Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
The crash happened three blocks from the shop.
Brian heard it before he saw it. The screech of tires, the sickening crunch of metal on metal, the shattering of glass that seemed to go on forever. He was on his feet and moving before his brain caught up with his body, muscle memory from twelve years of responding to exactly that sound.
"Brian!" Hank's voice was behind him, but Brian was already out the door, sprinting down Bay Street toward the intersection.
A pickup truck had T-boned a sedan in the middle of the crosswalk.
The sedan was crumpled on the driver's side, pushed up onto the curb, its front end wrapped around a lamppost. Steam hissed from under the hood.
The pickup's driver was already out, stumbling, blood running from a cut on his forehead, but otherwise moving okay.
The sedan's driver wasn't moving.
Brian reached the car in seconds. An older woman, sixties maybe, slumped against the deflated airbag. Her eyes were closed, her face pale beneath a mask of blood from a gash on her temple. The door was jammed, the frame bent inward from the impact.
"Ma'am? Can you hear me?" He knocked on the window, tried the handle. Nothing. "Ma'am!"
No response.
A crowd was gathering. Someone was on the phone, hopefully calling 911. Brian blocked them out, focused on what was in front of him. Assess, stabilize, treat. The training was still there, buried under two years of trying to forget.
The passenger side. He circled the car, tried that door. It opened with a groan of protesting metal. He leaned in, reached across the center console, and pressed two fingers to the woman's neck.
Pulse. Weak but there.
"Okay," he said, more to himself than anyone. "Okay. You're okay."
Her breathing was shallow, labored. Possible chest trauma from the airbag. The head wound was bleeding freely, scalp lacerations always did, but it didn't look deep. What worried him was the angle of her neck, the way she was slumped. If she had a spinal injury and he moved her wrong...
Don't move her. Stabilize. Wait for the ambulance.
But then he smelled it. Gasoline. Sharp and unmistakable, pooling somewhere beneath the car.
"Shit." He looked under the vehicle. Fuel dripping from a ruptured line, spreading across the asphalt. Not a lot yet, but enough. If something sparked...
He couldn't wait.
"I need help over here!" He grabbed the nearest bystander, a young guy in a delivery uniform. "Hold her head. Don't let it move. Keep it in line with her spine. Can you do that?"
The guy nodded, eyes wide, and climbed into the passenger seat. His hands were shaking as he cradled the woman's head, but he held steady.
Brian moved to the driver's side. The door was jammed, but the window was already shattered. He cleared away the remaining glass with his elbow, ignoring the cuts on his forearm, and reached in to unbuckle her seatbelt.
"On three, we slide her toward you," he told the delivery guy. "Keep her neck stable. Ready?"
"Ready."
"One. Two. Three."
They moved her together, Brian supporting her torso while the delivery guy kept her head immobilized.
It wasn't textbook, wasn't how you'd do it with a backboard and a cervical collar, but it was the best they could manage.
They got her across the console, out the passenger door, and onto the sidewalk just as Colby arrived with a first aid kit from the shop.
"Ambulance is four minutes out," Colby said. "What do you need?"
"Pressure on the head wound. Clean gauze if you've got it." Brian was already checking her airway, tilting her chin slightly to make sure she could breathe. "She's unconscious but stable. Pulse is stronger now that she's flat."
Colby knelt beside him and pressed a wad of gauze to the woman's temple. His hands were steady, calm. They'd done this before, the two of them. Different accidents, different victims, but the same rhythm. Assess, stabilize, treat.
The woman's eyes fluttered open.
"Don't move," Brian said gently. "You were in an accident. Help is coming."
"My... my car." Her voice was thin, confused.
"Don't worry about the car. Just stay still. Can you tell me your name?"
"Eleanor." She blinked, winced. "Eleanor Marsh."
"Eleanor, I'm Brian. You're going to be okay. The ambulance will be here any minute."
"It hurts." Her hand moved toward her chest.
"I know. Try not to move. Can you take a deep breath for me?"
She tried. It came out shallow, but she did it. No gurgling, no wet sounds. Probably not a punctured lung.
"Good. That's good. Keep breathing just like that."
Sirens in the distance, getting closer. Brian felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. She was conscious, responsive, and breathing on her own. She was going to make it.
The ambulance arrived in a screech of brakes, and the paramedics took over with practiced efficiency.
Brian stepped back to give them room and gave a quick report as they worked.
Mechanism of injury. Vitals when he'd first assessed her.
The fuel leak and the extraction. They nodded, loaded Eleanor onto a stretcher, and had her in the ambulance within three minutes.
One of the paramedics, a woman Brian didn't recognize, paused before climbing into the back. "Good work out there. You a medic?"
"Used to be."
She studied him for a moment, then nodded. "Showed today. You probably saved her life, getting her out before that fuel ignited."
The ambulance pulled away, sirens wailing. Brian stood on the sidewalk, watching it disappear around the corner, his heart still pounding.
Hank appeared beside him. "You okay?"
Brian looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood, Eleanor's blood, and shaking. Not from fear. From adrenaline. From the rush he hadn't felt in two years.
"Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I think I am."
Hank handed him a rag from his back pocket. "You didn't hesitate. Not for a second."
"I didn't think. I just..." Brian wiped the blood from his hands, watching it stain the cloth. "It was like muscle memory. The training kicked in, and everything else went quiet."
"That's because it's who you are." Hank's voice was matter-of-fact, no judgment in it. "You've been pretending it isn't for two years, but it's still there. It'll always be there."
Brian didn't answer. He was thinking about Eleanor Marsh. About the way her eyes had opened when he'd talked to her, the relief in her voice when he'd told her help was coming. He'd done that. He'd kept her calm, kept her stable, gotten her out of that car before it could catch fire.
He'd saved her life.
For two years, all he'd been able to see when he closed his eyes was Lily. The little girl he couldn't save. Her face had haunted him, followed him from Missouri to Copper Moon, whispered in his ear every time someone mentioned EMS or fire departments or emergencies.
But right now, standing on this sidewalk with blood on his hands and sirens fading in the distance, he could see something else too.
Eleanor Marsh, alive and conscious, on her way to the hospital.
The delivery guy who'd held her head steady when Brian told him to.
Colby jumping in to help. Hank, handing him a rag as if it were just another day at the shop.
He couldn't save everyone. He knew that. Some calls went wrong, no matter what you did, no matter how hard you tried. Lily had taught him that in the most brutal way possible.
But he could save some. And wasn't that worth something? Wasn't that enough?
"I need to call Dawson," he said.
Hank's eyebrows rose. "The EMS chief?"
"She’s been asking me to volunteer for months. I keep putting her off, making excuses." Brian took a breath, let it out slowly. "I'm done making excuses."
A slow smile spread across Hank's face. "About damn time."
"You and Colby say that a lot."
"Because it's usually true." Hank clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on. Let's get you cleaned up. Tessa's probably heard the sirens by now and is wondering where you are."
They walked back toward the shop. The crowd was dispersing, and a tow truck arrived to deal with the wrecked vehicles. Life in Copper Moon was returning to normal, or as normal as it got.
Brian's phone buzzed. Tessa.
"I heard sirens. Are you okay?"
He smiled at the worry in her voice. "I'm okay. Car accident near the shop. I helped out."
"Helped out?"
"EMT stuff. I'll tell you about it when I get back." He paused. "I'm going to call Chief Dawson. About volunteering."
Silence on the other end. Then: "Brian. That's..."
"I know."
"I'm proud of you."
The words hit him harder than he expected. His throat tightened. "Thanks. I'll be home soon."
He hung up and looked at Colby. "Home. I called Hank and Bree's place home."
"It is, for now." Hank's voice was quiet. "But you'll get your cottage back. Diaz is going to find Carla Reeves. And when she does, you and Tessa can go back to building whatever it is you're building."
"What are we building?" Brian asked, half to himself.
"A life," Hank said it like it was obvious. "Same thing Bree and I are building. Same thing Colby and Sabrina are building. You find someone who fits, you hold on, you figure out the rest as you go."
Brian thought about Tessa. The way she'd looked at him when he told her about Lily, no pity in her eyes, only understanding. The way she'd stood in Hank's kitchen that morning and declared she wasn't leaving. The way she'd said "I love you" like it was the simplest thing in the world.
"Yeah," he said. "I think that's exactly what we're doing."
They reached the shop. Colby entered first, then turned, a knowing look on his face.
"So you played hero today," Colby said. "You good?"
"Getting there." Brian stepped past him into the shop.
The familiar smell of motor oil and old leather wrapped around him like a welcome home.
"I'm going to call Dawson. And then I'm going to finish that carburetor we started yesterday.
And then I'm going to go back to Hank's and hold my girlfriend and try not to think about the fact that there's still a crazy woman out there who wants to destroy her life. "
"Solid plan," Colby said. "Except for the part where you called her your girlfriend. Is that official now?"
"We've said 'I love you.' Pretty sure that makes it official."
Colby let out a low whistle. "Look at you. Rejoining EMS, saying 'I love you,' actually dealing with your shit. Who are you and what have you done with Brian Knight?"
"He got tired of being a coward." Brian said it simply, without self-pity. It was just the truth. "Tessa showed me that running doesn't work. You can't outrun your past. You can only decide whether it controls you or you control it."
"Deep," Colby said.
"Shut up."
"I'm serious. That was very philosophical. I'm impressed."
"I said shut up."
Colby laughed and threw an arm around his shoulders. "Welcome back, brother. We missed you."
Brian let himself lean into it for just a second. The camaraderie. The belonging. The feeling of being exactly where he was supposed to be, doing exactly what he was supposed to do.
He still had problems. Carla Reeves was still out there. Tessa was still in danger. The future was still uncertain in a hundred different ways.
But for the first time in two years, Brian Knight felt like himself again.
And that was enough to start.