19. Miles
CHAPTER 19
MILES
T he smell hit us first, smoke. Burning rubber. The chemical tang of firefighting foam.
Next came the heat, through the windshield. It shimmered in waves off the buildings on fire, melting the last of the snow in the street.
I shut down the siren and the sound was immense, the roar of the fire and pressurized water. Screams from all sides. The wail of a child. A saw whined through metal, and I clenched my teeth. FD was split between dousing the flames and chewing through a seven-car pileup.
“Six ambulances,” said Sophie. Her voice was small. Scared. I passed her a respirator.
“Here. Put this on.”
She fumbled it on as I caught my bearings. The cops were still struggling to contain the scene, separating the victims from unhurt bystanders. Setting up barricades to hold the gawkers at bay. Soot-covered figures boiled from the smoke, medics with stretchers. Someone on fire. A terrified dog ran around barking, and when a firefighter grabbed it, it bit his wrist.
We grabbed up our bags and stepped out into hell. A hot wind came blistering from the red wall of fire, steaming our goggles and flapping our pants. Ash blew around us in thick, cloying swirls. I trod in a scatter of windshield glass.
“Hold it right there,” said one of the cops. Sophie kept walking like she hadn’t heard. I grabbed her arm.
“Hey. Sophie. Hey. ”
She half-turned. “What?”
The cop pointed into a flower shop on fire. “They’re bringing the owner out. He’s in pretty bad shape.”
Sophie started toward the burning display. The cop held her back.
“Don’t get any closer.”
She glanced at me, and I couldn’t tell if her eyes were glassy from panic, or if they were watering from smoke or sweat. Her respirator covered most of her face, making it impossible to read her expression. I realized she was saying something and cupped my ear.
“Huh?”
She leaned in. “I said I can’t hear you! What are we doing?”
A car horn blatted out my response. The cop yelled instead, “Wait for FD!”
We stood and we waited, squinting into the flames, half-soaked already from the mist off the hoses. It wasn’t long before two figures charged out, soot head to toe, a stretcher between them. The dog from before beelined straight for them, howling and yipping, tail tucked in tight. The cop made a grab for it and it dove through his legs. It jumped for the stretcher and got its paws on the side. One of the firemen kicked it away.
“Get that dog out of here!”
“Shoo, get lost!”
The cop grabbed its collar and dragged it away. It gurgled and snapped, and he shoved it into his car. Sophie stepped forward.
“What have we got?”
“Male, forty-five, smoke inhalation. Hit with some shrapnel during the blast.”
I leaned over the stretcher and caught my breath. Some shrapnel — more like an arm-length section of pipe. It had gone through his gut just over his hip, and out his back close to his spine. The firefighters had cut a hole through his stretcher, for the pipe to poke through when he lay flat.
“Gauze,” Sophie said.
I frowned. “Better not. There isn’t much bleeding, so?—”
“No, his leg.”
I squinted down and saw his pant leg was torn, the flesh underneath it filleted like a fish. I caught a brief glimpse of bone, then Sophie’s gloved hands, pressing down hard to control the bleeding.
“Tourniquet’s loose,” she said. “Could you?—”
“One sec.”
Someone had tied off his shredded leg, but they’d done it hastily, too far from the wound. Blood was still oozing, too much, too fast. I pulled out a fresh tourniquet and set to work, cutting his pants away. Clearing the site.
I was fixing the tourniquet when Sophie lunged past me. She screamed, or I thought she did, a high, gobbling cry. Then the patient’s leg jerked and I understood. He screamed again and his body arched, then fell back with a thud. His good leg jackknifed, his knee in my face. I flung my head back, but he still clipped my chin. My teeth clacked together. I bit my tongue. Sophie was coughing and shouting hold him , and leaning to pin him under her weight. She had one of his arms down, but the other was flailing. Beating at Sophie to get at the pipe.
“Calm down,” I yelled.
The patient screamed, breathless. He kicked out again.
“You need to stop! ” Sophie grabbed his free hand and pinned it to his chest, and lay across his arms to hold them in place. “Listen, can you hear me? Hey, can you— Ah! ” She jumped back, grabbed her head, then circled back in. He fought her harder this time, clawing her face. He’d bitten her ear, and she was bleeding. The pipe wagged with his thrashing and sank deeper in.
“The pipe!” I swiped for it. “Hold it in place!”
Sophie caught it and held it, her glove slick with blood. The patient bucked one more time, and then he lay still.
“You need to stay calm.” Sophie stretched out his arms. “Miles, strap him down. Where are his straps?”
I got the patient restrained, legs, chest, and arms. His breathing was fast at first, ragged with panic. Then he passed out, and we secured him for transport. I got him intubated and checked him for bleeders. Sophie hit the siren, and we were off. I couldn’t tell if her driving was more erratic than normal, or if it only seemed that way with the pipe through our patient. It shook with the roughness of the fresh-gritted road. Every turn we took, that shaking got worse. It spread to our patient, and his abdomen tensed, and his feet drummed and twitched till the shudder died down.
We screamed into the bay and the doctors came running. I barked out his injuries and what we’d done so far.
“Get him to CT— No, watch for that pipe!”
“His oxygen line?—”
“I know, I’ve got it.”
One of the doctors turned to me. “You headed back out there?”
“Yeah. It’s all-hands.”
He pursed his lips. “Well, best of luck. From what I heard, you got the last live one. They’re saying at this point?—”
“We need to get going.” I slammed the back doors so hard they bounced and ran to join Sophie in the front seat. The last thing I needed was that toxic mindset, going in thinking it was too late. People lived every day, through the worst gruesome shit. We helped them survive. That was our job.
“What?” Sophie glanced at me as she sped off.
I pushed my mask up. “Didn’t say anything.”
“I thought you were muttering.”
“That doctor back there…” I scrubbed at my face. Black grit streaked my palms and I wiped it on my pants.
“What about him?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Let me look at your ear.”
“Not while I’m driving.” She flinched away. Our radio crackled with apocalyptic updates, two bodies recovered. An arm. A foot.
“It was a gas explosion,” said Sophie, leaning into a turn. “In that condo complex next to the florist. Some car going by got tossed by the blast, and came down on another car, then five more piled on. They’re saying the firefighters couldn’t get through.”
“They’re in now, though, aren’t they?”
“I think so. I hope.”
We got back and the fire wasn’t out but contained, driven back to the blown-out condo complex. The wind had picked up and the air was hot, damp, curtains of spray sweeping the scene. With the roads all closed off and the burnt shells of buildings, the place had the look of the end of the world. Saws whined from the wreckage, shooting off sparks. Firefighters black with soot strode from the mist, then vanished back into it like they’d never been. Even the sky was black overhead, stained with the smoke boiling up from below.
We grabbed our gear and jumped out, and a cold chill ran through me. FD had cleared out the worst of the pileup, and what remained was just twisted metal. The idea of anyone alive in that felt like a dream. Or like a nightmare, if they were still conscious.
Sophie stopped, shivered. Wiped at her goggles. I was about to ask her, was she all right, when a firefighter straightened and beckoned us over. Behind him, his colleagues were sawing away, dragging a minivan off piece by piece. Sparks rained on a yellow car half-flattened beneath, half its back end crumpled like foil.
“We’ll need you in a minute here to check on the driver.”
Sophie peered through the sparks. “He’s still alive?”
“He was yelling out till a while ago. Wanting his kids.”
“Kids?” Sophie’s voice cracked. “He was driving his kids?”
“No, they were up there.” He pointed. “Tenth floor.”
I looked where he was pointing, and my heart sank. The tenth floor was a furnace, belching out flames. If his kids were still up there?—
“Miss? You all right?”
I turned, and Sophie had dropped to one knee. Now, she scrambled upright.
“I’m fine. I, uh, tripped.” She clenched her fists and her jaw, and I moved in behind her. That clenching was a reflex, to combat fainting — tightening up the extremities to route blood to the heart. But Sophie just stood there, breathing hard through her nose.
“Lift on three,” came a voice, out from the wreckage. “One… two…”
Two firefighters lifted a huge, crumpled door. They pushed it aside, out of the way. One of them looked at Sophie.
“I think she’ll fit now.”
Sophie crunched through the glass and stepped over a muffler, and peered through the gutted SUV.
“You want me to crawl through?”
“She can’t do that,” I said.
“We’ll thread a stretcher through first.”
“No way. No way.” I could see from my vantage point, the front seat was ruined, springs and pieces of dashboard and floor everywhere. If she tried to crawl through that, she’d tear herself up.
“I can make it,” Sophie said. “If you push those seats back.”
The firefighter leaned in and pushed the seats back. His partner laid a spine board across the mess. I watched through a spiderweb of shattered windshield as she inched forward as far as she could. The roof had buckled on the passenger side, and the seat had thrust up, leaving only a narrow gap for her to squeeze through. On the other side of that gap, and just below it, the yellow car had crashed into the SUV’s cab. The driver was half still in his car, half in the SUV, pinned by his dashboard and the SUV’s door. I couldn’t tell through the starred glass if he was breathing, or if his eyes were open or shut.
“Sir, uh…” Sophie’s voice cracked again. I heard her cough. “Sir, I’m going to need you to stay very still. If you can hear me, just blink your eyes.”
The man twitched. His head jerked. He let out a scream. Sophie tried to reach for him, but the space was too tight.
“Sir! Sir, calm down. I’m a paramedic. We’re working right now on getting you out, but I need you to?—”
He tried to scream again and only wheezed. He coughed, a wet sound, and then came a whimper. I couldn’t tell if that was the driver or Sophie.
“Breathe slowly,” she said. “This’ll just take a minute.”
“What— what…” The driver spluttered and choked.
“I’m just going to examine you. It’s not going to hurt.”
I couldn’t see much of what she was doing, but I listened as she talked him through each step. She got it all out of order, our usual checklist, and I couldn’t tell if she did that because of something she saw, or the constraints of the tight space — or if she was too scared to remember the drill. She should know it by now. Like the back of her hand. Better than her lunch order or her own name. This, this was everything. This. Saving lives. Fear couldn’t?—
“Coming out.”
Sophie wriggled out backward. I heard fabric tear. She straightened up with her coat ripped, a careless mistake. Fear again, pushing her to move too fast. You didn’t rush on a scene. Rushing was death.
“His heart sounds are…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure. They don’t match with anything they played us in training.”
“Show me,” I said.
Sophie stared for a moment, like she didn’t understand. Then she puffed out her cheeks and blew a long, whooshy breath, pursing her lips so it went whew-whew .
“It’s sort of mushy. And his lungs. I heard fluid.”
I turned to the firefighters. “How fast can you get to him?”
“About forty-five minutes.”
“His pelvis is crushed. And his heart, I don’t think…” Sophie glanced at the driver and lowered her voice. “I don’t think he has that long before he chokes out.”
The firefighter frowned at her, then turned to me. “Anything you can do to buy him more time?”
I wanted to tell him there was, but there wasn’t. We couldn’t even be sure what was wrong, or the extent of the damage, or how to help.
“Oxygen,” said Sophie. “We could get him a tank.”
“Not with the saws running. One spark, and… pff. ” I made a boom gesture with both my hands.
The firefighters waved us back out of the way. We stood there, useless, with nothing to do. Sophie still kept calling out to the driver, cheery updates on the firefighters’ progress. I wanted to scream at her, he couldn’t hear her. And if he could, he couldn’t care. All that man cared about was word of his kids, and no other comfort would mean a damn thing. But Sophie wasn’t shouting to comfort him. She was shouting, I realized, to comfort herself. That’s what she’d been doing the whole damn time, covering her panic with dripping compassion. She was like I had been, when I’d flamed out. Seeing her father sprawled in that wreck. Needing to save him, or her world would end.
“Doing great,” she called. “They’re cutting the roof now. Opening a path to you, and we’ll be right there.”
I flashed back to this morning, to when we’d arrived. Sophie hadn’t heard when the cop called her back. She’d kept right on walking till I grabbed her arm. Had she really not heard us, or had our words not got through? If I hadn’t stopped her, would she have run inside? Into that flower shop all wreathed in flame?
“I know it’s loud, but keep breathing, okay? In and out, breathe, we’re almost there.”
When the patient had panicked, she’d missed the signs. She’d let him thrash all around and knee me in the face. She’d forgotten all she knew about safe restraint, and he’d chomped on her ear like a rabid dog. She’d need all kinds of tests now. A tetanus shot.
“That’s it, look at me. Don’t look at those sparks. Look at me, breathe…”
And then on the way back, her fast, jerky driving. I’d seen her drive a hundred times smoother than that. She’d lost her edge when she needed it most. Bumped and swerved all the way to the nearest ER.
“Almost there, doing good…”
I was spiraling now, tracing her spiral. And, had her driving been really that bad? The roads had been wet, gritty from snowmelt. The pipe through our patient had shuddered and thrummed. But it hadn’t shifted. It hadn’t done damage. If she’d hit a pothole, if she’d braked too hard?—
“We need you.” One of the firefighters stepped back from the wreck. They’d snipped the yellow car open like a can of sardines, and lifted away most of its body. The driver was gasping like a fish on dry land. With every breath, blood misted his lips and his chin. Sophie leaned over him.
“What can we do?”
“We’re ready to separate him from the wreck.” The firefighter bent down to take hold of his seat. “Our plan is, we’re going to lift up the dashboard, and at the same time, we’ll pull back his seat. We’ll lift him out through the back without moving his spine, or moving anything besides what we have to.”
“Then we’ll stabilize him.” My words came out hollow. We had no chance. I could see the damage now, and it was catastrophic. The dashboard was basically holding his organs in. The moment they moved it, his life would drain out. Maybe he saw some of that in the look on my face, because he groped out for Sophie. She took his hand.
“It’ll be quick,” she said. “We’ll be right here.”
He looked down at himself. “Wait. Wait, my kids…” He coughed, closed his eyes, and sucked a pained breath. “You gotta call someone. You gotta… Shannon and Andy. I need to know they’re okay before… Before…”
Sophie squeezed his hand. I turned away.
“We need to move,” said the fireman. “Do you have your phone?”
The driver looked down again, at his gore-spattered seat. I reached in and winced at the squelch of his blood, how it slid off in thick splats as I rescued his phone. The screen wasn’t just cracked, but popped clean out.
“Broken,” I said. “Let me try dispatch.”
I walked far enough out of earshot he wouldn’t hear what they said, then I radioed dispatch. Asked for his kids. The answer came back, angry, impatient. Locating survivors wasn’t my job. I asked a couple of follow-up questions without pressing TALK, then switched it to listen so chatter came through. After a minute, I turned it off.
“Shannon and Andy, right?”
The driver tried to focus. He was fading fast now, his lips turning blue.
“They’ve got them,” I said. “They’re at Mass Gen. Safe.”
“Who’s with them? Is someone—” He broke into coughs.
“They didn’t have many details, but they’re okay. Not a scratch on them. Not even skinned knees.”
The driver seemed to fall in on himself, like the only thing holding him up had been hope. Now, in relief, he let himself crumple. His jaw fell open. His eyes showed whites.
“It’s time,” said the fireman, and crouched into place. Sophie moved to his right side and I moved to his left, but we knew it was pointless. He was already dead. We’d do all we could to keep his heart pumping, to keep the monitors blipping through his last drive, but it would be his last. This fight was done.
After that, after showers, after maintenance check — after Sophie’s ear was taped up, not bitten, just scratched — after we’d written up our reports, after Clive had reminded us we’d done all we could, I stood in the locker room, and I thought, had we?
I’d been distracted by Sophie, if she was okay. It’d been my first thought, stepping out of the bus: her first mass-casualty. Was she all right? I still didn’t know if she had or she hadn’t, and in the cold light of hindsight, it didn’t matter. She’d done her job anyway, as best she could. Had I done my best job, with my focus on her?
I closed my eyes and saw the driver, what was his name? Sophie had asked him. Had he replied? I saw his mouth gaping when they pulled him out. His skin turning gray so fast it felt fake. I’d seen lightbulbs fade slower than the light in his eyes.
“Hey.” Sophie touched me lightly on my arm. I shouted on reflex and jerked away.
“Sorry. I scared you.” She looked pale, herself, and still smudged with soot. Her blue eyes looked bigger, glassy with shock. “Do you want a ride home? Or to come back to my place?”
My stomach turned over, horror. Disgust. Back to her place? With her? Tonight?
“They both died,” I said, my throat thick with bile.
“Both?” Sophie blinked.
“Clive told me, that first guy, the one with the pipe. He made it through surgery, then died of a stroke.”
We stood in silence a while as she let that sink in. All I could think was, could I have stopped that? If I’d got him back sooner? If I’d driven the bus? Had I missed something, some warning sign, in my distraction? This, this was why…
“Miles?”
“I have to go.”
“Wait! Call me later?”
I couldn’t respond. If I tried, I might puke, or worse, I might yell. My guts were churning with fury. Resentment. Heartache. Right or wrong, I blamed her at least halfway. She’d been a distraction, and me, I had let her. This was why partners were partners , not friends. Not girlfriends, not lovers. Never an us .
“Miles?”
I ran out of there like a bat out of hell, and straight to my car, boot to the gas.
Reeves.
She was Reeves .
Never Sophie again.