The flames are spreading fast now, eating through the crumpled hood, smoke pouring thick and black into the morning air. Through the cracked windshield I see someone slumped over the steering wheel, not moving.
I sprint toward the car.
The door is crumpled where the car wrapped around the tree, metal folded in on itself. I grab the handle and pull. Nothing. I brace my foot against the frame and get my whole body into it,every muscle straining, and the metal screams as it gives way inch by inch.
The man inside is unconscious, with dark hair and tan skin, and there’s blood running from a gash on his forehead. He looks young, maybe mid-twenties. His seatbelt is jammed.
Of course it’s jammed.
My fingers are slick with his blood and the release won’t catch and the fire isright there, close enough that I can feel the heat pressing against my back like a physical weight. Sweat is dripping into my eyes and my lungs are burning from the smoke and the belt won’tfucking budge.
Come on. Comeon.
It clicks.
I hook my arms under his shoulders and drag him out, backward across the wet grass. Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty. The heat is intensifying behind us and I can hear the fire roaring, hungry and getting hungrier, but I keep going, keep dragging, keep putting distance between us and that car.
The car goes up just as I throw myself over him, shielding his body with mine. The explosion of heat slams into my back and for a second I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only press myself flat and wait for it to pass. The roar fills my ears and the light fills my vision even through closed eyelids and I think, in a distant kind of way, that this is a hell of a way to start a Tuesday.
When I look up, the car is a fireball. And this stranger is alive beneath me, breathing, his chest rising and falling in a shallow but steady rhythm.
Then his eyes flutter open. Unfocused, confused. And I’m looking at my brother’s face.
Not exactly. But close enough that my stomach drops straight through the ground. The jaw is Calvin’s, the dark eyes, a bone structure that’s unmistakably familiar in a way I can’t explain and don’t want to examine too closely. But this guy is younger,with darker skin and higher cheekbones and a bigger build than my brother.
Still, the resemblance is strong enough to make me feel like I’m losing my mind. Like maybe I hit my head somewhere and I’m hallucinating, or dreaming, or having some kind of stress-induced breakdown in the middle of Harbor Road while a car burns behind me.
The man tries to say something. His lips move but nothing comes out, and then his eyes roll back and he’s unconscious again. His head is heavy against my arm. I keep pressure on the wound and wait, the car burning behind us, the drunk driver groaning somewhere in the grass, sirens finally wailing in the distance.
Who the hellisthis guy?
I’ve told the story three times now, once to the paramedics, once to the intake nurse, and now to the cop who showed up about an hour after I got here. Each time I tell it, it feels a little less real, like something that happened to someone else in a movie I half-remember watching.
The cop scribbles in his notebook and my eyes drift to the painting on the wall behind him. A clown holding a bouquet of wilting flowers, its smile just slightly too wide. What kind of psychopath puts clown art in a hospital waiting room? You’d think they’d want something calming, not nightmare fuel.
I glance at my watch. 5:47 am. Sarah opened the gym for me this morning when I called to tell her I’d be late. She’s been working with me almost six years now and knows the place nearly as well as I do. I trust her completely. But years of thesame routine doesn’t let go easily, and part of me is itching to get back where things make sense.
I’m not entirely sure why I followed the ambulance here in the first place. The guy’s a stranger, and I don’t owe him anything beyond what I already did.
But the way he looked so much like my brother Calvin unnerved me. A reminder that the people you love can be gone in an instant, that nobody’s invincible no matter how much you want them to be. If anything like this ever happened to one of my brothers, I’d want someone to stick around long enough to make sure they were okay.
“Mr. Midnight?” The cop clears his throat.
I realize I’ve missed his question entirely. “Sorry. What was that?”
“The other driver,” he repeats patiently. “You mentioned he seemed intoxicated. Did he say anything to you when you pulled him out?”
“Nothing coherent. He was mumbling, maybe trying to thank me, maybe telling me to go to hell. Hard to say.” I shrug. “I got him clear and went back for the other guy.”
He nods, scribbling. “And Mr. Navarro? Was he conscious at any point?”
Mateo Navarro. I’d found his wallet while waiting for the ambulance, desperate to find someone to call, but there was no emergency contact listed anywhere. The only things I know about him are that his address is in Boston, he’s twenty-seven years old, and based on the certification cards tucked behind his license, he does fire and rescue work.
Ironic, that. Being on the other end of a rescue. Life has a dark sense of humor sometimes.
“Briefly,” I say. “His eyes opened for a second after I got him out, but he couldn’t speak. Then he was out again.”
The cop nods, scribbling, and then flips his notepad closed. “The drunk driver already admitted fault. Crossed the center line coming around that curve. Mr. Navarro wouldn’t have had time to react.”
