Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center Page 0,100
here, and I’ll call you as soon as there’s news.”
* * *
I WENT HOME. What can I say? The adrenaline had worn off, and I was too tired to fight.
But I snuck back later.
I got home, showered, put on my softest sweats, and lay in bed.
But it was the bed I’d slept in with Owen. Owen, who was now fighting for his life in the ICU. Owen, who I could not bear to lose.
I didn’t sleep. I wound up writing my far-too-detailed report for the captain instead, and emailing it off at midnight.
They were keeping him in a medically induced coma, letting the tissues heal and also offering him the mercy of sleeping through some of the pain. I thought back through what I knew about what happened. In addition to the cyanide poisoning, his airway had been burned by the hot air in the flashover. The swelling had caused respiratory arrest, which led to cardiac arrest—though I had no idea how long he’d gone without breathing. Five minutes? Ten? It’s hard to tell time in a fire.
They say you can only last six minutes without breathing before incurring brain damage, but it really can vary a huge amount from person to person. A fit guy like Owen, I kept telling myself, could amaze us all. I thought about a story I once heard about a two-year-old boy who was drowned in a frozen river for over half an hour but walked away just fine.
The rookie could be okay. It wasn’t the most impossible thing I’d ever tried to hope for.
Or maybe it was.
Finally, at two in the morning, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I snuck down the stairs, past Diana’s white noise machine, got back in my truck, and drove down to Boston.
The waiting area was mostly empty now. The rookie’s parents were asleep on the one available sofa—his mother sideways with her head on his dad’s thigh, his dad with his head tilted back against the wall. Somebody had put blankets over them.
I tiptoed past, and I pushed through the double doors into the restricted section.
There are no rooms in the ICU, just beds separated by curtains. I checked one chart after another until I saw CALLAGHAN. But before I could slide the curtain back, a nurse stopped me.
“No visitors at this hour,” she said, slipping between me and the curtain.
“Hi. Yes, I just—”
“You’ll have to come back tomorrow.” She looked me over. “And then only if you’re family.”
How to describe myself. “I’m his girlfriend,” I said.
“Then you can come during visiting hours.”
“It’s complicated,” I said. “I’m not sure I can.”
She stepped back and looked me over. “You’re his mistress?”
“No!”
“But his family doesn’t like you?”
I sighed. “They think I’m the reason he’s in here.”
Her eyebrows went up, like, Are you?
“But I’m not! I’m the one who saved him!”
I was ready to launch into the whole story—but one look at her face told me she didn’t want the story. She had work to do, and she needed the person breaking the rules to get out of the way.
Instead, I summed up: “I can’t be here during visiting hours. But I need to see him. Five minutes—please. There’s something I need to tell him.”
Her face pinched up. She didn’t really have time for this nonsense. But as I waited for her verdict, tears started filling my eyes and spilling over. For a person who never cried, I sure was turning out to be good at it.
Finally, she’d had enough. “Five minutes,” she said, pointing at me. “And don’t try to sneak in here again.”
* * *
BEHIND THE CURTAIN, the rookie was hooked up to every tube and machine possible. He was on a ventilator, and the paper tape holding the tube in obscured much of his face. His eyes were taped shut. His face was red with second-degree burns where the edge of his mask had been.
Thank God for the movement and the noise of the ventilator, because everything else was as still as death.
But his hand was there. Someone had tucked his blankets carefully up under his arms and laid his hands at his sides. I reached over the rail. It was warm and soft. Alive.
And then I didn’t know what to say. Faced with the chance to talk to him, my mind went blank. I’d planned a whole speech on the drive down—one inspiring and powerful and motivating, one he would hear through the fog of his coma and grasp on to for the will to live.