Chapter 25
LILY
I’ve just finished patching up a patient with a broken leg when the first burn victim arrives.
Two paramedics barrel in, pushing a gurney.
The smell hits me first—that unmistakable stench of charred fabric and burned flesh—and my stomach drops before I even see the patient.
A young woman, barely conscious, with most of her visible skin blistered and blackened.
What’s left of her T-shirt is scorched at the edges, melted into her wounds in places.
Her face is the only part unscathed, though her eyebrows are singed and her lips cracked from heat.
My hands freeze at my sides. My brain fills with useless questions: Was she trapped in a house? Did someone pull her out? How long was she surrounded by flames? Who saved her?
Where is Josh?
The thought crashes into me, a painful twisting pang inside me that makes my vision blur.
Dr. Chen is already moving toward the trauma bay, barking orders. “Lily! We need you now!”
The callout snaps me back to reality. I blink the anxiety away and force my feet to move, my brain to focus.
I pull on fresh gloves and start an IV. I get the fluids running, monitors beeping.
But the monster clawing at my chest doesn’t go away.
A prickling heat burns under my skin—that old, familiar dread I had forgotten.
My thoughts scatter, flickering back to Josh every few seconds, wondering if he was anywhere near the hell that caused this.
I push the worry down and focus on the task at hand.
We’ve barely stabilized the woman when the doors swing open again. This time it’s a man clutching a toddler to his chest, both of their faces streaked with soot. The child’s hair is singed at the ends, and the father’s eyes are wild with panic.
Right behind them, a firefighter limps through the doors, supported by his partner. His arm is wrapped in a makeshift bandage already soaked through with blood, while sweat carves rivers through the grime on his face.
My heart leaps into my throat for a second, but the firefighter is not Josh. I don’t know whether to be relieved or more terrified.
“Multiple burn victims coming in,” a voice announces over the intercom. “All available personnel to the ER. Initiating MCI protocol.”
I ask the paramedic what’s going on, and her answer punches straight through my lungs: “Wildfires gone out of control.”
My pulse flares as if I’ve been injected with pure adrenaline.
Josh must be out there, in those fires. And I have no way to reach him or to know if he’s okay.
I tell myself to breathe, to concentrate on what’s in front of me, but the panic creeps closer with each new patient that rolls through our doors.
The ER transforms into a triage room, colored tags assigned to the incomings—red for immediate, yellow for delayed, green for minor, black for…
I can’t even think it. Family members are separated into waiting areas while medical staff prioritize the most critical cases.
The acrid scent of smoke and burned plastic saturates the air, clinging to everything and everyone.
I move from patient to patient, checking pulses, filling out medication orders, calling security when bystanders threaten to overwhelm the nurses’ station with questions about loved ones.
On the outside, I’m acting normal, but my hands shake.
I keep glancing at the clock, at the door, at my phone—no messages from Josh.
It vibrates only with trauma updates from the hospital system.
At the first lull, I duck into the supply closet and pull out my phone. I text Josh:
Lily
Are you okay?
I stare at the screen, willing those three dots to appear, but nothing happens. I hit the call button. It rings once, twice, then goes to voicemail. His voice, recorded and distant, tells me he can’t come to the phone right now.
I hang up without leaving a message, then delete the call from my history like it’s evidence of a crime. What am I doing? We aren’t a couple. He doesn’t owe me a bulletin of his whereabouts.
But my heart doesn’t care about what’s proper. It’s too busy imagining the worst.
I wipe my clammy hands on my scrubs and head back out into the fray. Another burn victim has arrived, a teenage boy with patches of angry red skin along his arms and torso.
His mother clutches at my arm as I check his vitals. “He said he saw a firefighter fall,” she tells me, her voice cracking. “Can you tell me if he made it out?”
My stomach lurches. “I’m not sure,” I say, keeping my tone gentle and professional. “We’re doing everything we can for everyone who comes in.”
She nods, too numb to press further, and I excuse myself to grab more sterile dressings from the supply cart. My legs are unsteady beneath me as I shoulder my way into a resuscitation room where a young man’s breathing is ragged and labored.
“They found him crawling out of the brush, suffering from smoke inhalation and first-degree burns to his back,” a paramedic informs me, handing over his chart. “Said he was looking for his dog.”
I nod, connecting the man to monitors, checking his oxygen levels. Sweat prickles at my scalp, but I don’t notice anything—not until I glance at the monitor and see the time: hours have passed and still no word from Josh. My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my fingertips.
I’m changing an IV bag when yet another gurney is pushed in. I look up just as they wheel in a firefighter, this one unrecognizable under a mask of burns and swelling. His turnout gear is blackened in places, the department patch barely visible beneath the soot.
My entire body turns cold as I move toward the gurney. Is it Josh? Please don’t let it be Josh. I fixate on the man’s boots, the shape of his hands, searching for anything familiar that might tell me who lies beneath those bandages. The doctor checks his pupils, revealing brown irises.
It’s not him. The relief hits me like a slap, immediate and guilt-ridden. I have to lean against a wall to keep upright.
“Lily?”
Ellis, the head nurse, is standing beside me. I didn’t even hear her approach.
“You okay?” she asks, brows furrowed with worry.
“I’m fine,” I lie, straightening up. “Just catching my breath.”
She studies my face for a moment longer, then shakes her head. “No, you’re not. Your hands are shaking, and you’re pale as a ghost.” She places a firm hand on my shoulder. “You’re done for the day, Lily.”
“What? No, I’m fine. We’re swamped. You need me here.”
“You’re panicking. This”—she gestures toward the burn victims—“is too much. You don’t need to relive it.”
I open my mouth to argue, but she cuts me off.
“Go home, Lily. That’s not a suggestion. I understand.”
No, you don’t, I want to scream. She must assume this is about Daniel, about how he died. But it’s about another man…
I can’t complete the thought as guilt and shame burn through me.
“I have to go now.” Ellis pats my shoulder. “You okay on your own? Can you make it home?”
I nod and stumble to the locker room. I change out of my scrubs in a daze.
Outside, the ambulance bay is a beehive of activity: rigs coming and going, the air hot, the winds strong.
The sky is still blue overhead, but in the distance, it has that strange orange glow that means the fires are getting closer to the city.
I walk to my car and fumble with the keys, my hands shaking so badly I nearly drop them. Once inside, I sit motionless, gripping the steering wheel, the only solid thing in a world gone liquid with fear.
I should go home. Pick up Penny at her after-school program. Pretend everything’s normal. But I can’t. Not when every cell in my body is screaming that something’s wrong.
I grab my phone and call Josie.
“Hey,” she answers on the second ring, her voice cheerful.
“Josie,” I manage, and something in my tone must alert her because she drops the lighthearted greeting.
“What’s wrong?” she demands. “Are you okay?”
“I need you to pick up Penny.” My voice cracks. “I can’t do it. I’m losing it, Josie. I can’t—please, can you take her?”
“Of course,” she says without hesitation. “But Lily, what’s going on?”
I swallow back tears. “The wildfires. The ER was overwhelmed with burn victims and injured firefighters, and I can’t—I just can’t right now.”
“Okay. I’ll get Penny. But Lily, you shouldn’t be alone. Let me come get you too.”
I shake my head even though she can’t see me. “No. Just take care of Penny, please. I need to be by myself.”
I hang up before she can argue. My hands are still trembling as I start the car, but instead of heading home, I drive straight to Station 27.
I park haphazardly and stumble toward the entrance. The garage bay doors stand open, eerily empty without the massive fire engines that normally fill the space. The station is nearly deserted.
Inside, an administrator is sitting alone behind a desk—an older man with salt-and-pepper hair who looks up in surprise as I enter.
“Can I help you?” he asks, rising from his chair.
“Are the squad back?” I ask, aware of the note of desperation in my voice.
Recognition flickers in the man’s eyes. “You’re Daniel Finnigan’s widow, aren’t you?”
I nod, unsure what to say. He must be wondering what I’m doing here, but I’m well past the point of shame. So I prompt him, “The squad? Are they okay?”
His face falls, and my heart plummets with it. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Last we heard, they were in the worst of it near La Canada. Communications have been spotty, but the report is that they and several other crews had to deploy fire shelters when the wind shifted.”
Fire shelters. The last resort when firefighters have no way out, when they’ve nowhere left to run, when the fire is about to overtake them.
They are trapped in thin foil cocoons that might buy them a few precious minutes if the fire passes fast enough.
Or become their final resting place if it doesn’t.
I thank the clerk, the words hollow and meaningless, and somehow make it back to my car. I drive home on pure instinct, seeing nothing of the road, hearing nothing but the roar of my pulse in my ears.
My apartment is silent when I enter. The sound of my ragged breathing echoes off the walls as I collapse onto the floor, my back against the front door, knees pulled to my chest.
The tears come in waves, hot and unstoppable. My body shakes with them, with the weight of memories of the past and uncertainty for the future pressing me flat against the tiles.
Josh might be hurt. He might be—
I can’t bear to form the word, even in my mind. Instead, I curl tighter into myself and let the tears fall, waiting for news I’m terrified to receive.