Chapter 30 Loving Me #3
He wasn't there by chance. Ellis had been deployed earlier that morning on a search-and-rescue operation for a missing hiker last seen near the falls.
When radio updates confirmed the hiker's route intersected the drainage system feeding into the north ridge, the SAR team was pulled into the same emergency zone, overlapping directly with the wildfire response I was leading.
That shift brought him onto the ridge at the same time the fire crews were holding the lower perimeter, waiting for my assessment before committing equipment into unstable ground.
Behind him, I could see firefighters and rescue units moving in controlled formation through the smoke, holding position at the edge of the slope while Calloway coordinated from below, ready to advance only if the terrain held.
Ellis kept his focus on me, his grip steady even as the ground shifted again.
"I've got eyes on both teams," he said quickly. "Fire crew's holding the base line, SAR is closing from the west. You're not alone up here, April. Just stay with me until they can move in."
Then the ridge gave up.
The earth beneath us fractured with a sound that felt too deep to belong to anything living, and the slope collapsed in sections that dragged everything downward with it. One moment there was ground, the next there was nothing but sliding debris and smoke.
Ellis tried to pull me back, but the movement of the land broke the space between us faster than he could close it.
I remember the sensation of falling not as a single drop but as a series of losses, each foothold disappearing before the next could form.
The ridge wasn't just collapsing outward; it was swallowing itself, and I was inside it when it did.
I hit ground that was no longer really ground.
It shifted under me immediately, dragging me into a shallow pocket between broken rock and torn earth.
For a moment I couldn't move at all. The pressure of the slope above me, the heat from the fire still feeding through exposed roots, the sound of collapsing stone all around me made it feel like the world had narrowed into something I couldn't breathe inside.
I was alone, completely.
My chest tightened before I had time to understand why, and suddenly the ridge above me stopped feeling like collapsing earth and started feeling like something familiar in the worst possible way.
I remember a space so small it seemed to reject the shape of me. I hear a door close too firmly, and the sound tells me I have been put away again, hidden until someone else is gone.
I hear my mother's voice somewhere beyond it, close enough that I know she is there, laughing softly, speaking easily, living in the rooms I am not allowed to occupy. I understand even as a child that she does not want me seen, and that silence becomes the price of staying near her at all.
I sense another presence moving through the house, footsteps, lowered voices, the shift of attention that always changes the air.
No one touches me, yet everything tightens around me anyway.
The walls seem to draw closer with every passing minute, as if they know I am the thing being hidden.
I stay inside that shrinking space until breathing feels like asking for too much.
My breathing began to fracture. I pressed my hands into the ground instinctively, searching for something solid, but even that did not feel like support anymore. I was slipping into it before I even realized I was going.
And then, beneath the panic, something in me began to ease in a way I didn't fully understand.
July's face came first, reminding me that needing time did not mean I was failing, and that silence did not have to be filled in order to be understood. Then came Bramwell, his fingers lightly tapping the table...then his words:
"Just sharing the same space as you, April... it feels like something I got lucky to have. It feels like warmth I can rest in."
The words stayed with me and I let myself hold onto them.
My breath broke again, but this time I didn't chase it. I followed it downward, slower and more deliberate, gradually returning to something I could recognize as my own again.
In.
Out.
Again.
The ridge was still collapsing somewhere above me, but my body stopped following it into panic. My hands moved, pressing against the earth for protection. Not waiting for someone to find me, but preparing myself to be found.
I don't know how long I stayed like that. Then I heard Ellis's voice cutting through everything anyway.
"April. We're getting you out. Stay with us."
I could hear boots moving carefully across shifting ground above me, the team coordinating their steps as they moved through the unstable ridge.
They were coming in, all of them. Ellis was still there too, close enough that I could feel him anchoring himself between me and the collapse, still holding on to what hadn't given way.
"We've got her," someone said, and the words cut through the smoke with certainty.
*******
The hospital was too white and too still. I was checked under bright lights, asked questions I answered slowly, and told I was stable. My body was bruised and exhausted, but I was not in danger.
Outside my room, voices drifted through the corridor.
"...man involved in ridge extraction sustained significant injury during secondary collapse. Name listed as Bramwell Thorne."
My breath caught. I turned my head too quickly and pain pulled through my ribs. I looked at the nurse and reached for her hand, and she seemed to understand what I was asking.
"He helped reroute the equipment off the unstable access road," she said quietly. "If they'd taken that route, the convoy would have gone down with the slope."
She paused, then lowered her voice even more. "He stayed behind longer than he should have, trying to move the slope markers when the second collapse happened. That's when he was injured."
I didn't speak.
I couldn't.
And as I lay there, still listening to the quiet movement of the hospital around me, I stayed frozen on the last thing I heard them say, that he had been hurt while trying to hold the ridge together just a little longer.
Chapter 20: Gentle Repairs
The hospital had discharged me with instructions to rest, avoid stairs if possible, and return immediately if the dizziness worsened. The house was quiet in the ordinary way, but nothing inside it felt ordinary anymore.
I moved through rooms without purpose. I sat down and stood up again.
I made tea and forgot it on the counter until it went cold.
Every time I closed my eyes, the ridge returned in fragments: the groan beneath the soil, the violent tilt of the world, the feeling of ground deciding it no longer believed in itself.
And threaded through all of it was Bramwell. I kept hearing the nurse's voice.
Bramwell's work was engineering geology, which meant counties and contractors called him when hillsides became unstable, roads cracked, drainage failed, or officials needed someone qualified to confirm that a dangerous situation was, in fact, dangerous.
The north ridge had a history of runoff damage and shallow slope failures after storms. It also carried the service road used by emergency crews during fire season.
After the previous night's rain, the county sent Bramwell to inspect the ridge, check soil movement, assess drainage, and determine whether the access road could safely support incoming trucks and equipment.
It could not.
When fire crews began mobilizing anyway, he stayed to redirect the convoy onto a safer route and move the warning markers into place. The second collapse struck while he was still on the slope.
I checked my phone more times than dignity allowed. There were messages from July, two from Ellis, one from work, and nothing from Bramwell.
By evening, worry had sharpened into something active. He had given me his address once in the same careless tone people use when offering gum. I had remembered it with insulting ease. My ribs objected the whole drive there.
The building was older than I expected. I stood outside longer than necessary before knocking.
The door opened immediately. His friend stood there and nearly dropped the mug he was holding.
He was younger than I remembered and softer somehow than the loud version of him I had seen once at a café with Bramwell.
Then, he had been animated and reckless with stories.
Now, standing barefoot in an oversized sweater with sleep-creased hair, he looked almost shy.
His eyes landed on me and widened with immediate recognition.
"Oh. April."
I didn't answer. He didn't seem surprised by that at all. Instead, he stepped back at once and opened the door wider.
"Sorry. Yes. Come in. Obviously. You're the person with the eyes."
I blinked.
He flushed faintly. "That sounded strange. Bramwell described your eyes once. More than once, actually. In a way no man should while sober."
I stared at him. He winced at himself. "I've already failed confidentiality."
I shifted my weight and pain pulled through my side before I could hide it. I looked past him toward the hall.
"Yes," he said quickly, stepping aside. "Right. You want information."
He lowered his voice.
"Current condition: bruised ribs, stitches in the shoulder, sprained wrist, dramatic sighing. Emotional condition: pretending to be charming through pain. As a citizen: still parking badly."
My mouth almost betrayed a smile. From deeper inside came Bramwell's strained voice.
"If that's Jo, tell him I hope his hairline accelerates."
His friend looked at me cheerfully, "He sounds strong and I was leaving anyway."
Then he reached for his coat.
"I do actually have to leave the city for a few days. Family obligation. Also if I remain here any longer, he will ask me to help him bathe and I respect neither of us enough for that."