A Firefighter in Her Stocking

Please, don’t let him be hemorrhaging.

Please, let him be okay.

Please, guide my hands and my mind as I do this.

Oh, God, how could she do this? How could she not? She didn’t want anyone working on Jude other than herself. She needed to make sure everything possible was done, everything.

Sarah intubated Jude, not quite believing she was doing this to him. Her hands shook. She panicked just a little when the tube met more resistance than it should have. Mentally talking her way through what she was doing, she got the tube situated, sighing in relief when she checked placement and it was good.

Heartbeat low but steady. Airway established. Fluids going. Meds going.

Vitals stable for the moment.

She glanced around at the haggard, dirty crew who’d carried Jude into the emergency department. “I’m taking him for imaging to check for internal injuries and fractures. Other than insisting that he wait for the next ambulance, did he say anything particular before he went out? Mention somewhere he was hurting? That kind of thing?”

“We carried him out, but I don’t think he’d broken anything. He’d had the air knocked out of him by the debris that fell on him.”

“What kind of debris?”

“The big kind. Beams, ceiling tiles, dust, who knows what all that was? Visibility was next to nil and we were digging him out as quick as possible because the upper floors of the building were gone. We could hear explosions going off and although that ground floor wasn’t on fire, the weight of everything above was pushing down hard and stuff was falling almost as fast as we could clear it.

“We cleared him of the building. Had him lying on the ground, but he was talking some. He kept saying your name.”

She placed her hand over Jude’s, squeezed the warmth she found there.

“He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?”

Sarah’s gaze met Roger’s. “He has to be.”

Which said it all.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

JUDE’S HEAD HURT. So did his body. But it was a strange hurt, almost as if he were experiencing the pain from somewhere far away from reality.

Breathing wasn’t easy and his lungs felt full of dust and smoke.

The smoke put hazy thoughts into his head. Hazy thoughts of being in a burning building, weighed down in his gear. No, it wasn’t his gear weighing him down. It was the building itself.

On top of him.

He couldn’t move.

He tried to call out for help, but words wouldn’t come. He tried to call for Sarah. He needed to tell her he was sorry, to tell her he wouldn’t let their last conversation be an argument, as it had been with Nina. But no words sounded. Nothing. Just silent screams in his head.

Nina was there, too. Holding her hand out to him, telling him to come with her.

His voice wouldn’t work or he’d have told her he didn’t want to go. Not with her. His place was beside Sarah.

His heart belonged to Sarah.

He tried to tell Nina but smoke choked him, gagging him, making him feel as if he couldn’t breathe.

But he must be because his chest was rising and falling. He could see it doing so, felt the pain with every expansion of his chest.

Even in his fog he realized he shouldn’t be able to see himself, shouldn’t be seeing the rise and fall of his chest. Yet he did.

He was lying in a hospital bed. His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving other than that chest rise and fall.