Chapter Five Jase
The weight in my arms shifts as I hurry toward the exit. Smoke curls around the periphery of my vision, but it’s the wispy kind that suggests an absence of flames around me and up ahead.
Still, my lungs ache with every breath I draw in, even with the mask over my face.
But this woman is still alive, and if I hadn’t gone in there, she might not be.
Max and Evan might not have known to venture down that especially dark section of hallway if they didn’t happen to see me already running in that direction.
They wouldn’t have known that someone was still unaccounted for until they emerged from the building.
“Please wake up,” I whisper, realizing I don’t even know her name. The article we saw earlier mentioned the bride, but it escapes me now. “C’mon, keep your eyes open.”
Her head slumps against my chest, pinned curls brushing my jaw. She’s lighter than I imagined she’d be in a dress this colossal, like carrying the ghost of a person.
But she’s alive. Definitely not a ghost.
Max shouts something up ahead, voice still muffled through his respirator, and I don’t bother attempting to translate it.
The exit glows ahead of him, a rectangle of light swirling with steam.
When I finally step through it, I stumble into cooler air, trying and failing to hold back a series of rasping coughs.
The bride in my arms mumbles something into the cloth pressed to her face. I pull it away for her as I make my way across the small patch of grass at the front of the half-ruined church.
The second the fresh oxygen hits her face, she gasps down a gulp of it and jerks in my arms.
Her fingers twist into the fabric of my shirt, nails scraping through it against my sternum. I hold back a shiver, horrified at myself for having a visceral reaction like that in a moment like this.
“Hey,” I say to her, tugging down my mask and offering her a smile. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. I’m Jase.”
She blinks up at me, eyes a little unfocused.
That’s okay. Not dire, at least. Hopefully.
I should probably check her for concussion symptoms. I scan the crowd of public servants and wedding goers, looking for the irate woman from before.
Max and Evan are already jogging off toward our station’s solitary engine, but I know I’ll still get an earful from the future captain soon enough.
At last, I spot the man who can only be the groom, given that he’s surrounded by a flock of fawning people and an older couple who can only be his parents.
What was his name again? Montgomery? He doesn’t look particularly concerned. Just pissed off, really.
Still, I head toward them.
“No,” commands the bride, shocking me with the desperate authority in her tone. Despite that, her voice breaks a little. Definitely too much smoke inhalation.
Actually, now that I’m getting a closer look at her in the light of day, I think she might need hospital transport. Something seems… off.
“It’s alright,” I assure her. “I’m bringing you back to—”
“Please, don’t,” she interrupts, tugging on my shirt again. “Don’t take me to them.”
My steps falter. I frown down at her, but she’s looking in the direction of the groom.
He spots us then, and there’s the barest moment of hesitation before he stalks forward, pointing a vaguely accusatory finger at me.
“Brielle!” He shouts. Her name, I assume. Then, to me, a barked, “Give her to me!”
Sure, no problem. She’s only alive and well because of me, by the way. No thanks to your husbandly attentiveness. You’re welcome, man.
But I don’t even get a chance to consider a better response, because she tenses so sharply that I nearly drop her.
“Please,” she begs again. “I don’t want—please bring me literally anywhere but back to him.”
Damn.
That doesn’t sound like the request of a besotted bride yearning to return to her lover’s side.
It’s really none of my business, but…
But why was this woman—Brielle, he called her—out there alone in the hallway in the first place? Why didn’t she evacuate with the others? Wouldn’t she have been at the altar, or at least on her way to it, by the time the fire bloomed beyond control?
Something doesn’t seem right, and my instincts are telling me to listen to this woman panicking in my arms.
I whip my head around, looking for assistance. There’s an NYPD officer only a couple feet away, and when they lock eyes with me, I don’t bother with preamble when I tell her, “This woman needs hospital transport immediately.”
She nods, then flicks her eyes to Brielle. “I’ll inform the groom over there?”
“I don’t—I don’t want…” She swallows hard, eyelids fluttering in a way that makes me a little nervous. A raspy sigh follows, and she seems to give up. “Just get me out of here, please.”
The officer frowns, but decides against asking further questions.
When she’s gone, I reverse direction and head toward the back of an ambulance.
“I don’t actually need a hospital,” she protests, a little more weakly this time. “M’fine.”
“I’m not sure you are, ma’am.”
“Just need to get away from… from… fuck, my head…” Those last few words come out on a groan.
“Stay with me, okay?” I murmur. “I’m not handing you off to anyone. We’re getting you in the ambulance, and I’m coming with you.”
Not necessary, honestly, but something in me needs to ensure that this woman is okay.
She shivers oddly and buries her face against my shoulder.
A medic opens the back doors of the rig for me. I hop inside, the floor jostling under my boots.
“Wait,” she mumbles. “I can’t—take me anywhere but the hospital. They’ll find me there.”
“I’m sorry,” I reply as gently as I can. “I can either treat you here on site or I can transport you to the nearest hospital. Either way, you’re in no state to walk free.”
A small sound of protest leaves her throat. She tries to push away from me, but she’s too weak, her dress too tangled around her legs.
“I can’t,” she whispers, sounding more than a little delirious. “I can’t.”
Her breath hitches, but this is hardly theatrical. This is genuine pleading.
I swallow hard. “I’m coming with you. Everything will be okay.”
“You promise?”
I lay her down on the stretcher, nodding at another EMT as he reads the situation and reaches for the oxygen mask.
“I promise,” I tell her.
The doors slam shut, and the engine kicks on, drowning out the noise of everything beyond.
“You need to stay awake, ma’am,” the other EMT says to her when he notices her eyes drifting shut.
“There are lacerations on her feet,” I tell him, pulling rank despite the fact that he’s affiliated with a different crew.
He takes the cue, nodding when he realizes that she’s barefoot, and clearly ran right through broken glass without noticing the way it cut her up.
I place the oxygen mask over her face gently. “Just inhale slowly, okay?”
“Mmf-do-mmfit,” she mumbles.
“Pardon?”
She swat at the mask. I lift it enough to hear her repeat, “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Do what?”
“The fire—ow!” She flinches when, down at the foot of the stretcher, the other EMT has to carefully remove a disturbingly jagged piece of glass from the side of her foot. She grits her jaw, then turns her attention back to me. “S’my fault.”
“You didn’t cause the fire,” I reply firmly. “I have a feeling the one thousand open flames was probably someone else’s decision, huh?”
I mean, most likely, right? If she’s as rich as she seems, it’s likely this entire wedding was planned by someone her family hired. Shit like that has to be perfect according to everyone else, not the bride’s tastes.
Probably. I don’t fucking know.
The radio on my shoulder crackles, and I catch snippets of Max’s voice on the other end.
I curse under my breath. Instead of answering the call, I secure the oxygen mask back over Brielle’s face and dig my phone out of my back pocket to shoot Max a text.
En route to Mount Sinai w/ bride, I type out.
I’ll explain later.
At the hospital, my job is to step aside. I’m the one who decided to forego medical school in favor of the life of an EMT, and yet it’s still hard for me to move out of the way when all they need to hear is her full name before they’re leaping into action and wheeling her down the hall.
At least I’m able to follow, though.
A doctor checks her vitals, listens to her lungs, asks her questions that she struggles to answer.
“She inhaled a moderate amount of smoke,” I cut in. “Lost consciousness twice. Took a hit to the head, given the abrasion on the left side here below her temple.”
He nods, then turns to one of the nurses to murmur instructions.
She locks eyes with me, lower lip jutting out slightly. Even now, with unraveled curls and a streak of soot across her cheek, she is unbelievably beautiful.
Her hand lifts, gesturing for me to come closer. On the other side of the bed, another nurse is busy inserting an IV into her arm. I almost want to take over, noting that the nurse is a little clumsy with it.
“What did you say your name was?” She croaks, barely flinching when the needle goes in.
“Jase,” I tell her. “Jase Thibodeau.”
Her brow furrows slightly. “Ah. Fran?ais?”
“French Canadian. Many generations ago.”
“Oh. You must be from further north?”
“Boston.”
She stares up at me. “Hm. You are big.”
“Pardon?”
“Big,” she repeats, her gaze fading in and out of focus as she continues to stare at me from the hospital cot. “College football?”
I almost laugh. “Hockey.”
“Ah.” She tilts her head to the side, eyes focusing for only half a second, and yet it’s enough to make my stomach swoop. “But you have teeth.” This time, I do laugh. I open my mouth and point to one of my front teeth, which snapped in half in a game years ago. “This one is fake.”
At that, despite all her pain and panic, she grins.
The nurse chimes in before I can make sense of that odd little conversation, drawing Brielle’s attention to her. “You’re dehydrated, so we’re going to give you some fluids via IV, okay?”
Brielle merely shrugs, gazing vaguely down at the needle in her arm.