Page 88 of Second Alarm
Rodriguez turns to me. "You ran the extrication?"
"Yes, sir."
She turns back to Hanna. "You cleared Maureen in seconds?"
"Yes, sir."
"You both did good." She holds for a beat. "Brennan."
"Chief."
"When you're done here, you go to the hospital. You stand outside the door of Cal's room until his sister tells you you can come in. You don't try to come in before that."
"Yes, sir."
She looks at me one second longer than a chief looks at her guys.
"He's going to be fine."
"Yes, sir."
"I've seen worse."
"Yes, sir."
"You're allowed to breathe."
I breathe. Once. I put my hand on the hood of the rescue to hold myself up for one second — nobody sees it but Rodriguez — and she nods and walks away, and I get back on the line.
The rest of the scene takes another ninety minutes. The ride back to the station takes twelve. The cab is quiet — nobody talks, the radio carrying Maureen's update (stable, surgery cleared) and Cal's (Grade 2 concussion, overnight for observation, shoulder reduced in the field, no surgery needed). The relief that moves through doesn't cause speech. Derek's hands on the wheel are shaking a little. I don't comment. He doesn't either.
We get to the house, decon the rigs. Rodriguez is in the bay. She looks at each of us as we move through — the count a chief does every time a rig comes home, a small physical check of the bodies. When her eyes hit me she tips her chin:go.I go.
I drive to Missoula General.
At eight fifty-seven on a Sunday night, still in my turnout because I didn't stop to change, I stand in a hallway outside room 314 where my best friend is sleeping off a concussion with a sling on his shoulder.
Hanna is in the room. Cal is out. Their mother has been called and is an hour away.
Hanna comes out at nine-oh-three, closes the door quietly, and looks at me. She's been crying at some point in the last hour and has stopped, holding the stopped-crying together by a thread I can see from here.
We don't speak.
She walks to me and puts her forehead into my collarbone and stays there.
The hallway has bad fluorescent lighting. A woman pushing a laundry cart. Three other doors with three other people in three other degrees of the worst day of someone's life. The hallway doesn't care about Hanna and me. We don't care about the hallway.
"He's okay." Her voice goes into my turnout.
"He's okay."
"I almost — "
"You didn't."
"I was going to tell him today." She pulls in a breath. "I parked at his building at four thirty-seven."
"I know."
