The Rebuilding Year (31 page)

Mark inched downward in lurching fractions. Ryan held the rope, held his breath. The boy’s feet were above him, and closer, and then he put a hand on one thin ankle. “Keep coming,” he said. “Almost there.” Two ankles, and now he’d catch any fall. He guided the boy’s feet inward, and then Mark’s grip was sliding. But he was in Ryan’s hands and the slide brought him inside the sill and against Ryan’s body.

“Oh Jesus.” Mark was shaking. “Oh Jesus. I
never
want to do that again.”

“Well, not without a real rope,” Ryan said lightly, an arm around him. “And yeah, maybe a net. So, Spiderman, ready to find a way out?”

“No kidding.”

“Let me go first.” Ryan led the way through this new space. Off to the right, the ceiling was beginning to catch, probably under the burning cabinets above. To the left, he spotted a door. It was locked, but the catch was in the door handle. He unlocked it, and laid a hand flat on the surface. Cool. He pulled it open. “Come on.”

They burst out into the hallway. Ahead and to the right, smoke hazed the air. The left looked marginally better. “This way.” Fifty feet down the hall, and he found a staircase. This door was cool too. He pulled it open.
Stuffy, smoky, but not too bad.

“Looks okay,” he said. “Move, kid, go fast and steady. And stay low. I’m right behind you.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Just go.” They were on the stairs. Down was always harder on the knee than up. The last thing Ryan needed was to fall. “Mark, I need you to go down as quickly as is safe. Get out, find the firefighters, tell them exactly where I am then find your dad. Can you do that?” Ryan gimped down slowly, knuckles white on the rail. Mark was keeping pace with him.

“I want to stay with you.”

Smoke drifted up the stairs, getting thicker. “Mark, the best thing you can do is send the guys with the gear up here after me. Okay?”

“Fuck! Okay. Just don’t stop until you’re out. Promise.”

“Are you nuts? I hate fire.” Ryan’s breath was coming hard. “I’m hurrying here, in my own way. Stay low and get gone.”

Mark clattered ahead, feet swift on the stairs. Ryan sighed. Just himself now, and the leg, and the smoke, and four more fucking flights. Each step got harder. He must have wrenched his back or something, because he could feel the pull up his arm and across his shoulders. He started coughing and couldn’t stop. He had to pause for a moment, doubled over. Then he kept going. The firefighters met him on the last step.

One of them reached for him, but he shook them off. “I’m fine. I’m out. Be careful up there, guys. You’ve got alcohol, oxygen tanks, maybe hydrogen, some bacterial biohazard, and no water.”

“Fucking lovely,” the lead man muttered through his mask. “Anyone else in here?”

“Don’t know for sure.” For a bare instant Ryan remembered what it was like to be one of them, the adrenaline and the sense of purpose. But his throat was raw and his chest was tight, and really all he wanted now was to get outside and find John.

Ryan coughed as he went past them and out into the cold, clean, blessedly thin, breathable air. It turned out to be a side door, with a fine drift of snow dusted over the steps. All around, the snow-covered grass was bright under the lights. Just two steps down, two more steps and he’d be clear. And he felt it happen.
Shit, not now!
But as the knee went out, he was caught in a familiar hold. Ryan looked up at John, and grinned manically. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
 

Chapter Sixteen

Ryan was filthy, covered in soot, reeking of burned hair and plastic. John had never held anything so wonderful.

He pulled Ry in close and just shut his eyes for a moment. He would never forget seeing Ryan hanging by one arm over that five-story drop. And the moment when the cane fell from his hand. John saw the downward motion, and for one heart-stopping instant thought it was Ryan falling. And there was nothing he could do from below, even as he reached up to catch. And then the cane just missed his arm, and Ryan pulled himself up to the window.

In his arms, Ryan coughed, a wet, harsh sound. John stepped back, keeping an arm around his shoulders. “Come on. You need the paramedics.”

“I’m fine,” Ryan said, still coughing.

“Sure you are. But Mark is there and he’ll want to see you.” John guided his boyfriend toward the ambulance, parked under a streetlight. Ryan leaned on him heavily. The knee was obviously not good. John shifted his grip to give more support.

A paramedic hopped out of the back of the truck as they approached and hurried toward them. “Where are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.

“He probably inhaled a bunch of smoke,” John started.

“No, you. The blood.”

“Oh.” John looked down at himself. “It’s not mine. It’s from the boy who was shot.”

“How is Patrick?” Ryan rasped.

“Still alive when the ambulance pulled out,” John told him.

“What about that guy?” the paramedic interrupted, pointing at Ryan’s foot.

John looked down. In the snow around Ryan’s boot, red splashes were spreading.

“Shit! Ry?”

“I don’t feel anything,” he said. But he didn’t protest as the paramedic took hold of him from the other side, and they helped him over to the back doors.

Mark was inside, sitting with an oxygen mask on his face. He yanked it off to say, “Ryan! Are you okay?”

The second paramedic firmly reseated the mask over Mark’s nose and mouth, as Ryan was lifted up and onto the gurney. Ryan muttered, “Ouch. Damn it,” and rolled on his side. John stood in the doorway as the two men bent over Ryan, attaching leads to his chest, a clip to his finger, who-the-hell-knew what kind of lines and monitors. Ryan managed to say, “Don’t worry, Mark. I’m good,” before he got his own oxygen mask.

John peered over one man’s shoulder as the paramedic slit Ryan’s jeans up the leg. From boot-top to just below the knee a deep bleeding gash marked Ryan’s calf. The paramedic quickly moved to apply a pressure wrap. “That’s going to need stitches,” one of them said.

“How bad is it?” John asked anxiously.

“Not too,” the other man said. “They might want to top him up a pint, but it should heal. We need to get both these guys in for chest films though.”

“I want to come along,” John said urgently.

“Sorry, no room,” the man said. “You’ll have to follow us.”

Ryan tugged off his mask to say, “John, get a cab. Don’t drive.”

John frowned. “What?”

Ryan coughed hard, and managed to say, “Look at your hands”, before being forcibly masked again. John looked down.
Well, hell.
His hands were shaking.
Guess I haven’t run out of adrenaline yet.
Or maybe it was just cold. He shuddered, realizing for the first time that he was standing in just his blood-soaked T-shirt. A paramedic caught the motion and tossed him a blanket.

“Wrap yourself up and get somewhere warm,” he directed, “unless you want to end up in the bed next to them.”

In bed next to Ryan sounded really good right now. John stepped back, tugging the blanket around himself. The ambulance doors closed and it pulled off the grass and out onto the road. For a moment John went blank. They were safe. He could stop praying and screaming in his head now. He should do…something else.
Phone. Cab.

A hard grip on his arm turned him. “John Barrett. I should have known you’d be in the middle of this.”

John sighed. “Detective Carstairs.”

“I got a call,” she said. “Arson, gun shots, buildings burning down on campus. And here you are.”

“You have to excuse me,” John said absently. “I need to get to the hospital and see my son and…Ryan.”

Her face became a little less sardonic. “Are they hurt?”

“Smoke inhalation. Cuts. I don’t know. I need to go find out.”

“It was Ryan Ward who called 9-1-1?”

“Yes. Because Mark was inside the fire, but he called me instead.”

Carstairs sighed. “Okay. Listen, wait five minutes and I’ll drive you to the hospital. I need statements from all of you.”

John caught her arm as she turned away. “Mark said it was Dr. Crosby, the guy who runs the lab, who was setting it on fire and shot Patrick.”

“He saw him?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know why?”

“I…we didn’t get that far. It was more important to get him out.”

She nodded. “Okay. Five minutes. I’ll brief my officers here, and then we’ll go see what the real story is.” She looked up at the flames emerging from the upper floors of Smythe. “My car is over there, the blue Taurus. Go sit in it, outside the perimeter. And don’t get blood on my seats.”

John half expected with his luck that the car would be locked, but when he tried the handle it opened. He slid in, keeping the blanket around himself. The interior was blessedly warm. He leaned his head against the door and watched as yet another fire truck arrived. The crews were immediately busy with hoses. At least the hydrant clearly had water. Police officers were stringing tape barriers, to keep onlookers back. In the quiet inside the car, the scurrying men and equipment seemed distant and unreal.

He startled as the other door opened and Carstairs swung herself in. She started the car with a muffled curse.

“You haven’t found Dr. Crosby?” John said.

“Not as far as I know,” she said. “Although it would help if I even knew what the man looks like. Shit, what a mess. It makes no sense. I hope your boy has some good explanation for what’s going on here.”

John shrugged. Right now he didn’t need an explanation. He just needed Mark and Ryan healthy, safe, home. Hell, he’d settle for safe and in hospital for now. Safe and anything.

As she pulled off campus onto the main road, Carstairs turned to him, opened her mouth and then shut it again. She shook her head. “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I’m not going to take some kind of half-assed statement while I’m driving. I can wait fifteen minutes. It won’t kill me.”

John leaned his head back. “I don’t know anything anyway.”
Except how close I came to losing it all.

“Well I hope to hell someone does,” she muttered.

Twice on the drive she took brief phone calls, her end a series of okay’s and get-back-to-me-with-that’s. Once she called someone to get hold of Patrick’s contact information from the student-records office. John closed his eyes and counted breaths. Yelling at her would not make this woman drive faster.

The emergency room was busy, but not frantic. It took Carstairs a few minutes to work her way up to the desk, but then her badge and John’s explanation that Mark was a minor, got them back into the treatment area. Mark and Ryan were in the same cubicle. Ryan lay facedown on the bed. Mark was seated in a chair, but an oxygen mask still covered his face.

“Hey, guys,” John said, as steadily as he could.

Mark’s eyes brightened and he smiled through the plastic. Ryan’s fingers waved in his direction. The doctor was bending over Ryan’s shoulders. He straightened.

“Excuse me. Who are you?”

“I’m the boy’s father,” John said.

“I thought he was.” He pointed to Ryan. “That’s why we put them both in here.”

“I’m the boy’s other father,” John said firmly. “How are they?”

The doctor glanced at Mark, who pulled down the mask. “He’s my real dad,” Mark said. “Ryan’s like my stepdad.”

“Ah.” The doctor shrugged. “Your son is fine. No burns and his oxygen levels are good. The mask is a precaution. We’ll send him down to radiology in a bit here, just to check his lungs on an X-ray, but I expect he’ll be able to go home in a few hours.”

“And Ryan?”

Ryan lifted his head. “I’ll be able to go home in a few hours too.”

“You shut up. I’m asking the doctor.”

“Um, that’s privileged information,” the doctor said tentatively.

“I’m fine,” Ryan said. “A few scorch marks, and the cut which I don’t even feel since it went through the old scars. I’ll leave when Mark is ready.” He coughed harshly.

“He should stay the night on oxygen,” the doctor said, capitulating. “The cut needs sutures and I want to run IV fluids. He lost some blood.”

“I freaking hate hospitals,” Ryan muttered.

“Tough shit.” John stepped over to him and looked down at Ryan’s bare back.
Youch!
Patches of small red blisters dotted his shoulders. “You’ll follow doctor’s orders if I have to sit on you.”

Ryan rolled an eye at him, and John could almost hear the comment he bit back. Something like,
“Sounds good to me.”
It sounded good to him too. But once Ryan was healthy, not now.

“What can I do?” John asked.

“You can tell your son to talk to me,” Carstairs interrupted.

“And who are you?” the doctor demanded.

She flipped her badge at him. “York PD. I have a man supposedly running around out there shooting people. If this kid won’t die without the mask, I need his statement.”

The doctor hesitated, but then said, “He should be okay. But, Mark, if you feel out of breath or your chest is tight, you put that oxygen right back on.”