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“It’s Coastal… we… please help,” she stammered in a rush, not knowing what to say. “He’s dead. The captain’s dead. He had a medical, I think a heart attack. The FO’s in the lav. He’s not here. He’s… the pilots are gone! We’re going down. Please help us!” Her voice was loud and trembling and for the first time the fear was coupled with emotion as she stifled a sob… at hearing the sound of her own voice echoing out in the cabin. It wasn’t the radio. It was the PA system.
And panic ensues…
It was a house, in the literal sense. There were beds, showers, a kitchen. They were on duty for days at a time, so they lived there, together, in that house. But what people who didn’t work with fire didn’t appreciate was that it wasn’t just a house—it was a home. A home where brothers and sisters spent holidays and weekends together and fought over whose turn it was to do the dishes.
And when, day after day, call after call, you stand shoulder to shoulder and put your life on the line together, you are no longer just firefighters. You’re family.
“I’d be willing to bet most of the people working at the plant nowadays don’t even know this place exists. Which is why”—Marion held up a key—“they never asked for the key back when I turned in my badge.”
They’d been hopelessly naive. But they weren’t wrong. There was a difference.
It’s called leverage, R.J. It’s called opportunity. For once in your life, you had the winning hand, but you didn’t see it. And that is on you.”
This is what community is. It’s not a place, it’s not a people—it’s the acts of love done in a place by those people.
Right then, Steve saw a flicker of something in Matt he hadn’t seen in a long time: his son. Who he truly was. The person that grief and loss had tried so hard to destroy. He was still in there!
He prayed his son saw something similar in him. Maybe he saw the dad he once knew, the one who used to laugh, who used to make pancakes on Sunday mornings. A man who would do anything to protect the people he loved, no matter what it cost him. Maybe Matt felt the same relief Steve did. That if his old dad was still in there, maybe his old self was too. Steve made a decision. They were going to make their way back to each other. They were going to survive.
“Our plan to stop a nuclear meltdown is to patch it like a pair of jeans.”
She was proud. This was what small-town America did. They handled it.
the world needs people crazy enough to try to save it.”
It wasn’t for nothing. It was for everything.
If he truly had understood what that meant—that time runs out—he would have done it all so differently.
they’re just that. Moments. So we’ll spend them together. And it won’t be long enough. But it never is.”
Reverend Michaels was grateful for the federal assistance. It was desperately needed. But he was also grateful for the reminder that people in crisis need other things too—and only Waketa had been able to provide that for itself.
“There’s going to be a lot of things you don’t know how to do. That’s okay. It’s okay not to know. Ask for help. People will help you. Let them.”
Joss might be remembered; she might be missed. But she would not live on. And there was something profoundly sad in realizing, too late, that inside her—perhaps even as strong as her maternal instinct to protect—was the equally human desire to create.
