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I nod, pulling the oxygen face mask away to rasp, “Thank you.”
Even saying those two words scratches my throat painfully.
“Of course.” She closes my chart and places it back in the sleeve at the foot of my hospital bed. “I’ll come back to check on you before you’re discharged.”
She—her white coat readsDR. EVANS—gives me a smile before exiting my room in the emergency department. As soon as she leaves, my parents and brothers file in. I’m sure there must be some rule against so many people back here in the ED, crowding into one room. But with my father and brothers in uniform and Ma being ... Ma, I assume they’re making an exception.
They all wear the same worried expressions and gather around my bed. Dad and Ma on one side, Malcolm and Malik on the other.
“Hey,” I croak.
“Sweetheart.” Mom grasps my hand in hers and brushes the other one over my hair. Tears pool in her eyes. “Oh my God. I’m so glad you’re okay.”
“You scared the shit out of us, sis,” Malik says, his gaze running over me as if assuring himself that I really am good.
“Yeah, don’t ever do that to us again,” Malcolm orders.
The corners of my mouth lift in a feeble smile under the face mask.
“I’ll try. Can’t make any promises.” Even saying that has my throat on fire.
I hoped my flippant answer would ease some of their tension, but it fails.
“We’re going to need to discuss what happened,” Dad says, his anger practically vibrating in his voice. “Both officially and unofficially.”
I nod.
Yes, there’s no getting around that.
I close my eyes, and immediately images of that hot smoke-filled room I’d been trapped in just hours ago appear in my mind’s eye. I canfeel the flames that ate at the walls, the window. Popping my eyes back open, I meet Dad and Malcolm’s furious gazes.
They know.
Maybe not the why, but they definitely know the what.
The first call of my shift had been to a structure fire in a two-and-a-half-story family home. When we pulled up, black smoke billowed in the air, red-and-gold flames licked at the first-floor side windows and the back of the house. Dad, Jared, and Cam did a quick assessment.
Jared quickly asked the owners if anyone was still inside the home, and receiving a negative answer, he and Cam started issuing orders. Attack lines ready, we prepared to enter.
It’d shocked me that Cam had assigned Matt to be my partner. But on the scene at an active fire, I couldn’t argue. So I went into the fire with a man who despised me.
At first, everything went fine. We hosed down the walls and floor in what appeared to be the dining room. After that, things start to get a little hazy. I remember the smoke thickening, the flames encroaching closer. A crash.
Then . . . nothing.
No, not completely true.
I remember Matt not being there.
He’d left me.
Terror and anger rise up inside me like an inferno, threatening to choke me.
Two in, two out. Never go into a structure by yourself. That’s a cardinal rule in firefighting, and our unbreakable one. Even if one of our tanks goes off, we tap our partner, letting them know, and we both leave.
Matt broke that rule and left me in there by myself.
And I spy the knowledge, along with the fury, in my father’s and brothers’ eyes. So, yes, they’re aware of the what—Matt abandoning me—but not the why.
