Page 148 of Set Me On Fire

“Let me grab a couple of wheelchairs.” His eyes swung my way. “You good with helping wheel one of these guys over to intensive care?”

Intensive care? Noah was in intensive care? All I could see in my mind’s eye was all of those medical dramas Mum used to love to watch.

“Um, yeah…” I said with barely a whisper. “Sure.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Bloody recycling plants,”Knox grumbled as we wheeled the guys down the hallway. “The government needs to outlaw them, or at least regulate them better.”

“The place was supposed to be filled with cardboard,” Charlie explained, looking up at me. There was some of his old mischief in his eyes, but also shadows that weren’t there before. “Instead, we discovered what else they were storing there. A bunch of old gas bottles well past their prime.”

“A gas bottle did this?”

I was still working out what ‘this’ was. White, clinical bandages concealed the worst of their injuries, leaving me to imagine what was behind them.

“Multiple gas bottles.” Brent joined us, escorted by another nurse, his face like thunder. “The prick that owns that place has made millions stockpiling recyclables. I’m gonna make sure the minister takes this to cabinet, that the owner is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. The last fire like this took over one hundred and fifty firefighters and three days to contain, over in Victoria. We don’t want the same shit happening here.”

Preventative measures were forgotten. I couldn’t listen to talk of petitioning our politicians, not when I saw him like this.

“Noah…”

He was swathed in white. White sheets, white blankets, white walls, and white floor, his pale skin blended in with it until it didn’t. Bruises down one side of his face and angry red wounds had me sucking in breaths too hard, too fast, my chest aching with the effort, or was it just at the sight of him?

“Noah…”

I stumbled forward, leaving Charlie behind, but he wouldn’t allow that. They must’ve ignored Garrett’s directives because they were there at my shoulders, holding me up as my feet faltered. If I took a step closer, this was real. The man who’d waited his whole life for me was fighting for his in a hospital bed.

“Noah.”

My voice was corroded by tears, his name coming out as a guttural croak, but I couldn’t do anything as I sank down by his side. I wanted to touch his hand, his face, something to reassure myself he was still here, to feel the furtive flutter of his pulse, but I didn’t dare, my eyes whipping around to find Garrett.

“It’s OK,” the nurse told me with a kind smile. “He’s pretty beat up, hence why he’s in here, but the doctors are pretty sure he’ll be fine.”

Fine, a thin, wan word, but I clung to it like a lifeline, right as I sank into the chair beside Noah’s bed, then clung in reality to his hand. Cool, dry, limp, it felt wrong. Not the hand of the lover that stroked my face, pushed my hair out of my eyes or stroked my body to greater and greater heights.

Right up until the moment he squeezed back.

My head whipped up, my eyes scouring his face so I caught the moment his eyelids fluttered, then opened.

“Noah…” Bloody hell, tears were really streaming down my cheeks now, and I couldn’t even pull back to wipe them away. “Fuck, you’re OK.”

“Am now you’re here.”

His voice was nothing more than a whisper, but I heard it as much with my heart as my ears.

“Always.” I let out an explosive little burst of laughter, fear and relief a weird mixture inside me. “Always. Consider me your shadow going forward, because I’m coming on every job you go on.”

“Millie.”

Hands landed on my shoulders, one set, then two, as Knox and Charlie clustered closer, rubbing at the tight muscles.

“I’ll go through all the necessary training and become a firefighter if that’s what it takes to keep you safe,” I vowed.

“Millie, the fitness test?”

That little joke, it cost Noah to make it, but my whole heart was wrenched out of my chest at the sound of it. I flung myself forward, pressing my face as close to his chest as I could get. Arms, Charlie’s and Knox’s arms went around me, pinning me in the centre of this ragged little cluster, helping to ground me.

“Let’s give them a minute,” Brent said to Garrett.

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