Torch

by Roxie Noir

  It’s okay, I think over and over. It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay. It’s okay.

  “C’mon,” Jennifer says. “They’re in a helicopter, heading to Ashlake General.”

  I grab her hand and let her pull me up, and before I can stop her she’s pulling me in, wrapping her arms around me.

  “There’s a football trophy with Cute Butt’s name on it by the principal’s office,” she says softly. “You never said you’d known each other since high school.”

  That does it.

  The dam breaks and I start sobbing into Jennifer’s shoulder, and it’s a loud, messy, snot-filled ugly cry but I don’t care because I feel limp and spent like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far and snapped back. Jennifer just strokes my hair and makes soothing noises as I babble, shit like I thought he was gonna die and I couldn’t fucking do anything and Jesus I’m a mess I’m sorry.

  Eventually, the waterworks are over and I’ve just got the hiccups. Jennifer reaches into a pocket and hands me half a brown paper towel from one of the school bathrooms.

  I clear my throat and blow my nose, then wish I’d dried my eyes before blowing my nose, and Jennifer guides me upstairs to the girl’s bathroom where there are as many paper towels as I need. I splash my face, and as I dry it on more scratchy paper towels, Jennifer’s radio says her name.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Did you find Clementine?”

  She looks at me.

  “Yeah, I got her,” she says.

  “Can she talk?”

  I nod.

  “Sure,” she says, and hands me the radio.

  There’s another lump in my throat, and I try to clear it. The radio is quiet for a long time, and I just watch it, waiting.

  Then there’s a quick burst of static.

  “Clem?” Hunter’s voice says.

  “Hey,” I say, and I grin despite myself, my eyes filling up again.

  Jennifer turns and leaves the girls’ bathroom.

  “I told you I’d be fine,” he says.

  “I believed you,” I say, my voice a little shaky.

  “I’ve still got your rock,” he says. “I had to fight the paramedics for it when they cut my pants off, though.”

  “You could have replaced it with another one and I’d never have figured it out,” I say.

  “Yeah, but I’d have known,” he says.

  I look at myself in the mirror. I’m a mess, but I’m grinning like an idiot.

  “Are you really okay?” I ask.

  “I will be,” he says, and then the radio goes quiet for a moment. “Listen, Clem, they gotta do some hospital stuff because I guess I inhaled a lot of smoke. And I’m not really supposed to be using the radio for personal shit, anyway, but they said I could.”

  “Hunter, I think you could ask for a pony right now and get it,” I say.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” he says.

  “When can I come see you?”

  More silence. Then a sigh. Then a deep, wracking cough, and I cringe.

  “They said tomorrow,” he says, his voice raspy.

  “Tomorrow?” I ask, my heart sinking.

  “I guess they don’t want visitors for the first couple of hours because of, uh, stuff, and then visiting hours are gonna be over...”

  Visiting hours? Fuck visiting hours.

  “I gotta go,” he says. “But Clem, I, uh...”

  He trails off, my heart suddenly in my throat.

  “I’ll see you soon?” he finishes.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I say.

  The radio clicks off, and I put it down on a sink. I grab the ugly, hard water-stained porcelain in both hands and lean my forehead against the scratched mirror.

  He’s okay, I tell myself. He’s okay, he’s okay.

  It still takes me a little while to pull myself together. I feel like an asshole that he called me after nearly dying and what I said was you could ask for a pony. A good girlfriend would have said oh my God, I’m so glad you’re okay, I was so scared, I don’t know what I’d do without you.

  And I am, I was, and I don’t. But somehow it came out of my mouth as are you really okay?

  I quit thinking about it. I stand up straight, wipe the smudge off the mirror with another paper towel, compose myself, and leave the bathroom.

  Right away, someone needs something: blankets, cots, food, phone numbers. Someone else is finding Delilah for her mother, but I get yanked in a hundred directions instantly.

  The second I can sneak off again, I call my mother.

  “Minty!” she says. “I was just about to call you, because you heard that two of the hotshots had to deploy their fire shelters? I mean, my God, I can’t imagine.”

  “I did hear,” I say. “And—”

  “You’re never going to guess who one of them was,” she goes on.

  “My high school boyfriend Hunter Casden?”

  She laughs.

  “Darn it, Minty, I thought I was the first one with the news for once,” she says. “He’s fine, but I couldn’t believe it when I saw his name on the charts as I was leaving. You know, I had to throw out that couch in the basement after you two broke up.”

  I push my bangs off my forehead, thinking I may as well tell her.

  “Actually, mom, I—”

  I pause, frowning.

  “Why’d you have to throw out the couch?”

  “It was disgusting,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Minty, there was practically a crust on it.”

  I can feel myself turn beet red, and I take a deep breath.

  “Hunter and I are dating again and I need your help busting in to see him after visiting hours are over,” I say, the words rocketing out of my mouth.

  There’s a pause.

  “Hunter Casden?” she says, sounding a little incredulous.

  “What? Yes,” I say. It’s not like we were talking about a different Hunter.

  There’s a long pause on the other end.

  “Please?” I say.

  My mom sighs.

  “All right,” she says.

  36

  Hunter

  On the upside, I get to watch this thunderstorm from indoors, behind the thick glass of my hospital room. The rain lashes against it, the sky almost black, the flashes of lightning intermittent shocks of white daylight.

  It’s quite a show.

  As it’s happening, I get an honest-to-God sponge bath. I try to convince the two kindly, middle-aged nurses that I could take a shower, but they fuss at me that I have second-degree burns over a sizable chunk of my body, and until I heal up a little, running water isn’t a good idea.

  Honestly, I just want them to hurry up, because I’m secretly hoping I can see Clementine before visiting hours end. I know it’s not very likely, and I know that, at worst, she’ll come see me in the morning

  They have to go through ten buckets of water before it stops turning black with soot, and then they can finally bandage me up. I’m not quite sure that my burns warranted all that, but after my day, I don’t mind letting other people bathe me while I lie there.

  At least I’m not Porter, who got rushed into surgery the second we were in the hospital. The guys in the helicopter, who rescued us, could barely look at his leg either. I heard one of them muttering to the other hope he doesn’t lose that, but I was too busy sucking in oxygen from a mask to really listen.

  I do hope he doesn’t lose it, though.

  After they treat my burns with a sponge bath and gauze, I get to see the pulmonologist. She listens to my chest very seriously, asks me lots of questions, listens to my chest again, then frowns.

  “I’m going to keep you overnight,” she says. “In the morning we can see if you’re going to need a pulmonary CT scan or not, because you likely breathed in some superheated air and it could have caused permanent scarring.”

  I swallow and breathe in. All I know is my lungs kinda hurt.

  “How much?” I ask her.

  She shakes
her head.

  “No way to tell just yet,” she says, but pats my shoulder. “But you’re here, so you’re out of the woods.”

  Then she laughs.

  “Literally!” she says, and laughs again. “But seriously, there could be permanent damage. We’ll know more soon.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  I get a mask to wear. I get an IV, because I’m dehydrated, but at least they don’t give me a catheter since I’m still perfectly capable of getting up to pee.

  They do let my parents see me, but not for long. My mom cries and talks a lot about Jesus. My dad makes me pray with the two of them for a good ten minutes, even though I run out of stuff to say to God after about forty-five seconds. I’m just not very religious.

  Around ten that night, after hours of waiting and prodding and wrapping and more waiting and poking and more waiting, I get moved to a regular room at last, walking along with my oxygen mask and IV. At least my hospital gown closes all the way up the back.

  When I open the door to my room, it’s absolutely fucking stuffed with flowers. There are arrangements on every horizontal surface, so many that they’re overflowing onto the floor. There are roses, sunflowers, carnations, lilies, and that’s all the flowers I can really name but I swear there’s a hundred kinds of flowers in here.

  “I swear, every other phone call to the nurse’s station was someone delivering flowers for the fireman,” the nurse who escorted me says.

  I look up at the ceiling. It’s choked with GET WELL balloons, plus one that says Happy Birthday.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I tell her. “People are always nice, but... wow.”

  “You earned it,” she says. “Hope you’re not allergic.”

  After I get into the bed, another nurse seems to visit every ten minutes. I wish they’d let me sleep, but they’re coming in offering more pillows, chamomile tea, warmer socks, a white noise machine. They’re all so nice and sweet that I can’t even get annoyed.

  None of it’s what I really want, but I know I just need patience. Tomorrow morning. I’ll wake up, eat breakfast, and she’ll be here.

  I’ve just drifted off to sleep again when the door opens.

  Please don’t give me anything else to make me more comfortable, I think. Just let me sleep.

  Then whoever opened the door pauses, like they’re uncertain. I open my eyes, but I can’t see them yet because of how the room’s laid out.

  After a moment the bar of light cast by the open door disappears, and the door clicks shut. Quiet, tentative footsteps enter the room, and then a dark shape comes around the corner.

  My heart leaps.

  “Hey,” I whisper.

  “You awake?” Clementine whispers back.

  “No, I’m talking in my sleep,” I say, keeping my voice low, since she obviously sneaked in somehow.

  She comes up to my bed, leans over, and kisses me gently on the forehead. I slide one of my hands into hers, and she squeezes.

  “You missed,” I murmur. “The proper hello kiss is down here.”

  She kisses me on the mouth hesitantly, like I’m made of glass, so I put my other hand on the back of her head and pull her in, harder. Then she kisses me so fiercely I can feel the sharpness of her teeth against my lips, our mouths open, my tongue reaching for hers.

  I’m beyond glad I held on and didn’t run out of the shelter, because now she’s making soft little noises, her hand’s in my hair, and she’s practically pushing me back into my pillows.

  When Clementine finally pulls away, she leans her forehead against mine, eyes closed.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” she whispers.

  “Me too,” I say.

  I’m glad I got to see you again, I think. This is what I hung on for.

  I don’t say it out loud. It’s too cheesy, sounds too much like it’s from a bad made-for-TV movie.

  Clementine sits on my bed, then looks around at the room like she’s seeing it for the first time.

  “This is a fuckton of flowers,” she says, still keeping her voice low.

  I grin and rub the back of her hand with my thumb.

  “Well, I’m a hero,” I say, putting my other arm behind my head.

  Clementine laughs.

  “You get to use that for a week,” she says. “Two, tops.”

  “I saved Eaglevale,” I go on, teasing her. “Singlehandedly. I think.”

  Then I pause, because I realize I don’t actually know what happened to Eaglevale. I’m just assuming if it burned down, someone would have said something.

  “How... is Eaglevale?” I ask.

  She laughs in the dark.

  “Unburnt,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean six months from now, you get to play the hero card to get out of doing the dishes.”

  Then she stops, my room’s quiet again, because we both realize what she just said. Six months from now, she thinks we’ll be arguing over the dishes.

  I like it, and I like that she said it so casually. She didn’t even have to think about it.

  “After the ordeal I went through, I’m still gonna have to wash dishes?” I say. “I don’t get even one servant?”

  “You do have a gaggle of nurses attending to your every whim and desire,” she teases me. “My mom had to lure them away from their station so I could sneak in.”

  “I got a sponge bath from two nurses earlier,” I say. “Consider that a fantasy come true.”

  “I thought you weren’t crazy about two women at once,” she says, laughing. “Or did you figure out where to put your dick?”

  “Front, center, and flaccid,” I say. “I think they got off from it more than I did.”

  Clementine rolls her eyes at me.

  “Clem,” I whisper.

  She raises one eyebrow, so I hold up my arm and flex my bicep.

  “Is that how you got them to sponge bathe you?” she says.

  “You can touch it if you want,” I say, and wink at her.

  Before Clementine can either touch my muscle or tease me again, the door opens brusquely and the lights flash on. We both wince, squinting.

  One of the nurses is standing just inside my room, looking stern. I lower my arm and act like I wasn’t trying to impress a cute girl with my muscles.

  Which is, of course, exactly what I was doing.

  “Visiting hours are over,” she says.

  “Sorry, I was just going,” Clementine says, though she doesn’t move from where she’s sitting, next to me on the bed.

  “Mhm,” says the nurse.

  “It’s my fault,” I say, and rub my thumb across the back of her hand. “I just needed to see her after today.”

  The nurse softens a little bit, her face less stern.

  “Look, they start again at eight tomorrow morning,” she says. “But I do have to kick you out now.”

  Clementine nods. The nurse turns and leaves.

  “When are you getting out of here?” she asks.

  “Tomorrow, day after that at the latest,” I say. “They might have to do a CT scan of my lungs, but I should be out soon.”

  “Okay,” Clementine says, then kisses me again, not as deep or hard as before but not quite gently either.

  “Get some sleep,” she says when she pulls back.

  I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss the back of it softly, her hazel eyes dark and serious.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” she whispers. “I was really scared.”

  I look at her face, so open and serious and vulnerable, and I decide to tell the truth.

  “You know what I kept thinking of?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “When that mountain lion was on the tower, and he wouldn’t get down, and you said I’m sorry the mountain lion doesn’t respect you. For some reason, I just thought that over and over, and I got through it.”

  She smiles and looks down, but I think her eyes are bright with tears.

  “That’s the thing you thought?” she says.

  Th
e nurse pops her head back in and clears her throat.

  “I gotta go,” Clementine says, and kisses me quickly. I squeeze her hand, and then, just like that, she’s out of my hospital room and it’s dark again.

  I fall asleep slowly, the scent of flowers in my nostrils. I hope I dream of Clementine but I don’t dream of anything at all.

  37

  Clementine

  The next morning, I scan the rows of donuts in their glass cases, behind the counter.

  “Two more,” says the bored teenager, snapping a pair of metal tongs together.

  “How about those... round ones with the icing and the bits of stuff on top?” I say, pointing.

  She looks.

  “Those are maple walnut,” she says, like I should really know that already.

  “I’ll take them,” I say, because I don’t really care what they are. I’ve already got the single old-fashioned donut I’m interested in eating, and the rest are a “please like me, and sorry for sneaking in last night” offering.

  “Twelve-oh-nine,” she says. I hand her a twenty, she gives me change, and then I head back to the Forest Service vehicle in the parking lot.

  It’s a beautiful, sunny day, and even though smoke still hangs in the air, it doesn’t feel nearly as dire as it has the past few days. Even better, I actually took a shower and put on clean clothes this morning, so for the first time in a couple of days I’m not wearing my dirty forest ranger uniform.

  I’m wearing Jane’s clothes, actually. I might have borrowed them while she was in the shower and then left a gushing note on her table about how she’s the world’s greatest sister. She might be annoyed with me right now.

  Life’s just full of possibilities. I drive to the hospital and get there at five ’til eight, fully determined to stare down some nurses until they let me see Hunter.

  When you walk through a hospital with a large box of donuts, heads turn. People watch you.

  Perfect, I think, hitting the fourth floor button in the elevator. Operation ‘please like me’ is already going great. Sure, Hunter has one of those charming personalities that wins people over in minutes, but I’ve got donuts.