by Finn, Emilia
“What are you talking about?” I grab Marjorie’s shoulder and spin her back to face the front.
She looks to the sky, to the road, to the people passing in the street.
“Hey! Focus. Focus on me, Marjie.”
“Didn’t mean for it to happen,” she whispers. Her words imply feeling. Regret. Sadness. But her tone is… dead. “Didn’t mean to. And then it happened, and she got burned.” Marjie’s chest lifts and drops at the same speed as mine. But where I feel heat in my cheeks, hers are deathly white. “I tried to fix it,” she mumbles. “Tried to make it better. And then I told him to make it better.” Her eyes come to mine. Her pupils, tiny pinpricks in size. “He couldn’t fix it.”
“Marjie…” My chest turns tighter, my breath shallower. “Are you… are you saying… was she alive or not?”
“It was an accident,” she chants. “Accident. Just an accident.”
“What, Marjie? What was an accident?”
“Fire,” she whispers. Her words are so quiet, so ominous and low that I have to lean closer until our heads almost touch.
My lungs don’t want to fill, and my chest doesn’t want to expand.
“Fire got us,” she whimpers. “Cady got hurt, and then she fell.” Marjie’s eyes come to mine, fat tears plop onto her cheeks. “We were running, but she fell down.”
“Fell down what?” My heart races too fast. Too painful. “Fell where?”
“On the stairs.” She looks away, to the sky outside. “Pretty flowers. Roses are so pretty.”
“Fell on the stairs? Marjie?” I grab her arm and yank her around. “How many stairs?”
“Lots of them,” she whispers. “All of them.”
25
Mitchell
Someday… is Now
At the first boom, I release Nadia’s hand and jump a step forward.
Which way to go? my mind wonders. Who needs help?
But when smoke plumes from the front of the old car, and the building they collided with begins crumbling, my hands drop to my pockets in search of tools.
It all happens in a single second.
A single moment in time.
Nixon screeches to a stop just ten feet from where we stand. He jumps out of his truck with eyes for me, for Nadia, for the shop. Then his brain registers the wreck, and he dives back in. Being high up in the fire department means he drives a county-supplied vehicle. It means he has a radio, and tools, and direct contact with his station.
He shouts for units to be dispatched, for tankers to race this way, for help. And then he tosses his radio and sprints toward us. “Where’s Abby?”
“With Marcie.”
It’s instinctual for us to save our sister, to make sure she’s okay. But then my eyes go to Nadia, to the dude who speaks, but I have no clue who he is.
My instinct, after Abby, is to save Nadia. But my training demands I run to the car.
“Stay!” I look at her, but my feet carry me toward the end of the street. “Nadia, stay here!”
A booming explosion rocks the street and brings me back around to face the car as a mushroom of fire erupts from the engine bay and demands I run faster. I aim for the driver’s seat, and Nixon splits off as we get closer, running for the passenger side.
“Two occupants,” I shout over the roar of flames. “Two adults.”
“I got it!” He runs faster than me. He always has been able to, which means he reaches the car first. And that, in my brain, is unacceptable.
Abby’s life isn’t the only one I must save, and Nix is my baby brother.
“Be careful!” I skid on the road, and look down to find a trickle of liquid snaking away from James’ car. It could be brake fluid. Or wiper fluid. Or hell, it could be coolant.
Or it could be gas.
I come to a stop at James’ door. The collision forced his window to shatter, so pieces litter his lap, and blood trickles from his face. His high blood pressure I could see just minutes ago, now makes him bleed faster, harder, and creates a mess so I don’t know where his injuries start and end. His eyes are closed, his head laid back against the headrest. His airbag remains unused, which makes this all that much trickier. It’s a ticking timebomb set to go off whenever the fuck it wants. And if I’m in the way, it’ll hurt.
Across from us, Marjorie is folded in half, her head between her knees, the top of her spine touching the glove compartment. Nixon wrenches the door open on her side and searches for a pulse.
“James?” I reach into the car and place my fingers on the blood soaking his throat. “James, are you there?”
“You gotta move fast!” Nixon pushes his door open as wide as he can manage. If I open my eyes wide, peek into my peripherals, I can see the flames. The orange that spells darkness and death to me. “Get ‘em out, move aside. Now!”
I look back to James, to the faint pulse I feel beneath my fingertips, and gauge the situation we’re in. The front of the car folds back accordion-style so it crushes his thighs between the steering column and his seat. His hands remain on the steering wheel, but he bleeds from… everywhere.
“Nix!” I shout over the din of the fire. “Move her out, then send your crew over this way.”
“It’s gonna blow,” he calls back. “Get him out, then deal with the damage.”
“He’s stuck. His legs are fucked!” I look down. “Can you hear me? Are you in there?”
“I’m ‘ere.” James’ voice crackles, and his breath rattles.
My eyes track down to his torso in search of anything that may have punctured his lungs. My heart races, and though James’ did too only a few minutes ago, his is now thready and too slow.
“Sleepy.”
“Don’t go to sleep.”
I fumble in my pocket and yank out a pair of shears. Without pause, I stab them into the fabric of his shirt and begin cutting it away. The material sticks to the blood coating his body, and sticks to my skin, since, for the first time in my life, I’m working without gloves, without sterilization or protection for us both. The fire is murderously hot and scorches the side of my face. My hands are steady, even if my pulse slams adrenaline through my system.
Somewhere dark and hidden inside my psyche, I hear the whispers to just let him go. Let him die. His only goal in life is to destroy yours.
“Come on. Come on. Come on,” I chant.
“Got her!” Nixon triumphantly yanks Marjorie from the car. I see his hands beneath her arms, and then her feet disappear as he pulls her out and drags her thirty feet away.
It helps me to know he’s out, that he’s safe and no longer at the mercy of the fire licking toward the windshield. So my attention comes back to James as I frantically search for a way to free him.
“Stay with me, okay?” I spare a quick glance to make sure his eyes are open. “Talk to me, man. Tell me what happened.” I look to the mangled steering column and work on probing the space between leg and car. Are we crushed, or are we simply wedged? Has the body of the car sliced into James’ thigh, or is it more of a gentle caress? “What happened?”
“Marjie,” he chokes out as I cut the denim away from his left leg. “Marjie—”
“She’s with Nix.” I glance up when the airhorn of a truck sounds just a block away. I’m in this car with nothing more than scissors, a pen, and a notebook. I need tools, and I need more time. “I don’t know her condition, James. But I know she’s with Nix.”
“No.”
I look up in time to catch him shaking his head side to side.
“Don’t do that.” I reach back and place a hand on his jaw to stop his movements. “Don’t twist your neck.”
“I think Marjie… I think…” Heavy tears spill from his eyes and plop onto his cheeks. “I hated you.”
“I know. And you still do, but I’m not gonna leave you.”
As soon as the truck pulls up, I remove my hands from James’s body, one from his jaw, the other from his bleeding thigh, then I push to my feet and reach a hand out—prematurely, considering
the guys running my way are still a fair way back. But I want my supplies. I need more than what I have, so I extend a hand in anticipation.
But then an explosion booms beneath the car, and fire sparks out to touch my legs.
I jump from the sound, from the force, only to spin back to James.
“Tires are blowing out!” One of the fire crew is shouting to his colleagues, but I hear it, I understand it, and appreciate that it’s only a tire, and not something worse.
Dropping to my knees at the side of the car, I double down on my efforts to separate man from vehicle. “Tell me about Cady.” It’s a gamble, considering our relationship this far. “Tell me what makes her special.”
“She likes LEGO.” He closes his eyes, but smiles. “She especially liked the LEGOs with horses and stables and shit.”
“Okay.” I peel his jeans away and bite down on my groan at the sight of metal slicing through his thigh. I can fix it. I can still get this right. “What else did she like?”
“Barbies.” He chuckles, but it turns into a fit of coughing that I can do nothing for.
I can’t help him until the rig arrives with air and drugs. So I coach instead. “Try to relax.” Saying that is mostly useless, and always makes me feel like a dick, but it’s all I’ve got. “Slow your breathing, try to stop coughing so your diaphragm can relax.”
“It’s not so bad,” he wheezes and lifts a hand away from the steering wheel to wipe his cheek. “Doesn’t even hurt.”
“Report!” Fester skids to a stop by my side, a hand up to shield himself from the fire I’m pretending doesn’t exist, and plops a bag by my thighs. “What do you need?”
“Chest hurts,” James rasps. “Hurts—” He places a hand near his solar plexus.
“Start with nitroglycerin,” I tell Fester. “I think this crash started with a heart attack.”
I tear the bag open and rip a mask from the top. While Fester works on my request and I’m forced to do the job with someone else’s partner, I try to help James breathe a little easier.
“I’m gonna place this over your mouth, okay?” I try to look into James’s eyes, but his can barely focus, they’re barely slit open. “I want you to stay awake, okay? Try to relax, try to breathe.” I snap the mask into place and fix the straps. “The fire department is here too. They’re going to help us get out of this thing.”
I reach for my radio, switch it on, since it’s been off while I wasn’t on shift, and immediately try to decipher the chatter. I take a second to process Nixon’s voice, his call for medical for the deceased Marjorie, then I look to James, and pray he didn’t hear what I just heard.
“I need the jaws,” I hear myself, and then I hear it again through Fester’s radio. “Victim is pinned in his vehicle between the steering column and his seat. Metal plate has pierced his right thigh. Left thigh appears unobstructed. Suspected heart attack, but that’s only a hunch.” I release my radio and tug on a pair of gloves.
It feels almost useless at this point, but training is training, and this is what we do.
“How’s your pain, James? How are you feeling?”
“My heart is broken.” His voice sounds different through the mask, but the emotion is as powerful as the growing flames. “My baby—”
“Let’s focus on you for a second.”
Thudding footsteps race in our direction, men in full uniform, men I’ve barbecued with over the years, who I’ve seen at ballgames and the cinema on the weekends. They carry the jaws of life between them, and a third brings up the rear with more tools, more devices to either torture James, or free him.
The guys on the hoses get themselves set up at the water supply, and then they open lines, and water sprays this way.
“Can you wiggle your toes, James? Can you do that?”
He nods. Just the faintest movement of his head. “Yeah. They’re moving.”
“Both feet?”
He goes silent for a moment, as though to check. Then, “Yeah, both.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Little bit.” He coughs again, so his mask fills with condensation and hides the way his lips turn blue. “My heart still—”
“Yeah.” I turn when the jaws arrive and three fire crew stand a couple feet back. “Get this car open for us. He’s dead if you don’t.”
“His leg?”
“If we have to amputate, we will. Patient’s about to go into full cardiac arrest. I know he is.”
“Nitroglycerin?”
“Done,” Fester replies. “But we haven’t dealt with the pain from his leg.”
“Let’s move to fentanyl.” I speak calmly but quickly. Practiced, and hoping like hell I don’t fuck it up. “Fester, you move back. Sloane,” I speak to one of the senior firefighters. “You come closer. Help me cut this steel away.”
“And the jaws?”
“You guys work on those,” I say to the remaining two. “But maybe get your hoses over this way.” I have it all planned out in my head. Extraction, hospital, car doesn’t explode and kill us all.
But before I get to say more, the windshield shatters from the heat, and sprays glass over the interior of the car.
I dive forward instead of back, and cover James’ torso and face so I take the brunt of the slicing shards of glass.
“Can’t breathe,” James whimpers as my back turns wet. From blood? “Can’t b—”
“Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.”
I fall halfway out of the car, yank an electric saw from the ground where the guys left it, and bringing it up, I glance at James; his leg, or the car? “Which one?” My gaze flicks between James and his leg. James and his leg. “Fuck, which one?”
“Leg will be faster,” Sloane murmurs. “Meat and a little bone.”
“Let me do you first.” I turn to him with a lifted brow. “Meat and a little bone?”
“Car.” Nodding, he lifts the jaws and slams the end into place. “Fuck it. Let’s rip this bitch apart.”
“Sound choice.” I grab my radio and hit the button. “We need more water by the front of this vehicle. We’re about to cut it open. More sparks. More fire. There’s fluid on the ground, unidentified, but enough to make me nervous.”
“We gotcha, Mitch.” It’s Nix’s voice I hear. His crew he commands. “Move in,” he says to everyone. “Hit the front, and don’t fuck it up.”
Releasing my radio, I switch on my small saw and bring it closer to James’ thigh. I choose to slice the car, but there’s only a half inch of space between blade and meat, so if my hands were shaking, now might be the time to step down.
“It’s gonna be okay,” I speak to James, to Sloane, to myself. “It’s gonna be fine.”
“He has no pulse,” Fester snaps.
I whip my gaze to him, then to his fingers on James’ throat.
“He’s in cardiac arrest.”
“Fuck!” I bring my blade closer to the body of the car, even as the jaws slowly work, slowly push the engine back. “You do compressions,” I tell Fester. “Don’t stop unless you have him back, or I have him out.”
“Got it.” He presses his hands to James’ chest and pumps.
The shrill roar of the blade drowns out the sound of the fire, the sound of the groaning car, even the sound of high-pressure water hitting the engine and splashing onto my shirt. The cold is a welcome relief against the blazing fury of the fire.
I work with the blade in one hand, the vibrations rolling along my arm as I bring it closer to the steel frame, and with the other, I push James’ denim back so I know exactly how much space I have to work with.
This guy’s kid is dead, I think as I touch down with the blade and begin cutting steel. His wife is now dead, according to my radio.
And technically, for as long as Fester does chest compressions and furiously searches for a pulse, James is dead too.
Are they all together right now, frolicking in some field of wildflowers, while Cady talks of how pretty they are? Are they happy to be together again? I
s that why he’s given up so easily?
“Pulse?” I demand.
“No.” Fester continues his work, just as I continue mine.
Does James even want to come back? Does he want to be where his girls are not?
Or am I searching for the easy way out? To let him go, save myself, and solve the biggest problem in my life right now.
“Fuck.” With renewed energy, I continue sawing into the steel pinning him down.
Sloane can open the car like a tin can, but for as long as the steel remains in his thigh, we aren’t going anywhere. And if we’re not fast enough, not only will we be dealing with a heart attack and a dead leg, but burns too, on all of us.
“Come on. Come on. Come on,” I urge. “Pulse?”
“No.”
“Fuck! James, wake the fuck up!”
“I got it open.” Sloane sets the jaws on the ground outside the car, and looks to me for direction. “Now we wait on you.”
“You do it.” I pull the saw away, set it into hands that have actually trained with it, then I push Fester out and take over the chest compressions. “Get the paddles,” I tell him. “Get ready. Sloane?”
“Two inches to go.” He puts his strength into his work, shoulders bulging and making it difficult for the three of us to fit. “One and three quarters.”
“Fire jumped!” Nixon’s voice screams from my radio. From somewhere nearby. From somewhere in my fucking soul. “Evacuate! Mitch! Evacuate now.”
My eyes shoot to my surroundings. I work on James’ chest, but I also look across the car, through the window, and to the ground outside. I see firefighters. I see a truck. I see nothing that warrants an immediate evac. I look to the back of the car; same.
Then I look down at my knees, at the puddle I kneel in… the puddle that has grown since I arrived on scene. And then I look just twelve feet to my right to where the liquid was draining slightly downhill. But this time, the liquid is a fucking flame, and it races toward us the way a line of gunpowder sprints.
“Oh shit!” I stop working on James’ chest and instead use my shears to snip his seatbelt.
Fester and the other guys clear out at Nix’s order, but Sloane stays and works faster with his saw.