Page 43 of Memories with Fire

I’m already running towards Hailey. Yanking her door open like I’m the Hulk and it’s a little piece of tin, I block her path of getting out as she turns towards me. Scooping her face in my hands with a gentleness I didn’t think I’d possess in this moment, I look her square in the eyes.

“What hurts?” I demand. Her color isn’t horrible which is a good sign. Maybe a little pale, but that could be all the drama that’s unfolded.

She shakes her head, but she’s focused and alert when she responds, “I – I don’t know. I can’t tell if there’s anything. There’s too much adrenaline still.”

My hands start moving down her neck, ready to do a thorough assessment. I realize that all she’s wearing is a t-shirt and I bite back the urge to demand to know where her jacket is. I know where it is. The same place she could have ended up. At the bottom of a fucking mountain, possibly very dead.

“Luke!”

My name is nearly a scream from her lips. It pulls me back to reality. I have the feeling that isn’t the first time she’s said it, especially the way she has hold of my face in her hands. I concentrate on her, giving her my full attention.

“You gotta let them look me over,” she says gently, nodding towards the firefighters that are standing beside the Jeep. “Let them do it.”

I frown at her. I’m perfectly qualified to look her over. I have no idea who those guys are, or how long they’ve been on the job.

Hailey takes my hands, which only made it as far as her upper arms, and pushes them in front of me. I look down to see what she sees and suck in a harsh breath. I’m shaking like a leaf.

“Go take a few deep breaths, okay? I’m okay.” Letting my hands go, she reaches up and takes my face again. “You didn’t let anything happen to me. You did your job. Now let them do theirs. Okay?”

A large bubble of thick, hot emotion rises in my throat, clogging any words that may have wanted to come out. I know she sees it when she smiles softly.

Lifting herself up from the seat a couple of inches, she presses a kiss to my cheek, whispering, “Go breathe.”

Nodding, I swallow the lump and back out of the doorway, moving away a few feet. I can watch over them, make sure they’re doing a good job with her. That they aren’t being rough, or causing any damage to things they may not see.

When they let her jump out onto her own two feet, though, I nearly rage since they haven’t checked her over yet. Which is absolutely ridiculous considering, logically, I would be the same way if a patient told me they could walk.

I’m losing my grip on the situation. Glancing down at my hands, they’re still trembling, and I know it’s a combination of reality hitting, and the adrenaline slowing. I need to focus on something. I need to get some of this out. My head is spinning with everything that happened, everything that could have happened, and maybe a few things that should have happened.

Pulling my phone out, I go through my contacts until I find Nate, hitting the call button without giving it much thought. It rings three times before he comes on the line, sounding as awake as when we left him earlier. I can’t believe that was only a little while ago. Has it even been an hour?

“What are you still doing awa?—”

“Nate,” I cut him off sharply.

My tone must say it all because the friendliness dissipates and gives way to seriousness. “What happened?”

Those two dang words are so loaded. There’s a multitude of ways I could answer. I should probably just give him a full report. At least that’s what the firefighter portion of my brain tells me to do.

But this isn’t work, and I’m not calling him because he’s my boss.

I’m calling him because he was the first one here that was nice to me. I’m calling him because he has a woman at home. I’m calling him because out of everyone at the firehouse, I know he’s the one that will understand the most, and will tell me what I need to hear.

“I almost fucking lost her, man,” I choke out. That emotion I swallowed a few minutes ago rises quickly in my throat, goes into my nose, and wells in my eyes. I press my finger and thumb into my eyes to keep it there.

He sounds like Hailey when he says, “Deep breath.”

I follow his direction, inhaling deeply, just like we tell our patients, then slowly let it out.

“Good. Now start from the beginning. What happened?”

I tell him everything. From what happened to the what ifs running through my head. He asks a few questions, but mostly just listens, for which I’m grateful. By the time I’m done, my hands are no longer shaking, and I’m feeling more in control again. This day is long from over, and talking this out, telling Nate what happened and where my head is at, is exactly what I needed to get through the rest of it.

An ambulance pulled up at some point while talking to Nate. They loaded Hailey into the back of it, and I’ve been hovering close, but have given them privacy by standing to the side so I can’t actually see her at the moment.

“Hey!” A female voice says, and I look over to find a paramedic with her head poking out of the door. “You Luke?”

“Nate,” I say into the phone, “I gotta go. The paramedic needs me for something.”

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