Page 82 of Attraction & Repulsion

“Oh, honey.” Raegan’s tears started again, and she leaned forward toembrace Carson.

A torrent of emotions washed through Carson: relief, elation, and a bit of hysteria. This wasn’t déjà vu at all. Not even close.

Releasing her friend, Carson mouthed a question.Where is he?

“He’s upstairs in the TICU, the trauma intensive care unit,” Raegan said, wiping the mascara that stained her cheeks with her fingers. “He’s fine, though. His leg was crushed when the roof collapsed. He was in surgery all night, but they finished a couple of hours ago, and he’s doing well.”

The memory of the rubble on top of him, of not being strong enough to free him, flashed in Carson’s mind. Again, more beeping. She glanced at the monitor until it quieted. Apparently, it only decided to beep when it detected her heart rate spiking.

How bad?she mouthed again.

“His femur was broken. They predict he fell unconscious from the pain.”

Carson’s mouth twitched with distress.Can I go see him?

Tucking one of her golden locks behind her ear, Raegan peeked at the open door, sniffing. “I don’t know. None of us have been able to see him yet.”

How long have I been here?Carson silently and carefully enunciated for her to understand.

“Both of you were brought in last night.” Raegan’s eyes darted to a clock on the wall. “It’s about eight-thirty in the morning.”

A knock interrupted their conversation. A woman with salt-and-pepper hair glided in, her white coat billowing behind her. Raegan got up to make room for the doctor.

“Good morning, Ms. West. I’m Doctor Hill,” she said. “I heard the good news that you woke up.” She took Carson’s wrist andchecked her pulse. “Your throat may be very sore. That’s to be expected from the amount of smoke you inhaled. Can you open for me?”

The doctor fished out a tiny flashlight, one that resembled a writing pen, and clicked it on. Her eyebrows furrowed when Carson obediently opened her mouth. “Definitely red and swollen.” Clicking off the light, she placed it back in her breast pocket. “It’s very important you understand that you were exposed to an extreme amount of smoke and the hazards that come with it. That means a liquid diet and no speaking. Let’s do a forty-eight-hour observation and oxygen . . .”

Carson did her best to listen to the doctor and the hospital lingo spewing from her mouth. It wasn’t easy, though. Her throat was in flames. No matter how many times she blinked, it still felt like sand was scratching her eyes. The machines hummed and buzzed annoyingly around her. Her backside was already hurting from sitting in the bed that might as well have been made out of wood. And she was anxious to see Jax.

After the doctor left, her nurse returned and gave her a small whiteboard and dry-erase pen before updating her chart. When he was gone, Raegan sat back on the edge of the bed. Her slow-growing belly protruded a bit more, making her look officially pregnant. It was a cute little bump. Carson wondered how big the baby was now.

“Man, you stink,” Raegan said, wrinkling her nose.

Carson lifted her arm to sniff, but couldn’t smell anything. Either the constant flow of fresh oxygen masked her odor, or her nose was so singed she’d lost the ability to smell. Her skin was still dirty, her fingers darkened from ash. Next to her IV there was a red spot where the ember had burned her hand. Lifting her shoulder once, she scooted back in her bed, the plastic mattress crinkling beneath her.

The door creaked open. Hunter pushed his way in and crumpled intothe tiny recliner shoved in the corner of the room. His body seemed to melt as if his bones had turned to jelly. Smudges smeared his face, covering his freckles, and his red hair was wild and uncontrolled. He seemed to fight a losing battle with his eyelids as they drooped dangerously near closed.

“How are you feeling?” he managed to ask.

Using her new communication device, Carson scrawled her answer and faced the whiteboard toward him.

Great, but what happened? How did you find us?

“The radio,” he said, puzzled by her question as if the answer was obvious. “You told us where to find you.”

So, the radio had worked. Using her arm, Carson wiped the surface clean and wrote,Start from the beginning.

The fabric of the chair stretched when he leaned further back and put his hands behind his head. “I’m not joking when I say literally seconds after we got the command to go in, your voice comes through all of our radios.” Then he laughed. “The looks on everyone’s faces. It even took me a minute to recognize it was you on the other end. I had to piece together that you’d gone inside. The rescue team immediately went in and found you and Jax exactly where you said you were.”

His arms dropped with a thud on the arm rests, his face now somber. “If they’d been even a minute later both of you would have been killed. As soon as they freed Jax, the whole area went up in flames. They barely made it out. If you hadn’t told them directly where to go, they would have wasted valuable time searching. And you would both be dead.”

Though the room was warm, goosebumps crept across Carson’s skin. Only the humming of the oxygen device mounted to the wall disturbed the quiet. The three of them—Hunter, Raegan, and herself—let the reality of what had happened settle around them. Once again, death had tried tosteal from them. Only this time, Carson had the chance to fight back, and miraculously, she’d won.

The black marker squeaked as she scribbled her next question.Is the fire out now?

Using his fingers, Hunter rubbed his tired eyes. “Barely. Two engines are still there. Raegan messaged that you’d woken up, so I came straight here.”

A hundred more questions filled Carson’s skull, too many to keep track of. A dull pain creeped from her neck to behind her eyes. There was so much to say, and ask, and do. But Carson knew exactly what she needed to do first.

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