Chapter 39
HANNA
My phone buzzes on my nightstand and pulls me out of sleep.
Blinking hard, I look around the room and can tell that it’s still dark outside.
Closing them again, my hand reaches over and grabs my phone, unplugging it from its charger and pulling it back to my face that’s still half covered by my duvet.
I glance at the caller I.D. and when I see that it’s Miles and he’s calling at nearly two in the morning, my stomach sinks and fills with dread.
He never calls me when he’s on duty so the fact that he is now means that something’s happened.
I try to keep my voice steady as I answer, bracing myself for whatever is about to come my way.
“Hello? Miles, is everything okay?”
He doesn’t speak right away but I can hear his breathing. It’s labored and heavy, like he’s having a hard time taking in air. Panic pricks my skin and I sit up in bed, suddenly wide awake.
“Miles.” I repeat his name more firmly this time. “What’s wrong?”
“Hanna.” His voice breaks over the line and the sound of it nearly kills me. “There’s been an accident. It’s Carter.”
I fly out of bed and I hurry towards my closet to find something to throw on.
I don’t know where he is or what’s happened but hearing him so broken triggers my stress response.
There’s two types of people when it comes to responding to stress: hyperactive people who move into action to fix or solve the problem and hyporeactive people who tend to shut down and become overwhelmed.
I’m very much the former instead of the latter.
“What happened?” I ask, pulling on a pair of pants without looking at them.
They’re the first ones my hand finds in the darkness and will be much better than me going out in my underwear which is what I had worn to bed.
He doesn’t speak. Instead, the only sounds I can hear over the line are the sounds of his sobs and distance sirens.
Tears flood my eyes and I blink them back quickly.
This isn’t about me; it’s about him. His breath is shallow and labored until it becomes too much and he starts to cough and choke.
“Miles, Miles, breathe.” I try to calm him down. “Come on, fireman, breathe for me.” I take a few deep breaths and wait for him to match me. When he does, a small smile of hope breaks on my lips.
“Good; keep breathing. Can you tell me what happened? Or where you are?”
“We’re headed to the hospital. He’s in bad shape, doc, his leg—” He seems to choke back another cry.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Are you in the ambulance now?”
“Yeah, we got called to a really bad fire. He ran in—tried to save someone—he got burned pretty bad—”
I can hear him starting to spiral and I try to do what I can over the phone to calm him down. “It’s okay, you don’t have to explain now. Just breathe. Where are they taking him?”
Wherever it is, it’s where I’ll be going as soon as I’m dressed. I hear him talking to someone in the background before he comes back over the line.
“We’re going to Roper,” he says, his breathing still sounding labored and stressed. “We’re pulling in now, I have to go.”
“Okay, keep your phone on you. I’m on my way.”
“You don’t have to come—”
“I’m coming. You won’t tell me I can’t or that I don’t have to. I’m coming,” I argue.
There’s a brief pause over the line. “God I love you, woman.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “I love you, too, fireman. I’m on my way.”
After hanging up, I quickly finish throwing on some clothes and tie my hair back into a ponytail.
Forcing my glasses onto my face, they slip down my nose immediately and I curse to myself about needing to get them adjusted.
Grabbing my keys and wallet, I hustle to my car to head to the hospital. His words play on a loop in my mind.
Carter.
Accident.
Burned.
While I’m happy Miles is okay, I know what the weight of this could do to him.
He’s hardly started to let go and heal from losing one of his men last summer and now he’s on the brink of losing his own brother.
He’s one of the strongest men I’ve ever known but I don’t think he will ever survive this kind of loss.
Living downtown and with it being the middle of the night, it doesn’t take me long to get to the hospital.
I text him when I pull into a parking spot and ask him to send me his location.
Once I have it, I make my way inside, trying to track him down.
“Miles Adler, do you know where he is?” I ask the woman sitting at the nurses station. “He’s a firefighter—”
“Hanna, over here.” My eyes shoot to the sound of his voice. When I see him step around one of the curtains in the emergency room, I take off in a sprint and fling myself into his body. He catches me with ease and lifts me up, my feet leaving the floor and wrapping around his body.
“I’m so happy you’re okay,” I say into his neck, biting back tears. He reeks of smoke but I don’t care. Seeing him now, I feel the adrenaline and fear of seeing his name flashing on my phone in the middle of the night finally starting to hit me.
His hand holds the back of my neck as he pulls me into a kiss. It’s as if I’m his lifeline and he’s reaching out, trying to find steady ground in the midst of a terrible storm.
“I promised I’d come back to you. And I always keep my promises,” he says, finally pulling away from me. He sets me down on the ground but doesn’t let go of my hand. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course,” I hurry out, shaking my head at him. He’s still in his full gear, his helmet resting on the hospital bed behind him. Soot and ash cover his jacket and a black streak of it runs down his face. His hair is damp and patted down from sweat. “What happened?”
He takes a deep breath but it comes out as more of a wheeze than anything.
Before speaking, he sits back down on the bed and takes a few moments to put his oxygen tube back in place under his nose and around his ears.
“It all happened so fast. We were called out to a fire, a three-alarm which is pretty bad. When we got there, the building was already burning hot and fast. I was in the middle of giving orders when Carter took off inside. We heard someone scream and he went in to rescue them.”
His eyes become wet as he retells the story.
“I went in after him; I had to. I wasn’t going to lose another person.
I couldn’t. When I found him, he was in bad shape.
But we got him out, and the woman he saved, but I don’t know, it might be too late for him.
” He brings his hands to his face, covering his eyes in shame.
Reaching up, I place my hands on his neck and weave them under his, replacing his hands with my own.
He stares at me, cheeks wet with his grief and fear.
“He’s going to be okay, Miles. This is a great hospital, one of the best. They’re going to take good care of him.”
“What if he doesn’t pull through?”
“He will, I know he will. He has something to live for. People to live for. He’ll pull through, I know he will.” I wipe my thumbs across his cheek. The soot and tears mix together, making him look even more of a mess than before.
“Carter!” the voice of a woman calls down the hallway. “Carter Jensen!”
We look towards the voice and when the body it belongs to comes into view, I see that it’s Willow. She’s running down the hallway of the hospital, wearing a set of pink scrubs and matching pink tennis shoes.
“Willow,” Miles calls out, pulling off his oxygen once again before standing. When she sees us, she runs towards us.
“I saw his name on the admitted patients list, where is he?” she asks, gasping for air. Her eyes are wild but tired. She has dark circles under them and I wonder if she had been working the night shift when Carter and Miles were brought here.
“He’s being looked at now. They took him to the ICU.” She doesn’t wait for him to finish before trying to head in the direction he’s pointing.
“Willow, wait,” Miles calls out, grabbing her arm to stop her. “You shouldn’t see him yet. He’s not in good shape.”
“Then I should absolutely be in there to make sure he pulls through,” she spits. She runs her fingers through her curly red hair that she has pulled back into a haphazard braid.
“How could you do this? How could you let him get hurt?” she screams at him, arms flailing away from her body.
“Willow, I didn’t do this. He ran into the building without backup. He saved a woman’s life. I pulled him out,” Miles argues defensively.
“You were supposed to keep him safe. You’re the big brother, not him. It’s your job to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid!” she continues to shout, shoving him so hard he has to take a step back to catch himself. A few of the nurses standing close by glance in our direction.
“He’s not a child, Willow. He’s a grown man who makes his own decisions. This isn’t my fault,” Miles grits through clenched teeth.
She bites her lip and takes a step closer to him, her lip curled up into a snarl.
“If he dies, I will never forgive you,” she grits out with a hard finger pressed into his chest. Then, she spins on her heels and hustles in the direction of the ICU. When she’s gone, I take a step towards him and loop my arm around his.
“She didn’t mean that. She’s just scared and worried about Carter.” I try to comfort him. People express their emotions in a myriad of ways, including lashing out at people who don’t deserve it. “He’s going to be okay, Miles. This isn’t your fault; you saved him. You did everything you could.”
“Yeah, well, it might not be enough,” he says quietly, shoulders slumped and defeated.
He looks around and sits back down on the bed before pulling the oxygen tube over his ears and setting it back in his nose.
Sitting down beside him, I look at him and give him space to talk when he’s ready.
His eyes are fixated on the floor and he’s circling his thumbs one around the other.