When Ashes Fall

by Marni Mann

  Knowing the driver was about to pull over, I looked out the window and said to Rose, “You really think she’s here?”

  I didn’t doubt her knowledge.

  Rose certainly knew Alix better than I did.

  But this was a hell of a walk from Alix’s townhouse. It was fucking pouring. She had no cell and no purse, so going by foot was basically her only option.

  “If she’s not here, we’re calling the police,” she said. “And then I’ll start freaking out for a whole different set of reasons.”

  I slid my hood over my head and opened the door, pushing myself out of the car. I waited for Rose and shut it behind her, and then I went with her to the entrance. She lifted the latch to let us into the gate.

  As she led us down the paved walkway, the only sound was the rain.

  I was lost in too many thoughts to talk.

  The same amount of questions was swirling through my goddamn head.

  To try to get them to settle a little, I focused on my steps and how this walk seemed so fucking endless.

  The ground wasn’t flat.

  We climbed several hills and made a few turns.

  And, when we reached a spot that was high enough to overlook the rest of the land that was inside the massive gate, Rose’s arm shot into the air, and she said, “She’s there.”

  I looked at where she was pointing.

  The fog that had formed over the lower points made it hard to see anything. But, after a few seconds, it lifted, and I was able to make out a body on the ground.

  I didn’t waste a fucking second.

  I took off running as fast as I could.

  As I got closer, I saw the outline of her body. She’d tucked her knees against her chest, and her head was resting on her arm as though it were a pillow.

  My feet pounded on the pavement, closing the distance between us.

  Once I reached her, I fell onto my knees and put my hands on her back. “Baby?”

  She didn’t move, not even when I shook her.

  And she didn’t say a word.

  Goddamn it, Alix, come back to me.

  I put my hands under her arms and pulled her out of the ball. I dragged her against my chest, holding her like a baby. “Alix, can you hear me?”

  Rain poured on us both.

  Thunder was cracking directly above us.

  Her skin was ice.

  Her pulse was slow.

  She was sopping wet.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I told her.

  As I brought her in closer, I looked at the headstone that was right in front of me.

  Dylan Cole

  1980–2013

  “Wishing for a sunny day …”

  “You’re going to get a sunny day,” I whispered in her ear. “Just hang in there.”

  My arm went under the backs of her knees, and I lifted her into the air. When I turned around, Rose was only a few feet away.

  “Is she okay?” she asked, panting.

  “She has a pulse, and she’s breathing; she’s just not responding to me.”

  Rose took out her phone and said, “I’m calling nine-one-one right now. Do you want to bring Alix to the entrance, so it’ll be easier for the paramedics to find us?”

  I was already on my way, carrying her through the storm, hoping the warmth from my skin would do something to help her.

  She didn’t stir the entire walk back to the entrance.

  She didn’t let out a single moan.

  Not even when I brought her to the ambulance and set her on the stretcher.

  “What hospital are you taking her to?” I asked as I stood by the double doors.

  I watched as the medics began to hook her up to machines, calling out numbers that meant nothing to me.

  “Mass General,” one of them replied.

  “I’m going with her,” Rose said, her fingers now on my arm. “And don’t try to fight me on it because I will win that battle.” She was now pulling my arm. “Look over there. I got you a cab, and you’re going to follow us to the hospital.”

  When I finally took my eyes off Alix, I saw what Rose was talking about.

  There was a taxi pulled up to the curb, waiting for me.

  “Don’t take your eyes off of her.”

  “I won’t,” she promised.

  I climbed into the taxi, telling the driver to follow the ambulance, and he stayed directly behind it the entire drive. Once I arrived at the hospital, I found Rose, and we were put in a waiting room in the emergency department.

  A nurse came in to treat my hand since I wouldn’t go into an exam room.

  I didn’t care that I was still bleeding from the glass. I wasn’t leaving this spot until I knew what was happening with Alix.

  After I was glued and bandaged, I sat in the chair and didn’t say a word.

  Neither did she.

  The only movement I made was when I reached into my pocket and took out my phone, typing Alix’s name into the search engine.

  The first article that came up was from The Boston Globe.

  I clicked on it.

  Boston Marathon Bombing: The Survivors

  By Dawn Warren

  April 16, 2013

  Boston resident Alix Rayne, 28, a paramedic for Boston Emergency Medical Services, was located near the finish line on Boylston Street, directly outside Copley Square, when brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, detonated their two pressure cooker bombs.

  Rayne wasn’t in the affected area during the explosion but was on her way back to it to join her fiancé, Dylan Cole, 33, owner of Embassy Jets. The explosion sent Rayne to her knees, and one witness describes seeing her crawl toward the blast site. When Rayne found Cole, who had been blown more than twenty feet away from where he had been standing, he was already dead.

  Sources tell The Boston Globe that Rayne and Cole were scheduled to be married next month.

  Underneath the short article was the same picture Rose had described to me. It showed Alix in the middle of the road, holding Dylan against her chest.

  That photo had become the face of the bombing.

  It was no wonder she had so many followers online.

  And why she only posted sunny days.

  I clicked the screen off and put my phone away.

  I couldn’t look at it anymore.

  The pain on her face fucking killed me.

  I got up and started pacing the room, trying to remember the first time I had seen that photo published. I had been in Dubai during the bombing on a two-week vacation, and I’d followed the story from the other side of the world. And, when I’d returned to Boston, I had been focused on how they were going to prosecute the motherfucker who hadn’t died during the shoot-out.

  Even though I’d seen the picture before, I’d had no idea Alix was in the photo.

  I turned at the wall and started walking back toward Rose, my hands tugging at my hair, trying to process everything I’d seen today.

  Rose’s hands were pressed against her chest, holding the blanket the nurse had given to us because we were both soaked.

  I cleared my throat and stopped a few feet in front of her. “Was April 15 the last day Alix was a paramedic?” I asked.

  Rose nodded, giving me the answer I’d feared. “She was one of the best in the city. She tried so hard to get back to it. Every couple of weeks, she’d go to the firehouse, but she just couldn’t do it.”

  She glanced up, our eyes finally connecting. I knew my expression looked as emotional as hers.

  “She took a year off and just recently went back to work. She wanted to stay in emergency services, so she transferred to the call center.”

  “That’s not easy either.” I scraped my fingers through my beard as I pictured her answering the phone. “She probably worries every day that she’ll get a call, and it will send her into a flashback, like thunder does.”

  “I’ve never thought about that,” Rose admitted. “But, my God, you’re probably right.”


  Jesus Christ.

  We both turned quiet again.

  There was nothing left to say.

  And I started to pace once more.

  I just wanted to help her.

  Heal her.

  Make her pain go away.

  But I couldn’t do a goddamn thing in this room besides walk back and forth across the fucking floor and wait for a doctor to come out and tell me if Alix was all right.

  Fifty-Four

  Dylan

  I walked over to Alix’s hospital bed and sat on the very edge, surrounding her hand with mine. There was an IV in her wrist and oxygen in her nose.

  Physically, she was going to be fine.

  She would stay the night here, and in the morning, she would be good to go home.

  But, mentally, she was putting up one hell of a fight.

  It was my fault.

  I was selfish.

  I didn’t want to let her go.

  Alix Rayne was the love of my life.

  She was my balance.

  The air I flew through.

  The sun that shone during every sunny day.

  It hurt to be without her.

  To watch her live a life that she should have been sharing with me.

  But she wasn’t really living because I wouldn’t let her.

  I knew how hard she was struggling.

  I knew the position I was putting her in.

  I didn’t care.

  Even when she’d broken down, when she’d walked three and a half miles across the city to find me, a place she hadn’t visited since the funeral, she couldn’t say good-bye.

  She was too loyal.

  She would continue to grasp at any bit of hope I threw at her.

  And she wouldn’t stop.

  Because she was a fighter.

  A survivor.

  A healer.

  Someone who didn’t let go.

  I had to be the one.

  And I had to do it now.

  I leaned my face close to hers and breathed her in.

  Lemon.

  The scent of the ambulance had stuck to her skin the whole time we’d been together, just like it was on her now.

  I would miss that smell.

  I’d miss her.

  “Alix,” I whispered.

  Slowly, there was movement. It started in her feet and legs and went to her arms and hands. Her eyes gradually opened, and she took in my face.

  She smiled.

  I knew she didn’t realize she was in a hospital. I was sure she wouldn’t remember leaving the townhouse and walking to the cemetery or falling asleep at my grave.

  I wasn’t going to mention it.

  There were plenty of people in the waiting room who could fill her in.

  My time with her was limited, and I didn’t want to waste a second.

  “Hi,” she said so softly, the color finally returning to her skin.

  “You’re so beautiful.”

  It was true.

  And she had to know.

  Because this was the last time I would ever be able to tell her.

  Her cheeks blushed, her smile not fading at all.

  I would miss that, too.

  “My Alix,” I started. My fingers stretched out over her hand, gently touching the wire of the IV. “I told you once that you were in my life for only two seconds when I knew I loved you.”

  “That’s what I used to measure almost everything by, comparing it all to two seconds.” Her voice was hoarse, but I knew it would come back to normal soon. “If someone can love that deep in that short amount of time, then two seconds isn’t really quick at all.”

  She was right.

  It had only taken one second for my entire life to pass before my eyes.

  And another to hit the ground.

  “You’re going to have so many more seconds in your life.”

  “We are,” she corrected me.

  I smiled at her. “We had some good ones, didn’t we?”

  She nodded, a tear dropping each time she lifted her head. “They were incredible.”

  “I remember the lunch we had in the park the day of the marathon,” I told her. “You were sitting in front of me, and your back was leaning into my chest. I put my lips on top of your head, and I was thinking of how lucky I was to be there with you. How, in just a month’s time, you were going to be my wife. And, while I was sitting there, I pictured our future. What it would be like to see you pregnant and giving birth to our child. What it would be like to see that baby graduate from college. How many times a month you could get my ass up Cadillac Mountain once we retired.”

  She laughed, and it was beautiful.

  “I never pictured a moment that didn’t have you in it. My life started when I met you. And I consider myself the luckiest man in the world because my life ended with you.”

  I couldn’t catch her tears, as they were moving far too fast, so I just let them fall.

  “Dylan,” she wept.

  She knew.

  I could see it in her eyes.

  “Alix, I have to let you go.”

  She was shaking her head, but she was saying, “I know.”

  She was torn down the middle.

  Once again.

  She would never make this decision.

  So, I would.

  “I want you to smile again. I want you to get back in that ambulance and do what you love because you don’t know when that choice is going to be taken away from you. I want you to live.”

  “You can’t go.”

  “If I keep holding on, you’re going to lose everything you have. I won’t let that happen. You’ve already lost enough.”

  She looked down at my hand, her thumb grazing over the back of my palm. “What if I forget?”

  “You won’t.”

  “How do you know that, Dylan? Because, right now, I can close my eyes and I can see the texture of your skin and I can hear the exact pitch of your voice and I can perfectly describe the scent of your cologne. It’s all so fresh in my mind. But what if those memories dull? What if I need your laughter to get me through the saddest day, and I can’t hear it anymore? What if I need you to hold my hand, and I can’t remember what your fingers looked like?”

  I reached up and touched the side of her head. “All of that is right in here. You might have to dig, but you’ll always find it.”

  I brought her hand up to my lips, and I kissed her fingertips. She had the softest skin.

  That was something else I’d miss.

  “It’s time.”

  “Wait,” she cried out. “How am I supposed to say good-bye when I know I’ll never see you again?”

  She knew she would see me in pictures and in memories.

  She had those now.

  She also knew she would be with me again.

  So, there was only one way to answer her.

  I pressed my lips against hers and whispered, “I love you, Alix.”

  She closed her eyes, her tears soaking my mouth, her lips quivering between mine, and said, “I love you, too.”

  She didn’t open her lids for two seconds.

  By then, I was already gone.

  Fifty-Five

  Alix

  Present Day

  I felt a tingling.

  It started in my feet and moved to my legs. It then traveled to my arms and hands. Warmth was spreading throughout me as I regained the feeling in my body.

  The darkness behind my lids was lightening as I lifted them.

  Slowly.

  The light immediately stung.

  It felt as though it had been months since I saw it.

  Maybe a year—a time frame that felt almost exact.

  As my vision became more focused, I saw a face staring back at me.

  At first, I thought it was Dylan.

  I expected it to be him since I’d just seen him two seconds ago.

  He had told me he loved me and …

  It suddenly all came back to me.

 
The conversation we’d had.

  The good-bye.

  But Dylan wasn’t whom I was looking at right now.

  It was Smith.

  I squeezed his fingers as they clung to my left hand, hoping to alleviate the worry in his expression. “I’m okay.”

  My throat burned.

  My voice was raspy.

  “That’s what the doctor said, too.” He moved closer. I could almost feel the heat from his body even though only his hand was touching me. “They’re going to keep you overnight. As long as your vitals stay normal, you’ll be discharged in the morning.”

  It took me a minute to register what he’d said.

  “The doctor?” I asked.

  I looked past him and saw the room, the gown I was dressed in, the machines on the side of me, the IV in my hand.

  I was in the hospital.

  But why?

  I felt my blood pressure spike as the panic began to set in.

  Rose was walking over to the bed, wearing the same expression Smith had on. She took my right hand and said, “Do you remember?”

  As I glanced at her face, I tried to rewind to the last memory I had.

  I’d taken a shower and gotten dressed to go to Smith’s house.

  Rose had sent me a text, saying it was going to rain.

  I’d walked out my front door and stood on the steps.

  I couldn’t recall a single detail after that.

  “No,” I admitted, “I don’t remember.”

  “We don’t have to talk about it now,” Smith said. “We just got you back. We need to make sure you’re feeling all right, and then, when you’re up to it, we can discuss everything that happened tonight.”

  I’d scared them.

  I could tell that by the way they were looking at me.

  The truth was, there were days when I scared myself.

  Every storm that came through.

  Every craaack that filled my ears.

  “Where was I when you found me?” I asked.

  Because someone had to have found me.

  That was how I’d gotten to the hospital.

  “Alix, you don’t need to worry about this right now,” Smith said.

  “Yes, I do!” I shouted. “I have to know.”