I snorted and followed suit, my feet hitting the ground and my hand slamming the door closed all while I was moving toward the wreck.
My helmet didn’t do much to stop the rain, but it did enough in conjunction with my bunker gear.
A strong gust of wind sprayed water down my back, and I had to force myself not to shiver as I made my way to the side of the car.
“What happened?” I asked the woman who was looking at me dazedly.
“I got her. You get the kid,” Booth muttered.
I rolled my eyes.
Booth was more of our resident trauma person—he’d served over ten years in the Marines as a combat medic—and since it was more than apparent that the mother had taken the brunt of the force from the car wreck, I let him have it.
I moved to the back window where there was a girl sitting there, her arm somehow pinned between the back glass of the window and the seat.
The car resembled a fucking pretzel, anyway, and I wasn’t surprised that it was squished like it was.
“Honey, can you tell me where you are?” I asked the little girl.
She blinked at me.
“What’s that?” she whispered, her eyes going wide at something at my back.
My head whipped around, and all I saw was a fucking wall of black sky that almost appeared green.
“Son of a fucking motherfucking bitch,” I growled, looking up at the worst possible thing I could be looking at that moment in time.
“That’s a tornado,” the girl in the front seat whispered. “Oh, my God. It looks like the one in Twister!”
I looked down at the girl, maybe fourteen at most, and closed my eyes. My heart rate, which had been accelerating, started to slow, and I snapped them open.
“Sweetie,” I whispered. “I’m about to hurt you. I don’t want to, but if I don’t….” I looked back at the sky behind me.
She knew just as well as I knew that if I didn’t get her out, we were both dead.
I looked up and gauged the distance to the overpass, back down at the car, and then started to work.
The girl screamed.
Someone else screamed.
The mom maybe. Hell, at that point I wasn’t sure if I was the one screaming. The freakin’ air around us was electric.
Then an eerie quiet settled around us, and a single train whistle pierced the air.
I grabbed a Halligan that was handed to me, and I started prying the two pieces of car off the girl’s wrist.
She screamed louder, and my belly started to roll. I didn’t like hurting people. Had this been a different situation, I would’ve given her something for the pain. Fuck, anything was better than what I was doing to her right then.
The moment her wrist was free, she scrambled out, her one good arm, and one bad arm, pointed at me through the window.
I hooked my hands underneath her arms and practically yanked her out of the car, and was running before I even had clear comprehension of what I was doing.
Pounding boots sounded beside me, and I looked over to see PD hauling ass, and passing me.
Not one to be outdone, I sprinted faster.
The body I was carrying was half the size of PD’s, though, and he was about six inches and fifty pounds heavier than me.
It only made sense that he’d beat me there, but not by much. Not with the way my adrenaline was coursing through my veins, or the way my heart was beating so fast that I was likely tachycardic.
The train whistle got closer, sounding even louder than before.
We all pushed under the overpass, and someone started screaming for everyone to start climbing up the sides. It sounded like Booth, or Tai. At that point, though, I didn’t have the ability to differentiate between the voices.
I followed the crowd, and hunkered down with my girl, staring at the huge fucking funnel cloud that was heading our way.
“Goddamn,” some man said in awe beside me.
I didn’t look over at him.
I couldn’t.
Then, just like that, what I was looking at and was headed straight for us, was gone as if it’d never been.
The train whistle, which had likely been the tornado itself, was no longer in attendance, either. Leaving the entire overpass quiet. So fucking quiet.
“Where’d it go?” someone yelled. “Can we go?”
That question was answered moments later when the rain picked back up.
And the hail.
Hail the size of a fucking softball.
Needless to say, we chose to stay put until we could safely make it back to the ambulance.
If we could see to drive it. The glass was probably smashed. We’re just lucky that tornado didn’t take the whole rig with it.
My phone pinged, and I pulled it out, unable not to look at it.
It was a picture that Angie had sent me of the hallway of the ICU.
“Motherfucker,” I growled, my eyes taking in the pandemonium.
“You know,” the young girl in my arms said with amusement. “My momma gets mad at me when I curse. You could be a bad influence on me.”
I snorted and pocketed my phone without replying.
She didn’t have time for a reply.
“What your mom doesn’t know, won’t hurt her,” I muttered.
“I heard that!” the mother, somewhere under this stupid overpass with us, cried out.
I looked backwards over my shoulder and saw PD with his arm around his patient, the mother of the little girl in my arms. Then further to Tai, who had the little sister of my patient. She was about six or seven, and tiny.
“Sorry!” I called out.
Nobody answered, and I chose to take that as a good sign.
“Who was that on the phone?” the girl asked.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
I hadn’t had a chance to get it before I was yanking her out of the car like I normally would have.
“Macey,” she grimaced.
I tried not to think about how badly her arm was hurting her.
It was likely broken.
Not to mention had I had time, I would’ve ascertained the rest of her injuries before yanking her out of the car like I had. There was no telling what kind of problems she had.
“That was my girlfriend,” I answered her. “She’s working in the NICU today, and she sent me a picture where they had to pull out all their babies into the hallway.”
The moment the word baby was out of my mouth, my breath stalled in my lungs.
Although it was bad, having to pull babies into the hallway that were barely clinging to life, my mind was set on another baby.
A baby that’d started daycare only a few hours ago.
Elise.
My eyes closed, and I prayed whatever kind of fucked up weather this was would stop.
At least long enough for me to go check on Elise and to alleviate my fears.
***
“Jesus,” Drew groaned as he pulled out of the hospital. “This is so fucked up.”
It was.
You could see the exact path the tornado had taken.
“You didn’t want to stop in to see Angie?” Tai asked, looking at me.
I shook my head. No, I had other plans.
And I was sick to my stomach when I thought about those plans.
“Well then, we need to go get this repaired so we can go back in service,” Drew muttered, indicating the cracked windshield.
He was driving with his head out the window so he could see, and the captain would likely have a conniption if he realized how bad it actually was.
“Longview, Tyler, and the volunteer areas surrounding us have already responded to our area. We can pull over and stop, get this fixed,” Booth continued. “You’re just going to wreck us and put us out of commission.”
“Well it doesn’t look like it matters anyway,” Drew sighed as he pulled to the side of the road. “Road’s blocked. Cars everywhere.”
We all got out and looked.
/> There were overturned cars nearly every fifty feet, and medical personnel floating around damn near everywhere.
I nodded at a Longview paramedic that I recognized, and he nodded back, eyes going back to the man that he was helping.
“I have to go to the daycare,” I couldn’t wait anymore. “I have to go check on her. They’re not answering the phone, and I need to make sure she’s okay.”
Booth looked over at me, followed by PD, and they both nodded before falling in step with me.
“Well, I’ll stay with the rig and y’all can all go. Didn’t you say it was only a few blocks from here?” Tai asked.
I nodded, already starting to walk in the direction of the daycare.
The daycare was the perfect location for us.
It was close to both of our jobs and school. It was close to Alec—who was home today since he didn’t work on Fridays—and it was the best one in the entire city.
The closer I got, the more scared I became.
I’d heard over the radio after we’d dropped the patients off at the hospital that there’d been two tornadoes touch down in our small town.
One of which had been right in front of us. The other had touched down about a mile south, right around the hospital, fire station, school and the daycare where Elise was.
Even more cars were over turned, these having not been seen by medical professionals.
People littered the street, assessing the damage.
Glass and debris were strewn this way and that.
Somewhere along the way, I’d lost the other guys.
They’d stopped to help others, and I’d kept going, knowing I needed to get to the daycare.
And I knew why my subconscious was urging me on moments later when I saw the building.
“Oh, holy shit,” I moaned. My belly dropped at the sight before me.
The daycare had been hit hard.
Not by a tornado, though, but by a large transformer collapsing.
Right in the middle of the building.
Live wires popped and snapped, and it took everything I had in me not to run toward the building.
Pulling the mic at my shoulder close to my face, I whispered past the ball of grief that’d formed in my throat.
“I need the power shut off to Lazy Lane. There’s a power transformer in the middle of a daycare.”
“10-4,” the dispatcher said, all business.
Had her voice sounded higher than normal?
I didn’t know, and I didn’t have time to ascertain whether or not she’d comprehended the severity of the situation.
The closer I got to the building, the easier it was to hear the crying.
Tons of crying.
Not just one, but multiple children were still alive inside, and I closed my eyes and prayed that everything would be okay.
That Elise was okay.
This day had turned out to be my worst nightmare come true.
***
Angie
“Hey,” Jade called. “Look at the TV. That’s one of our firefighters, isn’t it?”
I couldn’t help myself. Despite not liking the woman, and hating that she made me look, I rotated my body to look at the screen.
And my heart nearly dropped out of my chest at the sight before me.
“That’s Bowe,” I exhaled in surprise.
I didn’t stop to think that everyone that was surrounding me knew him as ‘Mr. Tannenbaum’ from class. Nor did I think how that would make me sound as I addressed him as Bowe instead of his proper name as our teacher.
My eyes started to take in the surroundings that the camera crew for the news station we were on was capturing.
“A firefighter came to check on his daughter and found this when he arrived on scene,” the reporter was saying into the TV. “It’s not apparent at this time what the status of those inside are, but we should find out shortly. The power company was just now able to get the grid shut down for this area, and now firefighters are working diligently to pull survivors free of the debris.”
The glass vial in my hand fell to the floor and shattered.
Chapter 19
Let me make this simple. I want to be invited, but I don’t want to go.
-Women logic
Angie
“That’s not good enough!” I snapped. “Tell me everything. I need to know if she’s going to be okay.”
“Angie…” Bowe placed his hand on my shoulder.
I viciously yanked my shoulder away from him and glared.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed.
He stepped back like I’d burned him.
Alec, always the one to soothe my fits of temper, came up then and wrapped his arms around my shoulders.
“She’s fine, Angie,” Alec whispered gruffly. “She’s just sleeping.”
I sat by my daughter’s bedside, thanking God once again that this hadn’t been worse.
She could be dead like the teacher in her class.
“She’s fine,” the doctor was saying. “Right now, we’re just going to keep her for observation. She’ll likely get released tomorrow morning if everything goes as planned.”
The doctor was incredibly nice and I felt terrible for snapping at him earlier.
But my rational brain was gone the moment I walked up on where we’d dropped my baby off earlier in the day only to find her on a fucking stretcher strapped down with another girl next to her.
“If there aren’t any other questions,” the doctor stood from his perch against the counter of our small room. “I’m going to go do my rounds.”
I held out my hand.
“Thank you,” I whispered to him. “I wish we’d met under better circumstances.”
The doctor smiled kindly.
“As do I, dear. As do I.” He gave me a tremulous smile and patted my shoulder, then left the room.
“She looks great, considering,” my mother said, breaking the silence. “That could’ve been ten times worse.”
I gave my mother a look.
“It was worse. You didn’t hear about the other two little girls in her class, as well as her teacher, Ms. Sarah.” I took a deep breath. “The two girls are seriously injured. Ms. Sarah died trying to protect the three little girls from the roof caving in.”
Bowe’s breath left him and I felt a moment of sorrow.
He’d been the one to first breach the building.
He’d found the girls, hurt and crying.
He’d been the one to pull the teacher off of my little girl.
He’d been the one to find the other two children lying right next to Elise’s unconscious little body.
But I wasn’t that sorry.
He’d been the one to put her in that daycare in the first place.
He’d been the one to convince me that she needed the socialization.
Well, he could’ve taken my baby away from me today and I wasn’t in a very kind, nor forgiving, mood.
“Bowe,” I said, not looking at him. “Do you think I could talk to you for a minute?”
I felt, more than heard, him follow me into the hallway, and shut the door behind him.
I didn’t bother to turn around to say what I had to say.
Seeing him would only make it worse.
“Today,” I breathed out a shaky breath. “Today I could’ve lost the only thing that matters to me.”
I heard him swallow, and only then did I replay what I’d just said in my head.
Did I backtrack?
Hell no.
I didn’t backtrack or apologize for what I had to say. I said what I needed to say, and then moved on. Which what I was about to do, whether it hurt him in the process or not.
“I’ve realized a few things today, and I’m sure you’re not going to like it.” I looked down the hallway.
He appeared at my side, and I saw him with both hands in his pockets.
He was filthy.
He’d come in about ten minutes ago, just in time for him to he
ar what the doctor had to say in regards to my child’s health.
A child that he’d put in jeopardy.
“I think, at this moment in time, I’m going to focus on Elise and me.” I couldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry, Bowe. But you’re going to have to find somewhere else to live. I can’t do this anymore.”
He didn’t say anything, and only then did I find the courage to look at him.
His face was utterly blank.
“You blame me.”
“I don’t,” I lied.
I so did.
He didn’t need to know that, though.
“You do.” He nodded his head. “For what it’s worth, I love that little girl as if she were my own.” He swallowed, then looked down.
My breath caught at the hurt that was floating around in those beautiful eyes.
“I would kill myself over and over again if it would make today never happen,” he declared. “I never, ever, wanted you to experience this, and I’m sorry that I inadvertently played a hand in your worst nightmare.”
And before I could call him back, he was striding back down the hallway, not once looking back.
“You realize, right, that my house was hit by the tornado,” my mother said softly, sounding disappointed.
“What?” I gasped. “No!”
She nodded her head.
“Yes,” she confirmed with a nod of her head. “If Elise and I had been there, we could be just as dead as those that perished today.”
I bit my lip.
“Food for thought,” she said. “But I didn’t raise you to take your frustrations and doubts out on other people.”
I looked away.
“It wouldn’t have worked out anyway.”
She hummed under her breath.
“Well, I guess you’ll never know with that attitude, now will you?”
With that parting shot, she left the hospital room, leaving me alone with my sleeping, alive, baby girl, and my horrible thoughts.
Chapter 20
Women don’t want a man’s opinion. They want you to agree with their opinions.
-Fact of Life
Bowe
After I came to my senses, I tried to call Angie, and she ignored every single fucking text, call, and knock on her door. I suppose I should’ve been happy that she’d at least let me take my belongings, which she so nicely set out on the curb.
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