Rare (17 page)

“Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

I jumped down from the back of the ambulance and slammed the door. “Tired of what?”

“This.”

By “this,” of course, he meant him. “Never. Balance, remember?”

Ash sighed. The sound was heavy and world-weary. “It doesn’t feel very balanced to me.”

“It will one day,” I said. “And if you push me away now, what do you think will happen when I need you?”

“Asshole.”

“Yeah, I know, but you love me for it.”

“I do.”

It was about the closest he ever really got to telling me he loved me, but I didn’t mind. I knew he did, and I wasn’t much for platitudes myself.

“Guess I should go knock on that door.”

“I guess so. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

He hung up as the first spots of rain began to fall. I looked up at the sky and let them land on my face. It was probably the most constructive conversation we’d had in days, but for some reason I felt a sense of foreboding. There was something in the air, something I couldn’t shake. As Tim poked his head out of the ambulance to let me know a call had come in, I figured tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough.

I
LISTENED
in silence as the alert for a major incident came through. A packed train had derailed. Dozens trapped and injured, probably a large number of fatalities. It was a mass-incident deployment and every available crew was being called to the scene. I took a brief few seconds to mentally check the whereabouts of everyone I cared about: Ash, Maggie, Joe, Mick… Danni. Then I shut down and got my head in the game. The job sounded bad, really bad, and I knew from experience that the only way to get through it was to put my brain on lockdown.

In the distance, I could hear the wail of sirens as every district in the city began to respond. A prickle of adrenaline ran through me. Fear, excitement—I could never tell. It was a ripple of energy that couldn’t be defined.

Tim looked at me hopefully, his cautious excitement clear. “Can I drive?”

“Not this time, buddy,” I said. “Get yourself ready for some major shit. Whatever’s going down, it’s not going to be pretty. Think of the worst pictures they showed you in training and make it ten times worse.”

Tim nodded grimly, but said no more. The kid had proved himself not to be squeamish, but a call like this would put the young rookie to the test. I hit the lights, put the ambulance into gear, and hoped to God he was ready.

Despite the flurry of activity on the radio, we were only the second ambulance to arrive. The first was from another district, and as I pulled to a stop, I saw the crew was already out and arguing with the fire crew. Not a good start.

I slid out of my seat and hurried over with Tim a heartbeat behind me. I knew the firefighters. They weren’t from my firehouse, but they were stationed close by. I’d worked with them before, and I knew they wouldn’t be yelling at paramedics without a good reason. “What’s going on?”

The lead firefighter turned to me. “Pete, you need to sort this shit out. It’s like a fucking bomb’s gone off down there. We’ve got people trapped, people coming out who need transporting, and this fucknut is telling us he won’t go down there.”

The paramedic spread his hands and spoke slowly, like there wasn’t a major incident exploding around him. “We’re the first crew on scene. Protocol says we need to evaluate and assess how many further crews are needed. If ambulances come and go with no communication, it’s going to be chaos. Besides, I’m not going down there until you declare it safe. I don’t get paid enough for that.”

The firefighter growled before I could intervene. “Fuck your protocol, and fuck your money. We need medics down there now. People are dying.”

On paper, the paramedic was right, but on the street, that theory didn’t mean jack. With Mick at my back, I wouldn’t have thought twice. We’d have left the first crew to whatever they thought their role was and followed the firefighters underground. But Mick wasn’t there and Tim’s silence reminded me that he was an inexperienced rookie. The barely contained panic rolling off a job-hardened firefighter unnerved me. He’d obviously seen something horrific, and taking Tim into a scene like that was risky… perhaps too risky.

Five minutes later, I swallowed my nerves, jammed the hard hat onto Tim’s head and grasped his shoulders. “Do exactly as I tell you and watch where you put your feet. If I tell you to leave someone, leave them. Some people aren’t coming off that train. Do you understand?”

“Got it, boss.”

I took a deep breath and led him underground.

The trek to the derailed train was dark and long, at least half a mile. We pushed past shocked commuters being evacuated. As usual, it struck me as ironic that I was fighting to get to something the rest of the world was running away from.

I smelled the wreckage before I saw it. My stomach churned. It didn’t matter how many years of service I had, the smell of blood and mangled flesh never got any easier to bear. More firefighters passed with the walking wounded. The tunnel was too dark to assess their injuries, but it was kind of irrelevant anyway. Those that needed our attention the most were the ones unable to carry themselves off the train.

Ahead of me, the lights of the cars flickered in the murky gloom. The first three were empty, but beyond them, I could see two that lay at awkward angles. One of them smoked, a barely recognizable tangle of twisted metal. I passed my bags back to Tim, followed the firefighter’s direction, and scaled the side of the first wrecked car to lower myself through a smashed-out window. Tim dropped the kit after me as I raised my flashlight to survey the scene.

What I saw made my heart stop. The firefighter had been right. The scene was a complete bloodbath, like nothing I’d ever seen before. There were bodies everywhere: trapped under debris; pinned to their seats by fallen handrails. The haunting sound of people in the worst pain imaginable filled the air, seeping through my skin and into my bones, imprinting the carnage into my mind for the rest of my days.

I didn’t know where to start.

I turned to Tim, glad the dim light didn’t allow me to see his face. “We need to prioritize. Ignore anyone screaming; they can wait. Check anyone unresponsive for a pulse. If they’re dead, tag them and move on. I’ll be right behind you, so if you make a mistake, I’ll catch it. Don’t stop for anyone, just keep tagging.”

We were down there for hours. For every survivor we found, a dead body weighed them down. Another paramedic crew managed to squeeze their way into the damaged cars, and to make room to treat the living, we had to set up a crude makeshift morgue in one of the abandoned cars. It was hot, oppressive, and with only two flashlights between us, we worked in the dark. Over and over, I called for more resources and backup, but they never came. After all the living had been loaded and carried up by the firefighters, I did a final sweep of the cars and discovered a tagged body that hadn’t been moved to the temporary morgue. I bent over the woman. She was alive, her body bent at an impossible angle, held in place by the weight of the car. Tim’s tag was right, albeit premature. There was nothing I could do. The woman’s torso was almost completely severed from the lower half of her body. Though she was clinging to life, she was going to die, and soon.

The logical part of my brain knew it wouldn’t take long. A minute, if that. I waved Tim past me so I could crouch beside her while her body shut down. She was beyond help, but I didn’t want her to die alone.

She took seconds to die, but it felt like hours. I was horrified when I found myself willing her to hurry up. When she was dead, I shut her eyes. It had always felt wrong to let a body stare at a world they were no longer part of. With that done, I stood to exit the train. Our work was far from done, but for the people lying obliterated around me, it was over.

I came upright and searched the murky darkness for Tim. He wasn’t far away. I began to step over the piles of twisted metal to where he stood with the firefighter who’d been our guide. I was three feet away when the car began to shake. I turned and felt my eyes widen. Inexplicably, through the shattered rear window, I saw the shadowy silhouette of a fast approaching train.

“What the
fuck
is that?”

Ash

T
HE
BRUISE
spreading across his temple looked old, like it had been there a year. It reminded me of the dusky, vintage-style tats the chicks had been digging all year. Roses, hearts, butterflies. I’d done so many of them I could sketch one out with my eyes closed. The ink designs were fashionably faded, done in muted shades, but in the dim light of the hospital, the ominous mark on Pete’s beautiful face was all I could see.

That, and the livid cuts and burns littering his arms. The doctors said the right side of his body had taken the brunt of the accident. He’d suffered a significant blow to the head and a blunt-force trauma to his abdomen. The words meant little to me, but I’d seen the terrifying swathe of darkened flesh beneath his hospital gown. The injury covered his entire right side from his belly to his back; there was more of it than skin. The doctors were preoccupied with his liver, and even to my layman’s brain, it made sickening sense. Nothing could survive a wound like that without being smashed to bits.

I shifted on the stool I’d pulled up close to the bed. They’d offered me a chair, but I needed the discomfort of the hard plastic seat to keep me grounded. Slumped down in the chair, it would be all too easy to let this nightmare take me away. I needed to be close to Pete. I needed to touch him. He seemed so far away from me, I needed to feel him to know he was really there.

Tubes protruded from his wrists, his arms, and even his chest. I avoided them and squeezed his hand. His fingers twitched in response, but to me or the pain he was in, I couldn’t tell. I let my gaze travel over his too-still form. He looked like he was sleeping, his eyes closed and his body slack. If it wasn’t for the periodic crease in his forehead, I’d have been fooled. Unconscious he might have been, but I knew his face better than my own, and I knew he was hurting.

They kept telling me he was lucky, that if he’d been standing a yard in either direction, he’d be dead. When the runaway car, somehow loose through human error or faulty brakes, hit the derailed train Pete was working on, every rescue worker underground had been killed… every soul except him. I always thought I’d know if something happened to him, like a sixth sense connected us. There was no such thing. When I opened the door to the uniformed officials, it felt like the bottom of my world fell out.

The CFD wanted to drive me to the hospital, but I sent them on to get Maggie. I didn’t remember calling Danni, but the officials left and the next thing I knew she was there, sliding her pale arms around me and telling me everything was going to be okay. She’d retreated to the corner of the room when we’d first arrived at the hospital, speaking only when the doctors came in. By some miracle, she seemed to know the questions I couldn’t find the words to ask.

I felt her hand on my shoulder now. It was probably the third time she’d ever touched me.

“Ash? I’m going to see if I can reach Joe again. Can I bring you anything?”

“Can you see if they found Maggie yet?”

“Of course.”

Maggie wasn’t home when the fire department called at her place. They’d left a note and a message on her machine, but I was worried she wouldn’t pick it up, or know what to do when she did. I knew if they didn’t find her soon, I’d have to go and get her myself. It would kill me to leave Pete, but he’d kill me himself if I didn’t take care of his mom.

Danni left. A nurse came in and checked all the machines in the room. I was used to that now; they seemed to come in every ten minutes or so. Most of them didn’t look at me, even though Pete had signed some form that made me his next of kin, but this one came around the bed and stood beside me.

“I’m going to take some blood from Pete. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”

She connected a strange contraption to one of the tubes shoved into Pete’s arm. I felt sick as the vial turned an ominous dark red. “Why do you need his blood?”

“To check his liver function.”

The nurse spoke like I understood the implications of what she’d said. I didn’t, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Or maybe I did. Maybe I needed to know everything. “When will you know?”

“In a few hours. Hopefully his mom will be here then too, and we can update you both together.”

I nodded slowly, reaching again for Pete’s hand. I’d dropped it when the nurse came in. Though Pete had me listed as next of kin, I wasn’t sure what that meant.

Her sharp eyes caught the movement, and she smiled. “Don’t worry too much, honey. I know your Pete; he’ll be all right. He just needs some rest.”

“You know him?”

The nurse rubbed Pete’s arm. The gesture was maternal and sweet. It made my eyes itch. “I split my time between the ER and ICU. Pete’s one of my favorite medics. He’s a strong boy. I know he’ll be okay.”

She left and Pete and I were alone again. I pondered her words as I fiddled with the ID bracelet on his arm. The nurse said he needed some rest, but I doubted she knew how right she was. He’d been exhausted for months. He’d tried to hide it, but I saw it all the same. The way he dragged himself out of bed every day, the way he slept like a dead man when he finally made it home. Add in the stress of the past year and it was no wonder he wouldn’t wake up.

I tore my gaze away and glanced through the tiny window. Unbelievably, the sky was beginning to darken again. Pete had been injured in the middle of the night, but it was dawn by the time I reached him. As I stared through the glass, I couldn’t figure out the time, but it was clear a whole day had passed me by. A whole day… twelve hours, and he hadn’t moved at all. They kept telling me he’d wake up in his own time, but they didn’t seem to know how long it would take. Apparently he had a history of blows to the head—all of them work related. Though it was news to me, I wasn’t surprised. How many times had he come home to me battered and bruised? Too many to count.