Page 34 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

My street.

Chapter ten

Leave the Jacket

OWEN

Three vehicles. One pickup on its side in the ditch, one sedan accordioned into a fence post, one minivan sitting crooked in the middle of Juniper Lane with its airbags hanging out like spent parachutes.

And a little yellow cottage forty yards past all of it, porch light on, untouched.

I count the house numbers while I work. Can't help it. 1287. The wreck sits at 1263.

Forty yards. A man could throw a rock that far.

"Peterson." Tater's voice cuts through. "Passenger side. She's pinned at the ankle, not the leg. Talk to me."

I get my head where it belongs. The woman in the sedan is sixty-something, scared, breathing fine. The dash has her foot, not her bones. We take the door with the spreaders and I keep her talking the whole time. Grandkids in Waco. A cat named Biscuit. She tells me my eyes are kind and I don't correct her.

The minivan family walks away with seatbelt bruises. The kid in the pickup, the one who caused the whole mess texting, breaks his collarbone and his phone, and I've got no sympathy to spare for either.

Last patient loads at 11:40. Tater claps my shoulder.

"Good work. Go home."

"Yeah."

I don't go home.

***

The ER at midnight is a lit box in a dark town, and I walk into it like I've got a reason.

I do have a reason. She's standing at the board with a pen in her teeth, hair coming loose from whatever she did to it at seven o'clock, and every patient off that scene is on her list.

She sees me. Takes the pen out of her mouth.

"You're bleeding," she says.

"I'm not."

She points at my temple. I put my fingers up and they come back red. Huh. Somewhere between the spreaders and the glass, something got me and I never felt it.

"Sit," she says.

"It's a scratch."

"Sit down, Peterson, or I'll chart you as combative and get orderlies involved."

I sit.

She cleans it standing over me, close enough that I can smell antiseptic and underneath it something warmer. Her fingers are steady on my jaw, tilting my head to the light. Neither of us says a word about the wreck being on her street. Neither of us has to. She knows why I'm here. I know she knows.

"Butterfly closure," she says. "You'll live."

"Been told that before."

"Well." She presses the strip down with her thumb, soft. "Now it's official."