by Tess Oliver
She moved out around the truck and was only a quarter of the way when her small car slid sideways. The truck driver rolled on, seemingly not even noticing the disaster behind him. The car flew up and did a somersault before landing off the side of the road where, once again, it flipped over twice before settling on its roof.
The highway was close to deserted, and the landscape was pitch dark. I pulled my truck at an angle so my headlights could light the accident scene. I was out of the truck and halfway to the car before the first spark of fire.
Soft moans came from the car, but there was little or no movement inside. Considering what the small sedan had been through, it hadn’t been too badly crushed. If they’d survived the impact, then I felt confident they were both still alive.
For the second time tonight, adrenaline was pumping through my muscles. A low whimper floated out from the car. I dropped to my knees next to the driver’s broken window. The woman’s hand was still clinging to the steering wheel. I reached in and touched her skin. She was still warm.
I leaned down to get a better look at the passenger. She was hanging upside down in her seatbelt, completely unconscious with blood coming from somewhere.
The glow and hiss of a flame drew my attention to the front of the car. We didn’t have long. The driver groaned again.
I leaned my head closer to her ear. “I’m going to get you out of here.” I rolled back to my ass and used my boot to break down some of the glass shards still clinging to the window frame. More headlights illuminated the overturned car. “Need help?” Someone called from above on the road.
“Call for an ambulance,” I yelled back as I yanked off my coat. The word ambulance shook another cry from the distraught driver.
I reached in and put my hand on her arm. “What’s your name?”
It took her a second to remember. “Sarah. My name’s Sarah,” she sobbed.
“You’re all right, Sarah. I’m going to lean across and unfasten your seatbelt.” A piece of glass sliced my shoulder as I shoved the upper half of my body through the jagged opening. I fumbled with the belt for what seemed a fucking eternity. It finally came loose, and my arm shot around the woman to keep her from falling. She groaned in pain but clung fast to my arm. She was small and I was anything but. I inched my body back out.
“Hold on, Sarah. This might hurt.”
She cried out as I pulled her as gently as possible back through the broken window. With caution and a healthy dose of fear that I would cause her even more injury, I pulled her legs free from the car.
The fire was no longer just angry sparks. Waves of hot red flames curled over the front of the car, lapping dangerously at the cracked front windshield. The cab was beginning to fill with bitter, dense smoke, It was thick and blinding like the air around the newly filled coal cars. Sarah was dazed and close to unconscious, but the sight of the fire overtaking her car shocked her awake. She clutched at my arm and screamed. “Nadine! My sister is still inside!”
I picked Sarah up and carried her up the small embankment. The man who’d stopped to call for help came down halfway to meet me. He was an older man with a pronounced limp.
I set the girl on the ground. She was near to hysteria as she stared down at the burning car. “Keep an eye on her,” I told the man.
“Yes, of course. But you can’t go back down there.” He took hold of my arm. “That car is about to blow.”
Sarah cried and struggled to crawl back to the car. I stooped down in front of her and held her face to get her to focus on what I was saying. “I’m going back right now, but you have to stay clear. Do you understand?”
Her face, a young, pretty face of twenty or so, was covered in a smear of dirt, blood and tears. She nodded. “Hurry, please.”
“I plan to.” I raced back to the car. The flames were arching over the bottom of the car. I had no idea which side the gas tank was on, but with the way the fire was moving, it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t be long before the tank blew.
The grass and brush around the car had been dried by the extreme heat, and the fire was creating a trail of smoldering mounds all around the vehicle.
Sirens sounded in the distance just as I dropped to my knees next to the passenger side. They were still too far off to help.
Again, I pounded down the sharp edges of the window until there was room for me to slide my shoulders into the car. The heat and cluttered air felt like being in the deepest cavern of a coal mine. Blood from the cut on my arm dripped down off my fingertips as I reached for her seatbelt clasp. The passenger hadn’t stirred from her position, but a small sound came from her mouth as the seatbelt opened and she dropped onto my arm. She was taller than Sarah, and I fell back onto my ass as I finally managed to pull her free.
“Hurry!” the old man yelled unnecessarily down from the embankment. Flames had all but engulfed the car. Smoke made it impossible to see, and my asthma was kicking in hard. I held back the inevitable coughing fit, knowing damn well that once it started, it was going to take oxygen or a breathing machine to stop it.
Sarah stood and pulled away from the man’s grasp. She stumbled toward us. “Nadine!”
Her sister stirred in my arms at the sound of her Sarah’s voice. Nadine’s eyes fluttered open for a brief second, and she stared up at me. A knot the size of a fist formed in my throat. She had been just seconds from being burned to death.
A loud explosion behind us lit up the sky. Sarah dropped to her knees and covered her head. I stumbled forward but managed to hang onto Nadine.
The heat at my back was almost unbearable.
Sarah lifted her face and screamed. “Your shirt is on fire!”
I took two more steps and placed Nadine on the ground. Two paramedics appeared over the embankment as I dropped to the ground and rolled. The searing pain lasted only seconds before complete numbness overtook me. A paramedic’s heavy coat was thrown over me. They worked quickly to make sure all the flames were extinguished.
I pushed myself to sitting and swayed back as if someone had just spun the ground beneath me.
The paramedic grabbed my arm to keep me upright. He crouched down in front of me. “Someone sure as hell deserves a medal tonight. But first we better get you to a hospital.”
Chapter 4
Andi
I shut the curtain around the bed. The patient, a middle-aged man, had come in with chest pains that thankfully turned out to just be a major case of gas. He was resting quietly while waiting to be released.
It had been such a busy night on the emergency room floor, I’d hardly had time to catch my breath. The reception area was finally quiet, almost too quiet.
I swung around the corner and nearly smacked right into Gary. “Gar—Dr. Hughes, I was just going to check on—”
He shook his head. “An ambulance just pulled up to the vestibule. Another one is coming in behind it. A car slid off the road and landed upside down. The car exploded, so we’ve got burns as well.”
“I’ll see that the trauma rooms are ready.” I hurried past him. Three rooms with single beds were set up for trauma patients. The gunshot wound had already gone through surgery and was now in intensive care. The rooms were clean and ready to go.
Cool air ushered in as the doors to the ambulance dock opened. The first two victims were young women in their twenties with multiple lacerations. One looked far better off than the other.
“Bed one and bed two,” I told the paramedics as they rushed them through. The second ambulance pulled up and minutes later the gurney emerged. The patient was on his stomach, but his head was resting on his arm as if he was awake. A bandage was doing its best to stop the blood flowing from his right arm. His shirt had been cut away. The red blisters of a second degree burn blurred the mosaic of tattoos on his back.
I pulled my eyes away from his form for a second, then my gaze shot right back to the victim. For a brief moment, it seemed there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. I sucked in a much needed breath and rushed forward
to the man.
“Tommy?” My voice came out as a scared whisper.
He lifted and turned his head toward me. “Hey, Sulli.” It had been a long while since he’d called me Sulli, and the sound of it tugged at my heart like the sweet, nostalgic feel of homesickness. “Fancy seeing you here.” His words were stretched by the analgesic gas given by the paramedics to control pain. His grin assured me he’d had plenty of it.
Gary came up behind me. “Nurse Sullivan, we need to get him to a room.”
“Yes, I know.” I ran my hand over the back of Tommy’s head. “Jeez, still the same old Huck. Always chasing trouble.”
“Old habits,” he slurred as he rested his head back down and closed his eyes.
“Bed three,” I told the attendant. I followed behind, but Gary took hold of my arm.
“Do you know the patient?”
“Since childhood. He’s my brother’s best friend.”
“Then switch places with Nurse Rathbone. She’s with the woman in bed two.”
“But burns are an area of expertise for me.”
He scoffed at the word expertise. Gary was always quick to remind me of the medical hierarchy. “It’s never a good idea to tend to family members and friends. I don’t need you getting all emotional in there.”
“Dr. Hughes,” I said sharply, “I always keep my emotions to myself in this hospital, with the exception of right now.” I pointed to my face. “Anger. In case you couldn’t tell. I’ve been taking care of Tommy’s cuts and bruises since we were twelve years old. I will be his attending nurse.” I turned hard on my heels and walked away.
The two attendants were standing in the room with the paramedics, apparently assessing how they’d move a man the size of Tommy. He’d always been tall, but in the past few years, he’d filled out tremendously. He was nothing short of massive. His shoulders spanned across the gurney and beyond. Even lying stretched out with the red blisters of a large second degree burn on his back, he looked intimidating. Could have been the menacing looking tattoos or the size of his arms or maybe it was just because I knew how dangerous he could be. As a teenager, he’d left his brutal stepfather in a coma for a week. The man had deserved it. Tommy had been protecting his mom, but from the stories I’d heard, he’d laid the man out with one punch.
“I can move myself,” Tommy suggested. “Just a little high from gas, but I’m not hurt bad.”
He moved his legs to slide off the gurney. Carl, the attendant, took hold of them.
“Tommy, it’s against procedure to let a patient move to the bed himself.”
“Come on, Sulli, when have I ever followed procedure?” He shot the attendant a look that made Carl remove his hands. Tommy winced in pain as he turned around and sat upright on the gurney with his long legs hanging over the side. He braced his hands on the edge to steady himself. “Damn, I need more of that sweet gas. Think I’m starting to feel again.”
Dr. Patel, a freshly minted doctor who’d only just come off of residency, came into the room. She’d only been working in the emergency room for a month and still always looked a little frazzled. But a night like tonight could do that. I was glad it was her and not Dr. Hughes.
Dr. Patel’s eyes widened as she saw her next patient, sitting up and looking large and intimidating with his overflow of muscles and tattoos. “Gentlemen, let’s get this patient to the bed.”
Tommy lifted his hand to stop the ‘gentlemen’ from assisting him. He hopped off the gurney and moved over to the bed. “I’d lay down, but it sort of feels like my back is on fire.”
“Nurse Sullivan, take his vitals and get an IV started. I’ll be back.”
I took the blood pressure cuff off of the hook.
“How are the women I came in with?” Tommy asked.
“They’re being looked after in the next two rooms.” I stepped in front of him and looked up at his handsome, all-too-familiar face. The emotion I was supposed keep in check surfaced unexpectedly. I pressed my hand to my mouth for a second.
“What’s wrong?”
I shook my head and swallowed back the tightness in my throat. “It’s nothing. It’s just that you could have died tonight, Tommy, and, well, I don’t have that many people that I care deeply about in this world.” I took a long breath. “But you’re here and alive. Looks like once again, I’ll be fixing up your boo boos. Although you really did it this time. Should I call your mom?”
“Nah, I’m fine. Besides, my mom moved to her sister’s place in Nevada last month.” He stared down at me through a dark curtain of lashes. Tommy had those kind of eyes that could look a different color depending on the lighting and situation. Right now, they were a serious dark hazel color. “You worry about me, Sulli?”
“I worry about all three of you, Kellan, you and my clown of a brother. You guys take too many chances. I can only imagine where you were headed with not one but two women in the middle of the night.”
“Ahh, so that’s your opinion of me, driving along a dark highway with two women looking for a nice place to have a threesome.”
“Would I be far off?”
“Guess not.”
Somehow, the line of conversation had flustered me. Tommy grew quiet. I was pissed at myself. It had been the first time he’d done more than just grunt a reluctant hello my direction in a long time. It seemed during the past year, every time we ran into each other, I was left feeling completely confused and hurt by his harsh attitude, but tonight, he was even calling me Sulli. I’d missed it. I’d missed him talking to me.
I placed the cuff over his arm and realized there was no way a regular sized cuff would work on his massive biceps. “I have to get the extra large cuff,” I said hastily and turned to leave.
He took hold of my wrist. I stared down at his large callused fingers holding me.
“You’re upset.”
I shook my head. “I’m upset that you got hurt. That’s all.” I pulled my hand away. “Actually, I’m upset because it took a terrible burn and some analgesic gas to get you to talk to me again. You’ve been a complete and utter ass to me for months now.”
He took a slow, deep breath and turned his face toward the activity out in the center hub. “It’s called self-preservation.”
I stared at the side of his face, completely confused by his answer. He didn’t elaborate.
“I’ll get the larger cuff.”
Gary came around the corner, and again, we nearly ran into each other. “I can’t seem to stay out of your way tonight, Dr. Hughes,” I said with forced cheer. But in truth, the night was taking its toll on me, and Tommy’s arrival had really knocked it over the edge.
Gary found no humor in my comment, but then, I didn’t expect him to. “We need this trauma bed. This patient can be moved to a treatment room. The paramedics weren’t clear. He wasn’t in the accident.”
“But, Dr. Hughes—”
“Just do as I say, Nurse Sullivan. We have a trauma patient coming in. I’ll need you in here. Another nurse will tend to his burns.”
I held my jaw tight as I answered him. “Yes, Dr. Hughes.”
He caught the anger in my tone and motioned me out into the hall. I followed reluctantly.
“I warned you about this. That’s why we don’t take care of people we know.” Gary’s gaze flicked toward the room. Then he looked back at me. “Interesting people you hang out with, Nurse Sullivan.”
The man might have been handsome and wearing a white coat and stethoscope, but he wasn’t scoring any points tonight.
“I need to get back to the patient, Dr. Hughes. I’ll move him and then return to the trauma unit. If that’s all right with you.”
I went back in to Tommy.
“What an asshole,” Tommy muttered.
“It’s been a long night for all of us.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s it, or maybe he’s just an asshole. Wait. Is that the guy? The doctor Dawson told me about? The white coat you’re dating?”
“None of your business
. I’ll get a wheelchair to move you.” I turned to leave. Then something suddenly occurred to me. I stopped and looked back at him. “You pulled those girls from a burning car, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged and winced with pain. “You’d already made up your mind about what had happened. Saw no reason to set you straight.”
“I’m sorry, Tommy. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.” There was that damn emotion again. It really had been a long night. “I’ll be right back.”
Chapter 5
Tommy
It had been one hell of a night. I’d jumped through one woman’s bedroom window, pulled two more through car windows, and then spent a good hour staring through a window, watching the one woman who I could never stop thinking about scurry confidently around the chaotic emergency ward of a hospital. Andi was amazing, but I already knew that.
After the long night, I was fucking tired. The pain meds were making my head heavy, and all I wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed. The police had towed my truck, free of charge, back to the hospital. But I was in no shape to drive home yet.
I hadn’t held my breath once while they sewed eighteen stitches into my arm and cleaned debris from my burns, but every time Andi walked into the room, air filled my lungs, and I temporarily forgot how to let it go.
She looked weary and a little sad and heartbreakingly beautiful as she walked to my bed. Her pale green eyes always had that glitter that showed her true personality, fun-loving, smart and caring. Always caring. She’d taken care of Dawson, Kellan and me growing up, and that love of fixing bumps and bruises had led her to nursing school. She’d never belonged on the south side of Bluefield. She was a Trog, a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, but she’d never fit the mold or the place. Andi had always been meant for more. She’d definitely been meant for more than the likes of me.
“If you’re up to it, there’s someone here to see you, Tommy.”
