Page 109 of As Long As You'll Have Me
“Please. Please don’t leave. You’re the only brother I’ve ever had. The only brother I’ve ever wanted. I can’t lose you too. You’re stronger than this, I know you are. Please.Please.”
The EMT riding in the back with me lays a strong hand on my shoulder to console me but it doesn’t do much. I blink my eyes a few times and feel fresh tears collecting in them. Reaching for my phone, I call the one and only person I know is going to be able to bring me hope in what feels like the darkest moment of my entire life.
“Hanna, there’s been an accident. It’s Carter.” I try to say more but the welt forming in my throat makes it impossible. Then, the dam breaks behind my eyes and I feel the tears run down my face as the thought of losing another person I love breaks me completely.
39
HANNA
My phone buzzes on my nightstand and pulls me out of sleep. Blinking hard, I look around the room and can tell that it’s still dark outside. Closing them again, my hand reaches over and grabs my phone, unplugging it from its charger and pulling it back to my face that’s still half covered by my duvet. I glance at the caller I.D. and when I see that it’s Miles and he’s calling at nearly two in the morning, my stomach sinks and fills with dread. He never calls me when he’s on duty so the fact that he is now means that something’s happened. I try to keep my voice steady as I answer, bracing myself for whatever is about to come my way.
“Hello? Miles, is everything okay?”
He doesn’t speak right away but I can hear his breathing. It’s labored and heavy, like he’s having a hard time taking in air. Panic pricks my skin and I sit up in bed, suddenly wide awake.
“Miles.” I repeat his name more firmly this time. “What’s wrong?”
“Hanna.” His voice breaks over the line and the sound of it nearly kills me. “There’s been an accident. It’s Carter.”
I fly out of bed and I hurry towards my closet to find something to throw on. I don’t know where he is or what’s happened but hearing him so broken triggers my stress response. There’s two types of people when it comes to responding to stress: hyperactive people who move into action to fix or solve the problem and hyporeactive people who tend to shut down and become overwhelmed. I’m very much the former instead of the latter.
“What happened?” I ask, pulling on a pair of pants without looking at them. They’re the first ones my hand finds in the darkness and will be much better than me going out in my underwear which is what I had worn to bed. He doesn’t speak. Instead, the only sounds I can hear over the line are the sounds of his sobs and distance sirens. Tears flood my eyes and I blink them back quickly. This isn’t about me; it’s about him. His breath is shallow and labored until it becomes too much and he starts to cough and choke.
“Miles, Miles, breathe.” I try to calm him down. “Come on, fireman, breathe for me.” I take a few deep breaths and wait for him to match me. When he does, a small smile of hope breaks on my lips.
“Good; keep breathing. Can you tell me what happened? Or where you are?”
“We’re headed to the hospital. He’s in bad shape, doc, his leg—” He seems to choke back another cry.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Are you in the ambulance now?”
“Yeah, we got called to a really bad fire. He ran in—tried to save someone—he got burned pretty bad?—”
I can hear him starting to spiral and I try to do what I can over the phone to calm him down. “It’s okay, you don’thave to explain now. Just breathe. Where are they taking him?”
Wherever it is, it’s where I’ll be going as soon as I’m dressed. I hear him talking to someone in the background before he comes back over the line.
“We’re going to Roper,” he says, his breathing still sounding labored and stressed. “We’re pulling in now, I have to go.”
“Okay, keep your phone on you. I’m on my way.”
“You don’t have to come?—”
“I’m coming. You won’t tell me I can’t or that I don’t have to. I’m coming,” I argue.
There’s a brief pause over the line. “God I love you, woman.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “I love you, too, fireman. I’m on my way.”
After hanging up, I quickly finish throwing on some clothes and tie my hair back into a ponytail. Forcing my glasses onto my face, they slip down my nose immediately and I curse to myself about needing to get them adjusted. Grabbing my keys and wallet, I hustle to my car to head to the hospital. His words play on a loop in my mind.
Carter.
Accident.
Burned.
While I’m happy Miles is okay, I know what the weight of this could do to him. He’s hardly started to let go and heal from losing one of his men last summer and now he’s on the brink of losing his own brother. He’s one of the strongest men I’ve ever known but I don’t think he will ever survive this kind of loss. Living downtown and with it being the middle of the night, it doesn’t take me long to get to the hospital. I text him when I pull into a parking spot and askhim to send me his location. Once I have it, I make my way inside, trying to track him down.
