“Yeah. I’m here. Get him out. Get to Hallie!”
My vision starts to blur. I fight to hang on. Everything fades.
Then Dustin is over me. “Which leg, Grey?”
“My right leg.” My words are clipped and strained. I cough.
Cody looks at Patrick. “We have to get him out of here now. No time for the Stokes basket.”
“We’re doing a three-man carry,” Patrick says. “Dustin, you get his torso. Cody, get his good leg.”
Dustin crouches down behind my head, looping his arms through the SCBA straps and holding me. Cody holds my good leg. Patrick stabilizes the one that’s probably broken.
“You with me, Grey?” Patrick asks.
I nod, reflexively. Then I say, “Yeah. I’m here. Where’s Hallie?”
The three of them count and lift. Then we’re moving. Smoke and flames everywhere.
“Second engine’s got Hallie,” Cody assures me.
I close my eyes. Pinching them shut and focusing on squeezing instead of the shooting pain radiating up my leg.
“Still with us?” Patrick asks as we burst into the night, the cooler air a stark contrast to the inferno inside.
“I’m here,” I tell Patrick.
They set me on a stretcher. An oxygen mask is slipped over my face. Someone cuts my turnout pants and applies a traction splint.
“Where’s Hallie?” I ask, sputtering out a cough. An EMT is talking about smoke inhalation.
And then she’s there.Hallie. Holding my hand and staring down at me.
“You made it,” she says softly, running her thumb over the top of my hand while the gurney is raised into the back of the ambulance.
She goes with me, her hold on my hand firm, her eyes soft with tears.
“How did you get out?” I ask.
“Ground ladder.”
“You saved me—calling in my rescue.”
“You saved that boy, so let’s say we’re even,” she says. Her smile is strained.
“Never,” I say, coughing into the oxygen mask. “The boy’s okay?”
“Yeah. Smoke inhalation. But otherwise, he seems good.”
I cough again.
“Stop talking for now,” Hallie orders.
“I’ll stop talking if you don’t.” I cough. “I need to hear …” I cough some more. “... your voice.”
“Okay,” she nods. But then she’s quiet, her eyes roving my face as if she almost lost me.
Not this time.
