Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
C HARLIE
The scorching heat from the fire engulfing the senior living apartment building is nearly unbearable, but I can’t make myself step back any further. Jack is still in there—my captain, and my friend. In the six months since he transferred to Station Three, we’ve become close. It’s only been a few minutes since Finn, Garcia, and I burst through the door to the outside with the elderly woman while Jack stayed behind to get her grandson from where he was hiding under the bed.
He should be out by now.
I’m seconds from asking the Battalion Chief if I can go in after him when I glimpse Finn out of the corner of my eye. The rookie did a hell of a job today, especially given this is his first big fire, but he shouldn’t be this close to the flames. He should be back with the rest of the crew, hydrating.
“Finn, step back. It’s too hot this close up,” I tell him.
“No, sir.”
“Uh, excuse me?” I turn my head to face him and glare. I’m in no mood for him giving me shit.
“I said, no, respectfully. Captain Jack told me to stick to you like glue. That’s what I’m doing until he’s out of there and gives me other orders. Plus”—he pauses, his voice cracking—“he’s my captain, too.”
I stare at Finn for a few seconds, his jaw set, and it’s obvious he’ll fight me on this if I try to force the issue. My respect for him rises a couple of notches.
“Okay,” I mumble, then nod at him.
I turn my gaze back to the front doors just as Jack busts through them, carrying a small, listless child.
Jack’s not wearing his oxygen mask because he’s got it on the little boy. The two sets of medics who are waiting move in, and Jack hands the coughing child to one team of them.
Finn and I have already started toward Jack, his wheezing and relentless coughing is worrisome as he staggers in our direction. We reach him just as he crumples, and we barely catch him before he slams into the ground. Finn and I lift him onto the stretcher of the second medic team.
Jack’s looking at me when, suddenly, his eyes roll back in his head and he loses consciousness.
Battalion Chief Malone gives me permission to ride with the Station Two medics and assist as they get Jack to the hospital. No one says it, but we all know he will most likely need to go on life support to protect his airway because of the smoke inhalation and heat injuries to his throat.
The ride to the hospital is less than eight minutes, but it’s harrowing. Jack’s wheezing and fighting for air and it’s horrible to watch. His nostrils flare and his shoulders rise dramatically with each breath, his respiratory muscles clearly fatigued. Yet, he won’t allow me to give him morphine to ease the pain and troubled breathing. He wants to be alert as long as possible. He doesn’t have to say it. I know it’s because he’s hoping he can see Annie one last time… just in case.
A few minutes later, once we hand Jack’s care off to the ER team, the medics from Station Two offer me a ride back to Station Three. I decline, needing a few minutes to myself. I’ll call Finn to come get me in the station jeep when I’m ready.
A rising tide of panic claws at my chest, and I need to get out of here. The air in the ER is hot and suffocating. I’m overstimulated by the dinging and ringing of alarms and call bells and the cacophony of human noises—nurses shouting, patients yelling in pain, families crying out in grief—and people rushing in all directions around me. I try not to draw attention to myself and to hold it together while I walk briskly through the ER. I make it out the front doors, not stopping until I’m at least fifteen feet from the entrance.
The cool October air is a relief to my lungs, and I suck in as deep of a breath as I can manage. As I lean against the outside wall of the building, heightened emotions threaten to overwhelm me. My legs give out and the coarse brick of the wall scrapes against my back as I slide down it and slump to a seated position on the ground.
My vision blurs and dizziness consumes me, making me salivate from the nausea it causes. I’m breathing too fast. I know this is normal—it’s just the adrenaline crashing. But, damn, it feels like hell. I lean forward and put my head between my knees.
I try, and fail, to settle myself by slowing my breathing—to calm the fear—like the speech therapist taught me to do when I was a kid trying to learn to stop stuttering. My mom never told her the root of that fear was worrying about what my dad’s fists and words would do to us when he was angry or disappointed in us. But, to her credit, she at least told the therapist she thought my stutter was stemming from anxiety.
“He’s gonna be fine. He got here in time. This isn’t like Teddy,” I mutter to myself.
Flashbacks of trying, and failing, to pump life back into Teddy’s heart less than two months ago assault me and my heart rate kicks back up, bounding in my chest. I tried my best for him, and for Emily, that day. But I failed. I wouldn’t have called him my friend, but he was my fellow firefighter, Jack’s best friend and Emily’s husband, and I couldn’t save him.
Fuck. Maybe I should have tried to put a breathing tube in Jack myself. What if he doesn’t pull through and it’s because I didn’t make the right call by waiting until we got here?
“Charlie? Are you okay?”
The heavenly sweet voice has me convinced I’m hallucinating. I don’t look up. “Fuck.”
“Fuck what?”
I’m pretty sure angels don’t say “fuck,” so I sit upright and whip my head skyward—and Emily is really standing before me. I didn’t imagine her.
“Em? W-what are you doing here?” I whisper.
She squats in front of me, placing her delicate hands on each of my upper arms, gripping them. Strangely, that helps to center me, focus me.
“I just dropped Shay off at the door and parked. We were walking into yoga when she got the call about Jack. Are you okay, Charlie? Did you get hurt in the fire? You’re breathing fast and you’re kind of clammy.” Her eyes survey me up and down as if she’s looking for injuries.
I nod. “I’m okay. Just adrenaline crashing is all. And… I’m worried about Jack. I hope I did everything right.” My voice shakes and I hate letting her see me like this.
“I’m sure you did. Everyone knows you’re an excellent paramedic and firefighter.” She rubs her hands soothingly up and down my arms, and it helps settle this frenetic energy inside me. “Can I sit with you for a few minutes? I’m not in a big rush to go in there myself.”
“Of course, Em. And shit, I’m sorry. Here I am being selfish and not even thinking about what being back here must be like for you.”
“Hey. Don’t do that. Yeah, it’s hard being back here—really hard—but that doesn’t diminish what you’re going through today. You can’t always just be saving me, Charlie. You’ve gotta let yourself take some support, too. That’s how friendship works.”
She moves over to my side and sits against the wall then grabs my arm off my knee and pulls it closer to her until she can reach my hand. Wrapping her tiny hand in my much larger one, she holds tight.
I look over at her and give her the best smile I can muster.
She doesn’t know she’s been saving me for a long time just by the amount of light she instills into my world, slowly displacing the darkness that has long lived inside me, courtesy of my old man.
* * *
EMILY
Once I plant myself on the ground beside him, Charlie and I sit in silence on the firm, cool concrete ground outside First City ER for another five minutes before he speaks.
“I should probably call for a ride back to the station soon.” Something in his voice makes me look over at him and he’s watching me. His voice is gentle when he asks, “Do you want me to walk you in first and make sure you’re okay?”
Leave it to Charlie to be worrying about me even when he’s dealing with his own challenges.
I plaster a smile on my face, though Charlie knows me well enough that he’ll probably realize it’s superficial.
“Nah, I’ll be fine. I’ll take my time out here and go in when I’m ready. Thanks for offering, though.”
Charlie’s eyes are fixed on me, probably searching for clues that I’m not really okay. Then he finally pulls out his phone, shoots off a text, and slides it back into his pocket.
Maybe it’s that I’m thrown off kilter by being here, where Teddy was pronounced dead, or maybe it’s because my grief has rubbed me raw over the last several weeks, but there’s a question that’s been gnawing at me for a long time. And I suddenly feel like I can’t hold it in any longer.
“Charlie? Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah, sure. Go ahead.” He leans his head back against the brick wall, closing his eyes.
I gather my courage, now wondering if bringing this up is a mistake. I swallow around the thick, nearly obstructing, lump in my throat.
“You pulled away from our friendship a few years ago. Not completely, but enough that I noticed.” I loathe how my voice shakes.
He pauses for a few seconds, in case I’m not done, then speaks. Though he’s still not looking at me. “That’s more of a statement than a question.”
“W-was it my fault?” It’s almost a whisper.
Charlie turns his head so fast to face me that I wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled a muscle in his neck.
“What? No, of course it wasn’t your fault, Emily. Why would you even think that?” His hazel eyes bore into mine, and I don’t know what to make of the intensity in them. Charlie’s always been quiet, thoughtful with his words, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this kind of look in his eyes aimed at me.
“I mean, I know it’s been a long time, but it seems like it started around… around that Thanksgiving when we kissed. And then we talked about it on New Year’s Eve at Trina’s that year, but things never quite returned to normal. I gradually saw less of you, and when you were around, it seemed like we never got back to where we were before that happened.”
He pulls his hand from mine and reaches toward my face but stops himself. Instead, he grips the back of his neck. His eyes, though, they never leave mine.
“Damn it, Em. I’m so sorry. I promise it wasn’t your fault.”
“So, I didn’t imagine it?” I have to know. It was a hard pill to swallow when I felt Charlie withdrawing and I need to know I wasn’t crazy.
He scrubs his hand over his face and shakes his head.
“No. You didn’t imagine it. At first, I was… trying to figure out some things, so I kind of withdrew into myself. But then, by the time I got my shit together, you were”—he pauses, clearing his throat—“you were dating Teddy again, and I didn’t want to overstep or make you uncomfortable. I’d never want to hurt you. You seemed happy, and I didn’t know if Teddy knew about our kiss. So, I figured I should give you guys your space. I thought you’d outgrown our friendship.”
My mouth is so dry it’s like I’ve been chewing on sawdust. How could Charlie ever think I had “outgrown” our friendship?
“No, Charlie. It wasn’t like that at all. In fact, I’ve missed you these last several years. Sure, we saw each other and hung out some together with Trina, but it was different.”
The corners of Charlie’s mouth turn downward, into a frown. “I’ve missed you, too.”
Before I can respond, a cherry red Elladine Fire Department jeep pulls up to where we’re sitting, and Charlie stands.
Before he walks away, he glances down at me. “That’s my ride. Thanks for sitting with me and helping me get through this, Em. I appreciate it more than you know.”
When he’s almost to the jeep, I call out to him. “Hey, Charlie?” He peers over his shoulder, looking back at me. “Do you think we can start over? Be friends like before, except not just because you’re Trina’s friend, because you’re my friend, too?”
Charlie smiles the first genuine smile I’ve seen on his face today. “I’d like that a lot.”
After Charlie leaves, I text Shayna to tell her where I am, then sit outside for a long time, waiting for her to let me know when the ER staff transfers Jack to a room in the main hospital so I can go sit with her. I don’t have to conquer going into the ER today. Hell, just the fact that I’m at this hospital is an enormous step for me.
And whether he realizes it or not, Charlie helped me through it just by being here.