Chapter 52
Wyatt
Decontaminated and in my street clothes, I rush through the emergency room doors at the perfect moment.
Jordan is standing behind the triage desk, talking to a nurse at a computer that has no one in front of it.
They both look up when they notice me coming, and Jordan points me towards the door leading back into the patient area.
When we meet near the doors, she grabs my arm, halting me rather than feeding into the urgency in my steps.
“I need to see her,” I ground out, trying my best to keep any irritation down. As the adrenaline from the fire and the arsonist started to wear off, the worry set in.
Jordan nods patiently. “You will, but I want to warn you first.”
My stomach knots.
“We had to sedate her,” she continues, like the whole world didn’t drop out from under me by fifty feet. “It’s mild, but we didn’t have a choice.”
It’s a damn good thing I’m in an emergency department because my heart stops, and I bring my hands to my face, scrubbing them roughly over my eyes, down my cheeks, until they stop at my jaw. “The smoke? Fuck. She was in there too long. I was too slow. I didn’t get her out in time.”
“No, Wyatt, you did good.” She nods reassuringly, touching my forearm again.
She looks around, lowering her voice. “A lot of it was anxiety once she started coming down from the situation, and she was definitely in some pain. There’s some swelling in her airway, but we didn’t have to intubate.
Ruby’s in there now with her, and I’ll have the doctor come see you both to explain and answer any questions you might have. ”
Moisture gathers in the corner of my eyes, worry and relief colliding into one. “Is she going to be okay?”
“She’s tough,” Jordan says, flipping her braid over her shoulder as her hand comes to my shoulder blade to guide me towards the door. She taps her security card against a little black box on the side, and the doors start to open. “She’ll get through this.”
It’s not lost on me that Jordan doesn’t fully answer the question. Being okay and getting through something are two very different things.
Jordan leads me to the shoe—what most of us first responders and ER staff call the emergency room because of its horseshoe layout—and back to a room near the nurse’s station.
Bryn isn’t in a curtained section; instead, they’ve got her in her own room.
A window next to the door has me peering inside to find Ruby sitting at Bryn’s bedside.
As we reach the door, my eyes land on Bryn in the hospital bed, arms outside of the bedsheet, chest covered by the white and blue of a hospital gown.
If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was just taking a nap. No lines of worry are etched in the smooth skin of her face, though she’s red from the fire and heat. The soot and ash have been washed away, but an oxygen mask covers her mouth and nose.
My gaze drifts down her body, landing on her arms. Angry red marks cover her skin where the cable wires dug into her, one side worse than the other from how she was suspended.
“Wyatt,” Ruby says, drawing my attention to her in the chair. Her eyes are rimmed red from crying, and the smile she tries to offer is wobbly at best.
“I’ll give you guys a minute,” Jordan says, patting me on the shoulder before leaving.
Walking into the room and around the side of the bed Ruby is on, she gets to her feet, and I envelop her in a hug.
Once I’d done a quick decon at the scene, I found my phone in the truck and called Ruby to tell her about Bryn.
It wasn’t a call I wanted to make, but I knew she’d hang me by my balls if I didn’t.
Ruby’s shoulders shake a second later, and I tighten my hold on her as she hugs me back, breathing slowly through my nose to contain my own emotion welling in my eyes and throat as I look over at Bryn lying there.
Today could have easily ended so differently.
If I had been slower, if Brody hadn’t shown up when he did, if we had been ten seconds later…
It didn’t end like that, but removed from the situation, it makes the “ifs” run rampant in my head.
Bryn could have died today. I could have lost the love of my life before I even had the chance to fully experience it.
The deep burning ache in my chest makes it harder to breathe, and a second later Ruby’s hand is rubbing up and down my back as if she knows exactly where my thoughts have gone. It’s easy to understand why Bryn loves her so much.
Is the sensation I feel, knowing I could have lost her, the same one Bryn walks around with daily when it comes to Ruby? The overwhelming sense of “I could have lost or could lose her at any moment”? It’s like a dead weight sitting square on my chest, making it impossible to breathe.
I didn’t lose her. I did not lose her.
But you could have.
“It’s okay,” Ruby whispers, drawing back. “You’re right. We didn’t lose her.”
It’s only then that I realize the words didn’t only live inside my head, I spoke them out loud. Releasing me, she dabs at her eye with a tissue, and I wipe my own face with a hand, clearing away the moisture now streaking it.
“Have you talked to her?” I ask, my throat thick, making my voice gruffer than normal.
She shakes her head. “She’s been out since I got here. She—” Ruby pauses, clears her throat and tries again, “She hasn’t moved much. I’ve just been watching her, trying to understand why that man would do this. How anyone could—could—could do this to her.”
Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, I hug her into my side as she breaks down.
“I know how scared she’s been to lose me, but I never imagined being in a situation where I could lose her,” Ruby says, voice cracking.
“She has so much life left to live, so many memories left to make. I wish I could trade spots with her. I’ve lived my life.
I’ve experienced the great love and the beauty of having children and the miracle of grandchildren.
It’s her turn to have all of that, and she nearly missed out on it all. If it weren’t for you…”
Rubbing her upper arm to offer what little comfort I can, I exhale a deep breath. If it weren’t for me, the arsonist may never have targeted Bryn in the first place, but that’s a thought that’ll take some time to unpack.
“She’s not going to miss out on any of it, Gran,” I tell her, somehow keeping any shake out of my voice. “If she’ll have me, I’m going to make sure she gets all of that.”
Ruby turns her head to look up at me, dabbing at her eyes with the tissue again. “She loves you. I think for a while now. She hasn’t told me, but I can see it. I know her, and I know she was trying to protect herself, but you showed her it doesn’t need to be just her and I.”
“We showed her.” I squeeze Ruby’s shoulder. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”
I don’t tell Ruby that I know she’s right, or that Bryn mouthed the words to me. If Bryn wants to share that later, she will, but I’ll hold that memory close to my chest until I can make a new one.
One where I hear the words out loud.
A while later, I’ve taken up residence at Bryn’s bedside opposite where Ruby sat until five minutes ago when she left to find us coffee. They’re admitting Bryn, at least overnight, worried about worsening pulmonary edema, but we're still waiting on a bed.
Jordan came and checked on Bryn’s vitals, commenting that everything looked good, and she’d be back again shortly to switch out the bag of saline. Bryn was severely dehydrated by the time she got here, considering all the sweat that poured off her in the fire.
I’ve taken to tracing up and down Bryn’s ring finger on her left hand—the one with the worst handcuff bruising—wondering what kind of ring she’d want one day.
Probably a ridiculous thing to be thinking about, for several reasons, but I’ve been sure about this woman for a long time.
Today just put into focus how little I want to wait on anything.
I will, if that’s what she wants, but I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Including firefighting.
She’s not a possession to be claimed, I stand by that, but the hell if I don’t want to claim her for myself for all the world to know. She is mine and I will do whatever is in my power to protect that.
Her hand twitches on my next stroke down her finger, making me freeze.
Glancing up at her face, her eyes are still closed, so I run the pad of my thumb along the slender length once more.
Again, she twitches, fingers curling towards her palm.
I slide my hand beneath hers, and she closes her grip around it, though there’s no strength to the hold.
Raising our hands to my face, I press the back of hers against my cheek.
A second later, her eyelids flutter, then close, as though they weigh a thousand pounds and are too heavy to keep open.
Bryn sighs into her mask, head turning fully in my direction, and then her eyes crack open and stay there for a second, another, and then close.
“Hi, baby,” I whisper, squeezing her hand gently. When she returns the gesture, albeit weakly, I manage a smile, relief coursing through me. “You’re safe. You’re in the hospital.”
Bryn manages a small nod before her eyes disappear again. It’s a minute before she blinks them back open, fighting the medication and exhaustion. When she coughs in the next moment, though, she’s forced awake as her body lurches forward from the bed.
“It’s okay, get it out,” I tell her, giving her the calm, steady Wyatt on the outside while my stomach drops to my feet and my heart rises into my throat.
Without letting go of her hand, I stand to rub her back, supporting her while she sits forward coughing.
When she finally finishes and falls back to the bed, eyes closed and watering, her chest heaves.
This is why they want to keep her, I realize, and it cracks my heart into tiny little shards of piercing glass to see her like this, knowing I’m helpless to make her feel better.
Running my fingers through her hair, I push it back from her face. “That’s it. Slow, deep breaths. You’re okay. It’s going to get better.”
I’m not sure if I’m telling her or myself at this point.
“Wy,” she croaks, and even though it doesn’t sound like normal, it’s the best thing I’ve heard in my life. “Arson…ist?”
It’s not what I expected her to say, which has a huff of laughter coming out of me despite the seriousness of the question. Leaning over, I press my lips to her forehead. “We got him. Because of you, we got him.”
She squeezes my hand in response. It doesn’t last long before her hand goes limp, and I ease back to find her eyes closed again. As though she needed the answer before she could return to sleep.
I’m just about to sit back down when her eyes flutter again.
“Wy.” The rasp in her voice has her talking in a near whisper, and I start to lean closer when I realize she’s reaching up to grab her mask with her free hand.
“Baby, no, you gotta leave that there,” I tell her, gently taking her hand before she can remove the mask. I’m careful not to grab her wrist, instead catching her fingertips beneath mine. “The mask needs to stay on. You need the oxygen.”
Her chest inflates with a deep breath, like she needs the energy from it to speak again. “You said I couldn’t tell you…” Another breath. “Until you…could kiss me.”
It dawns on me then why she wants her mask off. To tell me she loves me.
My heart expands in my chest in ways I may never comprehend.
“I still can’t kiss you,” I murmur, bringing her hand up to my lips to press to the back of it. “It’s important to keep that on right now, okay? So that you get better and we can get you out of here.”
The look of disappointment she gives me nearly has me hitting my knees at her bedside.
“I’ve waited my whole life for you, B. I promise I can wait a little while longer.
Until you’re better and that mask can safely come off and I can kiss you the way you deserve to be kissed.
” Pressing her hand against my cheek, I smile at her.
“Because when I hear you say it, I promise you I’m going to kiss you until you’re breathless and weak in the knees so I can catch you. And right now, I can’t do that.”
A light flickers in her eyes. I see it before her eyes close again and she gives in to the sleep her body desperately craves.
I give it a few minutes before I settle back in my chair, her hand still in mine, my thumb running over her ring finger again.
Though I made her wait, I don’t hold myself to the same regard, whispering so I don’t wake her, “I love you.”