The Fire He Started

POV: Wren

The kid in the driver's seat won't stop talking, which is good, because it means he's breathing.

"My mom's gonna kill me," he says, and laughs a little, then winces because laughing pulls at the gash above his eyebrow. I press gauze against it and tell him to hold still. He doesn't. Nobody ever does.

"Hold the gauze. Right there. Don't let go."

"Like this?"

"Harder."

The car is folded around a guardrail like someone crumpled it up and threw it away. Glass everywhere, catching the strobe of my own flashers. No fire crew yet. No cops yet. Just me, my bag, and a nineteen-year-old with a head wound and a busted collarbone, alone on a stretch of road that doesn't have streetlights for another two miles in either direction.

I check his pupils. Even. Good.

"Anyone else in the car with you?"

"No. Just me. I swear."

I believe him, but I check anyway, crawling around to the passenger side with my light, sweeping the back seat, the floor mats, because believing someone and trusting the dark are two different things. Nothing. Just a fast food bag and a phone charger tangled on the floor.

Dispatch said backup was four minutes out when I rolled up. That was six minutes ago. I don't wait for backup when somebody's bleeding. I never have.

"You a doctor?" the kid asks.

"Paramedic."

"Same thing."

"Not even close."

I get a line started in his arm, my hands moving without me telling them to, find vein, tape it down, hang the bag, check the drip. This part of the job I could do in my sleep. Some nights I think I basically am asleep when I do it, my body running on a track worn so deep my brain doesn't need to come along for the ride.

He winces again when I check his collarbone. "That hurts."

"Yeah. It's broken."

"Cool, cool, that's. Yeah. Okay."

"You're doing fine."

I splint his arm to his chest with a sling I tie one-handed because my other hand is holding the flashlight between my teeth, and somewhere behind me I hear the first siren start up, faint, still a ways off. The kid's talking again, something about a girl he was driving to see, some party he was late for, and I make the right noises back at him without really hearing the words, because what I'm actually doing is counting his breaths against the clock in my head. Sixteen a minute. Fine. Steady.

This is the part of the job nobody else wants. The waiting alone with somebody who might stop breathing on you before help shows up. Dani always says I take the worst calls on purpose, like I'm trying to prove something to a jury that isn't even in the room. Maybe I am. I don't ask myself that question much, because I already know I won't like the answer.

"You got someone you want me to call?" I ask him. "Your mom?"

"No. God, no. Not yet."

"She's gonna find out either way."

"Yeah, but not from a stranger holding gauze on my face."

Fair enough. I let it go.

The siren gets louder, closer, and I start gathering my supplies, snapping the kit shut, because the second the fire truck shows up this becomes a different kind of scene, more hands, more noise, less of just me and him and the road. I almost like it better this way. Just the two of us and the work. Nobody looking over my shoulder, nobody asking if I'm okay, nobody needing anything from me except the thing I'm already good at giving.

That's when the radio on my hip lets out a tone.

Not the dispatch tone. Not the one I've heard a hundred times tonight already, calling units to wrecks and fires and falls. This one is different, a short double pulse before the message comes through, and I know that sound. I know it the way you know your own name. My hands are still moving, folding the last strip of tape over the kid's splint, and then they're not.

They just stop.

The kid notices. "You good?"

I don't answer right away. The radio crackles, somebody's voice cutting through, words about a unit responding to a structure call three miles north, nothing to do with me, nothing to do with this road or this kid or tonight at all. Just a tone. Just a coincidence of frequency and static that happens to land exactly the way it landed two years ago, right before everything in my life split into before and after.

My fingers are still pressed flat against the tape, not moving, not finishing the job.

"Hey." The kid's voice cracks a little, scared now, picking up on something he can't name. "You're kinda freaking me out."

I make myself blink. Make myself look down at my own hands like they belong to somebody else for a second, then finally like they belong to me again. I finish the tape. Smooth it down. My voice comes out steadier than I feel when I tell him the truck's almost here, he's going to be fine, he did good staying still for me.

He believes me because I sound like I believe it too. That's the trick. That's always been the trick.

The fire truck pulls up behind my rig, headlights washing the wreck in white, and two firefighters jump out fast, already moving toward the car. I step back and let them take over the extraction part, let them deal with the door that's jammed shut on the kid's side, and I stand there a second longer than I need to, just breathing, just letting my pulse come back down out of my throat.

That's when my phone buzzes in my jacket pocket.

I almost ignore it. There's still blood on my gloves, dried under the cuffs where I forgot to tape them tight enough, and the kid's getting loaded onto a backboard, and somebody's asking me for a hand-off report, vitals, meds given, time of first contact. I peel one glove off with my teeth so I can dig the phone out, thinking it's Dani checking in, thinking it's nothing, thinking it can wait until I've at least got the blood washed off.

It's not Dani.

It's a message from Chief Voss's office, time-stamped four minutes ago, the kind of message that doesn't get sent at two in the morning unless somebody upstairs wanted it sent the second the decision was made and not one minute later. My name's on it. My unit number's on it. A new station assignment, effective my next shift, no explanation, no reason given, nothing but an address I don't recognize and a report time that gives me barely enough hours to sleep before I have to show up somewhere I've never been.

I stand there in the wreck of somebody else's worst night, glove half off, blood still under my nails, staring at four lines of text that just rearranged the entire shape of my life without asking me a single thing about it.