I focus on that, on the strong beats, instead of looking at the people on the floor. Instead of looking at the blood, or smelling the smoke, or having a panic attack.
“Are you okay?” Brand asks me, looking down at me. His face is confident, his voice calm. “You’re going to be all right.”
I nod because I believe him, because how could I not trust a voice that sure of itself?
But then it doesn’t matter.
Because out of nowhere, I hear a nauseatingly loud crack, and all of a sudden, the wall next to us comes down in a mass of metallic shrieks and groans and shards.
It shears my arm, and I can smell the blood.
I’m knocked free from Brand’s safe grasp, yanked from his arms, and I’m falling, falling, falling.
Then it all goes black and stays that way.
Chapter Two
Brand
Fucking son-of-a-bitch.
White hot pain rips through me, from my hip to my ankle. I grimace, trying to pull myself out of the wreckage, to no avail. I’m the one who is stuck now, firmly and painfully in a mountain of broken wood and cinder.
The smoke surrounding me brings back instant memories of Afghanistan, of bombs and blood. But I shake those images away. I’m not there. I’m here. And I’ve got to keep my wits.
The girl.
The girl I was carrying, the girl with the dark red hair and big blue eyes. She trusted me. I saw it on her face.
I twist to find her, scanning everything around me. And then I see her thin arm, sticking out of a pile of rubble. I know it’s hers because of the turquoise bracelet on her small wrist.
“Help!” I call out to the EMTs who are now on the scene. One hears me, and rushes my way, but I wave him toward the girl.
“Get her first!” I tell him. “She’s under that shit. Get her first. It’s crushing her.”
He does as I ask, and it takes two of them to dig her out. I watch them carry her out, I watch how her eyes are still closed, I watch them stretch her limp body onto a waiting gurney before they come back for me.
Fuck.
“Thank you,” I tell them sincerely. They gingerly move the wood and the drywall and the twisted metal that is holding me down, before they roll me onto a stretcher.
“I’m fine,” I try and tell them, as I attempt to get up.
But I can’t get up. My left leg is twisted beneath me, my foot turned an unnatural way. I stare at it, aghast and astonished, noticing the way my knee is turned out, while my ankle is turned in.
Fuck.
I don’t feel the pain, so I know I’m in shock. I drop back against the stretcher, as they wheel me toward a waiting ambulance.
My leg was shattered in Afghanistan. I had multiple surgeries, months of physical therapy and I was only just starting to walk without a limp. And for what? To have it annihilated again? Here in fucking Angel Bay?
Fucking hell.
They load me up and close the door and I stare at the white metal for a second before I close my eyes. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.
But it’s real.
The sirens, loud and wailing, tell me that.