12. Alexei #3
The side corridor is narrower, thick with smoke, and littered with broken glass from a shattered interior window.
I keep my footing by instinct, stepping over tangled hoses and chunks of drywall while Maggie’s hand stays locked in my shirt.
The exterior door appears ahead, propped open by a firefighter, and daylight cuts through the smoke like a blade.
Fresh air is twenty feet away.
Then the upper frame above the exit gives a violent groan.
The firefighter by the door shouts a warning.
I see the beam come down before anyone else reacts. I turn my body, putting my back and left arm between Maggie and the falling wood. Pain tears across my forearm, hot and vicious, as the burning edge strikes and slides away. The smell of scorched fabric and skin cuts through the smoke.
Maggie cries out behind the mask. “Alexei!”
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
It is a lie, and she knows it.
Her eyes flood with fear as she tries to reach for my arm. I hold her tighter and keep walking.
The moment we break through the doorway, the noise outside engulfs us. Sirens. Shouting. Animals barking from every direction. Volunteers crying. Firefighters calling orders across the parking lot. The world is too bright after the shelter’s smoke-filled dark.
Maggie drags in a broken breath as I carry her onto the pavement.
A paramedic rushes toward us. “Set her here.”
“No,” Maggie coughs, trying to twist in my arms. “Jules.”
“He’s behind us,” I assure her.
Luka emerges with Jules supported between him and the firefighter. Jules’s face is gray beneath soot, and blood marks his temple, but his eyes find Maggie at once.
“There she is,” he rasps. “I told you I was too pretty to die in a supply closet.”
Maggie starts crying then. Silent tears cut clean paths through the soot on her cheeks while the paramedic guides me toward a stretcher. I lower her onto it with care, but she refuses to release my sleeve until Jules is placed on the stretcher beside hers.
“The animals,” she says, her voice raw behind the oxygen mask.
A young volunteer overhears and hurries over with tears streaming down her face. “They’re out, Maggie. All of them. Every dog, every cat, Peanut too. Everybody made it.”
Maggie closes her eyes as relief takes her under. Her shoulders shake, and she covers her face with one soot-blackened hand before the paramedic gently moves it away to keep the mask sealed.
I stand beside her stretcher, one hand wrapped around hers, while the other throbs with pain I refuse to acknowledge. My shirt sleeve has burned away near the forearm. The skin beneath is red, blistered, and already swelling.
A paramedic reaches for me. “Sir, your arm.”
“Later.”
“Now,” Maggie says, her voice weak but stubborn.
I look down at her.
Even on a stretcher with smoke in her lungs, she glares at me as if she can command obedience through sheer will. Under different circumstances, it would almost amuse me.
“Let them look,” she rasps.
The paramedic begins cutting away the ruined fabric from my sleeve while another checks Maggie's blood pressure and asks questions she answers between coughing fits.
Across the parking lot, I catch sight of Sam already sitting in the back of an ambulance, an oxygen mask covering his face while a paramedic examines a deep cut along his forehead. He notices me watching and gives a weak thumbs-up.
I return it.
The ambulance ride to the hospital passes in fragments. Maggie's hand in mine. Her breathing ragged through the oxygen mask. The paramedic asking how far along she might be.
Maggie looks at me then, fear plain on her soot-streaked face.
“Not far,” she whispers.
The paramedic nods with professional calm. “We’ll have them check the baby when we arrive.”
Baby.
The word turns the space inside the ambulance into something fragile and terrifying.
At the hospital, they take us through separate curtains, but I don’t allow them to move me far from her.
A nurse cleans the burn on my forearm while another checks Maggie’s lungs, oxygen levels, and vitals.
Jules occupies the next treatment bay, where he argues with a nurse about whether smoke inhalation affects bone structure.
“It absolutely could,” Jules insists. “My cheekbones are part of my brand.”
The nurse gives him a look over her chart. “Your cheekbones are fine.”
“For now,” he says.
Maggie turns her head toward his voice and manages a tired smile. Seeing it eases the pressure around my ribs a fraction.
A doctor enters Maggie’s bay with an ultrasound machine, followed by a nurse carrying fresh gloves and a folded towel.
Maggie’s fingers find mine before I reach for her. Her grip is weak, but she holds on as if letting go might change the outcome.
“We’ll take a look,” the doctor says gently. “Smoke exposure can be frightening, but your oxygen numbers are improving. This will help us check on the pregnancy.”
Maggie swallows. “Okay.”
I stand beside her bed while the doctor prepares the monitor. Jules’s curtain slides halfway open.
“Do not even think about excludin’ me,” Jules calls, his voice rough but determined.
Maggie lets out a breath that trembles. “Jules.”
“I’m emotionally invested,” he says, then winces when a nurse adjusts his ankle. “Also trapped here anyway, so really, it would be rude.”
The doctor glances at Maggie for permission. Maggie nods.
The machine hums to life. The first image on the screen is a grainy, shadowed image that means nothing to me at first. The doctor adjusts the probe, and Maggie’s hand clenches around mine.
I lower my mouth to her hair and breathe in smoke, antiseptic, and the faint scent of her shampoo beneath it all.
Then a shape comes into view. Small. Fragile. Impossible.
Real.
The doctor smiles. “There’s your baby.”
Maggie holds her breath. I feel it in the way her hand stills inside mine. Then a sound fills the room, rapid and strong, echoing through the quiet space.
Our baby's heartbeat.
I stare at the monitor without moving. I’ve seen violence, death, betrayal, and every brutal truth men try to hide from themselves. Nothing has ever struck me like that sound.
Maggie begins to cry. Her free hand moves to her mouth while tears slide into her hairline.
“The baby?” she asks.
“Heartbeat looks good,” the doctor says. “Size appears appropriate for early pregnancy. We’ll continue monitoring you because of the smoke inhalation, but right now, this looks reassuring.”
Reassuring.
The word is too small for what happens inside my chest.
I bend and kiss Maggie’s forehead, staying there longer than I mean to. Her hand rises to my jaw, her fingers trembling against my skin.
“Our baby,” she whispers.
“Yes,” I answer, my voice low. “Our baby.”
From the next bay, Jules sniffles loudly. “Well, that’s just unfair.”
Maggie laughs through tears. “What is?”
“I almost die in a burning building, and now I have to pretend I’m not cryin’ over a tiny blurry bean on a screen.” He winces as he repositions himself on the hospital bed, then looks toward me with more sincerity than I’ve ever seen from him.
Jules clears his throat. “Thank you for saving us. I would say something deeply heartfelt, but I’m medicated and emotionally fragile, so please accept this limited edition vulnerability while supplies last.”
Maggie lets out a wet laugh.
I hold Jules’s gaze. “You’re family.”
For once, he has no immediate response. Then he blinks hard and looks back toward the monitor. “Well. That was rude. Now I’m definitely crying.”
Maggie squeezes my hand.
Jules points weakly toward the screen, his voice rough with smoke and emotion. “I can’t wait to be the world’s most fabulous uncle.”
Maggie cries harder, and this time she’s smiling.
I look at the tiny shape on the monitor, then at the woman in the bed beside me, alive and carrying my child. Beyond the hospital walls, the shelter burns, an enemy hides behind names and money, and war waits for me to answer.
But for this one moment, I let myself hold on to what survived.