Page 104 of Enraged

I sprinted across the parking lot, bypassing a cluster of deputies near the front door. After making it through the rotating door, I stormed the check-in desk in the lobby.

“Hi, my name is Jolene Felder and I’m lookin’ for –”

“Lee Lee,” Chief Hennessy interrupted.

I whirled around.

“Chief, where is he?” I cried out, my voice quaking with the promise of tears. He put his arm around me. “I’ll take you, honey.”

He led me down a hallway to a door labeled Trauma 3.

“Go on in, punkin. I’m right behind you.”

With trembling hands, I twisted open the doorknob.

There he lay in a tiny emergency room bed, an oxygen tube situated firmly against his nose. His cheek was cut open with a fresh pair of stitches, and almost every inch of his visible skin was covered with soot. He looked fragile and terrible, like you’d break him with one touch, but the most noticeable thing about him was that he wasn’t Dakota, at all.

Jace…

“Wait, it’s Jace?”

Chief Hennessy looked as if he didn’t understand the question. “Yes, that’s Jace…,” he explained gently.

I can see who it is… where the fuck is, Dakota?

“Dak…,” I asked him. “Where is Dak?”

Realization brimmed in his eyes as he understood what I’d been thinking.

“He’s on a different floor. I’ll take you.”

Leaving Jace’s room, we passed by the nurses’ station where a gaggle of deputies were standing by.

“What happened, Chief?” I asked hesitantly, unsure if I wanted to know.

Pressing the button on the old elevator, he turned to me with tears in his eyes. “A bunch of damn kids started a fire at the old papermill. DK – Dak, to you, and Jace were on search and rescue. Dakota had to be helped out of the warehouse but when we saw that Jace was missing, he called mayday and went back in after him.”

Holy fuck.

As we stepped off the elevator, he volunteered more as we walked down the old corridor.

“I screamed to Dak to keep him from goin’ back in. He didn’t have his oxygen or mask. I hollered until I couldn’t see him anymore, but you know how that boy is…” he trailed off.

“Everybody is goin’ home,” I quoted Dak’s mantra.

The chief nodded with tears in his eyes.

“This is Dak’s room.”

The sign on his door said ICU 8 – Clayton.

Intensive care…

A nurse came rushing down the hall. “Chief Hennessy, we are monitoring him closely so please make sure we limit visitation to immediate family and the guys from the station,” she looked pointedly at me.

Bitch, I will rip this door off the goddamn hinges.

The chief felt me tense up beneath his arm and understood that I was about to choose violence.

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