Lieutenant Buckley – Chapter 2 & 3 – ScarsLikeVelvet

Chapter 2

Evan sat down at the table the teacher indicated, pulled out a thick binder he had filled with dot grid paper and index dividers for each block of lessons he was about to attend. He put down a couple of differently coloured, erasable gel pens on the table next to the binder and pulled out the book for his first lesson.

After he got his desk set up the way he wanted to, Evan pulled his phone from the side pocket of his backpack to make sure that his do-not-disturb mode was properly set up for the time he was about to spend in the academy. Once he was sure everything was as it should be, he put the phone back into his backpack, and looked to the front of the room.

He was one of the first students to arrive, and it was weird for him to realize that everyone else arrived just shy of the moment their class was about to start. Evan questioned if that was how it was these days. He remembered how pissed his instructors in the SEALs had been when someone arrived this close to their starting time without a very good reason.

Anything past fifteen minutes before the starting point of any lesson or exercise was considered late and got them punished with at least fifty push-ups. It was still so ingrained in Evan, that he wanted to drop down to do them if he was late for anything despite being a civilian now.

Evan watched the classroom slowly fill up and leaned back in his seat, his hands on top of his desk so the instructor could see them, and relaxed a bit. It was weird to have unknown people sitting at his back and he knew it was his hyper vigilance rearing its ugly head, but he wasn’t about to ask to be accommodated since it was clear to him that the teacher had people sitting in alphabetical order.

When the clock ticked toward eight o’clock the instructor stood up, walked to the door and locked it before turning toward the class with an unreadable expression.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” the man said. “I’m Chief Wallace Bordeen, your instructor for the day.”

The tall, tan-skinned, grey-haired man’s gaze travelled over his students in silence for a moment.

“And I have to start the day with a lecture I really hoped to avoid already but it seems that only one person in this class understood what punctual arrival at the academy means,” he continued on, causing an uncomfortable murmur to rustle through the room.

Bordeen’s left brow rose, nearly meeting his hair line.

“You aren’t in high school anymore, ladies and gentlemen. Here, a different time of punctuality is expected. The starting time is eight o’clock, but you are expected to be here, and ready for classes ten to fifteen minutes before that. You are allowed to use these fifteen minutes to train putting on your bunker gear once you’ve been shown how it is properly done. Otherwise, you are expected to be at your assigned duty station or class room five minutes before the class starts,” he explained.

The woman sitting next to Evan raised her hand, waving it around a little and reminding Evan of Hermione Granger during potions class in the first Harry Potter movie. She was even bouncing in her seat a little, and had similarly bushy brown hair, though her skin was notably darker than Emma Watson’s, who had portrayed the character in the movies.

“Miss Baker,” Chief Bordeen said, motioning for her to ask whatever question she had.

“Why would we be training to put our gear on outside of classes? That’s what they are for, aren’t they?” the young woman blurted out.

Evan bit down on his lip and was forced to stop himself from rolling his eyes. He straightened in his seat, his military training never truly letting go of him, no matter how much he tried. It was to ingrained in him at this point in time.

“Mister Buckley, do you have an answer?” Bordeen asked, looking at Evan.

The whole class zeroed in on him and Evan nodded shortly.

“Sure, Chief Bordeen,” he said. He remained in his seat, but it was a near thing. Everything in him screamed to get out of it and stand at attention. “The reason why you’d take the time out of your day to train putting on your gear outside of classes is so you can do it in your sleep, literally with your eyes closed, when an alarm rouses you from a dead sleep. Working as a firefighter or really any type of emergency worker, doesn’t lend itself to gentle wake-ups with coffee first thing before you head out. You need to know how to put on your gear quickly and properly, so you can ensure the safety of both yourself, the people who go with you, and the people you go out to rescue. Failure to wear the proper gear could lead to injury and death.”

A few of the people around him sucked in shocked breaths and Evan questioned their sanity. Working in emergency services of any kind always came with the risk of losing not only your patients/victims/whatever you wished to call them, but also the risk of injury or in the worst cases death for yourself.

Not taking this into account when applying for a job like this and taking the space of someone who thought about it, but didn’t measure up in another way for some reason or another, was peak idiocy in Evan’s mind, not that he said it out loud. He knew the drop out rate of the Fire Academy was nothing to sneeze at, because a lot of people thought they could run into danger without a second thought, but when confronted with the real possibility of death even for training purposes, they froze and couldn’t do it.

Evan knew that was the reason why they trained for worst case scenarios from the beginning at the academy and allowed people to walk away without penalty when they realized this kind of job wasn’t for them, but questions like Baker’s showed him how woefully under-prepared for work like this some people were. He didn’t say anything, though, because that was Chief Bordeen’s job, not his.

“Buckley is right,” he said. “Knowing how to use your gear means the difference between life and death. There is a reason why continued training is encouraged even for firefighters that have been on the job for decades. Techniques and equipment change and evolve. It is necessary to keep yourself up to date for everyone’s safety.”

Bordeen continued on with his lecture and Evan grabbed a black pen and started to take notes. He couldn’t stop himself from snorting, when people scrambled for pens and paper to follow his lead.

Chapter Three

Evan competently moved through the training, participating in that calm, yet intense manner the Navy had instilled in him. He always kept a notebook and pen on him to ensure he could write down any questions he had or observations he made. It helped him figure out his own weak points and it didn’t take the instructors to rely on him for additional information about their students.

The day came when they had their first lesson on the climbing tower, the first thing Evan did when he was given a bag containing his set of gear for the day, was dump it out on the table in front of him. He knew there was a certificate contained in the bag that it had been checked just this morning, but Evan knew that the only opinion regarding the security of his gear he could trust was his own expertise.

Trusting anyone else, people he didn’t know, could easily get him killed.

Without a second thought, he began to check over the harness he had been given first and almost immediately he figured out that this was a test too. One that he was quite sure most of his classmates would fail, because from what a casual swivel of his head showed him, that most of them had already pulled on the harnesses without checking them.

Evan focused on his harness, checked the stitching and immediately decided that he wouldn’t be wearing it. It was already fraying and there was no way he would risk it even in controlled circumstances. He set it aside, and started to check the carabiners, tethers, quickdraws, ascenders, and belay devices the bag contained. Those were good quality, although it was clear they had been in use for a while. He set aside a couple of carabiners and one of the quickdraws because they were at the end of their lifespan.

Then he focused on the rope and what he found there was even worse than what the slightly fraying harness. He dropped the rope back on the table and stood at attention beside it calmly, waiting for the instructors to approach him.

“Something amiss, Buckley?” he was questioned. The instructor’s eagle eyes focused on him with an intensity that reminded him of his former drill instructor.

“The harness is fraying, the carabiners and one of the quickdraws have reached the end of their lifespan, and that rope is beyond use. I wouldn’t even use it for my worst enemy. Tossing them down a cliff would certainly be kinder than using a rope about to fully unravel,” he explained calmly, remaining standing at attention.

“Show me,” the instructor said and Evan did just that. He showed and explained what he had found, and which parts of the gear provided to him he was willing to use, but there were some things that just got a hard pass.

The other instructor for the class called everyone’s attention toward Evan again.

“Firefighter Recruit Buckley is the only one, who checked his gear thoroughly before even contemplating putting it on. You have to trust the gear you use not only with your own life, but also with the lives of the people you go out to help. All of you, aside from Buckley, trusted that we gave you gear you could simply use. In case you didn’t get it yet … this was a test. Trusting your team is all well and good, but you need to remember, that we all are human and we all can have a bad day and mistakes happen. Each and every bag held at least one piece of equipment that was unusable or used to the breaking point. So I want you all, to check your gear before we continue with this lesson,” Captain Mitchell explained.

One of the males in the row behind Evan huffed.

“Teacher’s pet!”

Captain Mitchell’s head snapped around and he focused on the guy who had spoken up.

“Buckley isn’t a teacher’s pet,” he growled. “The man simply values his life and has the training to back it up. He has an advantage over all of you, because of his military background. You would do well to follow his lead and ask for his advice instead of trying to make him look bad. It’s won’t end well for you.”

Evan sighed.

“You can tell them, what I did before I joined the academy, Captain Mitchell. It’s not exactly a secret that I am former military and the moment we hit the showers later, they’d see the evidence of which branch I served in anyway,” he said. He wasn’t keen on showing off. He was trained to blend in, but he also didn’t want to hide his light under a bushel, just to stop some egos from bruising.

“Thank you, Recruit Buckley,” Captain Mitchell replied, focusing on the class. He walked to the front of the room and watched them in silence for a moment, before speaking up again. “Buckley is a retired Navy SEAL. He has the certifications you are working to obtain already, and he agreed to take the courses anyway simply to help show some very important parts of climbing, since it seems that no one in this class climbs recreationally, which is fine, but unfortunately could lead to injuries.”

Hermione Baker, the woman sitting next to Evan in class, snorted.

“A SEAL, right,” she muttered.

Before Evan could say anything, Captain Mitchell showed off the picture of Evan’s graduation picture from the SEALs on the whiteboard, and suddenly silence reigned.

“Can we continue with our lesson, please?” Evan asked, which finally refocused everyone.

His instructor looked at Evan and told him to drop the parts of the gear he wasn’t inclined to use in the bin sitting on the teachers’ desk, before showing him the backup gear they had waiting in another couple of bins.

Evan calmly picked the harness, rope, quickdraw and carabiners, carried them over to the bin he now realized would hold them until the next class would be taught. Then he went ahead to pick what he needed from the backups provided.

He assisted the instructors the way they had asked him to, by climbing the tower first, and assisting everyone else later on, giving them tips and helping them without any artifice.

“You really do know what you are doing,” Recruit Baker said once their lesson was done.

Evan didn’t say a word. Instead, he waited for whatever she was about to say.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” she added. “It’s just … I thought SEALs went into security or police work or something when they have to leave service for whatever reason.”

“Common misconception,” Evan said succinctly before adding an “Apology accepted,” a moment later.