Chapter 14Luke
CHAPTER 14
LUKE
I watch in horror as Hailey’s car spins around on the highway in the rain, a branch from the fallen tree hitting the road as she heads straight for the edge. There’s nothing I can do but stare helplessly, my Jeep coming to a screeching halt on the pavement. My heart is in my throat, my adrenaline has spiked, and I sit there listening to her scream through my speaker system as her car goes over the edge. It comes to a sudden halt with a deafening crash.
For one long, god-awful second I’m paralyzed with fear. Fear that she’s about to die. Fear that I’ll never get to kiss her again. Fear that I never got to tell her how I feel about her.
Then I use that fear.
“Hailey, I’m coming!” I yell, and hope she can hear me through the phone as I launch myself into the rain that’s become a torrential downpour.
The only thought that exists is getting her out of there. Her blue hatchback was stopped by a tree that smashed into her rear bumper after spinning around, while the front end balances precariously on a rock. The slope of the embankment is steep, and one move in the wrong direction could send her, and the car, careening straight down a dangerous hill full of trees, boulders, and god knows what else. The tree holding her in position isn’t overly large so there’s no telling if it’ll give under the weight of the car, or how stable the road and hillside are, considering one tree already came down.
I need to get her out. Now.
With the front end caught on a rock, the driver’s window is level with my head when I come to a stop beside it, my feet sliding along wet foliage on the ground. Hailey is staring straight ahead, her chest rising and falling in quick succession. Maybe in shock, terrified by what happened. But I need her to snap out of it so she can help me get her out, which would be challenging on a good day, let alone in the pouring rain.
“Hailey!” I yell as loud as I can, trying the door, even though half of it is caved in. Probably from the damn branch that hit her. “Hailey, roll the window down.”
There’s movement but it isn’t the kind I want to see. All she does is shake her head.
I try a different tactic. “C’mon Freckles! I know it’s scary, but you can do this.”
That’s better. She blinks a couple of times, her eyes moving to me before she looks all around at the scene in front of her. From where I stand, I can see the sharp inhale she takes, and I wince at the terror in her eyes as she brings them back to me.
“Luke!”
“I know, Freckles. It’s okay. I’m going to get you out of there.”
Pulling my keys out of my pocket, I yank off the little device I keep on my keychain at all times. An emergency window breaker and seatbelt cutter. Something every single person should carry.
“Luke!” she screams. “The windows won’t work!”
“Cover your face,” I yell back, putting the device up to the window.
When all she does is stare at me, panic and fear written in the tremble of her chin and the tears in her eyes, my heart clenches.
“Push it back, baby. You can cry when I get you out of there, but right now I need you focused. Work mode, okay? We’re out on a rescue and I need your help with it,” I tell her, trying to get her into a better state of mind. “Cover your face.”
After one last moment of staring at me, she turns away, giving me her shoulder and part of her back. Before I have a chance to puncture the window, the car shifts, groaning against the tree as it slips a few inches.
“Fuck.”
Pushing the little device into the window to puncture it, the glass shatters into tiny little dull pieces, exactly what the tempered glass is supposed to do. A second later I’ve got the window cleaned out, some of it falling onto Hailey, but I’ll take it.
“C’mon, let’s go,” I command, sticking the window breaker into my pocket before I’m halfway through the window, grabbing her under the arms as she undoes her seatbelt. Thoughts don’t exist right now. Only a growing sense of urgency to get her the hell out of this death trap.
When the car moves again, this time more than a few inches, we both pause, frozen, our eyes meeting. There’s fear in hers, but I can see determination overriding the emotion. She knows what’s at stake. Probably more than most people, given our line of work, and what we both see on a daily basis. She doesn’t want to become one of those victims any more than I want her to.
“Now, Freckles!”
My heart is lodged in my throat, and I can’t push the fear away, or tamp it down. I can only be one with it as I pull her towards me. Hailey works in sync with me, maneuvering herself from behind the wheel and through the window, but she isn’t quite clear of it when there’s a loud cracking sound from the back of her car, and she screams.
A broken leg is better than death.
Using every bit of strength and muscle I possess, I yank her the rest of the way out of the window. The power in my move flings us both backwards to the ground, and then we’re a tangled mess of arms and legs, rolling a few times through brush and rock on the side of the steep hill before a large bush stops our descent.
Both of us gasp for breath, my body sandwiched between the bush and Hailey’s. There’s another sound that mixes with our breathing and the rain, and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s her car hitting something solid. A tree. A boulder. I don’t want to know.
Hailey could have been in that fucking car.
My arms, somehow still around her, tighten at the thought. Not in the car. Not wrapped around a tree. Not dead. Here. With me, in my arms.
“Holy shit,” she breathes.
“Yeah.”
Pressing my lips to the top of her wet hair, I allow myself a moment to lay there and be grateful she’s okay instead of down with the wreckage.
“You good?” I ask, leaning back enough that I can see her. “Is your leg hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
We’re not out of the woods yet. With the amount of rain the last few days, the instability of the hillside where the original tree fell, and now where the car went down, I don’t trust this part of the mountain. More downed trees, mudslides, the road washing out—they’re all possibilities. We need to get the hell out of here as soon as possible. Hailey must realize it too, because she’s moving before I tell her to, getting to her feet with me close behind.
We make a mad scramble upwards, having rolled farther than I thought. I’m just thankful I was following her up the mountain on our way home. If I hadn’t waited for her to leave in the parking lot, I don’t want to think about what would have happened.
By the time we crest the hill, the rain has lightened a little, but it’s still coming down. I think maybe that’s why I don’t hear anything to begin with. There’s a little popping noise, that wasn’t there a few seconds ago, that’s getting louder with each crackle.
Hailey hears it too. She looks around, the same as me, trying to figure out where it’s coming from. Then movement in my peripheral vision has me turning to see a tree to our left, just across the highway, starting to come down.
“Hailey, run!” I shout.
She’s already moving, but as her feet hit the pavement, she stumbles. I’ve got an arm around her waist before she falls, and I half carry, half drag her towards the Jeep as fast as I can as a tree slams down over the first one that toppled over.
It’s thunderous as it hits, the sound reverberating through my body, creating a new adrenaline spike. There’s more popping and cracking, and I realize too late that it’s coming straight for us, not looking to give any mercy whatsoever.
I throw Hailey ahead of me and dive after her, covering her body with mine as we hit the pavement at the front of my Jeep. The sound of the tree is more horrific than both the other trees combined, probably because it happens right next to us. The thud is sickening, but it’s nothing in comparison to the way the ground seems to vibrate beneath us from the impact of the landing.
“Luke?” Hailey cries out.
“Yeah, Freckles?”
She’s panicked as she fearfully asks, “Are we alive?”
I’m not sure why, but it makes me smile. I press my lips to the side of her head for a brief moment. “Yeah, we’re alive.”
Our resting spot is beside the driver’s side of my vehicle, the tree having fallen parallel to the front of it. I look down our bodies to where it landed, and curse. From where we ended up, if I were as tall as Brody, I wouldn’t have a leg. Heck, I might not have either of them. They’d be crushed by the tree, and this would be a different story altogether.
Pop. Crack. Pop. Pop. Crack.
Hailey and I both turn our attention to the trees at the side of the road. We know what that sound means now. Without prompt, we’re on our feet.
“Get in the Jeep,” I bark, opening the driver’s side door to practically push her into it.
She’s in and across in a second, and then I’m in the driver’s seat. It’s no more than thirty seconds since we were on the ground, but it’s still too long when it comes to mother nature.
Throwing the vehicle into reverse, I punch the gas and turn the wheel just as a fourth death timber comes hurtling towards us. Back in drive, I watch in the rearview mirror as it lands. Right where we were laying only moments ago.
When I look back to the road, familiar red lights are flash in the distance as they come racing towards us. Relief like I’ve never felt floods me, joining the adrenaline that’s been pumping furiously since I saw that first tree come down in front of Hailey. When the fire engine is closer, I hit the brake and throw the Jeep into park.
“Stay in the car,” I tell Hailey, already out of my seat. The rain has picked up again, but at this point I don’t care. We’re both soaked to the bone.
The engine slows down with my Jeep parked in the middle of my lane and I’m standing on the road, in front of it. I wave them down and watch as the window on the driver’s side descends.
“Roads blocked. Bunch of trees just came down,” I tell the driver, not bothering with a greeting. “A car is at the bottom of the mountain, but I’ve got the driver.”
A driver I need to check on. There was no time to do that before, but now that we’re further away from the toppled trees, I need to make sure she’s in one piece.
The thought sends a new burst of fear rushing through me. What if something hit her when she slammed on her brakes? Or what if her seatbelt caught her over the abdomen in the wrong place when she banged into that tree? Then I was telling her to jump out the window, and then we rolled down that fucking hill. What if she had an injury that I didn’t know about and I made it worse?
Forget rational thought. I know the first thing is to ensure life is preserved, then to treat injuries. Even if it is internal bleeding and could cause death. I did everything right, but all my brain can focus on is what ifs.
“Jesus man. Is she alright?” the driver says as he opens his door. They’re all opening their doors to jump out and assess the scene. “We were on our way to another call.”
I’m already running towards Hailey. Yanking her door open like I’m the Hulk and it’s a little piece of tin, I block her path of getting out as she turns towards me. Scooping her face in my hands with a gentleness I didn’t think I’d possess in this moment, I look her square in the eyes.
“What hurts?” I demand. Her color isn’t horrible which is a good sign. Maybe a little pale, but that could be all the drama that’s unfolded.
She shakes her head, but she’s focused and alert when she responds, “I – I don’t know. I can’t tell if there’s anything. There’s too much adrenaline still.”
My hands start moving down her neck, ready to do a thorough assessment. I realize that all she’s wearing is a t-shirt and I bite back the urge to demand to know where her jacket is. I know where it is. The same place she could have ended up. At the bottom of a fucking mountain, possibly very dead.
“Luke!”
My name is nearly a scream from her lips. It pulls me back to reality. I have the feeling that isn’t the first time she’s said it, especially the way she has hold of my face in her hands. I concentrate on her, giving her my full attention.
“You gotta let them look me over,” she says gently, nodding towards the firefighters that are standing beside the Jeep. “Let them do it.”
I frown at her. I’m perfectly qualified to look her over. I have no idea who those guys are, or how long they’ve been on the job.
Hailey takes my hands, which only made it as far as her upper arms, and pushes them in front of me. I look down to see what she sees and suck in a harsh breath. I’m shaking like a leaf.
“Go take a few deep breaths, okay? I’m okay.” Letting my hands go, she reaches up and takes my face again. “You didn’t let anything happen to me. You did your job. Now let them do theirs. Okay?”
A large bubble of thick, hot emotion rises in my throat, clogging any words that may have wanted to come out. I know she sees it when she smiles softly.
Lifting herself up from the seat a couple of inches, she presses a kiss to my cheek, whispering, “Go breathe.”
Nodding, I swallow the lump and back out of the doorway, moving away a few feet. I can watch over them, make sure they’re doing a good job with her. That they aren’t being rough, or causing any damage to things they may not see.
When they let her jump out onto her own two feet, though, I nearly rage since they haven’t checked her over yet. Which is absolutely ridiculous considering, logically, I would be the same way if a patient told me they could walk.
I’m losing my grip on the situation. Glancing down at my hands, they’re still trembling, and I know it’s a combination of reality hitting, and the adrenaline slowing. I need to focus on something. I need to get some of this out. My head is spinning with everything that happened, everything that could have happened, and maybe a few things that should have happened.
Pulling my phone out, I go through my contacts until I find Nate, hitting the call button without giving it much thought. It rings three times before he comes on the line, sounding as awake as when we left him earlier. I can’t believe that was only a little while ago. Has it even been an hour?
“What are you still doing awa?—”
“Nate,” I cut him off sharply.
My tone must say it all because the friendliness dissipates and gives way to seriousness. “What happened?”
Those two dang words are so loaded. There’s a multitude of ways I could answer. I should probably just give him a full report. At least that’s what the firefighter portion of my brain tells me to do.
But this isn’t work, and I’m not calling him because he’s my boss.
I’m calling him because he was the first one here that was nice to me. I’m calling him because he has a woman at home. I’m calling him because out of everyone at the firehouse, I know he’s the one that will understand the most, and will tell me what I need to hear.
“I almost fucking lost her, man,” I choke out. That emotion I swallowed a few minutes ago rises quickly in my throat, goes into my nose, and wells in my eyes. I press my finger and thumb into my eyes to keep it there.
He sounds like Hailey when he says, “Deep breath.”
I follow his direction, inhaling deeply, just like we tell our patients, then slowly let it out.
“Good. Now start from the beginning. What happened?”
I tell him everything. From what happened to the what ifs running through my head. He asks a few questions, but mostly just listens, for which I’m grateful. By the time I’m done, my hands are no longer shaking, and I’m feeling more in control again. This day is long from over, and talking this out, telling Nate what happened and where my head is at, is exactly what I needed to get through the rest of it.
An ambulance pulled up at some point while talking to Nate. They loaded Hailey into the back of it, and I’ve been hovering close, but have given them privacy by standing to the side so I can’t actually see her at the moment.
“Hey!” A female voice says, and I look over to find a paramedic with her head poking out of the door. “You Luke?”
“Nate,” I say into the phone, “I gotta go. The paramedic needs me for something.”
“Go. Keep me updated. I’ll stay up.”
I don’t bother with a goodbye, ending the call as I make my way to the ambulance. “Yeah, that’s me. How is—what the hell happened?” I screech, my voice shooting up four or five octaves to a very unbecoming pitch when I see Hailey sitting on a stretcher, oxygen over her face, hyperventilating.
Jumping into the back of the ambulance, I kneel down beside the stretcher, taking her face in my hands. I expected to see a frantic look in her eyes, but they’re just wide and scared as she stares at me. She’s trying to suck in a full breath, it’s just not coming to her like it should. I look at the paramedic.
“She’s having a bit of a panic attack,” the woman says. “I tried to give her something to calm her down, but she wouldn’t take it. Just asked for you.”
“I’m right here,” I tell her, running my thumbs over the parts of her cheek that aren’t covered. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
My words seem to help because the next breath she tries to take is a full one. I nod encouragingly at her, sliding my hands down along her neck, then her arms, which are covered by a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, until I reach her hands. Taking them, I bring them to my lips, pressing a kiss to the back of each one before I just press my mouth against her fingertips, leaving them there as I stare at her, waiting for her breathing to fully return to normal.
It doesn’t take long.
“There we go,” the paramedic says cheerfully. “Sometimes all it takes is a familiar face.”
“How is she?” I ask, glancing at the woman.
The paramedic nods in response. “Looks pretty good. A few scrapes and bruises, but her vitals are good. I’d still like her to go to the hospital, though.”
“I’m fine,” Hailey says, pulling the mask down.
I push it back in place, agreeing with the paramedic. “I think it’s a good idea. Just go make sure nothing internal is going on.”
“Luke, I’m a paramedic, I think I’d know,” she retorts, frowning at me.
“The only thing that means is you make the worst patient.” I bite back a laugh when she scowls at me, noticing how she doesn’t deny it.
“Fine, but do I need to go in the ambulance?” she whines.
I raise myself high enough to press a kiss to her forehead. “Please just do it for me. It would make me feel a lot better. You know you can refuse, but I’ve already aged twenty years today. This might give me five back.”
Hailey spares the paramedic a glance, then sighs and nods her acceptance of the situation. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“I’ll be right behind you in the Jeep,” I promise her, giving her one last kiss to the top of the head as I get to my feet.
Jumping out of the ambulance, I realize the second paramedic on scene is standing at the door, and has probably been there for a few minutes. She smiles at me.
“I’ve taken care of her before,” she says, which has me frowning. “She was in worse shape then. Might be where some of the anxiety comes from. We’ll make sure she’s okay for the ride to the hospital.”
“Huh,” I grunt dumbly because I’m not sure what else to say, but something about it itches my brain, like there are pieces I’m not putting together. “Take good care of her. I’ll be following you guys.”
The second, older lady nods reassuringly to me and closes the doors while I turn and head to my Jeep. I don’t like knowing Hailey has been in the back of an ambulance prior to this, for something other than work. Then again, I’m sure there’re a lot of things that Hailey has been through in the last ten years I wouldn’t like to know.