Things You Save in a Fire

At dinner one night, Murphy tells the crew about a call he received from the city. Due to some unknown corruption, the city budget is lacking, and they need to cut staff on city services, such as firefighters. Murphy says that some older members of the city’s fire department will be forced into early retirement but also that newer members’ contracts will be terminated, saying that either Cassie or the rookie will have to be let go. The captain hasn’t yet decided who he is going to let go but puts both on notice and says he will be monitoring their every move. Cassie feels certain that the captain will pick Owen to stay, thinking that she always knew the rookie would be her downfall. When she gets to her truck, Cassie sees that all four of her tires have been slashed and someone has left a note on her windshield that says “Just quit you bitch” in the same handwriting as the locker graffiti (293). Again, she refuses to tell anyone on the crew, but the rookie arrives a moment later, and she tells him what she knows. He is angry that Cassie did not tell him about the locker and determined to figure out who did it, but Cassie does not want rescuing.

She does let Owen drive her home, and he says he has a cousin who will fix her tires for free. As they drive, the rookie tells a story he’s never told anyone before, one that explains why he won’t back out of the running for the job, even though he knows Cassie is a much better firefighter than he is. When he was eight, he and two friends liked to play as firefighters, but one day they accidentally set a paper warehouse on fire. The fire was so big that Cassie even knew of it as the Boston Paper Company Fire, and it killed a firefighter who happened to be Owen’s uncle. Even though he has no interest in being a firefighter, the rookie knows he must atone for his uncle’s death and fulfill his father’s dream by continuing the family legacy. Cassie thinks this is too big a burden for anyone, especially a child, to carry, and she tells Owen that his father might rather he be happy than a firefighter. She tells him he should start thinking about forgiving himself. Echoing Cassie’s own words from earlier in the novel, he says he doesn’t know where to start. Cassie starts walking him through what she has learned about forgiveness from her mother, finding some wisdom in her own words.

A few days later, a brick is thrown through Diana’s window with a note reading “Just quit you wore” (311)—forgetting the “h” in the slur. Cassie is late to work but has brought the brick with her and holds it up so everyone can see. She tells the crew what happened and asks them directly who it was, but they are offended that she thinks it is someone from their shift. To shame the stalker into confessing, she tells them about her mother’s illness, and in the process, she starts to cry. In a final effort, she offers to compete against the man of their choice on The Obstacle Course. If she loses, she will quit. However, if she wins, the whole crew will know she deserves to be there. To her surprise, everyone just looks shocked and sad, and the captain tells her no one wants her to quit. The crew even begins to move in for a group hug before Cassie stops them, saying she wants to go ahead with her plan.

Cassie waits for the crew to pick a challenger, but she turns away their first choice, a man everyone knows cannot actually run the obstacle course. Even though everyone tells Cassie they don’t want her to leave, she is determined to go through with her plan even when they send the rookie out next. When the crew wasn’t looking, Cassie had been practicing on The Obstacle Course and had learned parkour, so she knows she can beat any of the men. She is a full minute ahead of the rookie on the course when she falls wrong and sprains her ankle—even so, she beats him. The crew makes Owen tend to her injury, and as he does, she knows that he threw the race so she wouldn’t have to quit. A moment later, Cassie gets a call from Josie, telling her that Diana had a seizure.

Uncharacteristically for someone who is normally calm in a crisis, Cassie panics when she learns about her mother’s seizure. Josie asks Cassie to meet them at the hospital. When she tells the captain what happened, he gets one of the men to give her an escort with the lights and sirens. At the hospital, Cassie comforts Josie and tells her to go home. Josie reveals something Cassie never knew about the night her mother left her. She says that Diana was about to change her plan and go back to Texas when Wallace called and told her that he was dying. She stayed with him because she knew that he needed her and that Cassie would be all right with her dad.

Shortly after Josie leaves, a doctor finds Cassie and tells her that he is surprised this hasn’t happened before, given Diana’s situation. Cassie does not know how the problem with Diana’s vision could cause a seizure, but the doctor nonchalantly tells her that it was caused by her large brain tumor, a recurrence of an earlier cancer. Cassie’s panic returns: Her mother has not told her about either of her cancer diagnoses. She thought it was only a vision problem, and now she is learning that her mother has, at most, a year left to live. Cassie feels sorry for the doctor as he struggles to find a silver lining about Diana’s health, but she feels even more sorry for herself, as she knows there is no good news.

Details about her stay with Diana begin to fall into place, and Cassie recognizes that Diana meant her time in Massachusetts to be a goodbye. Cassie panics again, thinking she’s been wasting the limited time they have together. She refuses to go into Diana’s room, as she thinks seeing her will make the situation even more real. She regrets all the time she has wasted being angry with her mother, and when she finally goes to see her and finds her asleep, she imagines herself as a child crawling into bed with her. When Diana wakes up the next morning, Cassie is at her bedside, and she asks why Diana didn’t tell her. Diana tells her about how she felt when she knew Wallace was dying and married him anyway and how she might have preferred not knowing. Cassie starts to see Diana’s choice to leave her through her perspective, and it changes the story for her. Cassie asks for forgiveness from Diana, but Diana is understanding and tells her to “just be nearby” for her (347). Cassie asks if there is any possibility for treatment, and Diana says there was one experimental drug that she declined as the side effects would be brutal. Instead, to Cassie’s horror, Diana has been trying to use meditation and visualization to keep her tumor from growing, as she read about it working for another woman and, unlike the experimental drug, at least it won’t do any harm.

Knowing nothing else can help her mother, Cassie just spends time with Diana doing the things she loves. Every night, Owen checks on them and brings them things he’s baked, but Cassie never answers. On the final night before she is meant to return to work, he insists that she talk to him, so she goes on a walk with him and tells him about her mother. He tells her more about the Paper Company Fire, saying he confessed to his dad because he thought it was the right thing to do and that, in the process, he remembered he wasn’t the one who actually threw the matchbox that directly started the fire. He says he feels better now that he’s been thinking about forgiveness. Some good things came out of the aftermath of the fire since it led him to the life he is now living.

Owen says he’s still anxious, as he still needs to tell his dad that he is quitting the fire department. Cassie is the first person Owen has told this to, and she isn’t sure how she feels about it. Quitting will allow him to cook professionally as he has always wanted to, but it also means he will be leaving her on her own at the station. Cassie feels abandoned, and she angrily walks away from him, berating him for quitting but knowing she can’t force him to stay. After she takes off running, Owen chases after her, but Cassie does what she has always done to protect herself, shutting down the conversation before she can feel any more emotions. As before, she is both hurt and relieved to see that he actually leaves when she tells him to.

Cassie whispers the word “wait” to herself, and Owen turns back around as if he heard her. He asks her if someone hurt her and if it was a man, and when she nods, Owen seems to understand and doesn’t pressure her to talk about it. He promises that he will never intentionally hurt her, and she leans in to finally hug him. To Cassie’s surprise, Owen admits that he has fallen in love with her and has been trying to hide it since their first day on the job. He says that when she pushes him away, he feels unsure about whether she actually wants him to leave. She tells him she doesn’t and kisses him.

Cassie invites Owen up to her room just to kiss and then fall asleep together, but things progress, and Cassie feels comfortable enough with Owen to have sex with him when he reassures her that if she wanted to stop, he would want nothing but to stop. They don’t stop, and Cassie feels for once like she is living in the moment rather than obsessing over her past or future, which only makes the present more important. Cassie recognizes that no one person or act can heal her but that love and her “choice to practice it” can (380).

The next morning, Cassie and the rookie wake up late together, which alarms Cassie but doesn’t faze Owen. They continue to avoid each other at work but call each other every night. During the last shift before the rookie plans to break the news to his family about quitting the fire department, they are called to a big fire at a grocery store in the middle of town. When they get there, DeStasio sees a little boy inside the building, though no one else saw anything. The captain orders everyone to stay outside, but DeStasio is furious and goes in despite Cassie’s objections. Owen follows, unwilling to let his colleague go in alone, so Cassie follows too. Five minutes in, Owen lets go of the guideline they have all been holding to stay together and begins to act strangely. He disappears in the smoke. Cassie suspects he has cyanide poisoning and begins to search for him. The moment after she finds him, the ceiling collapses.

Cassie goes to save the rookie even though she cannot see anything, and she hears sirens blaring for her to get out of the building. She thinks back to her mother telling her that “love makes you stronger” and realizes not only that she loves Owen but also that her love is what is going to help her save his life (401). She drags him to the door just as DeStasio gets there. She yells at him that she told him to stay put, but he says he doesn’t take orders from women. Backup has arrived by the time they get outside, and Owen is given CPR as he is unresponsive. Cassie rushes to administer one of the cyanide antidote kits she personally ordered with the money from the grants she applied for. The rookie starts to breathe again just before the helicopter arrives to medevac him to the hospital, and Cassie is forced to let him go.