Chapter Twenty-Three Noah
The atmosphere in the station feels like a collective hangover.
Not from alcohol, obviously, but from exhaustion, smoke inhalation, and the kind of adrenaline rush that leaves your body feeling wrung out like a damp rag.
We’ve been through worse, but last night was no small emergency. Three casualties and the partial destruction of a historic building means that it’s been skyrocketed to national news. By the time the morning commute rush ends, millions of people will know what happened last night.
I ended up collapsing on Old Bill’s usual armchair, intending to only grab a quick power nap, but I crashed for about two hours before Sandy jostled me awake.
She said I needed to get some food in me, so I scarfed down the breakfast burrito she handed over, and then immediately fell asleep for another half-hour.
I might have slept longer, but it was around that time—approximately three in the morning—that our captain came limping back into the station.
I’m used to seeing scary shit at this point, but watching him take the bulk of the hit when that interior wall was blasted apart by the explosion turned my blood to pure ice. He’d been trying to clear a path for that civilian to get out, but then he went down and she started screaming.
I still don’t know how I managed to get both of them out. It’s all a blur. Something inhuman overcame me. Pure instinct.
Yet, no matter how fast I jumped into action, Hale still had to be carted off to the hospital.
Not for long, apparently. When he arrived back at the station, he growled about a bruised rib and some muscle soreness, then waved off Rita’s insistence that she check him for signs of a concussion for what might have been the fifth or sixth time.
And so, despite the insanity, we went on with our shifts as normal.
Mostly. Everyone is moving slower than usual, and Matt burned the coffee that he typically brews to perfection in the kitchen.
The regular chatter is muted. Hale doesn’t even bother barking at anyone who has to pause and doze for a minute here and there.
I spend most of the earlier morning hours praying the city remains calm enough that we won’t get called out again. If we can just make it to midmorning, a fresh wave of staff will arrive, and those of us who are worn out can leave to rest up.
Unfortunately, doom descends long before midmorning.
The captain calls me to his office around seven.
Evan is already there, still wearing his rumpled EMT uniform. He looks a little flushed in the cheeks and more glowy in the eyes than usual, but he’s also jostling his leg nervously where he sits opposite Hale’s desk.
“What’s wrong?” I ask when both of them look up at my arrival.
“Close the door, please.”
I obey, letting it fall shut behind me.
Hale, looking like he barely escaped a tussle with a hoard of subway rats, runs his hands through his hair. “Banks called for an emergency vote regarding the new FDNY budget. If it goes his way, our funding will be cut by noon today.”
I freeze. “What? How is that allowed?”
“They can vote whenever they like, as long as the budget is decided by the end of the year,” Hale explains in a dull, totally exhausted tone of voice.
He’s barely looking at me as he speaks, seeming more like a robot than a human in this moment.
“I imagine Banks wants to bolster his campaign before the first week of November, though.”
“Why today, though?” grumbles Evan. “He would have heard about the fire last night, would have known that we responded. There’s visual proof that we saved lives. That Noah, specifically, saved lives.”
“Including mine,” Hale agrees with a sigh and a simple nod of thanks in my direction.
I’m still frozen, though, my brain desperately trying to keep up with this endless cycle of misfortunes.
“It’s bad timing,” Evan continues, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
Hale grunts in agreement. “I’m guessing someone informed him that I was transported to the hospital. Calling a vote while Station 47’s captain is incapacitated and unable to fight back certainly seems like it’d be his style.”
“But who would tell him?” I chime in. “The fire was contained, like, barely eight hours ago.”
Evan shrugs. “He’s a well-connected man and there was a lot of media present.”
“Fuck.” I plant my hands on my hips, glaring up at the ceiling as if it has the answers written upon it. “Someone should call Lila.”
At the mention of her name, Hale sits up a little straighter and Evan becomes so motionless it’s as if he’s turned to stone.
“Did she…?” Hale frowns deeply, as if trying to recall a hazy memory. “I was only barely lucid at one point, but I swear she—”
I snort. “Broke through the police line and then sobbed over what she momentarily feared was your dead body? Yeah, that happened. I was busy puking, but it definitely happened.”
Hale stares at me like I’ve grown a second head.
Evan clears his throat lightly. “She’s fine. I took her home. To my home, I mean.”
When both of us swivel our heads toward him, he starts jiggling his leg again and avoids eye contact.
I shake my head. There’s too much going on and my brain is on the verge of exploding.
Our captain lets out a long, loud exhale, then pushes his back from his desk.
“I do think it would be wise to inform our PR specialist of this update, so one of you can do that. In the meantime, my deputy is coming in early to take over so that I can go home, wash up, and get to the council chamber before the session begins. I’ll do what I can, but it’s likely our time working together is running out. ”
My stomach drops. “But—”
“You don’t want one of us to go with you?” Evan cuts in.
Hale rises to his feet. “You’re off the clock, Reyes. You should be at home in bed. And no offense, Trent, but I suspect your presence in the council chamber would only fan Banks’s flames.”
“You’re probably right,” I mutter.
He moves past me, throwing open the door. I think of a dozen things to say to him, the most important of which is that I don’t want anyone else to be my captain if it’s not Hale Hargrove, but my mouth isn’t able to catch up with my mind and, before I know it, he’s gone.
I glance back at Evan. He’s grimacing.
“That’s it? That’s—what the fuck?” I sputter.
Evan sighs, then hoists himself out of the chair. “We did what we could, man. All that’s left is to wait for the outcome and hope for the best.”
“But—”
“I’m gonna go shower,” he says, patting me on the shoulder as he passes by.
Feeling like a man tossed out to sea by a rogue storm, I stand alone in Hale’s empty office for several minutes, trying to figure out a way out of this that doesn’t end in the worst possible conclusion.
As in, we lose everything.
We lose the station. We lose our crew, our friends.
We get rearranged and reorganized, the union scattering us throughout the city wherever there are positions to fill.
We lose our captain, who ranks so high that he’ll likely need to be transferred to the outskirts of the city or sequestered to a desk job until another captaincy opens up.
We lose Old Bill, who will probably just give up and retire early. We lose the battle we marched into when we started the Save A Hero campaign.
We lose our reputation, too. The reputation that I tarnished in the first place. If Banks wins, it’ll be all the proof the public needs to know that he was right all along. And I don’t really give a fuck if the world hates me, but I can’t stand if they hate the others. They don’t deserve it.
I make my way out of the office and march numbly back to the bay.
The main entrance door bangs open, startling a handful of sleepy-eyed crew members who are in the middle of cleaning up the truck we brought to the scene last night.
Lila comes storming in.
She doesn’t see me. She doesn’t really seem to notice anyone. Her mind is stuck on a single track as she breezes past everyone and stomps up the spiral stairs to the mezzanine.
Clearly, she’s heard the news about the vote.
I need to help. I need to be useful.
I don’t care that I’m basically a zombie. I take a deep breath and follow her.
When I catch up to her on the mezzanine level, the door to her dorm is cracked. I nudge it open further to find her pacing the length of the room. She’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday, which means she went straight from the scene to Evan’s place to the station.
Have any of us taken a single minute to gather ourselves since the alarms went off yesterday?
“Lila—”
She halts, turning around to see me. “Oh! Good. Noah, we need to call a meeting right away. I know Hale is in the hospital, but maybe we can take a cab to go see him. He needs to know that Banks has—”
“Called an emergency vote?” I move further into the room, closing the door behind me with a soft click. “He knows. He just left to get himself suited up for the confrontation of the decade.”
Lila blinks. “He left… the hospital?”
“Well, he left the hospital around three in the morning. He’s a very strong-willed patient. We were puttering around the station for a couple of hours until someone dropped him a line about the emergency vote.”
She deflates, sinking down onto the edge of the mattress. “Oh. Must have been Lou. Thank God for that woman.”
“It seems crazy that Banks would make this move in the wake of a fire like that,” I muse.
Lila shakes her head, wincing slightly. “It’s Jake. Or Barry, I guess. I know it, deep down in my bones.”
“Who and who?”
“A longtime devoted hater of mine, Barry Pelavin, is running Banks’s reelection campaign. I found out last night that Jake, my main camera guy, has been his mole all along. He probably saw that Hale was—that he—well, he saw an opportunity for the bad guys to make a calculated move.”
“That’s disgusting.”
She snorts humorlessly. “Yes, well, people like that tend to flock together.”
I fall quiet. She drops her head into her hands.
“Lila,” I murmur, taking a step toward her.
She doesn’t lift her head, instead muttering a dull, “What?”
“You were reckless last night.”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“Running toward a burning building like that? It’s kind of the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do as an untrained civilian.”
“I know.”
“You could have been badly hurt.”
“I know.”
“What if there was another explosion? What if there was more broken glass? What if the smoke was—”
“I know!” She throws her arms up in exasperation. “I know, Noah, okay? I understand! But when I saw you carrying Hale out of there, and then the way you two fell like dead weight on the ground… I wasn’t even thinking. I just knew that I had to get to you. Both of you.”
I sigh, then sit down beside her. I take her hand, noticing shallow scrapes on her bare knees, but decide to hold my tongue on the further chastising.
“I get it,” I tell her, meeting her gaze with earnest intent. “If the roles were reversed, I would do the same thing. Because I love you.”
Her lower lip trembles slightly. “Don’t be silly. No, you don’t.”
“Of course I do. You’re very easy to love.”
“Noah…”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. You’ve got many suitors competing for your affections.”
“It’s not a competition. I mean, I don’t want it to be.”
I chuckle. “Then choose all of us.”
Lila stares at me for a long moment, then bursts out laughing. “You and your big heart, Noah Trent.”
“I’m full of shit, aren’t I? Always am.”
She sighs and reaches out to brush a lock of hair off my forehead. “You’re full of wonderful, grand ideas about how life should be. If everyone was like you, I think the world would be a better place.”
“If everyone was more like me, there’d certainly be fewer kittens stuck in trees.”
Lila laughs again, but it’s a tired sound.
She looks down at the floor, her lips settling into another frown.
“The vote is in four hours. There has to be something I can do. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
The GoFundMe was doing well and Save A Hero was gaining traction and… it’s just not fair.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I failed.” Her voice shakes. “It’s my fault. I didn’t do a good enough job. I didn’t strategize properly. I didn’t—”
“Hey, none of that.” I cradle her head in my hands and gently turn her face back toward mine.
“You are the best thing that’s ever happened to Station 47, Lila Hart.
You’ve energized everyone here. The staff is inspired and happy and more connected with each other than ever before because of your efforts to show the public how good you believe we are.
Your sunshine has even convinced our surly captain to smile once or twice.
Do you know how much of a miracle that is? ”
“Now you are full of shit,” she mumbles, eyes glistening with tears.
“We’ll figure it out, okay? We have a few hours, like you said. In the meantime, let’s just try to relax a little so we can actually think clearly.”
“Relax?”
“Exactly. Come here.”
Without waiting for her to respond, I curl an arm around her waist and scoop her up to maneuver her onto my lap sideways.
She loops her arms around my shoulders and giggles. “Don’t cradle me like a baby, you weirdo.”
“Why not?” With a grin, I stand up and spin around, twirling her like a bride I’m about to carry over a threshold.
Lila squeals and tightens her grip. “Put me down before you hurt yourself!”
“Hmm, I don’t think so.”
She kicks her legs a little, putting up a playful fight, but there’s a smile on her face.
“Tell me to stop and I will,” I murmur, watching her eyes.She doesn’t say stop, she pulls me closer.
I stumble to the bed and set her down. She lays herself out automatically, and I waste no time in crawling on top of her. My lips find hers in an instant, and even though the Hawk could be circling the station at this very moment, I don’t bother holding back when I groan into her open mouth.
Lila pauses, though. “Wait, I should tell you—”
A sharp knock on the door cuts her off.
“Fuck. Shit. Damn it,” I hiss, scrambling off the bed. I’m already half hard, and it’s tough to hide with the sweatpants I’m wearing.
“Lila?” a familiar voice calls through the door.
Evan.
Lila sits upright. “Christ…”
“Lila?” Another knock. “Old Bill said you were up here. I think we should talk.”
“Um, one second!” she calls out.
But the knob is already turning, and before I know it, Evan is gazing in at the scene before him. Lila, was sitting with parted legs and flushed cheeks. Her hair more wild than it’s ever been. And me, sporting half an erection.
Evan blinks in surprise, but quickly assesses the situation and nods to himself, taking a step inside before letting the door fall shut again. The lock slides into place a moment later.
“Well, good,” he says. “I seem to have arrived at an opportune moment.”