The Lieutenant is reading to me from the squad manual as we prepare for my "fourth" checkout. Once I'm "fourth" on the rescue squad I'll trade my blue EMS helmet for a red one, and I'll be able to play a much more active role in the heavy rescue truck's activities on calls.

He reads: "After completing "Fourth man" checkout, the probationer is permitted to enter structures that are, quote, on fire." He looks up and grins. "I like that. Quote, on fire. Looks like that house is, quote, on fire!"

A friend from my fire class, who already has her red helmet emails me:

Last night we had two calls after 11 both of which I woke up for from a deep sleep. I have to say there's nothing like rushing to put gear on to wake one up. I got to thinking as I was putting my gear on quickly, what if this turns out to be a fire? I started running through our stuff, feel the door...put on facepiece...check seal...turn on bottle...start freaking out because you're crazy enough to run into a burning building. Then I thought what tool do I like and I don't know. Should I take the ax because it could potentially free me from a dangerous situation or should I take a haligan?

Both of us are getting closer to a point where much of the serious training ends and you have to do it. We're both realizing that you can train in burn buildings until it feels almost fun, but when it comes down to crawling into the real flaming thing, it is scary and it will happen. Everything matters now as much as your life: what kind of tool you take in, whether you're careful enough in donning your equipment, whether you'll put fear in a place where you can find it later and do what you know needs to be accomplished.

We start my checkout test. The Lieutenant reads off various tools and I have to go fetch them off one of the rescue squads. No mistakes. The objects I'm sent to find are ones that are usually placed in entirely different locations on the two different rescue squads, so it's far too easy to get confused about where to look for them. I have spent so much time memorizing the location of every tiny object carried on these trucks that as he reads the name of the each tool I experience a profound surge of relief -- I know that one.

Then I'm assigned three compartments and have to write out the contents of them from memory. Aside from some dumb mistakes, this too goes well. Finally, I must don my full gear and SCBA and step off the truck breathing from the cylinder in under 90 seconds. I've been nervous about this part of the test, but it goes OK and I get by.

I donned gear and SCBA so many times in fire class that there is probably now a bulging, overdeveloped part of my brain devoted to those motions. Our SCBA is different from the ones we used at the Academy, but I had doubted this would make much difference. As I prepared for my "fourth" test, I spent all my time on the memorization and only tried practice rounds of donning a few nights before my test. My times were shockingly bad. That swollen part of my brain had somehow atrophied, and I discovered that the different equipment left me fumbling and frustrated.

I spent every night from that point at the squad, pulling on my gear and stripping it off again, over and over. I would beg various people to climb into the rescue truck and time me through as many repetitions as they could bear. At the end of each evening, I was sweaty and exhausted and had shaved off a few meager seconds. The night of my test, one member of my crew brings in a stopwatch as a sort of good luck charm, and we use it for my official time. Afterwards I'm tempted to hold on to it as a memento.

One of the rescue squads is out of service, so I can't complete my equipment check on it. We work out a plan to test on it later this week. I'm close to the red helmet, so close I can feel a bit of the maelstrom that lies beyond it.