Cold Cut

‘A cold cut,’ said Mac. The fire service risk analysis is always interpreted using hot to cold as a scale of dangerous to safe. Or time critical and life threatening to no rush and take our time. We work in hot areas. Hot zones. Cutting a live casualty from a crashed vehicle is dangerous, so they interpret danger as hot. A hot cut. This family was dead. Deceased. Not breathing. Cold.

Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Short Fiction

Content Advisory: Sustained depiction of fatal car accident and discussion of suicide.

I received the news whilst driving to the fire station. An intrusive phone call to interrupt my morning commute. It was an awakening like no other. My head already ached. It was not the conversation I needed to start the day.

‘I’m sorry to call you so early, but I just wanted to prepare you for today. It’s not going to be pleasant,’ the watch commander stated.

‘Why? What happened?’

I heard a large intake of breath at the other end. ‘We had an incident last night. It was horrific.’

The line went quiet while I waited without comment. I knew he could be overly sensitive about some things and had the tendency to exaggerate. A bad trait for a firefighter. There was no need to dramatize incidents, and I felt myself getting annoyed.

‘A road traffic collision on the main road out of town,’ he said. ‘On the bad camber bend at midnight.’

I frowned to myself. ‘How many casualties?’

‘Four,’ he said with a gulp.

‘Dead?’

I could feel the emotion at the other end of the phone even though we were talking in a matter of fact way. The watch commander sounded as though he was still processing the best way to tell me.

‘It was head on. Their car spun off into a tree. Then it set on fire.’

‘Sounds bad,’ I said. ‘Are they local?’

‘We don’t know. The driver of the other vehicle needed to be airlifted out. He probably won’t walk again. They’ll be lucky to save his legs.’

‘Okay, but why are you calling?’

The silence lasted an awkward number of seconds, and I nearly spoke up to fill the gap, but then he said it.

‘You’re going to cut them out today. The police need the bodies removed.’

From that point onwards, I was fully awake. Gone was my morning playlist that eased me into the day. No flitting between radio channels to catch the news or listening to which celebrity had attracted the most attention over the weekend. Who was dating who; who was getting divorced. Who was more relevant. Always a contrast to the innocents getting killed in the latest conflict. Lighter news items to raise everyone’s spirits from the gloom of global misery. Everyday dramas for the masses to relate to. I don’t remember hearing anything after the call.

When I pulled into the fire station car park, I switched off the engine and just sat there. I spent a couple of minutes alone, knowing that there would be little chance of this over the next nine hours. The crew of a fire engine spend the entire day together. Never leaving each other. Always on call and available to respond to incidents. No one is ever far from the appliance in case we get a ‘shout.’

From the moment we arrive, it is full on. Parade is always called at the start of shift where our duties are delegated. Each of us will do our daily equipment checks depending on which position we are riding on the pump. Then we will all sit down with a brew, some breakfast and chat about nothing in particular.

The day will normally consist of training together; eating together; using the gym together; driving to shouts together and even going to the toilet together. You tend to get into a synchronised routine when your day is spent so close.

Being such a small crew can be difficult, especially when you are having personal problems. Everyone can have a bad day. It’s not enjoyable. You want such days to end quickly, but they usually last longer than most. If you can get away without anybody finding out, then great. When problems happen in front of other people you just want the earth to swallow you up. It wouldn’t be so bad if it were people who were your family or best mates. When it’s your crew who rely on you with their lives, and the lives of the public, it isn’t just any bad day. It could be dangerous; catastrophic.

Pushing my demons aside, I entered through the wicket door into the appliance bay. This was just the garage for the fire engines, and it had that same smell. Oil, rubber, fuel. And a familiar one; death. Some of the roller shutter lockers were open where equipment was airing after being scrubbed clean and oiled.

One of the night shift opened the rear bay door to light a cigarette. It was Chissey. An older more experienced member of red watch. He nodded as I strolled past. We were not friends but had worked together occasionally over the years. His face told me all I needed to know. More drawn and tired than usual. The cigarettes made his skin look old, but he had aged overnight.

In the locker room, I bumped into Woody getting changed into his uniform. He was young and had been in the role for about five years. I knew he had dealt with a few incidents of note. A property fire that tore through a row of terraced houses; an underground tunnel collapse where we rescued two workers, and a chemical suicide.

‘You heard?’ he asked.

‘I have.’

‘Never done one of these before.’

I nodded. ‘I have.’

He seemed to be excited in the nervous way he spoke, although I knew this was just his way of overcoming the fear. That unknown factor that had to be confronted through the experience itself. No words I could say would change anything. Everyone went through this journey together but dealt with it alone. The aftermath was something that remained vivid for days afterwards. Just another horrifying memory filed away until it surfaced from the archives at a weaker moment.

‘Does Sally know?’ I asked.

‘Think she got the phone call as well.’

Being the elder member of the shift, I knew it was seen as my position to take the lead in how we were going to approach and deal with the situation. I already knew I was going to keep it professional but light. Nothing too heavy, and everything done in a calm manner. And it was essential to add a hint of humour. No one should underestimate the importance of laughter to overcome the most dreadful situations.

If you can retain your sense of humour, then you are already halfway through dealing with the senselessness of it all. Nothing in this life is meant to make sense when you see the grim reality of death in all its forms. Death is death. Whether planned or unexpected. There is no coming back from it. I was never sure how anyone could tell if it was peaceful, painful, or ecstatic. All I know is that it can come at any moment during the most peaceful of days.

We all met in the watch room instead of on parade. Today was a more informal approach to the shift ahead. Our crew commander, Mac, had already been briefed by the night shift watch commander. Mac was a good boss but relied on me to steer the youngsters. I stood leaning against a filing cabinet. Woody sat twisting on a squeaky office chair. Mac perched himself on the desk as Sally arrived tying her hair into a ponytail. She was a couple of years younger than Woody and had only just passed her competency. Both of them knew their stuff when it came to equipment and procedures. All they lacked was the experience of seeing multiple ways in which you could be killed.

Everyone had questions, but there remained a stunted silence in the room. The shock of the situation made for a sombre mood. Until Woody made a joke.

‘Did you hear about green watch and the funeral?’

We all shook our heads.

‘They were sent to do a guard of honour for an old firefighter as his coffin passed by.’

‘Yeah, I know. It was for Shep; he was on white watch about twenty-five years ago,’ I said.

Woody swivelled in the office chair as Sally frowned, waiting for the punchline. Mac drank from a bottle of water with an equally suspicious look.

‘Well,’ Woody said with a smirk. ‘They turned up at the wrong funeral. They got the wrong St Mary’s, and had to stand there like nuggets while the family walked past!’

Mac spurted out his water. Sally gave a shriek of laughter. I smirked, shaking my head.

‘As they stood to attention, everyone that went past said they didn’t know that Sheila was in the fire service! Rather than leave straight away, they stayed and saw it through until everyone went inside the church. Then they got out of there quick. They drove under blues to get to the right St Mary’s.’

‘Unbelievable!’ said Mac.

The tension was broken. I appreciated this temporary reprieve and zoned out again, thinking about everything that had happened. Mac was the one who brought us back to the main objective of the day.

‘You all got the phone call, so you all know the score.’

‘Why do we have to do it?’ asked Sally.

‘Because we have the equipment, resources and expertise to get trapped people out of crushed cars,’ he replied. ‘We, allegedly, are the professionals.’

‘But they’re dead,’ she stated. ‘It’s not a rescue. We’re not saving anyone. Why tie us up at something like this? It’s a waste of resources.’

I could see that Sally was tense about the upcoming event. She was speaking aloud all of our suppressed thoughts. Woody seemed keener.

‘Because they don’t want to subject anyone else to it.’

I agreed with him. Supposedly, firefighters are meant to be used to this sort of thing, but the reality is that no one can be used to it. How can anyone? It was just expected with no thought to the mental strain it subjected us to.

To the public, we get paid to risk our lives to protect them. We are expected to rescue people from fires, vehicle crashes, collapsed structures, falls from height, floods, wildfires, explosions. To enter burning buildings; jump into fast flowing water; deal with hazardous chemical spillages, toxic materials, and radiation. To get there as fast as we can and always be ready to confront a situation calmly and quickly.

The same people would see this as part of our job. Just another day. One of our duties. Just get on with it and stop moaning. Go home like it was just another day at the office, albeit a bad one. No one wants to listen to what we have to do. Everyone is too concerned about their own career and life. It is too depressing. Upsetting. Embarrassing. Humbling. They would rather you tell them funny stories or not talk about it at all. Deal with it yourself or talk to your colleagues if you have any issues. Don’t do the job if you don’t like it.

You get well paid for it, they would say. No one gets well paid in the public sector, but you just nod your head and talk about their lives instead. Their tedious dramas and office politics. How they are always under pressure. Then the subject reverts to how easy it is being a firefighter. All you do is play snooker and sleep all day. Where this stereotype originated from, I do not know. It seems that everyone knows what a firefighter does without really knowing anything at all.

When you listen to people in real jobs, no one works harder than them, and a career in the fire service just seems to be a huge waste of time. You don’t produce anything. There is no end product when you clock off. No profit margins or deadlines to meet. No stress, pressure, or targets. Just taxpayers’ money being wasted and squandered while you drink tea all day with your feet up.

‘It’s a family of four,’ Mac states. ‘They’re from out of town. A mother, father, and two young children.’

The room falls silent. The squeak from the office chair that Woody is swivelling on stops. I feel a slight relief to discover that the family are not local. There is less of a chance that any of us will know them.

‘How old are the children?’ Sally asks.

Mac takes a breath. ‘One is eight. The other is in a car seat. An infant.’

Woody’s chair begins to squeak as he twists in an agitated rhythm. Sally holds both hands over her mouth. I feel mine go dry. No one speaks. Then Woody swears under his breath.

Mac starts to speak but has to clear his throat before beginning again. ‘Red watch said that when they got there the car was well alight. They tried to get to them, but it was too late. Some members of the public had attempted to free them before we arrived. They said they were trapped in the car due to the impact. One of them stated that the mother was conscious before the car became engulfed in flames. The crew are devastated they didn’t get there faster.’

I thought about those members of the public who tried to help. How they now understood. I felt sorry for them. It was a sight that would stay with them the rest of their lives. At least we have a few minutes to interpret the situation when we respond to an incident. It starts with the bells sounding and the lights in the station illuminating. Everyone then gathers at the printer in the appliance room.

The paper sheet will tell us what type of incident we are going to and the address. This gives us a chance to mentally prepare for what we will encounter. The driver will always be the first one to react. They have to know the fastest route and where it is. What is the best access. How they will park when they get there. What equipment is needed. This gives us an advantage over members of the public who are faced with a situation they have come across by chance. The shock of it must be horrendous.

‘Where are we doing it?’ Woody asks.

Mac reads from a piece of paper. ‘A warehouse specifically rented for this purpose. The car was sheeted up last night and lifted onto a flatbed lorry. It’s an isolated location away from members of the public. The police will oversee what we do, but our job is to retrieve the bodies and place them into body bags.’

‘They will need to be cut out using the spreaders and cutters,’ I said. ‘It will be just like a normal road traffic collision, except there is no rush. They’re dead.’

‘A cold cut,’ said Mac.

A cold cut. A rather sick interpretation of what we were about to do. The fire service risk analysis is always interpreted using hot to cold as a scale of dangerous to safe. Or time critical and life threatening to no rush and take our time. We work in hot areas. Hot zones. Cutting a live casualty from a crashed vehicle is dangerous, so they interpret danger as hot. A hot cut. This family was dead. Deceased. Not breathing. Cold.

‘We could be there all day,’ said Sally.

‘I know,’ replied Mac. ‘Go upstairs and get a hot drink and some breakfast. We set off in an hour. We have to wait for the police crash investigators to get there before we can start with the extraction.’

The walk upstairs to the dining room and kitchen is slow. Woody is giddy with nerves. Sally is quiet and smiles a lot. I am still thinking about getting through the day. The grill is fired up to make some toast. No one is in the mood for eggs. Woody has no appetite and drinks his protein shake while Sally devours the toast. I manage half a slice with butter until Mac arrives and eats the remaining slices with heaps of strawberry jam. The edges of his mouth look like he has devoured a fresh kill until Sally tells him, and he wipes it. Woody looks pale as he watches him do it.

The clock on the wall seems stuck in time and does not move. Mac tries to keep the conversation going, but the two youngsters are occupied with their phones. An incoming message alerts Sally who taps her screen to open it. A flatulent sound emits loudly from her phone. We all smile. Then she hits Woody on the arm as he laughs. How can any sane person expect these two to extract four corpses from a family saloon in the next half an hour? I recall that they both joined at eighteen years old. Sally would be twenty-one soon. I question myself as to why an older, more experienced crew could not do the cut? Why inflict this on these two? Why should any of us be expected to see it?

But the reality is there is no one else. A purge of retirements opened up new job opportunities for the next generation. These are the experienced ones now while I am just an old dinosaur who can’t remember how many dead people I have seen. Or how many millisieverts of radiation we are safely allowed to be exposed to. Or the percentage ratio of foam concentrate to water. Or the new door entry procedures to utilise when searching a property using breathing apparatus. How many metres a safety cordon must be when there is an acetylene cylinder involved in fire. They keep changing the procedures every year, and I can’t keep up. All I do know is that this will not be something any of us will forget.

Mac finally gets some conversation from Woody who tells us about the festival he just got back from where everyone had food poisoning. How the portable toilets were overflowing, and everyone was being sick. Sally giggles at his graphic description of human suffering. Mac tells us in great detail how he spent the evening restoring his Porsche Boxster, and when it comes around to Sally, she shares her concerns about her depressive boyfriend. She spent the evening trying to talk some sense into him over the phone.

A new phone call interrupts the conversation as Mac answers enthusiastically. He listens to instructions from a senior officer before hanging up. Before he can speak, the bells go down, and the lights illuminate the room. Everyone jumps up to respond. We are alive with hope. We might not have to go to cut the family out of the vehicle. This is a reprieve. An alert to another incident. Hopefully, it is something less trying; like a fire alarm sounding, or a rubbish fire. Anything but our assigned task. We have escaped. Dodged a bullet. Jumped the fence. Until Mac calls us back before Woody can descend down the pole drop. Our postures slump, knowing there will be no escape.

‘Stand down. That’s just fire control mobilising us to the incident via the system. All the details will be on the print out sheet. We will be travelling at road speed without blue lights and sirens. Take a couple of minutes to grab anything you might need. Everyone meet downstairs dressed in fire kit, ready to go. And make sure we have plenty of surgical gloves and dust masks on the pump.’

Five minutes later, we gather at the pump while I take a stroll around to make sure all the lockers are closed and grab the turnout sheet from the printer. Then I hop into the driving seat. Mac sits next to me and asks one of his condescending questions that are just his nerves expressing themselves.

‘Do you know where we are going?’

‘I do.’

Before I start the engine, I check behind to see everyone is aboard. Sally is the team leader today with Woody seated directly behind me. Both are in their hi-visibility Kevlar jackets normally reserved for road traffic collisions or technical rescues. They both force a smile at me.

The engine shudders to life as the front door raises. I edge out of the station in no hurry to reach our destination. It is an industrial unit on the edge of town and away from public view. Someone has worked fast overnight to secure this location where we can undertake our task behind closed doors.

It is a cool crisp morning where the sky is that shade of blue that only exists in children’s books. A bright morning full of innocence. Full of hope. Mac lowers his passenger window, and we all seem to appreciate the cold air. The road is full of cars hurrying to their destination. Workers, dog walkers, and children being ferried to school. I think of the school missing a child today. The nursery with a free space. A desk missing a worker. An empty home. One less car on the road.

Mac tries to make conversation. I can tell he is fretting about our upcoming task. The two least experienced members of the crew are staring out of their respective window. We are like a family going on a trip.

Our route takes us over the bad camber bend, which has a police accident sign on the grass verge. It looks peaceful now, except for the burnt patch of grass in front of a scorched tree. Apart from the skid marks on the road, and a large fluid stain, this is the only evidence of what occurred last night. I feel a sense of grief, but it goes.

‘Do you remember the truck driver who lost an arm?’ Mac says to me.

I remember but just nod.

‘And the guy who hit the wall at 100 mph?’

‘He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt,’ I said, confirming my recollection.

‘What a mess.’

I know what Mac is doing, but it doesn’t help. He’s trying to recall all the worse things we have seen to compare them with what we are about to see. His brain is going through a process to file this one away correctly amongst all the other dossiers of death. I have my own filing cabinet in my head, which I rarely open. It is under permanent lock and key since I used to open it up regularly to read the contents after too many beers.

My records are gathering dust while Mac is still sorting through his. I realise I am old when I think about filing cabinets in my mind. The two younger members of the crew will no doubt log theirs onto a metaphoric hard drive.

‘It’s hit the news,’ Woody shouts from the back. His head pops through the hatch between the rear cab and the front. Sally releases her seat belt and sidles next to him as he reads aloud. ‘A serious road traffic collision occurred last night on a notorious stretch of road between…’

I zone out to his words. There is no point in making this worse by reading reports with little facts. People will be intrigued by the headlines, but they would not release any details until later in the day. When we had extracted the victims from their metal coffin. Woody continues doom scrolling through the various social media feeds that are guessing the facts and circumstances. There is a thirst to know details. To read exactly what happened. How they suffered. The tragedy of the situation. Who is affected. And then people will put it out of their minds by turning to something more light-hearted. They move on quickly to avoid thinking too hard about how it affects them. Their friends; their family. Everything is reduced to a snapshot headline. Some hard-hitting words. A few lines stating the basic facts.

‘We’re nearly there,’ Mac states.

The two least experienced members of the crew retreat from the hatch to their seated positions. I turn into an industrial estate of warehouse type buildings. Those long and tall cream clad structures that all look the same. We stop at a fenced gate where there is a police patrol car guarding the entrance.

A grim faced officer comes to my window and directs us where to park. It is in front of a closed roller shutter door. I position the engine so we can easily get the equipment off that we need. Another car arrives with the police crash investigators. One of them confers with Mac while we prepare our personal protective equipment. Woody takes a few sharp breaths and undertakes a nervous stretching routine. Sally is fully kitted up with helmet, surgical gloves, and a dust mask hanging loose around her neck. Her eyes are wide.

I double check my technical rescue jacket is fastened. It has just come back from cleaning and is shiny. I know after this that it will need to be bagged in one of the lockers for the journey back to the station. All of our kit will need to be deep cleaned.

We stand opposite the garage door as we await it opening. There is a stench of burnt plastic, and something sweeter, out here in the fresh air. Everyone knows it is coming from inside the industrial unit. An aroma that is not totally unpleasant until you think about the source. You can almost taste it on your lips.

I can tell that Woody is tempted to pull up his dust mask, but he knows that it will not do anything. Inside will be worse. We are silent for a few minutes until Sally turns to me as if remembering the conversation from earlier.

‘We never asked what you did in your days off. Something fun, I hope?’

Woody leans in. ‘Yeah, what have you been up to?’

I desperately want to tell them about the conversation with my mother in the care home. How she did not know who I was or recognise me. How she was dying of cancer and suffering from dementia. Why I made the decision to place her in there. The fallout with my sister about her care. My wife who argued back and defended me. The strained conversation on the way home. My sleepless night. The stress and worry about losing her. How she is already lost.

I smile at them both. ‘Not much.’

Mac brings the investigators over, and they stand next to us. He gives a quick brief.

‘Right, we will all be going in together. Each of us has our own task to undertake. Take a good few minutes to observe the vehicle and set up an equipment dump next to it with everything you think we will need. Please be respectful in there but treat it like any other job. Anyone feeling ill, take a step outside and inform someone. There is no rush. Any questions?’

I have many questions, but I don’t want the answers. A visual of the wreckage will tell me all I need to know. Mac goes over to push the button on the wall. The electric roller shutter door shakes and wobbles as it slowly rises. Everyone seems to take a breath to prepare for the encounter. It is like we are all holding each other’s hands in a line. We are in this together. When the door reaches the top, we step forward as one. All my own worries are put aside as I am confronted with someone else’s.

I’m a 51 year old married man with grown up children, and I began writing over ten years ago as a hobby that gradually became an obsession and helped me escape the draw of a destructive mid-life crisis. Born in Barrow-in-Furness, I left school without following my friends into a shipyard apprenticeship. Deciding against a life in industry, I studied A-levels but skipped university to join the fire service in 1997. I self-published my first eBook nine years ago and have subsequently written a total of five books.