We'd made it.
CHAPTER 18
Sloane
The ER was chaos,but the curtained-off section Ava had claimed for me was quiet.
I sat on the edge of the bed, an oxygen mask hanging loose around my neck. My throat still burned. My lungs felt heavy, like I'd been breathing through wet cloth for hours. Every breath came with a faint wheeze.
But I was alive.
"Oxygen levels are stabilizing," Ava said, making a note on her tablet. "You inhaled a lot of smoke, but your lungs are handling it. No signs of significant damage."
"That's good."
"It's very good." She set the tablet down and looked at me properly, the way doctors did when they were assessing more than just vitals. "You're going to feel like hell for a few days. Sore throat, coughing, fatigue. Your body needs time to clear out everything you breathed in." She held my gaze. "No work. No running around chasing stories. Just rest."
"I can do that."
She raised an eyebrow but didn't push it. We both knew my track record with sitting still.
"You got lucky tonight," she continued. "The burns on your hands are minor. The smoke inhalation could have been much worse. A few more minutes in there and we'd be having a very different conversation."
I looked down at the bandages wrapped around my palms. White gauze against skin that still felt too warm. Pounding on the glass. The heat pressing against the door. Rebecca's face as she struck the match, that strange calm in her eyes, like she'd finally found peace in destruction.
"I know," I said quietly.
Ava's hand found my shoulder. Squeezed gently.
"You're going to be fine," she said. "Physically, at least. The rest takes time. But you've got people who care about you. That helps more than most patients realize."
"It does."
She stepped back. Checked one more reading. Nodded to herself, satisfied.
"I'm going to send Garrett in." She was already moving toward the curtain. "He's been wearing a hole in the waiting room floor. I think the nurses are ready to sedate him."
I laughed. It hurt, a sharp ache in my chest that made me cough, but I laughed anyway.
Garrett pacing. Checking his phone. Asking for updates every thirty seconds until someone threatened to throw him out.
"Thank you, Ava. For everything."
"That's what family's for." She smiled once more, warm and genuine, then slipped through the curtain.
Footsteps hurrying past. Voices murmuring in other curtained sections. The steady beep of monitors.
The endless cycle of crisis and recovery that never stopped, not even at three in the morning.
The curtain rustled.
Garrett stepped through.
Soot on his face. Smudged along his jaw where he'd wiped at it with the back of his hand. Hair damp with sweat, plastered to his forehead in dark streaks. Turnout coat gone, but the smell of smoke clung to his clothes. Sharp and familiar.
His eyes were red-rimmed. Exhausted. But the wild edge of fear I'd seen when he burst through that office door was finally starting to fade.
He was here. Whole. Alive.
