Burning Heart Read online

Everything changed so fast, in the blink of an eye.

  What if I give up? I should, right? What if I get hurt? He said I would be weak. What could I do? I don’t want to do something else. A doctor? No way. Ok, let’s see, something… maybe… I don’t know, I don’t know! I don’t want to be anything else!

  The problem was that every candidate should have a signed medical consent from a doctor in order to take the PAT. That’s what chief Robert told me.

  What if I give up? I thought, I gave a bite to one of the cookies, and then back to sleep, that reality was horrible and I didn’t want to be there anymore.

  The next day I came out of my room, I was going to the kitchen, because I was hungry and thirsty. Have you ever cried the whole night? It is horrible because you wake up very thirsty and your eyes look like baseballs. I stopped at the stairs because I heard voices in the living room. I thought my mom would be at church, but no, she was there talking with my dad. The man from the great city was in town. They were arguing about money, shocking.

  He was yelling at her, “Ok, fine! Fine! Both of you, the two of you can come, happy now?”

  “Quiet Bob, she is sleeping. Look, even if I go with her, I’m not sure, I mean… she wouldn’t like the idea, she has this ability test to join the fire…” my mom said.

  “Martha listen! Now is the time for her to face the reality of life, the fire department was a stupid childhood dream. Life is not about dreams, life is about paying bills and get enough money to afford a decent retirement. That’s the damn reality and…”

  “Please Bob, stop yelling, she is sleeping”

  “This is what is going to happen, you two come with me, I have some connections there so I can get the best doctors and treatments, you sell or rent this piece of crap and she goes to one of the universities there, period.” When he said that I was about to explode. I swear.

  My mom was incredibly calm, “I don’t know, I will have to discuss it with her, Bob”

  “There is nothing to discuss Martha, if you stay, how could you possibly afford the chemotherapy? Do you think that the insurance will embrace you with a big smile offering to pay for everything? No! Of course not! And guess what? Guess what pocket will be affected? Your hippie librarian pocket? No!”

  “She is in my custody Bob, we don’t need your money…”

  Mom was crying by then and I don’t remember what they said after that. All I remember from that moment was like a burning flame going from my stomach to my head. My hands were shaking and I was sweating. All I wanted in life was to help people, save lives and to be there when the city needs me. I didn’t care about money, I know that it is important and useful in life, but life is not all about money.

  If we only have one life, if we get to live just once, shouldn’t we enjoy it? Money and bills? Is that all? I don’t think so, I have a dream, I want to help and set an example. I want to be a firefighter and nothing will stand on my way. Period.

  I ran downstairs as far as I could. I needed to talk. I couldn’t contain myself anymore.

  “I will be a firefighter and nothing will take that away from me,” I told them. Well, actually I yelled at them.

  They stood in silence for a moment and then dad spoke.

  “Ok, and how exactly are you planning to do things Lina?”

  “Well, I will train every day, I…”

  He interrupted me, “Listen, Lina, this is how things work, during the first week of chemotherapy you’ll feel constantly dizzy and nauseous. By the end of the second week your hair will start to come off. By week four you’ll have lost around ten pounds. You will need special care and…”

  “Shut up!”

  “Lina!” Said my mom. I guess that my dad was shocked too, because he just stood there staring at me. Honestly I had never talked to him like that.

  “I will train, I will eat well and I will do whatever it takes to be in shape for that test!” Then I ran back to my room. My head was burning and my hands were still shaking.

  Dad

  I know that everybody hates me and everybody thinks that I’m an idiot, even my daughter hates me, and not to mention Martha. But I love Lina and all I want for her is a good and stable future. I don’t want her to make the same mistakes that her mom and I made, mistakes that even destroyed our marriage. I wish I could open her head and make her see life the way I see it and how hard it is.

  However, that day I was nothing but proud about Lina. I was worried about her but in that moment, looking at her, I just can’t describe it. Just as she told us, she trained and took good care of herself for five weeks. She even passed out once during her workout, and I guess that that happened more than once, but they just told me about that one time. She spent over one month jogging daily with a bandage on her leg, eating healthy even with the constant nausea, doing a lot of exercises even with the dizziness and at the end of the month she convinced the doctor to signed the paper. I never liked that doctor, too soft.

  She looked beautiful to me, beautiful and healthy. By the way, she wasn’t completely bald. It happened that when she started to lose hair, she got a Mohawk. My beautiful and crazy Lina.

  So there she was, I wish I had that determination for a dream when I was young. It wasn’t over yet, she still needed a new round of tests and x-rays to see if the chemotherapy was working well but that day, in that precise moment she was happy and proud of herself.

  Martha and I were watching everything from outside the fire station, far away from where the PAT was taking place, but we still got a good sight seated on the top of the car.

  I can’t imagine how hot it was inside that thick coat and that helmet. She had to complete the tasks wearing all the equipment. When she started, I started to take her time, as far as we know she had seven minutes to complete everything. It was a pass or fail test, there was nothing in between, you made it in less than seven minutes and you were in, period. Martha was worried about her heel, me too but honestly deep inside of me, I was more worried about her time. Despite the fact that I wanted her studying laws or medicine, I really wanted to see her winning that test.

  They weren’t allowed to run, they had to go from one place to another walking. She went directly to a pretty big ladder lying on the floor, she picked it up and carried it from one place to another.

  Then she crawled like two meters carrying a hose on her shoulder, after that she took a big hammer and started to hit something. I don’t know what it was, but I was very nervous looking at my watch. She spent a lot of time in that hammer thing.

  Then she had to reach the third floor of a building using the stairs, wearing all the equipment, which included an oxygen tank. This was the one that got me nervous, but after a couple of minutes later we saw her coming out of the building.

  For the final task she had to carry a six feet tall human doll from one point to another. They could do it as they wanted. There was no right way to carry that thing, so they just had to drag it. She was dragging the thing and she was limping. I saw my watch, thirty seconds left. She was almost there.

  Fortunately she made it. She dropped the doll at the finish line, took the helmet off and went to see her results. Suddenly she fell on the ground unconscious. I remember that when I got down of the car Martha was already running.

  Once I got closer I saw Martha holding Lina and one of the firefighters was giving her water and checking her. I don’t know why but I felt the impulse to go directly to the lady who was tracking the scores. Maybe it was because I saw that Lina was fine, drinking water and talking.

  “Sir, you are not allowed to be here.” She told me. She was calm, I guess that she was used to see people fainting during the test.

  “Your daughter?” She asked.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Six minutes, with fifty four seconds,” she said, “she passed.”

  I ran to Lina, she grabbed my arm and looked into my eyes. “What dad? Are you crying? Dad?”

  “You passed Lina, you are in.
” She was so happy, she hugged me laughing and crying. I will never forget that moment.

  The Doctor

  What I am about to tell you had nothing to do with what she did at the test, this wasn’t her fault, and wasn’t mine either. Honestly I didn’t know whom to blame but I wish I could blame someone and ask him, why? Why Lina? She is a good girl! She was a hero for me and she didn’t deserve this.

  It had been six weeks after the first chemotherapy and by then I needed to take a blood sample to check if everything was going well. I remember the day when Lina came for that blood sample, I bought them donuts because that’s the bet we had with Lina, and since she passed the PAT I had to buy donuts for them. That was a good day, she told me everything about the enrollment process and what was next for her.

  The sad day was three days later when the results came. I didn’t want to give them the results right away, I wanted to be sure of those results so I sent them back for a double check. The next day they came back showing the same results. The cancer was still there and it was expanding fast, the affected area had doubled its size and everything indicated that it was growing exponentially. As I said before, it had nothing to do with Lina’s training. In fact I think that that helped her to manage the pain and to slow down the cancer.

  Originally she was taking two chemotherapy sessions per week, so after these results we tried with four sessions per week, but after two weeks the cancer