To Protect & Serve (28 page)

With a gentleness he had never experienced, she stepped over to him, took the top button in her fingers, and slid it into its rightful place. Down. One button at a time until they were all exactly where they were supposed to be. Then she took the bottom edge of the shirt and carefully worked it under the waistband of his jeans. When she was finished, her gaze locked on his. “Better?”

“Much.”

She turned and began picking up the heavy fire suit from the floor.

“Umm, if it’s not too much trouble,” he said, and when she looked at him, he held up both sleeves to reveal the cuff buttons dangling loose. She looked at it, questioning what she could do about that because it was obvious they were not going to close around the bandages. “You could roll them up,” he suggested softly.

Her skepticism slid into a smile, and she dropped her former task in a heap. A roll at a time, she turned the sleeves until both stopped just at his biceps. Then she stepped back. “Anything else?”

Short of going back 24 hours and changing everything, he could think of nothing. “I guess that’s it.”

Together they crossed out of Bay 14 and back into life.

After a quick check with her buddy at the admissions desk to make sure Dustin’s condition hadn’t changed, they went for breakfast which Lisa had to insist that Jeff eat bite-by-bite until at least half of it was gone. The hands were going to be a problem, but she did her best to make sure they didn’t interfere and remind him anymore than they had to.

When they went back to the hospital and up to the sixth floor, she stayed close to his side. Steady could hardly describe him. His steps swayed just as precariously as his spirit seemed to be.

“Excuse me, we’re wanting to find out about Dustin Knox,” Lisa said at the nurse’s station as determination echoed in her voice. “He’s a firefighter that was brought in last night.”

The lady behind the desk looked at Lisa doubtfully.

“He’s a friend of mine,” Jeff said, pulling the lady’s gaze to him. The next second slid by and then just as she looked about to tell them to go away, the lady glanced down and caught sight of the bandages on his hands.

“Are you…?” She nodded. “Let me check.” Her fingers clicked over the keys. “Mr. Knox is in critical condition. Only close family every two hours for ten minutes.”

“When is the next visit time?” Lisa asked.

“Twenty minutes,” the nurse said, checking the clock.

“Have you gotten in touch with his family yet?” Lisa asked, holding her breath for the answer.

“No, Ma’am. The department’s been overwhelmed with this thing. I’m surprised we even know his name.”

It wasn’t what Lisa wanted to hear, but she smiled anyway. “Okay.” She looked around. “Where do we wait?”

“Through
those doors. There’s chairs. Coffee too although I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Lisa nodded. “Thank you.” What she wanted to do was take his hand, instead she wound her arm under his and guided him across the lobby. “You know, Eve’s machine is going to get tired of hearing from me.”

“I just wish I knew where she was,” he said softly.

“Yeah, so do I.”

Ever since he had seen that boot in the burst of flames, Jeff had tried to prepare himself for this moment, lining up the words in his head just in case he ever got the chance to say them. Now was his chance, but the tears choking out the air wouldn’t let the words come as he stepped over to the unmoving figure on the bed. Dustin lay face down on the white sheets, and Jeff’s own hands were no match for the strips of charred and crimson flesh rippling up and down Dustin’s back. Jeff tried not to look too closely for fear that his composure would collapse completely.

“Hey, Dustin, man. What’s up?” How many times had he said those words? Half a million? But they had never, ever felt like this. Defiantly he pushed that away as he pulled a chair over to the bed. Dustin’s arm, bent at the elbow, wound up next to the short brown hair so that his hand lay right next to his still closed eyes. “Boy, this really
stinks, huh?” Jeff blew the air out of his lungs slowly. “Listen, we’re trying to get in touch with Eve. Lisa’s on perpetual vigil by the phone. We’ll get her here though. Don’t worry. We will. I know she wants to be here with you. I know she would be if she knew…”

He sniffed back the tears and ran his cheek down the plaid sleeve. “You know I know if you can, you’re going to come back to us. So, don’t take this like I’m writing you off or anything, but there’s some things I think you should know. I didn’t get to say them last time, and…” He closed his eyes to stop the words. The breath out was hard
er to control this time. “I want you to know how much I appreciated all those hours we spent together. I know you had Eve, and you didn’t have to make time to include me, but you did. I appreciate that…” Pulling the tears back to him, he sniffed. “…more than you’ll ever know.

“You should also know that I’d never have made it through the academy without you. Back in November… Oh, man, every time I needed someone, you were always there although I think you talked more tha
n you listened.” A small laugh jumped through the center of the tears. “When didn’t you, huh? But I needed that. I really did. There wasn’t a second all the way through the academy that I wasn’t glad to have you by my side.” The tears came again. “Not one single second.”

The words stopped, held by the invisible grip of grief. “Look, we both know this thing’s bad. Yeah, we do. But if God thinks you’ve got some more to do here, then you’ve got to know that I’ll be right by your side every step of the way no matter what.”

A sound at the door and Jeff looked over to where a nurse slipped in. When she saw him, she stopped, unsure of what to do next. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone…”

“That’s okay,” Jeff said, swiping at the tears with his own bandages. “I’d better let him get some sleep.” He looked at the closed eyes one more time, said a silent good-bye, and stepped away from the bed. At the door, he could hardly catch his breath for the tears, and it was at that moment that the nurse laid a soft, comforting hand on his shoulder.

“We’ll do everything we can,” she said gently.

He knew that of course, but as he stepped out into the bright room beyond, he couldn’t help but think their best wouldn’t be enough.

Shoulder-to-shoulder they sat in the little waiting room as the seconds turned to minutes and the minutes turned to hours. At five-thirty Lisa tried to talk him into going home to get some sleep, but she knew even saying the words was pointless. No, he needed to be here, and so she did too.

They had managed to get in touch with Dustin’s fire station, but between the two shifts that fought the fire, there weren’t enough men to spare one at the hospital. At seven Jeff had willed his way to the phone and called his own department. No one he knew was there, but they took a message anyway.

“I think I’ll go try Eve again,” Lisa said just before eight when the waiting began to grate across her nerves. At the pay phone she deposited her dwindling supply of quarters and listened to the phone ring. However, the fourth ring never made it across the wires.

“Hello?” The voice sounded fragile and frightened.

“Eve?”

“Yeah?”

“Eve, this is Lisa.”

“Lisa? I just got home. What in the world is going on?”

“Umm, can you get down to Ben Taub General right away?” Lisa asked, forcing her voice to sound urgent but not dire. “We’re on the sixth floor.”

“How’s Dustin?”

“We’ll talk when you get here,” Lisa said, feeling Eve’s knees go weak in her own. “And Eve? Drive careful. Okay?”

“O… okay.”

Breathing down the tears, Lisa walked back into the waiting area. “She’s coming.”

His gaze grabbed hers. “You got a hold of her?”

“She’ll be here,” Lisa said.

Jeff looked up at the clock. “It’s eight. I’d better go give Dustin the good news.”

Lisa nodded. “Yeah, I’ll wait for Eve.”

“Good news, buddy,” Jeff said when he pulled the chair over. “We finally got in touch with Eve. She’s on her way. You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were looking forward to having her for your nurse for awhile… Yeah, don’t deny it.” He smiled half-heartedly at his own lame joke. “I’m going to try to talk them into letting her come in as soon as she gets here—even though it won’t be visiting hours anymore. I know how much you want to see her… and how much she’ll want to see you…”

The machine behind him screeched to life, and the bottom of Jeff’s heart dropped through his feet as he turned to look at it. In two seconds a host of green-clad workers were rushing into the room.

“…Code blue… Code blue… respiratory failure…”

For the second time in what seemed only moments Jeff felt himself being pulled backward. “We need to get in here, Sir. Please.”

In disbelieving horror, his body backed away although not a single other piece of him did.

The small jerks of the body on the bed sent fist-hard punches right through Jeff’s gut.

“We’re losing him… His blood pressure’s dropping…”

Time and space floated away from Jeff’s consciousness as he stood there in the corner, watching the scene but never moving. Dustin was leaving, and somehow he had to find it within himself to let him go. “It’s okay, buddy,” he whispered so that only the spirit now floating above them could hear. “I’ll take care of Eve for you. I will. You do what you have to.” A solid beeeeep permeated the air around him. “I’ll take care of her. I promise.”

At the door to the waiting area Jeff’s steps slowed until he couldn’t even be sure he was still moving. However, the moment he emerged through the door, Lisa was there, worried and confused. “What happened? All the alarms went off and...”

Words wouldn’t come as Jeff looked into her eyes, and the message was received in the next second. “Oh, my God. No.” She covered her mouth to stop the words. “Oh, Jeff, no. I’m so sorry.” Her hand reached over to his shoulder, and for that moment he needed to be in someone’s arms more than he ever had before. Warm, tender, and alive, she surrounded him in her embrace, and just stood there, holding him as though she would never again let him go. And with that, life and death met in a silent embrace.

The warmth of the windows as the sun dipped below the horizon at their backs did nothing to thaw Lisa’s dead-cold spirit. Dustin was gone. Eve would be here any minute. Jeff looked like he might pass out any second, and somehow she had to find the courage to help them all even though what she really wanted to do was curl up in a dark corner and cry her eyes out.

When the elevator dinged, they both looked over to it. With a quiet whoosh the doors slid open, and Eve rushed out, wild-eyed with panic as she looked around for what to do next. A moment too long Lisa hesitated, and in her place, Jeff stood—looking far too steady for the shifting her world felt like it was doing.

“Jeff, what happened? Where is he?” Eve asked, rushing to
ward them, her feet going as fast as her words.

Lisa saw the breath he took and the square of his shoulders when he faced Eve and put out his arms to soften the blow.

“He didn’t make it,” Jeff said softly.

“Oh, no!” Eve said as her hand went to her mouth, and her knees buckled. “No! No!”

Jeff seemed not even to notice the bandages as his hands and arms caught her on the way down. Gently he took her to a chair and sat her down. The torment in her eyes when she looked up at him tore Lisa’s heart right out of her chest. She could never have found the words to continue; however, carefully as Jeff sat on his heels in front of the woman who had suddenly become a widow, he looked unnervingly calm.

“Dustin said that he loves you. He wanted you to know that,” Jeff said quietly. “Okay? He did. He loved you so much, Eve.” And when Eve leaned forward into Jeff’s arms, there was no way anyone would’ve questioned that the feeling was mutual.

His car was still at the station, but although outwardly Jeff looked better than it made any sense to, Lisa knew that him driving in that state was not a good idea. So after Eve’s parents arrived and their usefulness waned, Lisa suggested that they get him home for some much needed rest. Of course, he didn’t want to go, but her focus was increasingly on how he was dealing with this, and he was really beginning to worry her.

“There’s nothing else we can do here,” Lisa said emphatically even as she fought to keep her voice under control. However, the glance from Eve across the room told her it hadn’t worked as well as she would have liked.

Slowly Eve got up and walked over to where they stood by the now-dark window. “Lisa’s right,” Eve said, and her voice was stronger than Lisa’s would have been. “She is. You should go home and get some sleep.”

“But…” His eyes were glassy with pain and lost sleep.

“No. Now you listen to me, we have a long couple of days ahead of us, and you need some rest.” Softly she laid a hand on his arm. “Please. For me.”

At those words his gaze snapped up to hers, and in his eyes Lisa saw the tumult of emotions just before he nodded and his gaze fell.

“Good,” Eve said, and when she pulled him into her arms, neither could comfort the other’s grief. Finally Eve stepped back and wiped her eyes. “You take care of yourself. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Then she turned and looked at Lisa, and her tears became harder to contain. “Take care of him for me. Okay?”

In an instant they grabbed for each other like the only line that could pull them up from the side of a crumbling precipice. “If you need anything,” Lisa said as tears streamed down her face. Eve nodded her acknowledgement of the statement. When they backed away from each other, both had to wipe their eyes.

“Now go home and get some sleep. Both of you.”

Home. Somehow it had never felt so empty. The world seemed to be spinning without him. Sense had ceased to exist, drowned in the haze of tears and fear and shock. Still somehow Jeff kept walking as though if he just kept going, at some point, he would walk right out of this nightmare or right off the edge of the earth, and either would have been welcome.

“I’ll throw something together,” Lisa said after she had turned the key and let him in. “How does sandwiches sound?”

He shrugged having not really heard the question. His feet carried him over to the couch where he sat, looking at the room and trying to remember why it was he was here. A sound, a small whir, and a voice filled the air.

“Jeff, man, where are you? This is Gabe. They said you checked out of the hospital. Call me when you get in, please.” Jeff’s mind couldn’t focus on the number Gabe left. It couldn’t focus on anything.

Through the sounds of the dishes, he heard her voice, but only dimly. “Yeah, he’s okay… his hands… I don’t know… I think so… Yeah. It was bad… No, we finally got in touch with Eve… his wife… No. Okay, I’ll tell him. Thanks, Gabe… I will… ‘Bye.” A plastic-on-plastic knock, and the voice went silent.

He should be moving. Some part of him said he should move, and yet nothing would.

“Here you go.” Lisa came striding into the living room a few minutes later with a plate which she set on the coffee table in front of him. “I’ll get you some water.”

Bewildered at the sight of a simple sandwich, Jeff could only blink at it, and in seconds she was back. Carefully she sat next to him on the couch.

“You’re going to have to eat,” she said after a moment. “Here, I’ll break it in half.” Then for good measure she broke it into quarters. “There, that should be easier.”

Still he looked at it. The messages in his brain were no longer making it all the way to his body. Finally she picked one quarter up and slid it between the tips of his fingers. “Eat.”

His gaze fell to the sandwich, and then blinking off the action he put it to his lips. The middle of his stomach threatened revolt. It hurt to chew. Every piece of his whole body hurt—ached under the strain of keeping him alive even one more second. A piece at a time she handed him the sandwich and then watched to make sure he ate it. When it was gone, she took the plate away and was back before he knew she left.

“See, that wasn’t so hard. Here’s a painkiller. The last one will be wearing off any minute now.”  She gave him the pill and watched as he swallowed it. “Good. Now, I think you’ve got a date with a pillow and a mattress. What do you say?”

No words would come. There simply weren’t any more in his brain.

“Come on.” She coaxed him up off the couch. “I’ll tuck you in.”

Lisa didn’t have the heart to pull him back out of the bed when he collapsed into it the second they stepped into the bedroom. There were more important things than clean sheets. “Better?” she asked, pulling the top cover up and around his shoulders, but when his gaze caught hers, she wondered if things would ever be better again.

“Will you lay with me?” he asked, the words barely a whisper.

The pleading in his eyes was more than her heart could bear. She smiled, turned out the light, and walked to the other side. Carefully she lay down and slid over to him, flipping her hair back so she could hear his heartbeat when she laid her head on his chest. She needed to be close to him, and if he needed to be close to her, there wasn’t a no anywhere in her body.

“How is he?” Gabe asked late the next morning from the phone that Lisa had caught in the middle of the first ring.

“Sleeping for now, which is good,” she said, keeping her voice quiet in the softness of the kitchen. “What’re we supposed to do about work? Does he need to come in sometime?”

“I talked to Rainier, and it’ll be okay for him to come back when he’s ready—you know this week or early next. The sooner the better so Rainier can set up his leave status and all that, but get him through the funeral first. We can deal with the other stuff later.”

Funeral. She hated that word. “So, is there somebody down there that he can talk to… when he’s ready? You know, about what happened?”

“We’ve had a counselor on-call since Saturday night. If he needs it, all he has to do is ask.”

“Okay. Thanks, Gabe.”

“Sure thing,” Gabe said quietly. “And Lisa?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re all sorry for your loss.”

“Yeah,” she said, but the syllable broke in two. “Thanks.” When she hung up the phone, she knew there was one more call she had to make. It was a call she had never made even once in her life. On the other end the receiver clicked. “Sherie, this is Lisa. Yeah, I’m fine, but I’m not going to be in for a while. I… We… Umm, there was a death in the family, and I’ve got some things to take care of here. I probably won’t be in until at least Thursday. Yes, I know it’s Monday. Tell the guys to get whatever they can done, handle what you can, and I’ll deal with the rest when I get back… Yeah… Okay… Thanks. Talk to you later.”

Her hand hung up the phone as every other part of her said it just wanted to go in to work. Not because of work but because somehow then she could make believe this wasn’t what it was. In the middle of that thought a tremendous crash sounded from the bedroom, and she dropped the plate she was holding to the cabinet and ran.

“Jeff? What’s wrong? What happened?” she asked, bursting into the room only to find him seated, head down on the edge of the bed.

With lifeless eyes, he looked up at her. “I just wanted a drink.” It was then that she saw the shattered glass sprawled across the solid black base of the weight bench. “I guess it slipped.” As she watched, he slowly bent to try to retrieve the pieces.

“No!” she yelled, jerking toward him. “Don’t! I’ll get it.” Every instinct in her said that her job now was protection and prevention, and she took that job very seriously. “I’ll get you some water, and I’ll get that cleaned up when I get back. Don’t move.”

Sitting on the bed, looking at her with that vacant stare, she knew the glass wasn’t the only thing broken. If she could’ve wrapped him in tissue and put him high on the top shelf, she would have. Anything so she would never have to see that frightening helplessness around him again.

“I know what this is asking,” Eve said slowly. The soft gray of her fitted suit dress picked up the silver flecks in her dark eyes as she sat in the sunlight of her parents’ living room Monday afternoon. “And, believe me, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

A full night and half-the-day’s rest had cleared enough of the fog surrounding Jeff’s senses so that the fact that she was tiptoeing around him wound all the way to the place in his brain that could perceive the information. Regardless of the fact that half the neighborhood was milling about, watching the scene, his focus was on only her. “Anything, Eve. Name it, and it’s yours.”

“You are—umm, were—his best friend.” Her gaze fell, and she took a shaky breath. “I’d like you to give the eulogy.”

With a screech the world stopped around him. “Me?”

“I think he would’ve been honored for you to give it,” she said with a tight smile, “and I know it would make me feel better. Please, Jeff. I swear, you know I wouldn’t ask if…”

A breath of a decision. He had made a promise. He nodded. “Okay. I will.”

“You will?” she asked in surprise.

“Yeah, I will.”

“What are you going to say?” Lisa asked, not wanting to pry but wanting to know all the same. They had been by Eve’s side all day and half the evening, and there hadn’t been an opportunity to ask until they were alone in her car headed back to his place.

“I don’t know,” he said, his voice wistful and faraway. “I wish I did.”

Her gaze went before her hand which touched the side of his arm. “You’re a good friend. You know that?” But his gaze just sank into the black oblivion at his feet and stayed there. “Whatever you say, it will be just what Dustin would’ve wanted.”

For as long as Lisa could remember, she had wanted to ride in a limo, but somehow this scenario had never entered her mind. Across from them sat Eve, flanked by her parents, the dark glasses hiding nothing. The private memorial at the little funeral home was enough to make a stone weep, and to this minute Lisa’s brain was having a hard time comprehending that the man now lying in that coffin had been her dance partner less than two weeks before.

Laughing, joking about his “hopeless” friend, and now that friend was preparing to give the speech of his lifetime. She hoped Dustin wasn’t far away because Jeff was going to need all the help he could get today. More than that, if anyone tried to convince Dustin what his friend was about to do, he would never in a trillion years
have believed them unless he saw it for himself.

She looked around at her fellow passengers. There were two at the center of the grief in that car. The others were there to help them get through it.

Dark, navy blue. It was that color that would be with Lisa forever when she thought about how walking down that aisle alongside Jeff, a heartbeat behind Eve, felt. She could almost smell the polish on the shoes, feel the scratchy wool from every uniform that turned to watch the entrance of that flag-draped coffin in front of them. The walk to the front of the church could have been no longer. It was like walking the wrong way on a moving carpet. She walked, and she walked, and still she got no closer to the front.

Not until the six men with hands on the rails of the coffin stopped, checked it, and stepped back did the reality of what they were about to do hit her. With a breath she grabbed onto Jeff’s arm with both hands. One bandaged hand came up to meet her hand, but he never looked at her. Somehow she had to pull it together. He didn’t need to be holding her up right now. No, he had other far more important tasks to concentrate on, and she needed to be there for him—even if it killed her not to break down into hysterics right there.

When the preacher signaled Jeff’s cue, his legs stood and he felt her hand slide from his arm. Courage was a pitiful thing in the face of that moment. Absolutely pitiful. At the podium he turned to the audience, which gazed up at him like he knew something that would make this whole horrible situation go away, but he knew nothing.

“For three days I’ve tried to sit down and put some words on paper,” he began, and each word was a fight to get out. “There were a couple of problems with that though. One, the pen was kind of hard to hold.” He held up one bandaged hand, and there was a small ripple of choked laughter. “Two, I’m not very good with words.” A smaller ripple from those who really knew him he was sure. “And three, what do you say at a time like this?” He sniffed back the tears, laid his bandaged hands on the podium, and ducked his head. It was only with great difficulty that he raised it again. “So, I didn’t write anything down. Instead I thought I’d tell you a few things I know about Dustin Knox, and for that I don’t need ink anyway.”

His gaze found the second row where Lisa sat, holding him up on the softness of her gaze. He tried to smile at her in assurance that he could handle this. He tried, but it didn’t quite make it that far.