I was twenty-nine when the call came in from Stoneybatter, and I remember thinking, in the foolish way you do before a bad thing shows its face, that I’d still make it home in time for my daughter’s bedtime. It was a wet October evening, the kind that turns the pavements silver and makes every siren sound sharper. We were sent to a terraced house not far from the North Circular Road, smoke already pushing out through the upstairs window when we arrived.
There are fires you remember by the heat, and fires you remember by the noise. This one I remember by the silence. The woman outside was screaming that her son was still inside, but once I got up the stairs, crawling low with my mask hissing, the house seemed to swallow every sound. I could see almost nothing. The wallpaper was peeling in long black strips, the landing carpet was melting under my gloves, and somewhere behind a closed door there was a small cough.
I found him under a bed. He was five years old, maybe six, curled so tightly into himself that for a second I thought he was a bundle of clothes. I remember his red sock. Just one of them. I remember touching his ankle and feeling him flinch. I lifted him into my arms and he grabbed at my jacket with both hands, not knowing who I was, only knowing I was something moving towards air.
We got out through the front. His mother made a sound I’ve never forgotten when she saw him. Not a scream. More like her whole body had cracked open. The paramedics took over near the engine, under the yellow streetlight, and I stood there uselessly with soot on my face, watching the rain hit the boy’s hair. He opened his eyes once. They were grey, or maybe they only looked grey because of the smoke. Then the ambulance doors closed.
People think firefighters are brave because we go in. The truth is, going in is the easy part when you’re trained and the body is full of purpose. The hard part is going home afterwards and making toast, and listening to your own child ask why your hands are shaking. For years, I did not know if that boy lived. We are not always told. The job moves on. Another call, another door, another family in the street. But that child stayed with me. Every October, when the damp came back into Dublin, I thought of the red sock.
I left the service after twenty-two years. My knees were gone, my lungs weren’t what they had been, and my wife said I had started waking up before the alarm as if I was still listening for it. Retirement was meant to be quiet, but quiet can be its own kind of noise. I took walks along the Royal Canal, drank coffee near Smithfield, tried to learn how to be a man without a pager.
Then, last spring, I was asked to speak at a fire safety morning in a secondary school near Phibsborough. I nearly said no. I had become shy of uniforms, even old ones. But the teacher who rang me was kind, and she said some of the students wanted to hear what the job was really like. So I went, wearing a clean shirt and carrying a helmet I no longer needed.
After the talk, a young man waited at the back of the hall. Tall, thin, with dark curls and the careful stillness of someone trying not to make a moment too big too quickly. He asked my name, though he already knew it. Then he told me his.
I didn’t recognise him, of course. How could I? The child I had carried out was all smoke and bone and fear. But his mother had kept the newspaper clipping. She had kept the hospital bracelet. She had kept, he said, the red sock in a drawer with old birthday cards. He told me he was studying nursing.
Note: Please be aware that these are written in confidentiality and there is not reference or mention of any real people and their sentiments here. Every incident and Story tends to be emotional so please read at your own emotional risk. Website is not responsible for anything related. HumansofDublin.io is not related to the photography project HumansofDublin by Peter Varga
