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.Jude nodded at two men.One was holding a stopwatch and the other a clipboard.The chief went and stood next to them, and Jude felt a bead of sweat work its way down his spine.His upper lip was moist and his heart was pounding out of his chest already.He needed to get a grip, and he needed to get it right the fuck now.The dummy drag was first and thank God for that, since it was hell on his knees and quads.It involved him walking backward, pulling a two hundred pound dummy along with him.He got through that without any major catastrophes and then went through a series of equipment tests, which he passed with flying colors.Jude knew this equipment inside and out.That had never been a problem.Next up was the hose-pack carry.He strained some and feared his knee would come out from under him a couple of times as he lumbered up the stairs of their training structure, but the joint held and he made it to the top.Immediately he looked over at the captain with the stopwatch.“Did I make it?” Shit, he was definitely sucking wind more than he should be.The man nodded.“Just barely, but yeah.”The chief, who was stationed at the top of the structure, put a meaty hand on Jude’s shoulder.“Only a few more to go.You’re doing well.”“Thank you, sir.”They made their way out of the concrete building and over to the aerial truck.Jude looked up.Fully extended, the ladder reached a hundred and twenty feet high.He wasn’t crazy about heights and only did time in the aerial lift when necessary, but had to do the test to pass.The captain handed him an ax.“You know the drill.Make it up to the top in five minutes or less, fully geared.Ax in your dominant hand.If you can’t make it to the top, run into a problem, or have to be helped back down, you don’t pass.”Jude wiped the sweat off his brow as the other man regarded him with what looked suspiciously like pity, which pissed him off.He’d done everything so far, hadn’t he? So why the look?Facing down the truck, Jude gave himself a quick pep talk.You’ve made it this far.You can do this.You’ve got this.With a nod, he put his left hand and right foot on the ladder and began to climb.He had no way of knowing exactly how much time had elapsed, but tried to take things easy at first.They would give him a warning with one minute remaining, and he could always step it up then.It quickly became apparent that the ax in his right hand was a problem.He’d shattered his left kneecap, and without his right hand to help, he basically had to drag the left leg up each rung.He hoped like hell no one noticed.Only a couple of times had he even been up this high, mostly in training.Usually the guys who didn’t mind heights took point on it, so he figured if he could get through this, he’d be golden.“One minute,” the captain called up.Seriously? Does he mean one minute gone or one minute left? Must be one minute left.How did four minutes go by without me noticing? Get your thumb outta your ass and move.He glanced up.About a third of the ladder remained, and Jude would have to haul ass to make it.Looking up again, he tried to calculate how many rungs he needed to climb so he could count off.Then his left foot slipped as his knee buckled and he fell through the rungs of the ladder, his lower half dangling between two of them.Only his upper-body strength kept him on the ladder at all, but in his wild swing to safety, he’d been forced to drop the ax.Once back on the ladder, Jude laid his forehead on his hands.It was over.No way would they pass him with a blunder like that.“Fuck!”The chief called up to him.“You okay? You need help?”“No.” Jude’s voice cracked and he cursed his damn knee.Would he ever be able to return to the job he loved? His eyes filled and he wiped at them as best he could with his gear on.It was not the time to become a blubbering mess.There would be plenty of occasions for that when he got home and could drink himself into a good stupor.“Come on down, son.”At least the trip back down was a little easier with the lack of the ax, but Jude kept waiting for his knee to betray him—again.It held and he reached the ground.“I failed.” He heard his own emotionless voice.Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d separated himself from the pain of losing everything he’d worked for, everything he’d ever wanted, refusing to look it dead on.Not now.Not here.“Yes.” The chief shifted his weight from foot to foot.“No point in putting you through the rest of it.Keep rehabbing that knee and we’ll see where we are a couple of months from now.”More endless days of physical therapy stared Jude in the face.It didn’t matter, though
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