(Jack Ahern and Ean Connell outside of the Ashdod Station. They are part of the Duxbury Fire Department's Fourth Shift.)

They gathered around the kitchen table for what Duxbury Fire Capt. Rob Tripp called the family meal, plunking down sandwiches and juice while exchanging bad jokes and playful jabs. They were already two calls into the day – one a medical emergency that resulted in a trip to Jordan Hospital, the other asking for help to lift a person who had fallen, a frequent call.

Over lunch, they shared news about retired jakes, rehashed calls from previous shifts and the outcomes of those they transported to area hospitals. What was immediately clear is that they care deeply about the people they serve. Together Tripp, Dave Beers, Alex Merry, Ean Connell and Jack Ahern are the men of the Duxbury Fire Department’s Fourth Shift.

“We do like to have dinner together,” said Tripp, noting Connell and Ahern made the trip over from the Ashdod Station. “They say when you break bread with someone, it’s hard to get upset with him.”

Though the job of a suburban fire department may differ in intensity from that of a city station, the work is no less important to the firefighters and the town. Much of what they do is community service-based, said Tripp, checking smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, offering up an ear to the lonely or scared. With a staff of 23, the Duxbury Fire Department answers approximately 2,200 calls each year, about 80 percent of which are medical. Some of those calls are the ones they remember best.

For Duxbury native Alex Merry, who came on as a call firefighter in 2001 and was hired fulltime in 2005, one of his most memorable calls happened about three weeks ago. It was the kind of call that makes emergency personnel drive faster and push themselves harder: a five-month old baby wasn’t breathing.

“We get those calls fairly often,” said Merry, after lunch in the department’s new kitchen, which he wanted the residents of the town to know he deeply appreciated, while fiddling with the cap on his drink. “Sometimes it doesn’t turn out to be that way, but this one was real and the training came into place. The police were there before and started resuscitation. We took over from them, went into the ambulance, started our treatment, and got a pulse back.”

Once the infant’s vitals appeared on the monitor, Merry said he felt relieved, but knew better than to celebrate.

“It’s still a very dicey moment,” said Merry, nodding to Ahern who was his partner on the ambulance that day. “You don’t know if it’s going to happen again.”

Later Tripp would tell how he received a call from the emergency room doctor expressing his admiration for the difficult intubation Ahern performed on the baby. A former paramedic for the City of Boston before joining the DFD a year ago, Ahern has been on the front lines of emergency medicine for years, having tended to the sickest among the sick.

“It’s a lot busier (in Boston), there’s a different clientele altogether,” said Ahern. “I have never seen as many healthy 90-year-olds as I have here.”

Beers recounted an accident on Route 3 about ten years ago when a cement truck flipped. One died, he said, and had to be extricated. Another lived and needed over a year’s worth of physical therapy to walk again. What he remembers best is how one of their cellphones landed in a tree, 20 feet up. Those are the kind of calls that stay with a firefighter.

Each week the team works two 24-hour shifts, the captain and two men at the central station, two more at Ashdod Station. Though Capt. Tripp always stays at central, the teams of two switch stations -- and teams -- every two weeks.

Following lunch, the men head down to the garage where the engines and ambulances are parked for a training exercise. According to Tripp, Chief Kevin Nord requires that each shift train for two hours each day. This one involves airbags – not the safety devices used in cars, but the extrication tools used by emergency personnel to lift heavy objects off of victims.

Working without words, two men fetch the Jaws of Life designed airbags, which can lift up to 18,000 pounds each, while two more wheel a steel shelf burdened with equipment to the middle of the garage. As a team, they talk through the process of lifting the precarious shelf. Never taking his eyes off of the bags, the pumps or his crew, Beers, who has 30 years on the job and has seen all manner of accidents, explains why they’re practicing.

“We do this to train in case we have to recover a body or a victim,” said Beers. “This is not a dog-and-pony show. At 3 a.m. when a call comes, that is not when you want to learn it.”

The men then gathered in an adjacent office with a computer hookup so Merry could share what he had learned while on a training retreat with the Federal Emergency Management Administration Urban Search and Rescue Team. A member of the Plymouth County Technical Rescue Team, who put that knowledge to use two years ago when he helped rescue a horse from a Marshfield swimming pool, Merry shares what he learns from outside agencies with his Duxbury colleagues.

“The chief requires that if someone does special training, they bring it back to the station,” said Tripp.

He went on to say more, but then the alarm rang.

In one fluid motion, Connell and Ahern took to Engine 3, Merry and Beers jumped in the ambulance and Capt. Tripp took to the shift commander’s SUV and the radio to clarify the 911 call: a 72-year-old male with trouble breathing. He received precise directions from the dispatcher, hit the lights, sounded the siren when cars failed to yield on the road, which happened frequently, and arrived with his colleagues.

While a police officer, first on the scene, held the door open, each firefighter had a job to do. While Beers and Merry did the medical assessment of the patient, Connell restrained an anxious dog that whined by her owner’s side, and Tripp spoke with the wife of the patient, gathering a medical history while simultaneously soothing her.

“Everyone has a job to do,” said Tripp. “Jack (Ahern) is the last one in and he’s on the computer. The others already have (the man) on oxygen. Normally, I get a list of medications and check the best way out.”

As the team carried the man outside in a first aid chair and transferred him to the waiting stretcher, they worked in perfect sync. During the transfer, Merry carried the oxygen tanks on his back, but when Beers took over he transferred them to his own, careful to belt the man onto the stretcher first. Capt. Tripp retrieved a blanket from the ambulance as Connell got the med list and Ahern worked the computer. As he was being transported, Tripp stayed a moment with the wife of the man.

“Are you okay?” he asked and she nodded. She explained her husband had been ill and this wasn’t his first trip to the hospital. “You know how it is then. Please, take your time getting to the hospital and if you need anything, you call us.”

Back in his truck he explains one of the greatest frustrations is the person who’s reluctant to call for help and waits until the situation becomes critical. The week before, two people drove to the station after suffering heart attacks.

“We always encourage people to call,” said Tripp, noting it’s safer to let the team go to the patient. “We always say we don’t have to take you (to the hospital), we’ll give you a medical evaluation. Every member of the Duxbury Fire Department just wants to help.”

Within moments, while Merry and Beers were still transporting the man with breathing problems, another call came in for a chirping smoke detector. Tripp offered to go by himself, but while en route to that call, a private alarm company called in a residential fire alarm and he changed directions to head there.

The call came from the other side of town, closer to the Ashdod Station, and Ahern and Connell were already on the scene in full firefighting gear. It turned out to be a false alarm.

Tripp still needed to check on the chirping alarm. He found the house within a warren of townhouses. The woman who answered the door was happy to see him and delighted when Tripp wiped his feet as he entered.

“I can’t believe I got a captain,” she said. She explained that she had tried to change the batteries in her multiple smoke detectors, but wasn’t sure how and had pulled one completely free from the ceiling. Would Capt. Tripp help?

He climbed an unsteady stepladder overlooking a second-story balcony and repaired the smoke detector. He offered to change the batteries in the rest, but suggested it was probably better for the homeowner to call an electrician, as they were hard-wired. Tripp took the opportunity to give her a tutorial on smoke detector safety.

“Every call is a chance to educate the public,” said Tripp.

As he drove back to central station, Tripp checked in on the status of his ambulance crew, planning two steps ahead if another medical call were to come in or fire alarm.

Asked if he was tired after an already full day with hours more left to go on his shift, Tripp shook his head.

“For me, I’ve always wanted to be a fireman,” said Tripp. “Every call is different, everyone appreciates what we do. I take it seriously. My job is to make sure everyone goes home safely.”