Richard

“Paging Doctor Powell. Doctor Powell, please call extension_._._._”

The intercom blared through the linoleum-lined hallway, but I couldn’t have cared less about what it had to say. I hated hospitals. Ever since my stepmother, Nancy, had gone the way she had—withered, gaunt, with tubes sticking out of her nose and her arms—I couldn’t see hospitals as anything other than death houses.

The worst part, I think, is all the damn waiting, sitting outside while doctors and nurses poke and prod, asking the same questions over and over without ever giving any answers. I remembered the way my dad had sat in the waiting room time after time whenever they’d hospitalize Mom for her treatments, the look on his face: hopelessness.

And now I was back, sitting where he’d been while Mom turned into a hollowed-out husk, powerless to even lift a finger to help her.

Things hadn’t gotten any better after she’d passed. Dad started drinking, back to the same old self he’d been after my birth mom had left. Nancy had breathed life into him, and for once, I hadn’t had to pick him up off the couch and pull him back to bed. Her effect on him was probably why I’d come to love Nancy the way I did—the way a son loves his own mother. She showed me that I wasn’t the only one who cared what happened to Jim.

Fuckin’ Jim.

This time, the whiskey made him mean when before he’d just been pathetic. He’d cuss and scream, pour all of his blame and hatred on Tanya and I until I couldn’t take it anymore. I screamed back, argued, and fought until both our voices were hoarse and Tanya was crying into my shirt. I remembered the anger, the resentment. But more than that, I remembered the first time he hit me.

He had come home late—which wasn’t out of the ordinary back then—reeking of booze and cigarettes. I’d put Tanya to bed hours before and waited at the kitchen table, my jaw set and ready for the screaming match that was about to happen. He started in on me as soon as he came into the kitchen, yelling and screaming about how I wasn’t worth a damn, about how everything that had happened was all my fault. How Nancy’s death was all my fault.

None of it made sense, obviously. Not a whole lot I could do about her cancer. So I yelled back, like always, but that time he thought he’d teach a lesson to my left eye.

I don’t remember much after that. Just the pain, then the sound of his head hitting the oven door as I crumpled to the floor. I’d hit him back, hit him so hard that I might have even broke his nose.

Then suddenly I was outside, walking. I couldn’t even remember how long I’d been walking for—minutes? Hours? Before I knew it, I was on my friend Chuck’s doorstep, asking if he had a spot on his couch I could crash on for a while.

I’d never gone back. Never even bothered to try talking to my dad again. As far as I’d been concerned that part of my life was buried, even the shame I’d felt for leaving Tanya back there with that asshole.

She must fucking hate me, I thought. Hell, I hated myself for what I’d done. If there was a shittiest stepbrother of the century award, I should have probably put my name in for consideration. And who the hell knew what Jim had told her all these years? Who knew if she’d believed him?

Shit. I couldn’t believe how much she’d changed—how much of a woman she’d become. In my head, all I could imagine was the pudgy little ten-year-old, smiling at me while we walked home from school together after I picked her up. That wasn’t her now, though. Now Tanya was_._._._taller. Slender, but with curves that could knock a man out. She weighed almost nothing, but even from the brief time I’d held her in my arms, I could tell she was all muscle.

That hair. Those lips. Those eyes. I hadn’t even recognized her. Had actually, shamefully been thinking about cashing in my “I saved your life” card and fucking her in the moment before I went back into that goddamned inferno. Now that I knew she was my stepsister, that urge should’ve gone away.

Why the fuck hasn’t it, though?

I glanced over toward the door to Tanya’s room, movement drawing my gaze as a nurse in blue scrubs gently closed the door after herself. Our eyes locked and she make a beeline right for me.

“Mr. Cole?” she asked, a tight smile tugging at her lips. It was the kind of smile you give someone you’d rather not be talking to.

“Gunner Cole.” Mr. Cole was what peopled called Jim. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“So far, we think your sister is going to be fine,” she said. I let out a sigh of relief. “They haven’t found any soot in her lungs The worst she has is just some minor burns on her palms, and her bloodwork is what you’d expect after all that smoke inhalation.”

Well, that was all good news. “Can I go in and see her?” I asked.

“Your sister has gone through a lot today, Mr. Cole. I think letting her rest might be the best—”

“I haven’t seen her in a long time,” I interrupted. “Years, actually. And when I pulled her out of that fire_._._._”

Who was I kidding? When I pulled Tanya out of that fire, I was just in it for myself. One more rescue. One more life saved to mark on my wall. It was all about me.

It wasn’t until the phone call from the hospital that I’d realized just what a dick I was, how much of a fucking asshole, piece of shit I’d turned out to be for her. I’d probably disappointed her just as much as Jim had, over the years. Maybe worse.

I ran my hand through my hair. “I’d just—I’d really like to be able to see her. Please?”

The nurse looked at me for a long time, almost like she was sizing me up, deciding whether or not it was worth it. But after a while she sighed and stepped away, waving me through.

“You’ve got a few minutes. But she needs rest.”

“Thank you_._._._” I glanced down at her nametag. “Claudia.”

“Mmmhmm,” she replied, retreating to the nurse’s station.

The curtain was closed when I came into the room, blocking my view. Despite what the nurse had said, a bit of dread crept into the pit of my stomach. Images of my stepmother lying in that hospital bed all those years ago flashed before my eyes and a chill seized my heart.

“Tanya?” I whispered. They’d given her a private room—thank God. I don’t think I could have dealt with having some stranger sit in while I tried to_._._._to do what, exactly? Apologize? Was there even an apology for doing something as terrible as leaving her to be abused by my asshole of a father? And hell, I’d done it again, didn’t I? I’d left her outside that apartment.

I should’ve stayed. I should’ve protected her. Instead I ran off to play hero to a bunch of other people while she still needed my help_._._._

No… I couldn’t think that way. I’d pulled six people out of that fire. Two kids. I’d have gone back in even if I had recognized her. It’s my job… It’s my responsibility.

“Gunner?” Her voice was hoarse, raspy, like she’d been smoking since she was eight. “Is that you?”

It took me a moment to steel my nerves again. “Yeah,” I said, slowly pulling the curtain aside.

God, she was so pretty, even lying there in the hospital bed. It had been impossible to see with her face covered in ash and soot, but now that she’d been cleaned up, I could see the woman that my stepsister had become.

Instead of the little girl I’d put to bed every night, I saw a fully grown young woman, her cheekbones and slender jaw reminding me of how Nancy had looked when she and my father had first gotten married. Those had been good times for us all. Looking at Tanya was a bittersweet reminder of what could have been. How the hell did I fail to see it when I pulled her out of the fire?

“My hero,” she said, her smile lighting up the room as I took a seat next to her bed. “Who’d have thought my big brother would be saving people from burning buildings for a living?”

“You know me. Always looking for trouble, right?” I tried to look cheerful, but my smile faltered as Tanya tried to push herself up in bed with her bandaged right hand.

“I can’t believe it was you,” she said, doing her best to make it seem like she wa

sn’t in any pain. “I had to fight with the nurse to get a call out to your station. When you went back into the building… I thought I might lose you again.”

Whatever she was feeling, emotional or physical, she was hiding it well. Her face remained stoic. I remembered the way our mom had done the exact same thing when she got sick. “Jesus, Gunner, when did you decide you wanted to be a big damn hero?”

I shrugged, toying with a frayed thread poking out of the arm of the chair. This wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I thought she’d yell. Cry. Scream at me to leave her the hell alone. But here she was, a few seconds shy of being burned to a crisp and asking me how the hell my life was. What was I supposed to say to her?

“Come on,” she prodded, “I know you don’t just wake up one day and say ‘I want to be a fireman.’_”

“I don’t know—I guess I always wanted to save people.”

Since I failed to save you from Dad.

“Well, shit,” she murmured. I could tell they’d given her something to take off the edge—probably morphine. “Now I can tell everyone my stepbrother’s a big, strong fireman. You know, instead of telling them you don’t exist_._._._”

I sighed, running my fingers through my hair as I glanced around the room. I was waiting for her to bring it up—to bring up the way I’d just left her and never even bothered to so much as call her to make sure she was okay.