24. Sophie
CHAPTER 24
SOPHIE
I was asleep when the flood struck, sprawled on my couch. I’d face-planted there after a long double shift, and when my phone rang, I answered half-dreaming.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. Is Sophie Reeves home?”
I sniffed and sat up. “Uh-huh. That’s me.”
“Oh! This is Clive. You don’t sound like yourself. You aren’t sick, are you?”
I should’ve said yes and gone back to bed. Instead, I pinched myself. “No. I’m okay.”
“Good. Then, we need you. It’s all hands on deck.” He explained that the rain we’d been having all day had set off a flash flood in a nearby town. With the flood had come a massive landslide. “Normally, the locals would have it in hand, but they were having their annual fair. The slide ran right through it, through all those tourists, so anyone free, we’re asking?—”
I was already halfway out the door, zipping my coat up. Inhaling a protein bar. “No worries, Clive. I’m on my way.”
“Thanks so much, Sophie. You’re the best.”
Through most of my drive, my mind was on coffee: where I could stop for some, how fast I could drink it. How much I’d need to get through the day. I filled up my Thermos at a greasy truck stop, and got an extra cup to drink in the car. By the time I arrived, I was glass-eyed and buzzing, ready to take on whatever the day brought.
“Paramedic?” A cop ran up as I parked my car. “Head straight for the triage tent. They’ll direct you from there.”
I grabbed my bag and set out, and I made it three steps. Three steps, and I froze. My heart took a dive. I couldn’t breathe.
“No way. No way. ”
The man by the triage tent had his back turned. His dark hair was drenched, plastered flat to his neck. I knew him anyway, by his shape. By his stance. By the way he was gesturing as he issued commands. Even the dumb way he pulled down his cuffs, like they wouldn’t ride up again the second he moved.
“Miles.”
He turned like he’d heard me, though the rain drowned my voice. His brows shot up, and he broke off mid-sentence.
“Sophie? You’re here?”
I couldn’t tell from his tone if he was happy to see me, or if he was angry, or felt anything at all. And I didn’t have time to figure it out. Next thing I knew, I was paired up with Miles, assigned to a parking lot hit by the landslide. Our job was to help dig out the drowned cars, and anyone trapped alive, we were to help them.
“There’s a bus,” said the firefighter running the scene. “The mud rolled it down there, flipped it onto its back. Shook up the passengers like peas in a can. It’s almost dug out, but when you get inside?—”
“Got it,” said Miles. His lips had gone tight.
“Get them tagged right away, so we know how to triage!”
I knew Miles was expecting a lot of red tags — black tags as well, meaning no hope — but by the time we arrived, the bus was unearthed, passengers being extracted through its back doors. A couple were red tags, a head wound, a crushed pelvis, but by some miracle, most were all right. We checked them all for concussions and found only three, then the rest we sent on with just scrapes and bruises. Then we treated a grandmother who’d collapsed from exhaustion, and two kids sick after drinking brown water.
Our last case of the day was our toughest by far, a large man pinned under a rolled-over car. He’d been trapped for hours, neck-deep in mud, waiting first to be found, then for FD to free him. The extraction was complicated due to the angle, the risk of the car sliding down when they moved it. Now, they were ready, and Miles stood poised and tense.
“When they free him, we need to be ready to move.”
I nodded, but Miles didn’t see. His eyes were fixed on the car, and the crane poised to lift it. The second it did, circulation would restart, blood rushing through tissue crushed tight for hours. Blood full of toxins from necrotized flesh, racing straight for his heart. Stopping it, most like. We’d need to restart it, and we’d need to move fast.
The chains pulled taut with a creaking of metal.
The patient stiffened, then screamed as the car jerked away. His whole body arched, then it went slack. The car swung aside and we rushed in, Miles on one side, me on the other.
“No pulse,” he yelled. “Bag him!”
I got a bag mask on him. Miles started compressions. The rain was still coming in warm gray sheets. It made the scene slippery and CPR difficult, Miles struggling for balance, his knees in the mud.
“Come on. Come on!” Miles thumped his chest. I worked the bag. We each had a knee on him to keep him from sliding, mine at his shoulder, Miles’s at his hip. I knew when Miles felt a pulse before he yelled “V-fib,” and had the AED ready to go. We shocked him three times and hit him with epi, and his pulse evened out, steady for transport.
We stood in the aftermath soaked to our skins, shivering through the onset of adrenaline withdrawal. Miles flicked a wet leaf off of his sleeve.
“We’ve still got it,” he said.
I blinked, half-stunned. “Huh?”
“Our rhythm, you know. We still, uh…” He looked away, frowning. “Want to get something to eat?”
I stared at him, torn between the impulse to slap him and the equally strong urge to laugh in his face. Get something to eat? Was he out of his mind? Like, sit and eat with him like nothing had happened? Like he hadn’t dumped me like a hot rock?
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I need to dry off.” I started to go, but Miles moved to block me.
“You could do that first, and then we could eat. I wanted to talk to you. I was going to call.”
I laughed. “You were going to? When?”
“Soon. Today.”
“Really? Today?” I rolled my eyes. “Because you’ve had six weeks to pick up that phone. Six weeks to try, at least. And find out you’re blocked.” I dodged him, strode off, but he jogged to catch up.
“That’s fair. You blocked me. I deserved that. But if we could just talk?—”
“Talk about what?” I picked up my pace. “You know what? Don’t answer that. There’s nothing you could say now, after so long?—”
“I was wrong and I love you. I pushed you away.”
I stopped walking so suddenly Miles trod on my heel. I pitched forward, off-balance, and he caught me in his arms. He swung me upright and set me on my feet.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Yeah. You should be.”
“So, uh, could we talk? I’ll be quick, I swear.”
My head spun. He loved me? But what did that mean? What could love mean to him, to hurt me like he did? I didn’t want to hear it, but at the same time, I did. More than anything, I wanted that, to hear the truth — but only a good truth. One I could forgive. A truth that would let me fly into his arms, and hold him, and tell him we’d be okay.
“You have five minutes,” I said, and my skin pricked with chills. If I couldn’t forgive him, we were over, done. All hope of recovery up in smoke.
“I talked to my dad,” said Miles. “It had been… years. So long I can’t even tell you how many.” He looked down at his feet, then to the sky. “All this time, I’d been thinking he blamed me for Nick. Him and Mom both, but that wasn’t it. It was me the whole time, pulling away. Shutting myself off from them. Refusing to talk. I thought if I did, they’d say what I thought, that it was my fault. That I killed Nick.”
My heart did a somersault. “You thought you killed him?”
“Because I was with him. I didn’t know how to help. And the more I blamed myself, the more I—I…” He pressed his hands to his face. Raked them through his wet hair. “I couldn’t let anyone love me, or let them get close. Whenever I did, it felt… wrong. Like something I had that Nick never would — like I stole it from him when I survived. I never thought I deserved you, and maybe I don’t, but I wish I could try to. Try to for real. If you’d let me, I swear I’d hold nothing back. I’d be all in, and I know you might not believe me. I know I’ve been?—”
“Miles.”
“—distant. Closed-off. I’ve been such a coward, and if I could go back?—”
“ Miles. ”
“If I could start it all over from our first day, and not be a jerk to you or push you away, you have no idea how different it’d be. I’d be the good partner you always deserved. I’d be honest and open, and?—”
“Miles. Shut up.”
He shut up for a second, then grabbed both my hands. “No. No, please, Sophie. I have to say this. I was numb when I met you. Barely living at all. I was scared to feel anything, but with you, now, I’m not. I want to feel everything, if you’d only?—”
He wasn’t going to stop talking, I guessed maybe ever. But I’d already heard all I needed to hear. So I grabbed him by his collar and jerked him down hard, and shut his mouth with a deep, breathless kiss. I could feel his pulse racing, his lips hot on mine, the roughness of his palm on the back of my neck. It was like coming home, that first step in the door, everything still familiar after a long time away. Everything welcoming, everything mine. He was still mine. Still the Miles I loved.
“I’m sorry,” I said, when I pulled away.
“Sorry for what?”
“For all you went through. For how scared you were. I couldn’t see it.”
“I couldn’t, either.” He gasped a shaky laugh. “It took a whole intervention, my best friend in my face. I was an ass to him, too, but he somehow saw through me. Somehow got through to me and made me see…” Miles took my hands again and squeezed them so hard the bones creaked. “I don’t expect you to forgive what I did all at once. But if I asked you out again, like a trial date?—”
“I’m starving right now.”
“So, you want to go eat?”
“The sooner the better.” I stole one more kiss. “And, Miles?”
His smile went crooked. “I know. Last chance, right?”
I laughed. “Oh, you’ll screw up again. And so will I. I’m sure we’ll both need a hundred more chances. But what I wanted to say was, I love you too.”
He spun me into his arms and we kissed in the rain, and all I could think was how brave he was — how brave to be honest, to deal with his past. To come to me now with his heart on his sleeve. I couldn’t wait for our second first date, and our next date after that, and all we’d become.