Page 41 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"The good news?"

"You kept the leg." He says it easy, but his eyes aren't easy. His eyes have been in that chair all night. "Randy and Beto came by. Beto says you owe him a shirt. You bled on his good one."

"Tell Beto to bill the tree."

Tater laughs too loud for a hospital and doesn't apologize for it.

I try to sit up. The leg says no in a language my whole body understands. I lie back down and breathe through it, and that's when I see her.

Doorway. Scrubs. My flannel over them, sleeves rolled the way she rolled them that morning through the glass doors, five days and one lifetime ago. The one I left on the supply shelf. She kept it.

She's wearing yesterday's face. Hair coming loose. She's been here.

"You're awake," Nellie says.

"You're here."

"Somebody's got to keep County honest."

"Her shift at the General ended," Tater says helpfully, "yesterday."

She shoots him a look that could strip paint. He grins and studies the ceiling.

She comes in like it's rounds, checks the bag, checks the monitor, checks everything except my eyes. Then her fingers find my wrist.

The monitor's right behind her. She takes my pulse off my wrist anyway.

I keep still and let her.

"How's the pain," she says. "One to ten."

"Four."

"Firefighter four or human four?"

"Six."

"So, eight." She adjusts something on the pump. Her hand is steady now. It wasn't steady in the rain. I remember that much. I remember her voice going flat and calm while her hands shook, and I remember her jacket going red, and I remember don't leave.

Neither of us mentions the flannel she's wearing. Neither of us mentions the night. There's a lot of not-mentioning happening in this room, and Tater is watching it like a man at a tennis match.

The surgeon comes in before anybody has to break. Dr. Osei, County ortho, forearms like he does his own carpentry. He pulls up the films and talks at me in numbers.

"Rod's carrying the load, not the bone." Dr. Osei taps the film. "Four weeks non-weight-bearing, then a boot, weight as tolerated. Interior firefighting's a three-month conversation, not a one-month one." He says it to me. He watches Nellie while he says it, because she's the one nodding along in the right places. "No stairs. No heroics. Somebody's got to keep an eye on the incision, manage meds, get him to follow-ups. He'll fight all three."

"He's right here," I say.

"He is," Osei agrees, "and he's the kind of patient who'll be up on that leg in six days telling everybody it's fine."

Nellie makes a sound that isn't a laugh but is related to one.

***

They discharge me the next afternoon, and that's when the war council convenes.

Debbie Sue has my duffel. She packed it herself out at the farmhouse, which means she's seen the dust sheets and the empty rooms, and I can tell by how gentle her voice has gone.

"So." She sets the duffel down in my hospital room like a gavel. "Where are we taking him?"