Page 127 of No Good Fight

Then the medic moves her away.

I turn back to Alex’s stretcher.

They are loading her now with the oxygen and a monitor and a whole ass bag of supplies they’re going to need to keep her alive. Words I know too well are leaving Casey and the other EMT’s mouth. Smoke inhalation. Unresponsive. Possible head impact. Prep airway.

I try to climb in after her.

Casey puts one hand against my chest. “No, Ryder.”

I look down at his hand.

Josh steps beside me before I do something that gets me dragged away from the ambulance by people who know me.

“Ride with me,” he says.

I don’t recognize his voice. Maybe he doesn’t either.

The ambulance doors close and that sound will live in me forever.

The ride to the hospital happens in Josh’s truck because someone takes my gear, someone else tells me to get out of the road, and Josh keeps a hand hooked in my shirt like I might run alongside the ambulance if he lets go. He drives badly. Too fast, then too slow, braking hard at a yellow light before running it when the ambulance clears the intersection ahead of us.

Neither of us speaks.

My phone is in my hand, and I don’t remember how it got there. Alex’s name is still in my recent list with the time beside it. I stare at it until the numbers blur.

At the hospital, fluorescent light replaces smoke.

They take Alex through one set of doors and Mrs. Vance through another. Alex’s parents arrive within minutes, her mother wearing two different colored slippers and no coat. Nia is with them, one arm around Mom’s shoulders, her own face pale under the calm she is forcing into place. Remy shows up still in uniform, rain in his hair, jaw tight when he sees the soot on my gear and the blood at my temple from the window frame.

No one asks me if I’m okay, which is good because I wouldn’t know what lie to use.

A nurse stops us outside the treatment area with a hand raised, practiced and kind and unbearable. “Immediate family only right now.”

I stop.

Josh nearly runs into my back.

For one long second, I wait for the line to hold. Brother. Parents. Not me. Never me, no matter how many locks I installed, how many nights I watched, how many times she slept in my shirt.

Josh looks at the nurse.

“He stays.”

The nurse hesitates.

Alex’s mother turns, eyes swollen and wet, and reaches for my wrist. Her fingers close over skin, soot and all. “He stays.”

No speech. No forgiveness. No permission I don’t deserve.

Just Alex’s family circle opening up just enough to let me in.

We wait in a room with beige walls and a coffee machine that burns everything it touches. Josh paces until Nia puts both hands on his face and makes him sit. He lasts twelve seconds. Alex’s father stands near the wall with his arms folded, staring at nothing. Her mother holds the sweatshirt they cut off Alex, folded in her lap inside a clear plastic bag.

My hands still smell like smoke even after I scrub them raw in the bathroom sink.

Mrs. Vance is awake before Alex.

A nurse tells us that she has smoke irritation, minor burns on one hand, and is only being held for observation because of her age. Minor. The word should help. It does, until I remember why.