31. Luke
LUKE
"Action."
The warehouse is hot. Morocco hot — the kind that gets into the walls and stays there. The set is dressed to look abandoned. Broken glass. Rust. A single bulb swinging from the ceiling on a wire.
Danny and I move through the door fast. Our characters have just pulled a girl out of a room she's been locked in for three days. She's between us, one arm each, her feet barely finding the floor. We move toward the back exit. Thirty feet. Twenty.
Behind us I can hear the bad guys realizing what happened. Shouting. Boots on concrete.
Ten feet from the door Danny looks back.
The bad guy raises the gun. Fires.
The shot hits the gas tank against the far wall.
We run.
I hit the door first, one shoulder, it gives, I'm through and I grab the frame and brace for the blast —
It's bigger than it should be.
The force rolls through the building like a wall. The door frame shudders in my hands. Heat across my face. I stay on my feet.
Behind me I hear Danny go down.
I turn around.
He's on the floor just inside the doorway. Not moving. Face down. Still.
"Cut."
Nobody moves for a second.
"Cut! Get the medics!"
I don't remember crossing the floor.
I'm just there, on my knees beside him, my hand on his back.
"Danny."
Nothing.
"Danny."
The medics push past me. I move back. I stand there watching them work and I can't feel my hands.
Someone rolls him over. His face is wrong. There's blood on his forearm. A cut somewhere above his eye.
"Get an ambulance," someone yells.
"Is he breathing?" I hear myself say.
"Sir, step back please."
"Is he breathing?"
"Sir."
They move me back further. I let them. I stand there with the crew forming a loose circle around him and nobody is saying anything.
I look at his hands and I wait.
Someone tells me he's breathing.
He comes around in the ambulance.
Not fully — his eyes open and close, open and close, like he's trying to find something to focus on. But he's there. He's in it.
"Hey," I say.
He looks at me.
"Hey," he says. Barely a word.
"Don't talk."
He closes his eyes again.
I ride the rest of the way watching his chest rise and fall.
The waiting room is the particular kind of awful that all waiting rooms are — fluorescent lights, plastic chairs, a television mounted too high on the wall showing something nobody is watching.
I sit there while they run tests.
I call Jen.
"There was an accident on set," I say. "Danny got hurt. I don't know how bad yet. I'm at the hospital."
"Is he conscious?"
"He came around in the ambulance. Briefly."
"Okay." Her voice is doing something complicated. Staying controlled. "I'm coming."
"Jen, I don't know yet how?—"
"I'm coming."
She hangs up.
I sit in the plastic chair.
The doctor comes out two hours later.
Three bruised ribs. A cut on his forearm that needed stitches. Mild concussion. He needs rest and monitoring but he's going to be fine.
I sit with that for a moment.
Fine.
He's going to be fine.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and stay like that for a while.
I call Anna.
It rings four times.
Voicemail.
I listen to her voice and wait for the beep.
"Hey. Something happened on set today. Danny got hurt — he's okay, he's going to be fine, but—" I stop. Start again. "I just needed to hear your voice. Call me when you get this."
I hang up.
I sit in the waiting room alone.
The television plays something with a laugh track. The fluorescent lights hum. A nurse walks past with a cart.
I needed to hear your voice.
I said it without thinking and I meant it completely.
Jen calls from the airport.
"He's okay," I say before she can ask. "Three bruised ribs, concussion. He's going to be fine."
She goes quiet for a moment.
"I'll be there in an hour," she says.
She comes through the door with both kids. Brian asleep against her shoulder. Penelope wide awake, clutching a stuffed rabbit, looking around the hospital lobby with the serious expression of a two-year-old who has decided this place requires investigation.
I meet them in the lobby.
Jen makes a sound I've never heard from her before.
Not crying exactly. Something underneath crying. Like the air went out of her all at once.
I put my hand on her shoulder.
She covers her mouth with both hands and her whole body shakes. Silent. She's keeping it silent so the kids don't hear, so Danny doesn't hear, but it's moving through her like a current and she can't stop it.
"He's okay," I say. "Jen. He's okay."
She nods but she can't stop shaking.
A sound comes out of her that's almost a laugh.
"He's okay," I say again.
She closes her eyes for exactly one second.
Then she opens them and she's already moving.
"Which room?"
I take her up.
We stop outside his door.
She looks through the small window. Danny is in bed, eyes closed.
She stands there for a long moment with both hands over her mouth and her eyes closed.
Then she takes a breath.
And another.
She drops her hands. Straightens. Wipes her face once with the back of her wrist.
She looks at me.
"Okay," she says.
She opens the door and goes in with Brian and Penelope.
I can hear Danny's voice through the door. Then Jen's laugh — surprised, relieved, the particular laugh of someone whose worst fear just didn't happen.
Then quiet.
I stand in the hallway for a while.
After a few minutes Penelope toddles over and holds up the stuffed rabbit.
"Okay," I say.
I take the rabbit. She takes it back. This seems to be the whole game.
Brian wakes up on the chair against the wall and looks at me with Danny's eyes.
"Is my dad okay?" he says.
"Yeah," I say. "Your dad's okay."
He nods. Goes back to sleep.
Later, through the window in the door, I watch Danny with his family.
Jen sitting on the edge of the bed holding his hand. Brian wedged in beside him, already talking about something, Danny listening with his eyes half closed. Penelope asleep across Jen's lap.
The four of them in a hospital room in Morocco.
I stand in the hallway alone.