The room was utterly dark and choked with smoke. I inched forward on hands on knees, hugging the right hand wall and swinging the beam of the flashlight back and forth in a feeble effort to see. With every breath, I heard the roar of air from the tank of the SCBA strapped to my back. I was almost completely blind. From time to time, I felt Adam's helmet bonk me from behind. His flashlight was dead, and he was sticking close to me. We completed a painstaking circuit of the room on hands and knees and came to the door. Opening it, we spilled through and stood up in the hallway of the rescue squad.

"How was that?" Steve the Lieutenant asked. I pulled off my helmet and he detached the SCBA air line from my mask. A little haze still spilled out from under the door of the training room, which Steve had completely filled with artificial smoke.

"Hoo boy."

"Now try it with the IRIS," he said eagerly. He fitted the helmet with the thermal imaging camera on my head, and flipped the twin screens down in front of my eyes.

This is going to get me in trouble, I thought. I'm enjoying this more than a sensible person should.

This had all started off as a drill for Alicia, one of my crewmates. She's preparing for her Aidperson test, the Squad's way of determining that a probationary member is ready to become a full member of an ambulance. People tend to drill heavily in the weeks preceding their test, working on their knowledge and skills in simulations created by other members of their crew. Drills can range from practice sessions on patient evaluation to in-depth scenarios in which the member must direct fire and rescue teams (other members of the crew) to extricate and treat "patients" (typically the newer members of crew) from all sorts of horrific mockups of car accidents and the like.

Steve took me aside early in the shift to show me the drill he'd planned. He was practically giggling with anticipation as he showed me the smoke generator. Alicia had no idea what was in store for her. In the drill, she would be dispatched to a relatively nondescript call. Then she would open the training room door and find herself engulfed in smoke, with a "patient" trapped inside. The appropriate thing to do at that point would be to close the door, back off, and call for fire support. I would play of one of the firefighters who would go in and pull the patient to safety. I would be completely suited up in fire turnout gear and Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus.

This seemed a little suspicious. Just last week, I'd told Steve that I was vaguely considering taking the Essentials of Firefighting class in the future. The class would be the first step in becoming certified on the Squad's heavy rescue truck, running fire calls and all sorts of mayhem.

"Am I playing a firefighter because I said I might take Essentials?" I asked.

"Um, yes," Steve said.

He's trying to get me interested in the tools of the trade, I thought. I wonder if he even has the slightest concept of Susan's profound opposition to the idea of me becoming a firefighter. She's quite adamant in her request that I not die in the near future. Other family and friends have expressed similar sentiments.

As Alicia began the drill, Marie and I donned turnout gear in the stairwell. When Alicia "called" for us, we appeared, clomping in our big boots and huffing on our SCBAs. I opened the door of the training room and was confronted with... nothingness. Impenetrable smoke that immediately rendered me blind. It was profoundly disorienting. Steve the Lieutenant appeared out of the smoke and told us where the "patient" was located, and we proceeded to bump our way in and haul her out. Alicia went to work on her victim.

A call came in, and Marie yanked off her gear and ran for her ambulance. I hung out in the hall talking with Steve about how I would have done a room sweep if I'd had the faintest idea how to do it. "Since we've filled the whole room up with smoke, we might as well play for a while," Steve said. Another crewmember pulled on the castoff gear and Steve started outlining the basic strategies for finding patients in the impenetrable black smoke of a house fire.

We crawled back into the room, made a complete circuit, and came back out. Next we would do it with the helmet-mounted thermal imaging camera. He helped secure the helmet on me, and I entered the room again on hands and knees, with the faceplate screens flipped down over my eyes.

It was eerie. It was extremely cool. The person inside the room glowed like a ghost in the dark. With my new vision, I could see something else lighting up ahead of me as well -- a great deal of trouble. It was foolish for me to start this knowing that I won't want to stop. But still, I fumbled forward on my hands and knees, listening to the rush of my breathing, heading blindly toward a breathless new place.