Page 105 of Meet Me on Greenwood

Becky looked up from her station with an unsurprised expression. She’d been expecting me. "Room ten. Dr. Brown is with him."

I was already moving.

The ward was fuller than it should have been. Men with burns on their hands and faces. A woman being stitched by someone I didn't recognize. Sirens wailed as more patients were brought in, but all I could focus on were the room numbers.

Room ten.

I stopped in the doorway.

Houston was in the bed by the window, an oxygen mask clamped to his face. His forearms were wrapped in bandages, his chest rising and falling in an unsteady way that had me worried. His face was pale as he struggled to breathe.

Perry looked up from Houston's chart when he saw me.

I crossed to the foot of the bed and reached for the chart to see for myself.

"Gema."

"His oxygen levels at intake—" I was already reading, running my finger down the numbers, checking the treatment notations, the medication dosages, the burn classifications.

"Gema." Dr. Brown's hand clamped down over the top of mine on the chart, firm yet gentle. "I have taken care of everything."

"The smoke inhalation protocol—"

"Is being followed correctly." He took the chart from me with the quiet look of someone dealing with an incoherent family member. I’d seen him care for a hundred patients. I knew he was doing everything right.

"His burns are superficial," he said. "The oxygen is precautionary. Donna took the worst of it, but she will recover." He looked at me steadily over his glasses. "I have taken care of everything," he said again. Slower this time. "You can trust me with him."

I looked at Perry’s steady face. The man who had given me work without question, was telling me that Houston would be okay.

"Yes," I said. "I know. I'm sorry."

He set the chart back on its hook and squeezed my shoulder once. "Sit with him. That is what he needs now," he said, leaving to check on Donna.

I pulled the chair from the corner, placed it beside the bed, and gently gripped his hands that were resting on top of the blanket. His bandages were white and clean, and the smell of aloe vera reached my nostrils which told me the burns were superficial.

This was my fault.

I had known for weeks that our recklessness would get one or both of us killed. I knew what was coming. And I had stayed—for Paul, I'd told myself, for the patients at Frissel, for reasons that had nothing to do with a pair of blue eyes and red curly hair, and yet, it had everything to do with them. Now Donna was sedated in the next room, and Houston wasn’t even breathing fully on his own.

I had known and I had stayed. I had let myself pretend that knowing changed nothing.

I raised one hand to cover my mouth as my eyes filled with tears.

"If you’re going to grip my hand like that," a hoarse voice said, "I'm going to need more pain medication, the good stuff."

I looked up, immediately releasing my grip.

Houston's eyes were heavy lidded and glassy from the medication, but they were open, and there was the unmistakable shape of something like a smile underneath the oxygen mask.

A sound came out of me that was half laugh and half sob. He pushed the mask aside.

"Don't," he said roughly. "Come here."

I leaned over the bed as he lifted his bandaged arm, and hugged him carefully, my face against his neck and his arm settling across my back with a slow, deliberate weight

"I'm sorry," I whispered into his neck. "Houston, I'm so sorry. This is—"

"Stop," he said in a smoke roughened voice. "Not your fault."