Page 95 of Second Alarm
"Am I doing this right."
"Yes." His thumb moves once, against my sternum. "Because it's the thing you've been trying to figure out since you decided to tell him, and you just figured it out without a joke. You're doing it right."
I put my face against his shoulder.
I sleep hard and without moving, the way you sleep when your body finally believes the person next to you isn't going to leave while you're under. I haven't slept like this in years.
In the morning, Ty is still there, his hand on my chest.
I wake and look at him — he's asleep. His face has lost the patience it's been carrying for weeks. Asleep, it's just a face. There's a small smile line at the corner of his mouth. His hair is a mess. He's mine.
I lie there for a long time and look at him.
Then I get up. I make coffee. I dress. I don't wake him. I write a note on the back of a grocery receipt —Going to hospital. Call you after. — H.— and leave it on the pillow next to his hand, and I go to tell my brother the thing I've been not telling him for years.
Chapter 18
Ty
Iwake up at seven on Monday morning in Hanna Larsen's bed with her side empty and a grocery receipt on the pillow.
Going to hospital. Call you after. — H.
I read it twice. I read her handwriting the way I used to read her notes in the margins of academy textbooks, looking at the small curl of herHand the hard dot over heri,and I put the receipt in my back pocket, and I make coffee with Mom Larsen’s bad French press and I wait.
She calls me at ten.
"He's loopy. He's on something — can't keep a sentence. They're discharging him at noon. I tried to start. He kept falling asleep mid-word. I didn't tell him."
"Okay."
"I'm going to take him home. Put him in bed. Let him sleep. He has PT at two — insurance is sending an outpatient guy to his place. I'll have Mom come help. I want to tell him tonight. When he's awake. When I'm not saying it to a zombie."
"Okay."
"I need you not to be at my mom’s place this afternoon. If I'm not home and you're there I won't be able to — "
"I know. I won't be."
"I'll text you when."
"Okay, Hanna."
"Are you angry."
"No."
"You'd tell me if you were."
"I'm not angry. You're doing it right." A beat. "Breathe."
"I'm — "
"Okay."
She hangs up.
I go to work. It's my off-day, technically, but Harrison has already texted to come by the station because Derek wants to debrief and we're one medic short with Hanna off. I spend the middle of Monday in the bay pulling hose, running inventory on the extrication kit because my hands need to be on metal, doing the small administrative things a firefighter does in the hours after a bad call when nobody is ready to talk about it out loud. Rivera comes in around one-thirty with sandwiches. Riley comes in around one-fifty and sits on the hood of the rescue and doesn't ask me anything, which is her way of asking me everything. Derek stays quiet, which isn't his way.
