomorrow, a full fridge, rent handled for another month, and the boys eating without watching him pretend he wasn’t hungry.

Then he pictured his probation officer in the courtroom. A probation violation meant his boys would be passed from one older relative to another until patience or money ran out, or somebody decided they were too much trouble to keep. Then strangers would make decisions for them as the system turned his sons into case files, becoming income for homes that were not homes. They’d age out and be thrown to the streets. By the time Donovan came home–if he came home–he might be an older, lesser version of himself, watching his sons pass through the same doors he had failed to keep them from.

He had failed to outrun himself years ago, and now, despite his woman’s death, money problems, and life in general, none of that changed the fact that his worst day out here was still better than his best day in there. Donovan pushed the phone away and put both hands over his face, cradling his cheekbones with his thumbs and scratching his forehead with nubby fingernails. He’d started biting his nails again, a habit that he’d quit months after coming home, especially after Kelly jabbed that he had the fingers of a third-grader. She hadn’t asked him to become perfect, but to step up, to stay. He couldn’t do that if he were another recidivism statistic.

The heater clanked somewhere in the wall. A car passed outside, its headlights sliding across the blinds and vanishing. From the boys’ room, Scooter made a small sound in his sleep. Donovan entered their room and checked on them before closing the door. My little men. I could never leave them again. When he returned to his bedroom past midnight, exhaustion moved through him with the heaviness of weather.

Sleep took him back to the card game. In the dream world, time moved differently. In reality, he’d been sleeping for about an hour when the playing cards between them darkened. Then, he smelled something. At first, Donovan thought the stove light had gone out, but then smoke began weaving its way through the dream. Kelly’s face blurred behind it. Is that smoke?

Donovan opened his eyes, his mind still blurry, still restarting.

For one confused moment, the dream and the room intertwined one another like dovetails. Then he smelled it outside the dream world. He sat up fast. That IS smoke! Someone shouted in the hallway as a fire alarm shrieked from somewhere beyond the door, piercing and relentless. Feet pounded past the apartment. A woman screamed a muffled name over and over, and another voice answered through the chaos. Donovan ran out of his room and toward the boys’ room, fumbling to put on his gym shorts, coughing as the smell reached the back of his throat.

“Boys! Get up!” He moved toward them, but the front door thundered down the hallway. Someone was banging on the door, and the first strike shook the frame. Scooter screamed. D.J. grabbed his brother by the arm and pulled him back. Donovan grabbed them both and turned toward the door, his heart pounding into his throat. In the strange calm inside the storm of it all, he thought his head would pop–a thermometer left in boiling water too long.

“Fire department!” a man shouted from the other side. “Move away from the door!”

Donovan stopped, and a second strike splintered the lock. The third forced the door inward with a violent crack, sending the doorknob, smoke, and flashing hallway lights into the apartment. A firefighter entered through the broken frame, masked and burdened by gear, his voice cutting through the alarm.

“Fire department!” he said, his voice muffled by the mask. “Everybody out now!”

Donovan yanked the boys to him, all holding hands, all barefoot.

“There’s a fire above you,” the fireman said in a voice that balanced urgency with a calm that gave Donovan the impression that he’d been there and done that many times before. He kept his boys close and followed the firefighter into the smoke.

The shutoff notices and Kelly’s robe remained where they were, but bounding down the stairs, Donovan remembered:

Pixie!

***

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ACT Two

‍ ‍Fire

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By 2:00 a.m., Jessica Richards was already on-site, having inhaled the rest of her granola and almonds during the ride over there. She saw the carnage before turning the corner. The building exhaled smoke through broken windows. Heat burped the noxious stench of burned hair, old, wet wood, and plastic outward in gusts. The flames flared in protest when water from the hose hit them. For an instant, the windows filled with white steam, boiling together before smoke rolled out again. Smoke rose in thick bands across the East Side, spreading over the rooftops and dimming the moonlight above Fairhaven.

In the parking lot, sirens overlapped one another. More fortunate neighbors from the first two floors poured onto sidewalks in robes, work pants, slippers, and coats thrown over whatever they had slept in. Winter had yielded a month ago, but spring nights were still chilly. Puffs of steam exploded from weakened lungs in uneven coughs. Many held children. Some held up phones, recording. Some held nothing at all, as the smoke and fire had rushed them from their apartments before they could gather themselves.

The first responder radio crackled as she threw the ambulance in park and pressed the rocker switch, killing the siren mid-wail. She stuffed some latex gloves in her side pocket and hopped out. Some people were built for long careers that included diagnosis, surgery, recovery rounds, and follow-ups. Jessica was built for the first hour, where command and training could narrow the world just enough for her to control.

The Expert Field Medical Badge she’d earned before her discharge wasn’t some empty decoration to her. She’d been one of three women in a class of more than a hundred candidates, and the only one of them to earn the badge, a fact everyone noticed and no one let her forget, especially those who’d wanted her as their figurehead for whatever agenda they were pushing. While that EFMB was proof of her discipline and toughness, she had no stomach for the politics, hierarchy, billing, or insurance claims. She just wanted to fix people, ASAP. She wasn’t a symbol or a spokesperson–just a medic.

“Let’s go. Grab the bag and those burn sheets,” she instructed Oliver, her field intern.

Fire crews had already taken the front. Thick hoses slapped against the pavement every time pressure surged through them, and water burst through fourth-floor windows in hard white sheets. The fire threw orange light across the black, wet street, bright enough to bleach faces for half a second before water dimmed them again. Mist blew back from the hoses and crossed the lot in cold waves, carried sideways by a shifting early spring wind that cut through coats and dragged smoke with it. Jessica tasted chemicals and wet ash.

She and Oliver hurried across the parking lot to the building’s front entrance, where firefighters disappeared into that darkness, likely climbing to the throat of the inferno on the fourth floor. In seconds that melted into years, they came back carrying stumbling residents, their soot-covered arms hanging limply over firefighters’ shoulders. The smoke slowly pushed into Jessica’s mouth and laid a bitter film over her tongue. She sorted the odors without wanting to, moving her impromptu station back a few yards.

Several residents were stumbling and coughing heavily. She grabbed the gear from Oliver and instantly began assessing priorities. With her eyes still trained on the growing numbers, she ordered, “Ollie, go grab the O2. Hurry up!” His shoes thumped on the asphalt as he sprinted back to the ambulance. The wind kept pushing hose mist over the pavement until every surface shone black beneath the emergency lights. People slipped, grabbing strangers by the arm to balance themselves. Jessica moved through it with her kit against her leg and her eyes cutting from face to face, searching for the ones who needed immediate treatment.

Oliver returned. “Mask.”

Jessica took it without taking her attention off someone near the entryway.

An older woman sat on the curb, coughing into her sleeve while a man paced nearby. Jessica knelt in front of the woman and placed a hand near her shoulder.

“Can you walk?”

The woman nodded.

“Come with me,” Jessica said. “Let’s get you a little farther back.” She gently placed the mask over the woman’s head, her thin white hair matted down with muddy soot. “Breathe in through your nose if you can. Slow out through your mouth, okay?”

The woman tried. Her eyes watered. Her hands trembled in her lap.

“What’s your name?”

“Brenda.”

“Okay, Brenda. You’re safe now. Keep breathing with me.” She looked at Oliver. “Keep an eye on her. Medic Three is en route. They’ll stage near us, and when they get here, help them prep her for transport. Then come find me.”

He nodded, and she disappeared into the sea of cries, coughs, and sirens. Jessica moved with the mastery of someone who’d become well acquainted with such scenes. Her final tour as a medic gave her plenty to adjust to. After her honorable discharge that included a Bronze Star, she continued her mission of wresting repair from the clutches of despair. The next hour belonged to her and these lives, and she allowed nothing to compromise that. Later, as the fire began to sink in defeat, as calamity took a breath, she heard a child’s voice behind her.

“Save my dog. Please, save her.”

Jessica turned toward the sound before she could stop herself. Donovan was hovering over his boys with one arm locked around their huddled bodies and the other holding a limp Pixie under his arm. Both boys had mylar blankets around them. Scooter was crying into Donovan’s side. D.J. stared at the building with his face emptied by shock.

Jessica reached for Pixie before Donovan could ask. Pixie’s fur was soaked and mixed with soot beneath her ribs, turning her white belly to a heavy grey. Her ears were soaked flat, heavier than they should have been. Soot marked her mouth and Jessica wiped it away with the back of her glove. Before the air had grown unbearable, someone had scooped her up while passing the apartment’s open doorway after she’d been spotted cowering under the living room table. Pixie had been saved from the fire, but not the smoke. Her old, stressed body gave little response beneath Jessica’s hands, but she moved just enough there to make Jessica work.

“Ollie, I need the pet mask,” Jessica said, laying Pixie on a makeshift table of plastic crates.

He grabbed the small animal oxygen mask from the kit and handed it to her. Jessica fitted it over Pixie’s muzzle. She checked for breathing, then for a pulse. Both were faint. She repositioned the dog to the pavement, cleared what she could from the airway, and began tiny compressions.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she said, low enough that only the asphalt and the dog could hear. “Stay with me.”

She worked through the noise, counting under her breath, letting her field experience squeeze the world down to a diamond’s point. Pixie’s ears lay flat. The breathing and pulse had faded, then stopped. No, don’t do that to these kids, she begged herself and continued working. Pixie’s dog tags, one shaped like a little bone, jingled faintly against the ground whenever Jessica adjusted her hands.

A firefighter came toward her, breathing hard behind his mask.

“Jess.”

“I’m working,” Jessica said.

“Jessica. We got a burn victim over here.”

She heard the difference in his tone and raised her face.

Jessica looked down at Pixie. The dog no longer responded as oxygen hissed softly through the mask. The dog tag clinked again, small and helpless against the pavement. The sound reached Jessica in a place that was supposed to be insulated by training.

Two firefighters carried a man from the entrance on a soft stretcher, the bright orange nylon stretching beneath his weight. His clothes had been darkened by smoke and heat, and his skin was red in places where the fire had licked him, raw pink in others where it had bitten him. He was conscious enough to make sounds but only barely. A third firefighter moved beside them, calling for immediate care.

“Jess, his LOC is dropping,” Oliver said.

Jessica kept the mask over Pixie’s muzzle for one moment longer. This was someone’s last familiar thing, someone’s couch companion. But it wasn’t treatment anymore. It was goodbye. She lifted her hands away with a learned gentleness, the kind that came from someone who had lowered too many heads in the field. The decision had been made. She rose from the pavement, and met Donovan’s eyes. Turning away would have been easier.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Donovan’s face changed before his body did. “No,” he said. “Please, Miss. She’s a good dog.”

Black tag, she thought.Her START triage kicked in again, and Jessica turned before the plea could become something she answered. She hauled the grief with her, locked it somewhere beneath her duties, and walked toward the man being lowered to the ground. Her mind didn’t allow her to hear the boys wailing behind her. At least, not yet. She dropped beside him, her eyes moving quickly over the burns across his legs and torso.

“What you got?” she asked, her voice now cleared of Pixie’s farewell.

“Second-degree burns over the legs and upper torso,” the firefighter said. “Breathing on his own, but he took in smoke.”

She leaned closer, watching the man’s face as he made a rough sound in his throat.

“He was responsive, but in and out now,” the firefighter said. “Conscious, but not answering questions.”

Suddenly, his body stiffened as he took in a huge, raspy breath. “He’s going agonal. Help me get him on the gurney for transport,” Jessica said. “Find out who he is and if he has family here, but we’re not waiting.”

They wheeled him toward the ambulance, and Jessica climbed into the rear, sitting beside him. Oliver took the driver’s seat. The ambulance doors shut. She looked at the man, adjusting his oxygen mask.

“Stay with me,” she said.

The siren howled, and they pulled away from the curb, carrying one life forward while another stayed behind on the ground. They maneuvered through the barricade of police cars and sped toward the hospital. Beyond the cruisers, news vans were already set up. The nightcrawlers arrived on-scene first, hunting for enough footage to sell to local networks.

This was not the kind of neighborhood that drew cameras for long. Apartment fires on the East Side could burn through a dozen lives and still get buried under weather reports, sports scores, and an update on the neighboring city’s upcoming fair. Poor people lost things every day in Fairhaven, and most of it never garnered late-night coverage. Suffering in the wrong zip code rarely made for good television. But by morning, Fairhaven would know their city’s shadow had burned. For a few hours, maybe, everyone would remember it was there.

Donovan dropped to his knees beside Pixie, pulling his boys close.

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***

‍ ‍

ACT Three

Ash

‍ ‍

By morning, the fire had been extinguished.  The north-facing side took the worst of it, for even from a distance the charred scarring of flame, smoke, and ash had left their marks running from the fourth floor all the way to the rooftop. The upper windows looked toothless, giving the whole building the look of something that had survived, but not yet recovered.

No one was allowed back inside yet. Even those likely unaffected on the lower floors had to wait for water damage to be assessed. The fire marshal had to go through again, followed by the structural review and the investigators. Escorted retrieval might come later, but not today. Donovan had heard it from a volunteer who had heard it from someone with a radio, who had heard it from someone standing closer to the yellow tape. The message moved through the displaced like that old telephone game, changing and somehow making everything worse.

The worst of the fire had climbed above the Smiths’ third-floor apartment, chewing through the fourth and fifth floors, although that hardly mattered now. Water had fallen for hours through ceilings, walls, carpet, mattresses, drawers, shoes, and keepsakes. Whatever the flames had spared, the hoses had probably ruined. Donovan wondered if Kelly’s robe was still behind the bedroom door, and that thought stayed in the forefront for quite a while before moving on to the furniture, the disconnection notices, and the boys’ clothes they’d need before night came again.

Donovan sat up on the cot near the far wall of the gym with his sons close beside him. D.J. was awake, sitting upright with an olive-drab wool blanket around his shoulders, watching his dad’s reactions. Scooter lay asleep in the cot that he and D.J. shared next to their father. Both boys had been given socks and sweatshirts. Shoes were still a missing luxury.

The place smelled of smoke, bad breath, dampness, and bodies that hadn’t slept or bathed. Cots had been arranged in rows next to the rafters. Volunteers moved from family to family, writing names, checking forms that were already out of date. Even their local civic rival, Fairview, had sent volunteers and a triage team overnight to help. Scooter yawned and pulled the blanket closer to his chin.

Donovan’s eyes were swollen and his back was stiff. He’d hardened his posture because his sons were now watching, and grief had already asked too much from them. He looked down to his forearm, reading the ink he’d gotten while inside: Ecclesiastes 6:4. For he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness. Next to it was the newer one with Kelly’s name, date of birth, and departure date. It was about a month old, but it hurt to read.

He couldn’t shake the guilt of those twenty-six months that he’d abandoned the three of them to fend for themselves on the rough side of town. If I didn’t get locked up, we coulda moved to a better place, maybe even a house. With their income, the latter was a stretch, but they would’ve had a better chance of doing it together. Maybe something in this old building gave her cancer, he thought. Without any way to support his speculation, he focused on what he did know, that she was no longer here. Perhaps her not living through this homelessness was a small gift of mercy.

She’d always been a woman of slight build, but she was undoubtedly the glue for their home. Watching her body further betray the pleas of the household felt cruel. Once inpatient stays became more frequent, he learned new words and hated them all. By the end, Kelly was too small for the force she had been in their lives, although her eyes had kept their command. Even from that bed, she made him promise.

“You take care of my babies,” she said.

“I will.”

“Donnie, you take care of yourself too.” Her eyes held the authority of a woman who demanded that her man step up and stay there.

A lump grew in his throat, dry and static. He’d been too unreliable in the past to be offended by her demands. Whatever pride he possessed had no place beside her bed.

“I will.”

“Don’t say it like that. Say it like you mean it.”

Donovan had taken her thin hand between both of his and bent close enough for her to hear every word.

“I mean it. I do. I will.” He took in her pale face, cupping it before moving in to kiss her chapped lips. “I shoulda married you.”

She smiled weakly. “Now you’ll just have to be single forever.”

He kissed her hand. The memory rose, then broke apart against the rising gymnasium noise. The unspoken rule of being quiet for others began to dissolve as sunlight streaked through the windows near the rafters. A woman argued with an intake worker about medication left in a bathroom cabinet. Two children chased each other between cots until their mother snapped at them, then apologized, then cried into one hand because anger had been the only thing keeping her upright.

Donovan understood the math around him. He and his boys would need temporary housing, clothes, food, work, probation compliance, and a way to deal with the furniture rental place and the shutoff notices. The apartment had been too small and too loud, but it had been theirs. Now it was gone, or close enough to gone that they’d probably have to move.

He’d been trying the new way, the legal way.

And look what it got me.

The thought came so quickly that it sounded like someone else speaking. But he still let his mind do the arithmetic of the past, tallying possibilities. Old phone numbers scrolled through Donovan’s memory in flashes like the ticker on a finance channel. That world didn’t need applications or interviews. In fact, secrecy was the first condition. He was still qualified for secrecy, and the past ways didn’t ask about his felony as if his entire soul could be summarized in a background check. There, in that world, he only needed to be useful, discreet, and willing.

And he was more willing this morning than he had been last night.

I gotta feed my boys. I gotta–

The double metal doors opened, and daylight rushed in. Near the entrance, the room changed. No announcement came, but people began raising their faces by degrees, turning toward a tall man in a sweater who was walking beside a woman with a folder pressed against her chest. Donovan recognized him after a moment. Everyone did.

Mayor Clark Rios entered. He stopped first at the intake table, speaking to the workers there. Then he worked around the room, moving toward an older woman who needed help understanding a form. He didn’t move like a man looking for photo ops. He simply went from cot to cot, spending a few moments with each person, shrinking the room by inches. Some people fell in his arms and cried, even a couple of grown men. Donovan stared at him without meaning to. He’d never seen people affected by one person like this before. Clark eventually made his way toward their cot.

“You guys doing alright?” he asked, looking at a list of names on a notepad before meeting Donovan’s eyes.

The air felt different, more important. Donovan stood without thought. He felt like people usually stood to greet this man. Even then, he had to lift his face to the man towering a couple feet from him. “We’re here.”

“Patrick Smith?” Clark asked with a gentle strength in his voice.

For a second, the name sounded stiff and foreign like something from a courthouse, coming from someone pretending to know him.

“Donovan,” he said. “Most people call me Donovan. Or Donnie.”

“Donovan, it is, then.”

Clark handed the paper to his assistant, Tina Martin, who immediately scribbled “Donnie” next to Patrick’s legal name.

D.J. studied him with open suspicion and exhausted curiosity. Scooter pushed himself upright, rubbing his face with the blanket.

“Are you the president?” Scooter asked.

Clark gave a chuckle. “No, not yet. But I’m the mayor of this city. So, I’m kinda like the president of Fairhaven.”

“Can you fix our apartment?”

Clark lowered himself enough to meet Scooter at his height. “I can’t promise your apartment will be the same,” he said. “But I can promise there are people working right now to make sure you, your brother, and your dad have somewhere safe to sleep.”

Scooter considered that. “Tonight?”

“Yes,” Clark said. “Tonight.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a card and wrote a number on the back before handing it to Donovan.

“If anyone tells you they’re splitting you up to make room, call this number,” Clark said. “If anyone moves you twice without explaining why, call this number. If medication, school records, or anything important is trapped inside, tell the intake worker and have them put it in writing.”

Donovan took the card. “I appreciate it,” he said, though the words felt too small. If he’d spoken more, he probably would have cried–not something his boys needed to see right now. He just hoped the mayor could see the gratitude in his eyes.

Scooter stared down at Clark’s shoes, then looked at Tina.

“My dog died,” Scooter said.

They talked briefly about Pixie, and Tina said she lost a dog when she was a kid too. Clark gave them both a moment, then turned slightly toward Donovan, who noticed him looking at the tattoos. Donovan was suddenly surprised by the knowing look in the mayor’s face. Clark stepped close enough that the boys couldn’t hear, and spoke near Donovan’s ear, effectively disarming the ex-con’s normal vigilance with personal space.

“The first big choice after the worst day is usually the one that decides the next year,” Clark said. “I’m sure you’ve been down that road before. Whatever you’re thinking you have to do, wait until tomorrow before you decide. Keep them close today, and tomorrow will give you better answers.”

Clark shook his hand, which somehow made Donovan want to listen more. “Let the city help tonight.”

Donovan didn’t speak, instead answering with a tight-lipped smile and a nod. Almost against his will, he felt it, an adjustment. Clark had been humane, compassionate. He hadn’t belittled Donovan. But Donovan still felt a bit … less beside the mayor, not in a way Clark imposed on him, but in the unspoken, unavoidable way some men revealed the size of others simply by standing near them. Mayor Rios stepped back, gave the boys one last glance, and moved on to the next family before gratitude could become a spectacle.

Scooter watched the mayor as he talked to other families before leaving with his assistant and others down a hallway that led to the administrative offices farther within the building. The mayor’s height is what resonated most with Scooter before he broke free of his trance and looked curiously at his father.

“Daddy,” he asked, “what he say?”

Donovan stared at the card in his hand. There was something about the mayor that felt too big for Donovan’s reality. The number on the back appeared too official, too far removed from the old numbers waiting in his memory. He thought of rent, Kelly’s robe hanging on the door, the boys’ shoes, Pixie’s collar somewhere behind yellow tape, and cash that could appear by morning if he reached back to a certain world.

“He told me to do what’s best for you two,” he lied. “Come on. Let’s go get some juice. I think they got donuts too.”

“Yay!” both boys shouted.

Donovan walked, palming the head of each boy as they wrapped their arms around their dad’s waist. In his hands was the life he promised Kelly he wouldn’t lose. I love you, baby, but my boys need me. He pushed his grief down to his shoulders the way he used to and continued charting the next moves with a chilled clarity.

‍ ***

‍Weeks later, the fire had become something Fairhaven could summarize. Twelve families displaced. Several injured. Two later dead from complications. The city council had authorized emergency housing relief. Churches had passed collection plates. Local businesses had donated gift cards, clothes, and non-perishables. Online, people had posted prayers, opinions, accusations, and promises to help. Some followed through. Most moved on to the next piece of low-hanging fruit.

The commendation ceremony took place in City Hall. Local dignitaries sat in chairs on the varnished wooden stage. Firefighters stood along one wall in dress uniforms. EMTs and paramedics gathered near the aisle, mingling. The ceremony commenced. People found their seats, with honorees in the front rows. Local and regional camera crews and reporters fanned the walls right offstage to carry the narrative to their networks. Families of the first responders proudly sat toward the back.

Firefighters and police officers were recognized first. They took their places on stage. The speaker continued, naming departments, units, response times, cooperation, courage, and community. Jessica let the words pass over her. Instead, she heard Pixie’s collar clinking against the wet asphalt. She heard the burn victim trying to answer through smoke-damaged breaths before he passed out. She remembered the “I’m sorry” when she turned away from Donovan and his boys’ pleas. She smelled the smoke and the sad song the sirens sang.

“Jessica Richards.”

The sirens in her head were cut off. Her name was called, and her medal waited on a table near the lectern. She stood in place with her hands folded in front of her. Her Class A uniform was pressed. Her face was stoic, even a little proud. Inside, she felt divided by that the way she always had. Guilt and pride fought for control. The mayor stood at the lectern. He called her actions “decisive under extreme conditions.” She had provided aid, prioritized care, and assisted in transport. She had contributed to saving lives. All of that was true, but not the whole truth, and the lives she didn’t save always ate away her joy in the moment.

When Mayor Clark Rios called her name again, applause filled the room, and he shook her hand. He lifted the medal from the table, and she bowed her head forward to receive it. The ribbon necklace itched her neck a little.

“Thank you,” he said.

His stature was undeniable, and she felt a little smaller in his presence, like “mayor” wasn’t a big enough mold for this man. What was odd was that he didn’t hover condescendingly, even though he could have. He just was. Yet he didn’t feel grand the way trophy shows usually made men grand. Jessica had lived around rank, uniforms, and ceremonial politics long enough to know the difference. He seemed genuine. She was drawn to him in a surprising blend of attraction and respect that was disarming. Suddenly aware of this, Jessica regained her bearings and gave him the shortest answer she could manage. “We all did our jobs.”

“I know,” he said. “That still doesn’t make it nothing.”

She let the words warm into a smile. He’s different. Seems genuine, she thought. Jessica had received enough awards to know the difference by now. Like her, the mayor had been there the morning after the fire, but he didn’t have to. Only she did. Now he wore a suit, but she could still see the man from that morning beneath it. She stood upright again. The medal felt heavier than it should have. She wondered what happened to Donovan and his sons before filing that away in her mind for another day. After the ceremony ended, the room loosened. People spoke, embraced, and took pictures. Jessica accepted congratulations with humility–for now; like clockwork, a tally of those she hadn’t saved would begin eroding the good in her work. Guilt had a way of barging into her celebrations like that, crimson stains she could never quite wash away.

At home that night, she set the medal on the dining room table and left it there. Her cat, a white and grey ragdoll she’d rescued and named Baton, hopped into her lap as soon as she sat down in her living room recliner, purring under the head scratches. She ran her fingers along his silky tail, careful not to touch his belly and draw his ire. Baton had rules, and she respected most of them.

Though she’d gladly slung her bra across the back of a dining room chair the moment she came in, she was still in her dress uniform. Jessica replayed pieces of the ceremony in her head. The usual polite applause. The handshakes. His handshake. Mayor Rios standing close enough that she could smell his cologne even though she felt like she wasn’t supposed to. His words. That still doesn’t make it nothing.

She sat in her recliner rubbing Baton and holding a beer, its sweat running down the dark green bottle. The medal waited on the table, the city seal bright and official. It looked too nice, too harmless a symbol, glory profited at the expense of others’ pain. Honor always waltzed in on bad days, after the worst of the work had already happened, after the blood was gone and somebody else had made a speech out of what other people had survived. Her phone sang and buzzed once against her thigh, almost dead. Jessica let it buzz again before she moved Baton off her lap and stood up from the recliner, straddling either side of the extended footrest. She didn’t bother resetting it since she knew she’d be reclining again soon anyway. Baton also knew the routine and he remained there, anticipating her return in a few minutes.

In the bedroom, she plugged the phone into the charger on her nightstand. The screen lit and chimed to confirm the digital handshake, showing missed texts, likely from people congratulating her. She didn’t bother to open them, but did set her phone to silent mode. Such commendations required a version of gratitude she couldn’t summon on command. She’d already given the public version at City Hall. She undressed, slipping into a t-shirt and running shorts. She’d left the hangers from her uniform on her bed earlier that day, and carefully applied her lint roller before placing her Class A’s back on the hangers. Jessica stopped at the closet to hang them back up, tucked away and dormant. Inside, her old jump bag waited on the floor in a corner with some of her other old gear, its desert camo faded almost gray in places. The straps were worn down, and frayed fibers stuck out of the nylon webbing like Baton’s hairs on any given surface during his shedding season. The buckles had dulled from years of dirt, trucks, tents, and hands grabbing for it in panic. She’d almost forgotten about it. Almost.

Jessica pulled the closet door wider, slowly.

The bag had been with her through two deployments and even more of the fallen. It had held all the tools to patch up a soldier just enough: tape, shears, tourniquets, chest seals, and gauze. It had been tossed into vehicles, dragged across sand and gravel, kicked under cots, and hauled toward voices screaming for a medic. She had never cleaned all the sand from it. Every once in a while, she’d tell herself she should empty it and either make it useful again or throw it out. Then she’d picture time falling into a trash bag, their memories rising once more in the dust, and her resolve would drift elsewhere. Cleaning it out had always felt too close to leaving them over there for good. She could never completely leave them.

Her hand found the outer side pocket by habit, fingers slipping past shears and gauze until they closed around a half-used roll of black tape. It had gone brittle and cracked. She'd kept it close enough to the tourniquets and chest seals to reach in the same motion. She remembered the wrists she'd tied it around, how the tape wouldn't stick against blood and dirt, sliding loose until she wound it twice, sometimes three times, before it held in place. Those details of marking the dead found their way into her conscience better than the lives she'd pulled back. Guilt worked that way, holding the fallen closer than the saved.

An impatient Baton wandered in and brushed against her ankle, competing with whatever had stolen her attention from him. Jessica stood there for a few more seconds, rubbing her thumbs along a worn, coyote brown desert Star of Life patch that she’d plucked from the sandy bag. The dark gray emblem was still peppered with tiny brown splotches of old blood. She whispered, “I’m sorry” before sniffing away her watering eyes. The city had given her something to display. The war had left her with something she kept in the dark. She tossed the patch back into the bag, closed the closet door, and returned to the living room. After neatly packing away a few more quiet voices, she threw something in the microwave, downed another beer, and tried to sleep before the next shift took her back.

***

The next evening, she came to work with her usual ponytail and light lipstick. The bay smelled of diesel and rainwater. Oliver was restocking the rig, checking compartments. He stood a little taller, though the seriousness of someone still proving he belonged there held fast.

Captain Hayes stood near the office door, reading the room. He stopped at Jessica.

“Richards,” he said.

Jessica looked up.

“Got a second?”

She walked the bay toward him.

“Ooh, you’re in trouble now,” her crew members joked.

She smiled and returned, “I’m taking y’all down with me.” But inside, something tightened. You didn’t get called into the office of your superior for good news.

“Have a seat.” Hayes waited until she was seated, then closed his office door.

“The patient from the East Side fire,” he told her.

“Mr. Gibson?” she asked.

“Yep.” Hayes gave a small nod. “He didn’t make it.”

The bay seemed to move in a garbled, slow-motion theater around the words. Jessica looked past her captain for a moment, not at anything specific. She saw the man’s body stiffen on the gurney, heard the ragged breathing, remembered the way the oxygen mask fogged and cleared. She’d left Pixie on the ground for him, chosen the life that could be better saved. She almost tittered at the irony that neither had been.

Hayes watched her with the unflinching gaze of someone who’d delivered too many updates like this to people who had earned the decency to hear such news in private.

“You good?” he asked.

Jessica inhaled, ready to breathe her response.

Before she could answer, the bay speakers cut through.

“Rescue Two, respond to an M-V-A, two vehicles involved, possible entrapment.”

“I’m okay,” she said. “The sad can wait.”

Hayes read the answer in her face and didn’t argue with it. The same detachment that had cost Jessica her first marriage was what made her good at the job. She didn’t have time to psychoanalyze that paradox. She never did.

Oliver was already climbing into the passenger side when she tossed the jump bag in, pulled herself behind the wheel, and shut the door hard enough to seal the world outside. The engine turned over. The bay lights flashed across the windshield. The radio repeated the address.

The medal rested somewhere behind her now, boxed in velvet or plastic or whatever the city had chosen for honor. Ahead of her, the evening waited with its broken glass, its twisted metal, its people who didn’t yet know they would need saving.

***

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© 2026 Arkeym N. Young / Notakwoda Press. All rights reserved. This story is provided for personal, non-commercial reading only. No reproduction, distribution, reposting, adaptation, sale, download, or commercial use is permitted without prior written permission.