The drive is smooth. His vitals hold steady. By the time we pull into the bay at Copper Ridge General, I'm confident he'll be fine.
We transfer him to the ER team---clean handoff, everything documented, nothing left to chance. Then Pablo and I climb back into the rig, both in the front this time.
"Good call," Pablo says as we pull out of the hospital lot.
"Thanks."
That's it. That's the whole conversation.
My hands start shaking somewhere between the hospital and the station.
It's not Richard Holt. He's stable---femur fracture, some lacerations, nothing life-threatening. Probably home in a few days complaining about hospital food and apologizing to his wife.
It's Denver.
The pediatric code plays in my head like a film reel stuck on repeat. Different accident, different patient, but the same sick lurch in my stomach. The same white-hot panic that starts in my chest and spreads until my fingers go numb.
Four years old. Car seat in the back. Impact on the driver's side, secondary collision with a guardrail. The metal screaming as we cut through. The mother screaming louder.
"She's not breathing---"
"Gemma, I need you here---"
"Intubate, we need to intubate---"
Small chest. Impossibly small. My hands working on autopilot because if I think about what I'm doing, if I let myself process that this is a child, I'll break.
The flatline. The desperate compressions. The mother's scream when we finally called it.
I clench my hands into fists. The shaking doesn't stop.
Pablo pulls into the station and kills the engine. "You good?"
"Yeah." My voice comes out steady. I've been doing this a long time. "Good call, right?"
"Textbook."
I force a smile. "Holt seems like he'll be fine."
"Yep." Pablo's already climbing out, moving to restock the rig.
I follow him, legs unsteady, and focus on the mechanical comfort of inventory. The station smells like industrial cleaner and old coffee and the faint chemical bite of packaged supplies — familiar enough that my hands know what to do without being asked. Replace the IV supplies. Restock the trauma bags. Run through equipment checks. Normal things. Easy things.
Things that don't require me to think about the fact that my hands are still shaking.
Pablo's shift ends as the sky starts to lighten. He heads out without ceremony, and a few minutes later Tommy comes through the door for the start of our regular 24, coffee in hand, crossword tucked under his arm. He takes one look at me and slides a fresh mug across the table without a word.
I wrap both hands around it and don't say anything either.
We work through the day. Three calls, none of them bad. Between runs I reorganize the supply closet, then reorganize it again. Tommy watches me rearrange bandages for the third time and doesn't say a word. He's good like that.
By the time our shift ends the following dawn, exhaustion has settled into my bones in ways that have nothing to do with physical work.
Tommy heads home without ceremony---standard for him. I sit in my car in the parking lot with my hands flat on my thighs, watching the last stars go out over the mountains. A couple of outgoing crew members walk past, nod, get in their cars and leave. I nod back and don't move. The sky shifts from black to grey to the particular pale that comes right before pink, and eventually my hands stop trembling enough to trust myself with the wheel.
When I finally pull into Beck's driveway---my driveway, technically, since I live here now, which is still surreal---the sun's just starting to paint the mountains pink.
Clarence is sitting on my doorstep.
