Chicago Med fic: Redemption (6/8)
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
-o-
Will had been under the impression that the situation was dire, but he hadn’t thought it would be dangerous. When he’d heard that it was a factory fire, he’d been expecting to find a burnt-out shell of a building and billows of smoke started to evaporate. Instead, when they arrived, the fire was still blazing.
Things were hot.
Literally.
The medics dropped them off at what appeared to be a field command center. Makeshift though it was, it was well staffed with police and firefighters, who appeared to be working in conjunction with site managers and city officials. There were paramedic teams being deployed -- it looked like the whole fleet was here -- and Will watched as another one took off, sirens blaring.
The medics that brought them to the site directed them to the man in charge, a wizened fire chief who looked like he’d had better days. Will introduced himself, and the man gave him a grim once over.
“We could use you down in the triage area,” he said, moving them along through a series of outcroppings. The crackle of the fire was raging nearby, and Will could feel the heat as it emanated into the area. The smoke was thick in the sky, even this distance from the flame. They were brought to an open area, where stretchers were lined up, and people were seated, each wearing a colored pin.
There were hundreds of patients, varying from critical injuries to minor wounds.
“Our queue to get the critical patients out is a lot slower than I’d like,” the man explained, gesturing to the area where two medics were directing other first responders to the critical care patients. “We’ve lost five people already, all before we could get them in ambulances. I can’t say for sure who would die anyway--”
“But we may be able to provide a little extra care in the field,” Will concluded for him, understanding where this was going. “Save a few lives.”
The man gave a terse nod, looking Will over again, and glancing at Helena. “Some of this isn’t pretty,” he warned. “Some of the burns--”
“Probably pretty serious,” Will said, he turned his head toward the fire. “How is it going with containment? Are we safe here?”
This question made the man’s face sour even more. “This whole row of factories is not up to code,” he said. “No fire prevention measures were in place, and it’s all highly flammable. Right now, we’re trying to prevent spread to the next three buildings, but I don’t know.”
Helena nodded with him in apparent understanding. “You worry about that, then,” she said. “We’ll do what we can here.”
“That’s all I ask,” he said. “If you go over, introduce yourself to my two medics. They’re two of mine, and damn good. They’ll tell you where they need you.”
Will thanked the man, for whatever that was worth, and he kept step with Helena as they crossed the field to the front of the triage line. One of the medics, a young woman with close cropped hair, was pulling a sheet over another patient. Her partner, an older man with a bald head, was frantically doing CPR.
“I’m Dr. Halstead, and this is Dr. Barringer,” he said. “We were called in to help from--”
“From anywhere, I don’t care,” the young woman said. “I’m Abby; that’s Diallo. You’re doctors, right?”
“ED and surgery,” Will said, gesturing from himself to Helena. “If you need help with patients.”
Abby laughed caustically, moving over to help Diallo. She grabbed the paddles, and Diallo stepped back. They all waited for the charge to deploy, and a rhythm thankfully returned. Diallo immediately set back to ventilating, calling in one of the other medics to take over so he could administer the appropriate medications.
“So, the triage is straightforward enough,” Abby said, nodding across the field. “We have one pair of medics assessing every patient we find, sorting them. From there, the cops have started to separate them into categories across the field, monitoring for changes in attitude and behavior. Up here, Diallo and I are trying to keep the critical patients alive.”
“But there’s only so much you can do,” Will said.
“And there are only two of us,” Abby said. “There are still people being brought out with every sweep.”
“Then, we’ll jump in,” Helena said. “Give us control over the critical patients.”
“Hey!” Diallo yelled. “A little help!”
He had moved on to another patient, this one heavily bandaged and also ventilated. Will moved quickly there, Helena right by his side. When they got there, Diallo was shaking his head. “His vitals are all over the map. Pressure’s falling -- he’s bleeding out.”
“Any obvious wounds?” Helena asked, already starting to assess the patient, checking his head and chest.
“Nothing we saw,” Dialllo said. “He’s starting to brady down.”
Will moved to his legs, nodding to the thick bandages. “What’s he got down here?”
“Burns,” Diallo said. “Not quite full thickness, but deep.”
Helena was probing the abdomen, listening to the lungs. “Belly’s still soft,” she murmured.
Will was unwrapping the legs, going on a hunch.
A hunch that was proven right when he saw the swollen, discolored legs. “Compartment syndrome,” he said, shaking his head. “Damn it, he’s bleeding into his legs.”
Helena circled down toward him, making a face when she saw. “We have to do a fasciotomy.”
Diallo looked at them both in surprise. “Can you do that?”
Helena glanced at Will, as if for confirmation. He inclined his head. She wanted his support; she had it. Drawing a breath, Helena nodded. “Okay, so I’m going to need a scalpel.”
Diallo produced one, and Will looked at the monitors. “He’s still pretty tachy. We need to control the bleed.”
Helena was focused now, pulling back more of the bandage to assess the legs. She started with the right, placing the blade carefully along the mottled flesh. She took a breath, and then cut deep.
Instantly, the wound oozed with blood, thick and red. She repeated the cut on the other side of the calf, giving the wound a moment to breathe before she turned to the other side. Will watched, glancing between the procedure and the monitor, and Helena finished cutting into the leg on the other side before Diallo used fresh gauze to mop up some of the blood.
The monitor chirped, and Will nodded. “Vitals are stabilizing,” he said. “He’ll need a transfusion when he gets to the hospital. Where is he at in the wait?”
“Uh, he was fourth,” Diallo said. “Should we bump him up?”
Will considered, weighing the patient’s current status. “If we get him out of here in thirty minutes, I think he’ll make it.”
“Bandage his legs lightly,” Helena said. “We do need the blood to drain, and go ahead and hang another liter of saline. That should help tide him over until he gets blood.”
Diallo looked impressed. “This is a good save,” he said. “I was sure I was going to watch him die.”
“Well, he’s not out of the woods yet,” Will said.
Helena was taking off her gloves, all business. “We’ll have to monitor him, best we can,” she said, discarding the remnants of her save as she turned back to Diallo. “Now, who’s next?”
-o-
Will and Helena agreed to work together, assessing each critical care patient as best they could in the field. Supplies were in short supply, and they had to start relying on cops to do extra ventilating when they ran out of hands. Helena was able to put in a few chest tubes, and Will managed to bind someone with a broken pelvis, stabilizing them long enough to hitch a ride out. At one point, Helena had to work with a suspected case of pericarditis, and he stood by her side the whole time, watching as she expertly hit the sac around the heart and drained the blood, restoring normal sinus rhythm.
By the time they had worked through all the critical patients, Will was ready to move to the rest of the field, but the fire chief was jogging back toward them. In the pressure to save lives, Will hadn’t been paying much attention to the rest of the scene. He had assumed the fire was getting under control.
He had assumed wrong -- not for the first time, not for the last time.
“I need you!” he said, drawing Will aside. Helena joined them a second later. “The fire -- it has started to spread to the next building.”
Will looked down the line, trying to make out one series of flames from the next with little regard. There was a reason he wasn’t a firefighter, it seemed.
“Okay,” Helena said, and she seemed just as confused as Will. “And are there patients?”
“We have cleared it except for one man,” the fire chief said. “One of the workers, an immigrant. He didn’t understand the evacuation orders, and ended up staying behind. When the far side of the structure was compromised, a section of the interior rafters collapsed. The building is still stable for the moment while crews work to control the fire, but the man is trapped.”
Trapped patients was a field for the firefighters, and they all knew it. If the man was requesting Will’s help, then there were confounding factors. “Trapped how?”
The man flattened his lips. “His leg is caught, possibly crushed,” he said. “The time it would take to move it--”
“May not be worth it,” Will concluded. “You want us to see if the leg is salvageable?”
“If you would,” the man said. He looked between Will and Helena. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”
Helena was stiff and silent, and this one was Will’s call. “I’ll go,” he said. He glanced to Helena. “I can do this one alone.”
She looked indignant at the suggestion. “If you’re going, I’m going,” she snapped. “Besides, it sounds like you need a surgeon -- not an administrator.”
Despite everything, Will almost grinned. He nodded, looking back at the man. “Lead the way.”
-o-
Will had agreed because it had been the right thing to do. Following the firemen around the scene, however, Will was given a much better view of the total destruction. The fire had already obliterated two of the buildings, and it was still raging in two more. They took wide berth around the area, and they rounded on another pair of buildings. Both were hazy with smoke, flames licking the side of one of them.
Clearly, this was the location, but Will felt some trepidation. Field work involved less than ideal conditions -- he had known that coming in -- but charging into a building on fire?
Jay would throw a fit if he knew. Especially since, this time, Will was going in on his own volition. He was making a choice here, and the implications for the hospital and the patient were one thing, but he couldn’t be naive about his own well being. In a few months, he was supposed to be back in Chicago, standing up for Jay as his best man.
And even then, Helena. He’d brought her here. He’d dragged her out of surgery and chosen her specifically. If anything happened to her, it was on him.
This was his choice.
Whatever happened next -- those consequences were his.
The intensity of the choice left him momentarily stymied. However, next to him, Helena was already willfully gearing up. She looked at him. “You okay?”
He swallowed, looking at her, buffeted by smoke. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.
She nodded, short and curt. “We do the job, right? That’s why we’re here.”
Will nodded back, feeling hollow in his resolve. He had no choice but to agree. “We do the job.”
-o-
He suited up as best he could. One of the firefighters adjusted his mask for him, testing the oxygen intake. They both agreed to wear the coats, but they needed to stay lithe and mobile if they were going to seriously work on a patient in there.
“It should be okay,” one of the firefighters said. This was a kid, who looked no more than 20. “The smoke makes it look worse than it is right now, but we got an early start on this. The area we need to work on has been pretty well controlled.”
“Still,” a second firefighter said. This one was older, and he looked like he’d done this kind of thing before. “You need to be careful, and be alert. When we pull the plug, you get out, no questions asked.”
“But the patient--” Helena started.
The older man shook his head. “No questions asked.”
Helena drew back somberly, but Will nodded for both of them. “We understand,” he said, and he adjusted his grip on his bag, giving Helena one more look. “Let’s go.”
-o-
From the outside, this all seemed like a bad idea. Will had to admit, once he got inside, he was somewhat pleasantly surprised. There were no visible flames where they entered, and though the smoke did hang in the air, it did not seem to be too thick. The gear, at this point, really did seem like a precautionary tactic. No doubt, the firefighters did not want to lose two volunteer doctors on their watch.
Which was good.
Will didn’t want to be lost, either.
These were errant thoughts, however, and they left him completely when the firefighters drew to a stop and Will got a look at the patient for the first time.
The man was indeed trapped. The rafter had fallen from above, crashing into some of the equipment. One of the pieces had tipped over, pinning the man to the ground. His leg was completely enclosed in the debris, and the sheer weight was plain to see. The rafter alone -- maybe they could have moved. Paired with the weight of the equipment, and the firefighters would need extra lifting equipment.
A luxury that was not permissible during an active fire scene.
While Will made this assessment, Helena had already gone straight to the patient. One her knees, she took out a portable kit, starting to hook it up. A third firefighter was at the scene, sitting with the man. He had one glove off, presumably to monitor the patient’s pulse.
“He’s been out for a little while,” the firefighter said to Helena. Will got down on the other side to help, unfurling his own pack to scour for an IV. “Not sure if it’s blood loss.”
Helena was placing the electrodes and turning the monitor on. It whirred to life, offering a fresh take on his vitals. She frowned. “Pressure is high, which doesn’t suggest blood loss,” she said. “Oxygen levels are good, though.”
The patient had been equipped with a firefighter’s mask, and it seemed to be doing its job well enough. Will worked on one arm, starting the IV in an efficient fashion. Nurses usually did procedures like that, but Will had taken time to renew his attention to the basics. It paid off in moments like this.
Helena finished checking the patient over otherwise. “No obvious other injuries. Doesn’t look like a head wound.”
“So, just the leg?” Will asked, nodding to the trapped appendage.
Helena drew a grim breath, and she nodded. “Looks like,” she said. She reached down, trying to get a feel for things. Will joined her, checking for a pulse at the pelvis.
“We tried to get it off,” the young firefighter said. “But we just don’t have enough to leverage with.”
“Leverage wouldn’t work anyway,” the older one griped. “It’s got to be hoisted off.”
“I told both of you, I don’t think it’ll matter,” the third one said. He nodded down, gesturing to Helena and Will. “His leg -- it’s crushed, right?”
Helena exchanged a look with him. Though their eyes were obscured somewhat by the masks, they could still read each other. He knew what she was thinking.
Worst case scenario: the leg was a lost cause.
Best case scenario: the leg was still probably a lost cause. If they could get him out with the leg intact, maybe they had a chance to save it. But that chance was slim.
They knew it, but they had to say it.
Protocol.
“Pulse is still good at the pelvis,” Will reported. “And his left leg is free.”
“The second one is trapped,” Helena said, and she sighed. “Mid-thigh.”
“He’ll be a bad case for a prosthetic,” Will said.
“Either way,” Helena agreed. “Now or later.”
They hadn’t said it yet. Neither of them wanted to make the call. Will, in desperation, looked to the three firefighters. “And you can’t do anything to get it off?”
It was a question he knew the answer to, but it was still one he had to ask. The oldest one was the one who spoke. “I told you, there’s nothing to jack it up with,” he said. “This area is secure, but it won’t last for long.”
He was right. Even as an untrained civilian, Will could tell that the smoke levels were increasing. Worse, when he looked around, there were flames starting to be visible on one end of the building.
The time it took to get the leg free might kill them all -- including the patient. All for a leg that Will had a pretty good idea wasn't viable.
“We have to try,” Helena said with a small breath of fleeting resolve. “I mean, if this man has a chance of walking again--”
But Will shook his head. She was his best doctor, and she was thinking like one right now. She was so focused on her patient that she didn’t see the big picture.
Will had to see the big picture.
It was his job, after all.
And it was a responsibility he had shirked for so many years -- and to his own detriment and the detriment of everyone around him. The conclusion here was glaringly, uncomfortably obvious. Helena knew it, too -- she’d come to the same conclusion a few minutes ago -- but she was a doctor. As the man in charge, this was up to Will.
And only Will.
“No,” he said, abrupt and to the point. Helena’s eyes widened as her mouth fell open in a protest that he didn’t let her make. “The leg’s viability is too questionable, and conditions on the ground are too precarious. If we don’t act, he may lose more than a leg. He might die -- along with the rest of us. We have to amputate.”
It wasn’t the call he wanted to make, but it was the right one. It was the only one.
“Can you do it fast?” the third firefighter asked. He was looking up, seeing a fresh streak of fire starting in across the ceiling. “Because I think we’re short on time.”
Will’s stomach churned, but this time, Helena stepped in for him, taking her place seamlessly as his right-hand woman. “Then we’ll do it fast,” she said. “Given the placement, we’re not trying to preserve the joint. It doesn’t have to be pretty.”
“Just fast and effective,” Will agreed. “Helena, get the tourniquet.”
She was already in motion, opening up her pack and pulling out the tools as she dropped to her knees once more. Will moved in tandem, opening up his own back and rapidly sorting through things. The scalpels would get through the top layers of skin. The bone saw, however, was going to be needed to get the job done.
It was unpleasant, true, but a necessary step. Will put those tools aside, however, and reached for the medications instead.
“Tourniquet is on,” Helena said, checking to make sure the blood flow was really stopped.
Will pulled out the necessary vial. “I’m going to get the heavy sedatives in the IV,” he reported as he injected them straight into the IV. “Okay, meds are in. He should be out.”
Helena had the scalpel ready, positioning the bone saw to the side. She looked at him anxiously through the growing haze. “Are you sure you got the dose right?”
Will was busy cleaning the leg and swabbing the area. They’d already removed as much of the pant leg as possible to improve their visibility of the wound, and Will needed to try to minimize the risk of infection with an open wound in these conditions. “Pretty sure,” he said. “We should also get him on an antibiotic as a preventative measure.”
“We can start it when we’re out,” she said. “There’s no time now. I just want to be sure he’s out. This will hurt -- and it’s not going to be pretty.”
She seemed to be warning herself more than she was warning Will. He didn’t look back to see how the firefighters felt about it. Any amputation was stressful, even in a well maintained OR. To do it here, in the field -- it was the stuff of nightmares.
Will knew that.
He was just suddenly aware that he might be the only one.
“I know,” he said, nodding back to Helena. “I’ve done field amputations before.”
She huffed, looking somewhat perturbed. “Of course you have,” she muttered.
It wasn’t quite the same timber as their normal banter. In fact, Will knew Helena well enough to know that this was something else. This was something he’d never seen from her before. Something he’d been sure he’d never see.
It was fear.
“Have you?” he asked, because this seemed like a necessary time to clarify this point -- for the patient, yes. For Helena, too. Field amputations were traumatic -- and not just for the patient.
There was a tightness in her expression, even as she tried not to show it. “In the field? Not exactly.”
With any other doctor, he would have offered to take over. With his experience and position, he had every right. In some ways, he would be doing Helena a favor.
But he wasn’t here to save Helena. He wasn’t even here to protect her.
She was too strong, too smart, too good.
She just needed to remember it. He looked at her, holding as steady as he could in the rising melee. “You can do this,” he said. “I know you can.”
He’d relied on her resolve more than he cared to admit. This time, for once, he was able to return the favor.
More importantly, she was willing to let him.
This wasn’t a one-way street. The mutuality between them was the spark that made the whole thing work. They were invested in one another, now more than ever.
She nodded, and then she took off her mask. The firefighters started to protest, but Will followed suit. “We have to do this precisely,” he said. “We promise to put them back on when we’re done.”
This didn’t seem to assuage their doubts, but Helena already had the scalpel in hand, so they didn’t have much time to argue. She drew a breath, giving Will once more look.
He nodded.
And she started to cut.
-o-
Through the skin and into the muscle before you cut through the bone.
Some problems didn’t have an easy fix.
Sometimes, the hard way was the only way.
Sometimes, you had to cut off what was holding you back.
Sometimes, loss was the only way forward.
Those hard lessons -- the hardest ones -- were always the ones that made the biggest difference.
The tourniquet helped stem the worst of the blood, but there was no way around what they were doing. The right thing wasn’t always easy. Sometimes, it didn’t even feel right.
But this was how it was.
This was just how it had to be.
Helena completed the procedure, efficiently and effectively. Within five minutes, the man was clear, and Will helped transfer him over to a waiting backboard. Helena looked spent, but she refused to slow down. As Will strapped the man into the backboard, stabilizing the spine and neck, she was already barking out orders.
“We need to start the antibiotics right away,” she said. “We’re also going to want to get him on the first ambulance back for surgery to clean up the procedure.”
“It was a pretty clean cut,” Will observed, allowing the two firemen to hoist the backboard.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’s at high risk for infection. Take him out, and we’ll be there in a second.”
The older man and the younger man obliged, starting out. The third turned to watch Will and Helena as they started to pick up.
“We got to get a move on,” he said. “This structure is getting more and more unstable. I think the fire’s spreading.”
Helena had packed her bag, and Will was getting the last of his things. He got up, seeing Helena with her mask back on. He reached down for his.
“Doc!”
The sudden yell caught Will off guard, and he lost sight of the mask as he whirled to his feet. It made no difference. On his feet, he caught sight of the explosion as it blew past him, a blossom of fire and heat that sent him rocking backward as debris rained down.
Dazed by the blow, Will struggled to get his bearing. Helena had been knocked clear off her feet, and he went to her, heart pounding in his chest. “Helena--”
“I’m fine,” she said, slowly starting to get to her feet. “The firefighter--”
She didn’t need to say it; Will was already thinking it. “You sure you’re okay?”
She waved him away. “Go -- go!”
He turned, trying in vain to brush away the smoke now. The billows had increased, and Will could feel the thickness in his lungs as he pushed his way forward, partially blind. He never did get the mask back on; he wished he had.
Dropping low, he figured that the improved visibility was more important than moving quickly at this point. The firefighter had been close; he couldn’t have been thrown too far. Plus, Will knew enough about smoke inhalation injuries to know that his lungs could only handle so much soot for so long. His old man had died in a fire; Will wasn’t about to let another one take the last of Jay’s family.
Fortunately, his assessment had been correct. The firefighter was close by -- but he was half buried under a new pile of debris. It looked like another section of the roof had fallen in -- no beams this time -- but trying to finagle the boards out of the way was still no small task.
Finally, when enough was cleared away, he was able to reach down and find the man’s carotid pulse. The sound of the fire was growing in intensity, but Will stilled himself and listened, felt--
And there.
There it was.
“He’s alive!” he said, calling back to Helena. He couldn’t see her in the growing blackness, and he coughed again. Keeping low, he leaned over the man, trying to do a quick check for injuries. He was going to get up to find Helena -- see if they could move the man together -- but he never got the chance.
The first explosion had taken Will by surprise, clearly.
He never even saw the second one.
Bigger than the first, the second explosion caught Will as he stood up. One of the walls all but exploded with an unexpected and unrelenting force. He caught sight of the fireball as it engulfed him, and he was thrown clear off his feet. He hit hard, and Will was a victim of his own futility once more.
-o-
In some ways, Will thought it shouldn’t be so hard. To pick himself back up. To make himself right again. He was smart; he was capable. There was no reason for the process of rebuilding to be so damn difficult.
And yet, it was.
Will was a fast learner in school, but a slow learner with the practical things.
Two steps forward.
Then, he fell all the way back down.
Natalie was right to give him back the ring. Ms. Goodwin had every right to fire him. Jay should have cut him out of his life the second he came back with the same stupid mistakes. Will had come all the way across the globe to do things right, to do things better, and for what?
His mother died of cancer, and he barely made it back for the funeral. His old man had died while under Will’s care. Natalie had taken Owen back to Seattle, and Jay wanted him to be his best man.
You had to cut through the skin and into the muscle before you got to the bone. Sometimes, the only way to save yourself was to sacrifice a part. You had to let go.
Let go.
But somewhere, a voice screamed at him. “Will! Will!”
He heard it, but didn’t know how to respond. He felt mired in the darkness, pulled back by the cloying bitterness.
“Hold on!” a voice yelled. “I need you to hold on!”
-o-
Blinking, Will realized belatedly that his eyes were open. It didn’t make much different. The smoky haze had increased. It burned his eyes. With an inhale, he coughed and gagged. He remembered where he was, but the memory did little to ground him. His mind was errant; his attention, fleeting.
“Will!”
He came back around, willing his eyes to focus. He was on his back, and he was covered with debris. He’d been working on the firefighter. The firefighter needed to get out--
“We’re almost there -- hurry up!”
That was Helena, then. She sounded stressed; she sounded upset.
She sounded close.
And still as far away as he’d ever known.
He would do anything for her, then.
Anything.
“Will, can you hear me? Talk to me!”
Something shifted, and some of the pressure on his chest was released. He gasped, not realizing just how heavy the weight had been. He’d barely felt it before, but he felt it now in its wake. Hot pain in his chest, like electricity up and down his spine. It felt horrible.
Then, hands on his face. Fingers brushed at his cheeks, bringing his face to bear.
“Will? Will!”
This time, when he looked, he saw.
He saw her.
She was as scared as he’d ever seen her.
As determined as he’d ever seen her.
“Helena,” he said, voice scratchy against his throat. “You found me.”
“You’re mad,” she said, but there was no anger in her voice. Her eyes looked wet. “And finding you is only half the battle. You have to work with me if we’re getting out of this.”
There was a moment of clarity.
Precise and clear. He saw her. He saw his way out.
“Come on,” she said, working with him to sit him up. The change in position didn’t bother him as much as he expected, and aside for a passing moment of dizziness, he found himself stable enough.
“The firefighter,” he croaked.
“Taken care of,” she said. “One of our friends doubled back.”
Will looked up. He still felt hazy, but he could see the other firefighter drawn up into carry over the other man’s shoulders.
The man turned back and shouted at Helena. “You got him? Or should I get backup?”
“I got him,” Helena said, and to prove her point, she propped Will up a little straighter.
Will was conscious, but he was still operating a step or two behind everyone else. “Is he okay?”
Helena gave him a critical look. “That’s not something you need to worry about,” she chided him. “You have to take care of yourself for once.”
Will wanted to shake his head, but the movement seemed to require far too much effort. He focused on breathing instead, but the smoke-clogged air did little to reinvigorate his head.
“Okay,” Helena was saying, because at least one of them was focused on the task at hand. “Can you do this?”
He wasn’t sure what what was, but the look on her face was expectant, and her grip on him was secure. She wanted to get him out of here.
That point took him long enough to realize.
Assessing an answer took him longer still.
“Will?” she said, voice rising slightly with demand as she shook him. “Can you do this?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, but his answer was irrelevant. She already had him on his feet, her arm steadying around his waist as she maneuvered his arm over her shoulders.
Without waiting to hear more from him, she pulled him forward. He stumbled, but she was unwavering, and keeping step with her was easier than it had a right to be.
“Come on,” she said, voice sounding over the din. “Just a little farther now.”
She coaxed him, step after step. His breathing was grating against his throat, but the spinning in his head had started to normalize by the time they got outside. His first breath of fresh air was grounding, and he felt the fog in his brain finally start to clear. She pushed him on, away from the burning building, until she finally felt satisfied and deposited him on the ground.
Exhausted, he was ready to slump back, but Helena had other things in mind. Ripping off her mask, she was crouched in front of him. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she went into full doctor mode.
“Will? Can you look at me?” she asked -- more like demanded.
His only response was to cough, a harsh, cloying sensation, and he hacked enough to make his ears pop. The renewed clarity allowed him to look at her compliantly.
She hardly looked relieved, eyes squinted as she studied his pupils. She lifted her finger, holding it a short distance from his face. “Follow along, yeah?”
She pulled the finger from side to side, and Will tracked it with ease.
Even so, Helena frowned. She reached her fingers up to his forehead, where Will could feel a tender lump. “It’s not deep,” she said, almost more to herself than to him. Then, she raked her fingers through his hair, feeling along the rest of his scalp.
“Helena, I’m fine--”
“You’re not fine,” she snapped at him, tipping his head from side to side and feeling his neck. “You were in an altered state of consciousness.”
“Which has cleared up,” he pointed out. He reached up to put her hands down. “See? I’m lucid.”
Her look back was nothing short of withering. “Pardon me if you sitting there covered in soot is unconvincing. I did just drag your ass out of a literal fire.”
Her adrenaline was going into overdrive, then. This was more than doctor mode. This was the chemistry between the two of them. “I know.”
His reply was soft, but she kept herself hard. “Look at me,” she ordered again. She produced a penlight from her pocket. “Eyes on the light.”
She was trying to be the epitome of professionalism, which only gave away just how on the edge of her self control she was right then. He complied as she checked his pupils for light reactivity, and he was fully obedient as she coached him to touch his nose.
Scowling, she did not seem satisfied. “Any nausea? Double vision?”
“No and no,” Will said.
Her jaw worked, and for once, she was the one who was unable to let go. “And your pain? How is it?”
“Very manageable,” Will replied honestly. His head had cleared even more by now, and though he was aware of a myriad of aches and pains, there was nothing that he couldn’t handle. “Helena, I’m fine.”
With a scoff, she tucked her hair behind her ear and sat back on her heels. “You don’t know that,” she said crossly. “You are a very poor judge of yourself.”
It was a point that had been made to him before, and it was a point he had learned to internalize. Helena was right, except for the fact that he’d changed. “I just passed your concussion check with flying colors.”
At that, she looked genuinely annoyed. Instead of conceding the point, she reached forward to probe the wound on his head again. Her fingers pushed a little harder this time, as if trying to pull the wound open a little. “I don’t think it’s going to need stitches, but we really ought to clean it out. It’s mostly stopped bleeding, but you’re covered in soot.”
Will couldn’t argue that one. He huffed with a small laugh. “We ought to clean a lot of things out right now,” he said, and he inclined his head toward her. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer, too.”
She was wholly unimpressed with his concern. Instead, she moved her hands down, pushing the thick coat out of the way. “What about the rest of you?” she asked, starting to feel his chest. “How’s your breathing? I lost my stethoscope back there.”
“We almost lost more than that,” Will quipped, but the joke wasn’t funny.
Helena frowned and leaned down, pressing her head to his chest.
Will swallowed, and he wanted to be patient for her sake. All the time and space she had given him, he knew he owed her -- for that and saving his life. That was why he couldn’t let her do this. “Helena--”
Shushing him fiercely, she held up one hand to keep him quiet. He permitted this, breathing slowly and evenly while she listened for sounds of crackles that he knew she wasn’t going to find.
Sitting back, her brow was dark. She reached up again, palpating his ribs. “Is anything broken? Bruised?”
“Just bruised,” he said, pushing her hand away. “You’re just fishing now. You know I’m fine.”
Helena was nothing if not determined, though. It was part of what he’d always found so attractive about her. It also made her the best damn doctor on his service.
The problem was they had crossed the line from professional to personal some time ago, and Will had refused to define it. Hell, he’d refused to admit it.
Now, here they were.
Helena doggedly pressing her hands against his stomach, looking for signs of a bleed. “Any tenderness?” she asked.
“No,” he said, allowing it this time. “I’m just sore. As I’m sure you are, too.”
Sitting back again, Helena still looked perturbed somehow. “You really should be checked out.”
“Think triage,” Will said. “I’m not your boss here. I’m just another patient. What would you do?”
It wasn’t an answer she particularly liked, no matter how clever Will was being. “That’s just a fancy way to get out of treatment.”
She wasn’t wrong, but Will knew he still had the logical high ground here. “I’m being practical.”
Mouth turned down sourly, she lifted her chin. “Triaged patients are usually left for observation,” she said. Then, she narrowed her eyes at him. “On the sidelines.”
He should have seen that one coming. “Helena, come on.”
“Hey,” she said, feigning innocence. “You’re the one who brought up triage.”
“I’m fine,” Will said. “And if I feel dizzy or have new pain, I’ll stop.”
“No you won’t, she said, shaking her head. “But I’m not leaving you alone for a minute, so it should do.”
The compromise was a way to end the stalemate.
He had to wonder if it was the way to start something, too.
He smiled. “Sounds fair. Shall we?”
She climbed to her feet with a long sigh. She offered him her hand, and he took it, letting her hoist him up back to his feet. “I guess we shall.”
The world wobbled, just for a second, but Helena’s presence was steady, and Will followed her back.
-o-
Back at the field camp, Helena did take time to listen to his chest, and she even bothered him long enough to visually inspect his airway just to make sure there were no indications of damage that they had missed. After that, she cleared him for duty, and they worked for several more hours, patient after patient. The stream of new patients had slowed by then, which allowed the queue to thin out. Now, Will and Helena were sorting the last of the patients, deciding who needed to go to the hospital and who could be discharged for home care.
Disasters started with a bang. Their starts were impossible to miss.
The resolution was always slower, harder to see, harder to track, harder to understand.
Sometimes, you didn’t even know when it was over.
You just kept fighting, you just kept going, you just kept pushing.
Until you ran out of things to fight, places to go, and obstacles to push.
-o-
By nightfall, the field center was being packed up. The fire had largely burnt itself out in most of the structures, and the fire crews had contained the worst of the damage in the final two. So far, Will knew of 11 casualties, but they had shipped off two dozen more critical patients. The final count would probably be worse.
But they had saved people, too. He tried to remember that as they packed up. He’d lost track of those patients, the ones who were stable, the ones he’d sent home altogether. People did survive disasters, after all. There was such a thing as hope.
When they were packed and ready, Will accepted a ride back to the hospital on one of the fire rigs. For as weary as Will felt, the fire crew looked even worse for wear. He and Helena offered to check the guys out before they left, but the crew just wanted to get home.
Will couldn’t begrudge them that. He wanted to get home as well.
Dirty and weary, he and Helena made their way back in the hospital. Tempting as it was to go home and sleep, Will knew how they had to look. He fended off the worst of the inquiries, and he made a note to work with Mikayla on an appropriate statement for the press -- tomorrow.
For tonight--
Well, tonight was a different story altogether.
He followed Helena, who marched almost on autopilot to the locker room. She turned abruptly on him, ordering him to sit down.
“Are we still doing this?” he asked.
“We are,” she said. “You still have an open wound, and you are positively disgusting.”
“Well, you can bandage the wound,” he said. He almost smiled. “Not sure you can do anything about the rest.”
She clearly did not want to smile, but her fondness betrayed her. “Oh, shut up,” she said, pulling out the first aid kit from the locker room. One great thing about hospitals: there was always medical gear on hand.
And there was always a doctor ready for a procedure.
Though this wasn’t like that.
Sitting there, while Helena gently cleaned and bandaged the wound, it wasn’t like that at all. Her touch was soft, and he could feel her breathing. She lingered close, smoothing the tape down, before she sat down across from him on the locker room bench and smiled.
“Now, how are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’ve told you a thousand times: I’m fine,” he said.
“And in the field, I let it slide,” she said. “But now, it’s just the two of us. There are no other pressures. No other commitments. No responsibilities. The job’s done, Will. How are you feeling?”
It was an appeal to something beyond duty. It was a draw to something deeper than his job.
Face to face, she was right.
This was just about them now.
After everything, it was just about them.
“I’m fine,” he said again, but the words were softer now as he held her gaze. “I don’t even feel the head wound. The worst of it is my scratchy throat.”
She looked at him, ever keen. “Are you lying to me?”
He blinked, as earnest as he knew how. “No, I promise. It really is just my throat.”
He wasn’t lying now, and she could see it. Satisfied, she nodded and eased back, climbing to her feet. “Yeah, me too,” she said reaching for her locker and opening it. “I’d hate to think what actual smoke inhalation feels like.”
Will got up after her, opening his own locker across the way. He did have an office -- and there were spare clothes up there -- but he kept extra supplies here as well. When he was on duty in the ED, sometimes making the trek back upstairs just took too long. “Grimy, I suspect,” he said, clearing his throat loudly and finding his own scrubs. They both turned away while they changed their shirts and pants. “Inside and out.”
“Uh, forget grimy. I feel absolutely disgusting,” she said, moaning a little as she reached for her deodorant, fully dressed now. “Blood, sweat and tears.”
“Go home, take a shower,” Will said. “And you know what? Take tomorrow off.”
“Oh, scandal!” she objected, putting on the deodorant under her shirt. “You are very by the book on shifts.”
“You did amazing work today, Helena,” Will told her. He put on his own deodorant, even if he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to make a difference with the smoke caked into his skin. “You’ve earned it.”
“Well, I will if you will,” she said, putting the deodorant back. She turned to him, beaming. “You were pretty good out there yourself.”
“It was just--”
“Part of the job?” she finished for him. She rolled her eyes as he put his deodorant away, too. “You are so predictable sometimes.”
He picked up the ruined scrubs and took them to the hazardous waste basket. It was an apt way to hide just how easily he turned red. “Well, reliability is a virtue, isn’t it?”
He turned back around and she had turned to face him. She was still grinning. “And are you a virtuous man, then?”
He brushed past with a light laugh. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
She was still following him. “You always talk like that, like you’ve got some deep, dark secret.”
“I do have secrets,” he told her.
She blinked up at him, intent. “They’re only secrets because you won’t share them,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they’re deep or dark.”
He sighed a little, feeling mildly crestfallen. All these months later, it still wasn’t easy to talk about. “I’ve told you I’ve made mistakes.”
“Right, which is why you have to work nonstop and can’t mix business with pleasure,” she said. “I just have to wonder what you did that possibly justifies all this?”
“All what?” Will asked.
“This!’ she said, nodding to him. “I know you’re Catholic, but you act like someone has hung a millstone around your neck. Or that you’re wearing a scarlet A or some nonsense.”
The airiness in his demeanor shifted. “Do you really want to know?”
She paused, almost surprised that he asked. “You’d tell me?”
“I would,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, as if she suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But her curiosity was just too keen. “Okay. What did you do?”
“I was involved with a drug trial, some heart medication that showed a lot of promise,” Will said. “I found out that someone I cared about -- someone I’d loved -- stole some of the medication to use on her sick mother. Instead of reporting her, I covered up for her, helped her keep it up. When the whole thing fell apart, I confessed what I’d done. The trial tanked, the hospital lost viable contracts with the drug company, and I got fired -- no excuses allowed. After that, I left Chicago, having ruined both my personal and professional integrity.”
It was a history he knew, of course. He’d gone over it in his own head countless times. And he’d owned it. He’d stopped denying it. He hadn’t tried to justify it. He hadn’t tried to outrun it.
But saying it out loud?
He hadn’t even said it to Adam.
To lay himself bare like that. To put himself out there for Helena.
It was a strange vulnerability. He was laying the last of his defenses down in front of her. She could hate him now. She could lose all respect for him. She could even out him to the rest of the staff he’d worked so hard to be worthy of.
And for a long moment, he thought she might. She stood there, transfixed in front of him, and he felt his self control waver.
Then, without a word, she reached out to him. She grasped him by the hands, and pulled herself closer until he could feel the rapid thrum of her heart close to his.
“So that’s it?” she asked him, voice no more than a whisper. “That’s the deep, dark secret?”
“It is,” he said.
“That you care too deeply, you love too much?” she pressed.
His brow furrowed. “That’s not--”
“It is,” she said. “I know you can’t see it, but it is.”
He tried to pull away, but her grip was firm and his willpower was shirking now. “Helena--”
“If you thought that this would push me away, then you’re an idiot, Will,” she said. “Because this only makes me want you more.”
With that, her fingers clasped hard. She moved up into him, on her tiptoes until her lips were pressed into his. The suddenness of the kiss was almost as startling as the deepness, and Will didn’t have time to think.
He only had time to react.
And he wanted her.
He wanted her so badly that it eclipsed his conscious thought. There was no more time for reason. There was no more space for self control. In a rush, he drew her into his arms, leaning into the kiss with fresh vigor.
She returned the sentiment until they were wholly enveloped. The two of them, still sweaty and smelly in clean scrubs in the locker room. It was reckless, it was stupid, it was--
Beautiful.
Will felt alive.
Well and truly alive in a way he hadn’t felt in almost a year.
The keenness of the feeling -- the realization of his own desire -- was sudden and overwhelming. All these months he’d kept a close hold on himself, exhibiting nothing but self control, and here he was, in reckless abandon.
And he could do it.
He could let go.
He could just let go.
It might be okay.
Or it might fall apart.
He was here to finish things, not to start them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away and releasing his hold on her. “I am so, so sorry.”
She trailed after him, looking bewildered at his sudden shift. “For what?”
He rubbed his hand over his face, shaking his head in horror as he realized what he’d been doing -- what he’d almost allowed himself to do. “I didn’t mean to do this.”
She looked like he might be talking gibberish. “But I did.”
He turned away, moving to the exit. “I never should have come in here with you. This was totally unprofessional--”
She reached out, grabbing him by the arm and turning him back toward her. “We were dirty and smelly. Of course we came to the locker room. There was nothing untoward; we do it all the time.”
“I should have invested in separate stalls--”
Helena looked outright incredulous now. “Are you saying that you think I kissed you because you didn’t install single stalls for privacy? Is that actually what you’re telling me right now?”
“No, of course not,” he said, feeling flustered. “We had a long, hard, and emotional day with lots of ups and downs. We were emotionally compromised, and there’s plenty of evidence that shows that our ability to make smart decisions is reduced--”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. “You’re not going to reduce this to an emotional outburst.”
“But it was--”
“No, Will, it wasn’t,” Helena said, raising her voice now. “You confessed something personal and private to me, and it was precious. And you laid your shame out there for me, and I fell in love with you a little bit. I fell in love with you and I wanted to kiss you, so I did. If you didn’t want it, then I’m the one who’s sorry.”
She was good at finding his weak spot. And he was just so good at breaking. “Helena, of course not.”
“Then what is the problem?” she said, demanding the answer now. “You’ve told me everything. You’ve confessed it all. And I still love you. So what could possibly be the problem?”
The problem. His mind raced and he found himself shaking. The problem.
Did he even know?
Could he ever forget?
It was all he could do to keep his voice steady as he spoke. “I’m still not good at relationships.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Because no one is good at things they don’t try.”
“No, Helena,” he said. “You heard what I said. I have a history.”
Her face screwed up. “I heard exactly what you said, sure,” she said. “And?”
“And,” he said, feeling like this should be self evident but he was struggling to remember why. “I’d be foolish to pretend like I’m even ready for one.”
“You keep saying that, and you keep saying that, and I want to respect your wishes, Will, I really do, but I think you’re in serious denial,” she said. She shrugged her shoulders flippantly. “We all have a history. Like, literally, all of us.”
He sighed, letting his shoulders drop. “Helena--”
“No, you shared your secrets, so try some of mine,” she said, speaking the words rapidly now as her emotions surged. “There was this one time in college when I dated a guy and his brother at the same time. Knowingly. I literally went out with the both back to back without telling either one, and to this day, I can’t give you one good reason why I turned two perfectly good brothers against each other and then broke both their hearts.”
He shook his head. “Helena--”
She wasn’t about to listen to him now. “And this other time -- I was older, like, old enough to know better -- I continued going out with a man who insisted on lying to me about his age. I mean, I found his driver’s license, and I showed it to him, but he swore up and down that he was really 28 like he said. I knew he was a liar, but I just liked him so much--”
“Helena, stop.”
“No, Will, you stop,” she said, turning her tone back on him abruptly. She was being firm, but there was no malice in her expression. She cared about him genuinely, and this was the first time he’d seen her with her own emotions not quite in check. “I may be speaking out of turn here, but this is a chance I feel like I have to take for my own sanity as much as yours.”
She paused to take a breath, before gesturing to him in a dramatic fashion.
“You are the epitome of self control,” she said. “You are the guiding force of this facility. You provide stability and direction unlike anyone else I’ve met while here. Anyone I’ve met ever, honestly.”
Will wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Okay--”
She went on. “Those are all admirable things, and I mean it when I say it’s a large part of what I find so impossibly attractive about you.”
She had paused again, and this time Will leaned into the gap. “But?”
“But,” she said, enunciating the word carefully and crossing to him and putting hand on his face. She let her fingers linger over his cut before cupping his cheek. “You deserve to be happy, too.”
Her touch was soft and sure, and it made him nearly fall apart. When he spoke, he could barely hear his own voice. “How do you know I’m not happy?”
The question was stupid, and Helena knew it as much as Will did. She didn’t back away; she didn’t turn back. “Because, I see the way your eyes light up at a trauma, when you are truly in your element, like they did today,” she said. “And you deserve that, Will. You deserve it all the time.”
What could he say?
What could he do?
Everything he wanted wasn’t what either of them needed. He’d learned so much this past year. He’d learned to be a friend. He’d learned to be a loyal subordinate. He’d learned to be a leader.
But love?
What did he know of love? He’d used Sabeena flippantly. He’d become a codependent mess with Hannah. And Natalie--
He’d lied to her and broke her heart and Natalie was half a world away, dangling like the biggest loose end in all of Will’s life.
“I swear to you, if I thought I could do it, I would,” he said. “You are brilliant. You are beautiful. But I can’t.”
She stepped back, clearly disappointed. But she wasn’t angry. In reality, she wasn’t even surprised. “I know,” she said. She lifted the edges of her mouth into a smile. “I just found you at exactly the wrong time, I think.”
“For a romance, maybe,” Will conceded.
She laughed, even if it sounded a little forced. “A romance? Please, don’t flatter yourself. I was just looking for a quick fling.”
He laughed at that, and she laughed with him. It was impossible to miss how good their voices sounded together, how good they felt together.
She tapered off first, and he was left with a small, breathless chuckle as he looked at her again.
“Maybe someday it’ll be different,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll be different.”
She tipped her head to the side with a knowing smile. “Maybe someday you’ll be able to see that you already are.”
He could only nod at that, dropping his head down for a moment before looking up to her again. “Thank you,” he said. “Helena, you have no idea.”
“I think maybe I do,” she said with a wink. Her movements were guarded even as she composed her face impeccably. “Anyway. See you tomorrow?”
She was remarkable, as a doctor and as a person. Will didn’t know how she could do it, putting herself out there and not flinching when it didn’t go her way. It was more evidence, probably. That she deserved someone far better than him.
That was the way it worked, really. He had to break her heart before she got too attached. He’d let this go on too long. He wasn’t equipped to make it last, and he couldn’t hurt her more than he already had.
She was better off without him, he reminded himself, again and again.
She would always be better off without him.
And this time, he let the moment pass.
He let it slip away.
It was either the best decision of his life.
Or the worst.
“Yeah,” he agreed as she made her way to the door. “See you tomorrow.”
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
-o-
Will had been under the impression that the situation was dire, but he hadn’t thought it would be dangerous. When he’d heard that it was a factory fire, he’d been expecting to find a burnt-out shell of a building and billows of smoke started to evaporate. Instead, when they arrived, the fire was still blazing.
Things were hot.
Literally.
The medics dropped them off at what appeared to be a field command center. Makeshift though it was, it was well staffed with police and firefighters, who appeared to be working in conjunction with site managers and city officials. There were paramedic teams being deployed -- it looked like the whole fleet was here -- and Will watched as another one took off, sirens blaring.
The medics that brought them to the site directed them to the man in charge, a wizened fire chief who looked like he’d had better days. Will introduced himself, and the man gave him a grim once over.
“We could use you down in the triage area,” he said, moving them along through a series of outcroppings. The crackle of the fire was raging nearby, and Will could feel the heat as it emanated into the area. The smoke was thick in the sky, even this distance from the flame. They were brought to an open area, where stretchers were lined up, and people were seated, each wearing a colored pin.
There were hundreds of patients, varying from critical injuries to minor wounds.
“Our queue to get the critical patients out is a lot slower than I’d like,” the man explained, gesturing to the area where two medics were directing other first responders to the critical care patients. “We’ve lost five people already, all before we could get them in ambulances. I can’t say for sure who would die anyway--”
“But we may be able to provide a little extra care in the field,” Will concluded for him, understanding where this was going. “Save a few lives.”
The man gave a terse nod, looking Will over again, and glancing at Helena. “Some of this isn’t pretty,” he warned. “Some of the burns--”
“Probably pretty serious,” Will said, he turned his head toward the fire. “How is it going with containment? Are we safe here?”
This question made the man’s face sour even more. “This whole row of factories is not up to code,” he said. “No fire prevention measures were in place, and it’s all highly flammable. Right now, we’re trying to prevent spread to the next three buildings, but I don’t know.”
Helena nodded with him in apparent understanding. “You worry about that, then,” she said. “We’ll do what we can here.”
“That’s all I ask,” he said. “If you go over, introduce yourself to my two medics. They’re two of mine, and damn good. They’ll tell you where they need you.”
Will thanked the man, for whatever that was worth, and he kept step with Helena as they crossed the field to the front of the triage line. One of the medics, a young woman with close cropped hair, was pulling a sheet over another patient. Her partner, an older man with a bald head, was frantically doing CPR.
“I’m Dr. Halstead, and this is Dr. Barringer,” he said. “We were called in to help from--”
“From anywhere, I don’t care,” the young woman said. “I’m Abby; that’s Diallo. You’re doctors, right?”
“ED and surgery,” Will said, gesturing from himself to Helena. “If you need help with patients.”
Abby laughed caustically, moving over to help Diallo. She grabbed the paddles, and Diallo stepped back. They all waited for the charge to deploy, and a rhythm thankfully returned. Diallo immediately set back to ventilating, calling in one of the other medics to take over so he could administer the appropriate medications.
“So, the triage is straightforward enough,” Abby said, nodding across the field. “We have one pair of medics assessing every patient we find, sorting them. From there, the cops have started to separate them into categories across the field, monitoring for changes in attitude and behavior. Up here, Diallo and I are trying to keep the critical patients alive.”
“But there’s only so much you can do,” Will said.
“And there are only two of us,” Abby said. “There are still people being brought out with every sweep.”
“Then, we’ll jump in,” Helena said. “Give us control over the critical patients.”
“Hey!” Diallo yelled. “A little help!”
He had moved on to another patient, this one heavily bandaged and also ventilated. Will moved quickly there, Helena right by his side. When they got there, Diallo was shaking his head. “His vitals are all over the map. Pressure’s falling -- he’s bleeding out.”
“Any obvious wounds?” Helena asked, already starting to assess the patient, checking his head and chest.
“Nothing we saw,” Dialllo said. “He’s starting to brady down.”
Will moved to his legs, nodding to the thick bandages. “What’s he got down here?”
“Burns,” Diallo said. “Not quite full thickness, but deep.”
Helena was probing the abdomen, listening to the lungs. “Belly’s still soft,” she murmured.
Will was unwrapping the legs, going on a hunch.
A hunch that was proven right when he saw the swollen, discolored legs. “Compartment syndrome,” he said, shaking his head. “Damn it, he’s bleeding into his legs.”
Helena circled down toward him, making a face when she saw. “We have to do a fasciotomy.”
Diallo looked at them both in surprise. “Can you do that?”
Helena glanced at Will, as if for confirmation. He inclined his head. She wanted his support; she had it. Drawing a breath, Helena nodded. “Okay, so I’m going to need a scalpel.”
Diallo produced one, and Will looked at the monitors. “He’s still pretty tachy. We need to control the bleed.”
Helena was focused now, pulling back more of the bandage to assess the legs. She started with the right, placing the blade carefully along the mottled flesh. She took a breath, and then cut deep.
Instantly, the wound oozed with blood, thick and red. She repeated the cut on the other side of the calf, giving the wound a moment to breathe before she turned to the other side. Will watched, glancing between the procedure and the monitor, and Helena finished cutting into the leg on the other side before Diallo used fresh gauze to mop up some of the blood.
The monitor chirped, and Will nodded. “Vitals are stabilizing,” he said. “He’ll need a transfusion when he gets to the hospital. Where is he at in the wait?”
“Uh, he was fourth,” Diallo said. “Should we bump him up?”
Will considered, weighing the patient’s current status. “If we get him out of here in thirty minutes, I think he’ll make it.”
“Bandage his legs lightly,” Helena said. “We do need the blood to drain, and go ahead and hang another liter of saline. That should help tide him over until he gets blood.”
Diallo looked impressed. “This is a good save,” he said. “I was sure I was going to watch him die.”
“Well, he’s not out of the woods yet,” Will said.
Helena was taking off her gloves, all business. “We’ll have to monitor him, best we can,” she said, discarding the remnants of her save as she turned back to Diallo. “Now, who’s next?”
-o-
Will and Helena agreed to work together, assessing each critical care patient as best they could in the field. Supplies were in short supply, and they had to start relying on cops to do extra ventilating when they ran out of hands. Helena was able to put in a few chest tubes, and Will managed to bind someone with a broken pelvis, stabilizing them long enough to hitch a ride out. At one point, Helena had to work with a suspected case of pericarditis, and he stood by her side the whole time, watching as she expertly hit the sac around the heart and drained the blood, restoring normal sinus rhythm.
By the time they had worked through all the critical patients, Will was ready to move to the rest of the field, but the fire chief was jogging back toward them. In the pressure to save lives, Will hadn’t been paying much attention to the rest of the scene. He had assumed the fire was getting under control.
He had assumed wrong -- not for the first time, not for the last time.
“I need you!” he said, drawing Will aside. Helena joined them a second later. “The fire -- it has started to spread to the next building.”
Will looked down the line, trying to make out one series of flames from the next with little regard. There was a reason he wasn’t a firefighter, it seemed.
“Okay,” Helena said, and she seemed just as confused as Will. “And are there patients?”
“We have cleared it except for one man,” the fire chief said. “One of the workers, an immigrant. He didn’t understand the evacuation orders, and ended up staying behind. When the far side of the structure was compromised, a section of the interior rafters collapsed. The building is still stable for the moment while crews work to control the fire, but the man is trapped.”
Trapped patients was a field for the firefighters, and they all knew it. If the man was requesting Will’s help, then there were confounding factors. “Trapped how?”
The man flattened his lips. “His leg is caught, possibly crushed,” he said. “The time it would take to move it--”
“May not be worth it,” Will concluded. “You want us to see if the leg is salvageable?”
“If you would,” the man said. He looked between Will and Helena. “I know it’s a lot to ask.”
Helena was stiff and silent, and this one was Will’s call. “I’ll go,” he said. He glanced to Helena. “I can do this one alone.”
She looked indignant at the suggestion. “If you’re going, I’m going,” she snapped. “Besides, it sounds like you need a surgeon -- not an administrator.”
Despite everything, Will almost grinned. He nodded, looking back at the man. “Lead the way.”
-o-
Will had agreed because it had been the right thing to do. Following the firemen around the scene, however, Will was given a much better view of the total destruction. The fire had already obliterated two of the buildings, and it was still raging in two more. They took wide berth around the area, and they rounded on another pair of buildings. Both were hazy with smoke, flames licking the side of one of them.
Clearly, this was the location, but Will felt some trepidation. Field work involved less than ideal conditions -- he had known that coming in -- but charging into a building on fire?
Jay would throw a fit if he knew. Especially since, this time, Will was going in on his own volition. He was making a choice here, and the implications for the hospital and the patient were one thing, but he couldn’t be naive about his own well being. In a few months, he was supposed to be back in Chicago, standing up for Jay as his best man.
And even then, Helena. He’d brought her here. He’d dragged her out of surgery and chosen her specifically. If anything happened to her, it was on him.
This was his choice.
Whatever happened next -- those consequences were his.
The intensity of the choice left him momentarily stymied. However, next to him, Helena was already willfully gearing up. She looked at him. “You okay?”
He swallowed, looking at her, buffeted by smoke. “You don’t have to do this,” he said.
She nodded, short and curt. “We do the job, right? That’s why we’re here.”
Will nodded back, feeling hollow in his resolve. He had no choice but to agree. “We do the job.”
-o-
He suited up as best he could. One of the firefighters adjusted his mask for him, testing the oxygen intake. They both agreed to wear the coats, but they needed to stay lithe and mobile if they were going to seriously work on a patient in there.
“It should be okay,” one of the firefighters said. This was a kid, who looked no more than 20. “The smoke makes it look worse than it is right now, but we got an early start on this. The area we need to work on has been pretty well controlled.”
“Still,” a second firefighter said. This one was older, and he looked like he’d done this kind of thing before. “You need to be careful, and be alert. When we pull the plug, you get out, no questions asked.”
“But the patient--” Helena started.
The older man shook his head. “No questions asked.”
Helena drew back somberly, but Will nodded for both of them. “We understand,” he said, and he adjusted his grip on his bag, giving Helena one more look. “Let’s go.”
-o-
From the outside, this all seemed like a bad idea. Will had to admit, once he got inside, he was somewhat pleasantly surprised. There were no visible flames where they entered, and though the smoke did hang in the air, it did not seem to be too thick. The gear, at this point, really did seem like a precautionary tactic. No doubt, the firefighters did not want to lose two volunteer doctors on their watch.
Which was good.
Will didn’t want to be lost, either.
These were errant thoughts, however, and they left him completely when the firefighters drew to a stop and Will got a look at the patient for the first time.
The man was indeed trapped. The rafter had fallen from above, crashing into some of the equipment. One of the pieces had tipped over, pinning the man to the ground. His leg was completely enclosed in the debris, and the sheer weight was plain to see. The rafter alone -- maybe they could have moved. Paired with the weight of the equipment, and the firefighters would need extra lifting equipment.
A luxury that was not permissible during an active fire scene.
While Will made this assessment, Helena had already gone straight to the patient. One her knees, she took out a portable kit, starting to hook it up. A third firefighter was at the scene, sitting with the man. He had one glove off, presumably to monitor the patient’s pulse.
“He’s been out for a little while,” the firefighter said to Helena. Will got down on the other side to help, unfurling his own pack to scour for an IV. “Not sure if it’s blood loss.”
Helena was placing the electrodes and turning the monitor on. It whirred to life, offering a fresh take on his vitals. She frowned. “Pressure is high, which doesn’t suggest blood loss,” she said. “Oxygen levels are good, though.”
The patient had been equipped with a firefighter’s mask, and it seemed to be doing its job well enough. Will worked on one arm, starting the IV in an efficient fashion. Nurses usually did procedures like that, but Will had taken time to renew his attention to the basics. It paid off in moments like this.
Helena finished checking the patient over otherwise. “No obvious other injuries. Doesn’t look like a head wound.”
“So, just the leg?” Will asked, nodding to the trapped appendage.
Helena drew a grim breath, and she nodded. “Looks like,” she said. She reached down, trying to get a feel for things. Will joined her, checking for a pulse at the pelvis.
“We tried to get it off,” the young firefighter said. “But we just don’t have enough to leverage with.”
“Leverage wouldn’t work anyway,” the older one griped. “It’s got to be hoisted off.”
“I told both of you, I don’t think it’ll matter,” the third one said. He nodded down, gesturing to Helena and Will. “His leg -- it’s crushed, right?”
Helena exchanged a look with him. Though their eyes were obscured somewhat by the masks, they could still read each other. He knew what she was thinking.
Worst case scenario: the leg was a lost cause.
Best case scenario: the leg was still probably a lost cause. If they could get him out with the leg intact, maybe they had a chance to save it. But that chance was slim.
They knew it, but they had to say it.
Protocol.
“Pulse is still good at the pelvis,” Will reported. “And his left leg is free.”
“The second one is trapped,” Helena said, and she sighed. “Mid-thigh.”
“He’ll be a bad case for a prosthetic,” Will said.
“Either way,” Helena agreed. “Now or later.”
They hadn’t said it yet. Neither of them wanted to make the call. Will, in desperation, looked to the three firefighters. “And you can’t do anything to get it off?”
It was a question he knew the answer to, but it was still one he had to ask. The oldest one was the one who spoke. “I told you, there’s nothing to jack it up with,” he said. “This area is secure, but it won’t last for long.”
He was right. Even as an untrained civilian, Will could tell that the smoke levels were increasing. Worse, when he looked around, there were flames starting to be visible on one end of the building.
The time it took to get the leg free might kill them all -- including the patient. All for a leg that Will had a pretty good idea wasn't viable.
“We have to try,” Helena said with a small breath of fleeting resolve. “I mean, if this man has a chance of walking again--”
But Will shook his head. She was his best doctor, and she was thinking like one right now. She was so focused on her patient that she didn’t see the big picture.
Will had to see the big picture.
It was his job, after all.
And it was a responsibility he had shirked for so many years -- and to his own detriment and the detriment of everyone around him. The conclusion here was glaringly, uncomfortably obvious. Helena knew it, too -- she’d come to the same conclusion a few minutes ago -- but she was a doctor. As the man in charge, this was up to Will.
And only Will.
“No,” he said, abrupt and to the point. Helena’s eyes widened as her mouth fell open in a protest that he didn’t let her make. “The leg’s viability is too questionable, and conditions on the ground are too precarious. If we don’t act, he may lose more than a leg. He might die -- along with the rest of us. We have to amputate.”
It wasn’t the call he wanted to make, but it was the right one. It was the only one.
“Can you do it fast?” the third firefighter asked. He was looking up, seeing a fresh streak of fire starting in across the ceiling. “Because I think we’re short on time.”
Will’s stomach churned, but this time, Helena stepped in for him, taking her place seamlessly as his right-hand woman. “Then we’ll do it fast,” she said. “Given the placement, we’re not trying to preserve the joint. It doesn’t have to be pretty.”
“Just fast and effective,” Will agreed. “Helena, get the tourniquet.”
She was already in motion, opening up her pack and pulling out the tools as she dropped to her knees once more. Will moved in tandem, opening up his own back and rapidly sorting through things. The scalpels would get through the top layers of skin. The bone saw, however, was going to be needed to get the job done.
It was unpleasant, true, but a necessary step. Will put those tools aside, however, and reached for the medications instead.
“Tourniquet is on,” Helena said, checking to make sure the blood flow was really stopped.
Will pulled out the necessary vial. “I’m going to get the heavy sedatives in the IV,” he reported as he injected them straight into the IV. “Okay, meds are in. He should be out.”
Helena had the scalpel ready, positioning the bone saw to the side. She looked at him anxiously through the growing haze. “Are you sure you got the dose right?”
Will was busy cleaning the leg and swabbing the area. They’d already removed as much of the pant leg as possible to improve their visibility of the wound, and Will needed to try to minimize the risk of infection with an open wound in these conditions. “Pretty sure,” he said. “We should also get him on an antibiotic as a preventative measure.”
“We can start it when we’re out,” she said. “There’s no time now. I just want to be sure he’s out. This will hurt -- and it’s not going to be pretty.”
She seemed to be warning herself more than she was warning Will. He didn’t look back to see how the firefighters felt about it. Any amputation was stressful, even in a well maintained OR. To do it here, in the field -- it was the stuff of nightmares.
Will knew that.
He was just suddenly aware that he might be the only one.
“I know,” he said, nodding back to Helena. “I’ve done field amputations before.”
She huffed, looking somewhat perturbed. “Of course you have,” she muttered.
It wasn’t quite the same timber as their normal banter. In fact, Will knew Helena well enough to know that this was something else. This was something he’d never seen from her before. Something he’d been sure he’d never see.
It was fear.
“Have you?” he asked, because this seemed like a necessary time to clarify this point -- for the patient, yes. For Helena, too. Field amputations were traumatic -- and not just for the patient.
There was a tightness in her expression, even as she tried not to show it. “In the field? Not exactly.”
With any other doctor, he would have offered to take over. With his experience and position, he had every right. In some ways, he would be doing Helena a favor.
But he wasn’t here to save Helena. He wasn’t even here to protect her.
She was too strong, too smart, too good.
She just needed to remember it. He looked at her, holding as steady as he could in the rising melee. “You can do this,” he said. “I know you can.”
He’d relied on her resolve more than he cared to admit. This time, for once, he was able to return the favor.
More importantly, she was willing to let him.
This wasn’t a one-way street. The mutuality between them was the spark that made the whole thing work. They were invested in one another, now more than ever.
She nodded, and then she took off her mask. The firefighters started to protest, but Will followed suit. “We have to do this precisely,” he said. “We promise to put them back on when we’re done.”
This didn’t seem to assuage their doubts, but Helena already had the scalpel in hand, so they didn’t have much time to argue. She drew a breath, giving Will once more look.
He nodded.
And she started to cut.
-o-
Through the skin and into the muscle before you cut through the bone.
Some problems didn’t have an easy fix.
Sometimes, the hard way was the only way.
Sometimes, you had to cut off what was holding you back.
Sometimes, loss was the only way forward.
Those hard lessons -- the hardest ones -- were always the ones that made the biggest difference.
The tourniquet helped stem the worst of the blood, but there was no way around what they were doing. The right thing wasn’t always easy. Sometimes, it didn’t even feel right.
But this was how it was.
This was just how it had to be.
Helena completed the procedure, efficiently and effectively. Within five minutes, the man was clear, and Will helped transfer him over to a waiting backboard. Helena looked spent, but she refused to slow down. As Will strapped the man into the backboard, stabilizing the spine and neck, she was already barking out orders.
“We need to start the antibiotics right away,” she said. “We’re also going to want to get him on the first ambulance back for surgery to clean up the procedure.”
“It was a pretty clean cut,” Will observed, allowing the two firemen to hoist the backboard.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’s at high risk for infection. Take him out, and we’ll be there in a second.”
The older man and the younger man obliged, starting out. The third turned to watch Will and Helena as they started to pick up.
“We got to get a move on,” he said. “This structure is getting more and more unstable. I think the fire’s spreading.”
Helena had packed her bag, and Will was getting the last of his things. He got up, seeing Helena with her mask back on. He reached down for his.
“Doc!”
The sudden yell caught Will off guard, and he lost sight of the mask as he whirled to his feet. It made no difference. On his feet, he caught sight of the explosion as it blew past him, a blossom of fire and heat that sent him rocking backward as debris rained down.
Dazed by the blow, Will struggled to get his bearing. Helena had been knocked clear off her feet, and he went to her, heart pounding in his chest. “Helena--”
“I’m fine,” she said, slowly starting to get to her feet. “The firefighter--”
She didn’t need to say it; Will was already thinking it. “You sure you’re okay?”
She waved him away. “Go -- go!”
He turned, trying in vain to brush away the smoke now. The billows had increased, and Will could feel the thickness in his lungs as he pushed his way forward, partially blind. He never did get the mask back on; he wished he had.
Dropping low, he figured that the improved visibility was more important than moving quickly at this point. The firefighter had been close; he couldn’t have been thrown too far. Plus, Will knew enough about smoke inhalation injuries to know that his lungs could only handle so much soot for so long. His old man had died in a fire; Will wasn’t about to let another one take the last of Jay’s family.
Fortunately, his assessment had been correct. The firefighter was close by -- but he was half buried under a new pile of debris. It looked like another section of the roof had fallen in -- no beams this time -- but trying to finagle the boards out of the way was still no small task.
Finally, when enough was cleared away, he was able to reach down and find the man’s carotid pulse. The sound of the fire was growing in intensity, but Will stilled himself and listened, felt--
And there.
There it was.
“He’s alive!” he said, calling back to Helena. He couldn’t see her in the growing blackness, and he coughed again. Keeping low, he leaned over the man, trying to do a quick check for injuries. He was going to get up to find Helena -- see if they could move the man together -- but he never got the chance.
The first explosion had taken Will by surprise, clearly.
He never even saw the second one.
Bigger than the first, the second explosion caught Will as he stood up. One of the walls all but exploded with an unexpected and unrelenting force. He caught sight of the fireball as it engulfed him, and he was thrown clear off his feet. He hit hard, and Will was a victim of his own futility once more.
-o-
In some ways, Will thought it shouldn’t be so hard. To pick himself back up. To make himself right again. He was smart; he was capable. There was no reason for the process of rebuilding to be so damn difficult.
And yet, it was.
Will was a fast learner in school, but a slow learner with the practical things.
Two steps forward.
Then, he fell all the way back down.
Natalie was right to give him back the ring. Ms. Goodwin had every right to fire him. Jay should have cut him out of his life the second he came back with the same stupid mistakes. Will had come all the way across the globe to do things right, to do things better, and for what?
His mother died of cancer, and he barely made it back for the funeral. His old man had died while under Will’s care. Natalie had taken Owen back to Seattle, and Jay wanted him to be his best man.
You had to cut through the skin and into the muscle before you got to the bone. Sometimes, the only way to save yourself was to sacrifice a part. You had to let go.
Let go.
But somewhere, a voice screamed at him. “Will! Will!”
He heard it, but didn’t know how to respond. He felt mired in the darkness, pulled back by the cloying bitterness.
“Hold on!” a voice yelled. “I need you to hold on!”
-o-
Blinking, Will realized belatedly that his eyes were open. It didn’t make much different. The smoky haze had increased. It burned his eyes. With an inhale, he coughed and gagged. He remembered where he was, but the memory did little to ground him. His mind was errant; his attention, fleeting.
“Will!”
He came back around, willing his eyes to focus. He was on his back, and he was covered with debris. He’d been working on the firefighter. The firefighter needed to get out--
“We’re almost there -- hurry up!”
That was Helena, then. She sounded stressed; she sounded upset.
She sounded close.
And still as far away as he’d ever known.
He would do anything for her, then.
Anything.
“Will, can you hear me? Talk to me!”
Something shifted, and some of the pressure on his chest was released. He gasped, not realizing just how heavy the weight had been. He’d barely felt it before, but he felt it now in its wake. Hot pain in his chest, like electricity up and down his spine. It felt horrible.
Then, hands on his face. Fingers brushed at his cheeks, bringing his face to bear.
“Will? Will!”
This time, when he looked, he saw.
He saw her.
She was as scared as he’d ever seen her.
As determined as he’d ever seen her.
“Helena,” he said, voice scratchy against his throat. “You found me.”
“You’re mad,” she said, but there was no anger in her voice. Her eyes looked wet. “And finding you is only half the battle. You have to work with me if we’re getting out of this.”
There was a moment of clarity.
Precise and clear. He saw her. He saw his way out.
“Come on,” she said, working with him to sit him up. The change in position didn’t bother him as much as he expected, and aside for a passing moment of dizziness, he found himself stable enough.
“The firefighter,” he croaked.
“Taken care of,” she said. “One of our friends doubled back.”
Will looked up. He still felt hazy, but he could see the other firefighter drawn up into carry over the other man’s shoulders.
The man turned back and shouted at Helena. “You got him? Or should I get backup?”
“I got him,” Helena said, and to prove her point, she propped Will up a little straighter.
Will was conscious, but he was still operating a step or two behind everyone else. “Is he okay?”
Helena gave him a critical look. “That’s not something you need to worry about,” she chided him. “You have to take care of yourself for once.”
Will wanted to shake his head, but the movement seemed to require far too much effort. He focused on breathing instead, but the smoke-clogged air did little to reinvigorate his head.
“Okay,” Helena was saying, because at least one of them was focused on the task at hand. “Can you do this?”
He wasn’t sure what what was, but the look on her face was expectant, and her grip on him was secure. She wanted to get him out of here.
That point took him long enough to realize.
Assessing an answer took him longer still.
“Will?” she said, voice rising slightly with demand as she shook him. “Can you do this?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, but his answer was irrelevant. She already had him on his feet, her arm steadying around his waist as she maneuvered his arm over her shoulders.
Without waiting to hear more from him, she pulled him forward. He stumbled, but she was unwavering, and keeping step with her was easier than it had a right to be.
“Come on,” she said, voice sounding over the din. “Just a little farther now.”
She coaxed him, step after step. His breathing was grating against his throat, but the spinning in his head had started to normalize by the time they got outside. His first breath of fresh air was grounding, and he felt the fog in his brain finally start to clear. She pushed him on, away from the burning building, until she finally felt satisfied and deposited him on the ground.
Exhausted, he was ready to slump back, but Helena had other things in mind. Ripping off her mask, she was crouched in front of him. Putting a hand on his shoulder, she went into full doctor mode.
“Will? Can you look at me?” she asked -- more like demanded.
His only response was to cough, a harsh, cloying sensation, and he hacked enough to make his ears pop. The renewed clarity allowed him to look at her compliantly.
She hardly looked relieved, eyes squinted as she studied his pupils. She lifted her finger, holding it a short distance from his face. “Follow along, yeah?”
She pulled the finger from side to side, and Will tracked it with ease.
Even so, Helena frowned. She reached her fingers up to his forehead, where Will could feel a tender lump. “It’s not deep,” she said, almost more to herself than to him. Then, she raked her fingers through his hair, feeling along the rest of his scalp.
“Helena, I’m fine--”
“You’re not fine,” she snapped at him, tipping his head from side to side and feeling his neck. “You were in an altered state of consciousness.”
“Which has cleared up,” he pointed out. He reached up to put her hands down. “See? I’m lucid.”
Her look back was nothing short of withering. “Pardon me if you sitting there covered in soot is unconvincing. I did just drag your ass out of a literal fire.”
Her adrenaline was going into overdrive, then. This was more than doctor mode. This was the chemistry between the two of them. “I know.”
His reply was soft, but she kept herself hard. “Look at me,” she ordered again. She produced a penlight from her pocket. “Eyes on the light.”
She was trying to be the epitome of professionalism, which only gave away just how on the edge of her self control she was right then. He complied as she checked his pupils for light reactivity, and he was fully obedient as she coached him to touch his nose.
Scowling, she did not seem satisfied. “Any nausea? Double vision?”
“No and no,” Will said.
Her jaw worked, and for once, she was the one who was unable to let go. “And your pain? How is it?”
“Very manageable,” Will replied honestly. His head had cleared even more by now, and though he was aware of a myriad of aches and pains, there was nothing that he couldn’t handle. “Helena, I’m fine.”
With a scoff, she tucked her hair behind her ear and sat back on her heels. “You don’t know that,” she said crossly. “You are a very poor judge of yourself.”
It was a point that had been made to him before, and it was a point he had learned to internalize. Helena was right, except for the fact that he’d changed. “I just passed your concussion check with flying colors.”
At that, she looked genuinely annoyed. Instead of conceding the point, she reached forward to probe the wound on his head again. Her fingers pushed a little harder this time, as if trying to pull the wound open a little. “I don’t think it’s going to need stitches, but we really ought to clean it out. It’s mostly stopped bleeding, but you’re covered in soot.”
Will couldn’t argue that one. He huffed with a small laugh. “We ought to clean a lot of things out right now,” he said, and he inclined his head toward her. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer, too.”
She was wholly unimpressed with his concern. Instead, she moved her hands down, pushing the thick coat out of the way. “What about the rest of you?” she asked, starting to feel his chest. “How’s your breathing? I lost my stethoscope back there.”
“We almost lost more than that,” Will quipped, but the joke wasn’t funny.
Helena frowned and leaned down, pressing her head to his chest.
Will swallowed, and he wanted to be patient for her sake. All the time and space she had given him, he knew he owed her -- for that and saving his life. That was why he couldn’t let her do this. “Helena--”
Shushing him fiercely, she held up one hand to keep him quiet. He permitted this, breathing slowly and evenly while she listened for sounds of crackles that he knew she wasn’t going to find.
Sitting back, her brow was dark. She reached up again, palpating his ribs. “Is anything broken? Bruised?”
“Just bruised,” he said, pushing her hand away. “You’re just fishing now. You know I’m fine.”
Helena was nothing if not determined, though. It was part of what he’d always found so attractive about her. It also made her the best damn doctor on his service.
The problem was they had crossed the line from professional to personal some time ago, and Will had refused to define it. Hell, he’d refused to admit it.
Now, here they were.
Helena doggedly pressing her hands against his stomach, looking for signs of a bleed. “Any tenderness?” she asked.
“No,” he said, allowing it this time. “I’m just sore. As I’m sure you are, too.”
Sitting back again, Helena still looked perturbed somehow. “You really should be checked out.”
“Think triage,” Will said. “I’m not your boss here. I’m just another patient. What would you do?”
It wasn’t an answer she particularly liked, no matter how clever Will was being. “That’s just a fancy way to get out of treatment.”
She wasn’t wrong, but Will knew he still had the logical high ground here. “I’m being practical.”
Mouth turned down sourly, she lifted her chin. “Triaged patients are usually left for observation,” she said. Then, she narrowed her eyes at him. “On the sidelines.”
He should have seen that one coming. “Helena, come on.”
“Hey,” she said, feigning innocence. “You’re the one who brought up triage.”
“I’m fine,” Will said. “And if I feel dizzy or have new pain, I’ll stop.”
“No you won’t, she said, shaking her head. “But I’m not leaving you alone for a minute, so it should do.”
The compromise was a way to end the stalemate.
He had to wonder if it was the way to start something, too.
He smiled. “Sounds fair. Shall we?”
She climbed to her feet with a long sigh. She offered him her hand, and he took it, letting her hoist him up back to his feet. “I guess we shall.”
The world wobbled, just for a second, but Helena’s presence was steady, and Will followed her back.
-o-
Back at the field camp, Helena did take time to listen to his chest, and she even bothered him long enough to visually inspect his airway just to make sure there were no indications of damage that they had missed. After that, she cleared him for duty, and they worked for several more hours, patient after patient. The stream of new patients had slowed by then, which allowed the queue to thin out. Now, Will and Helena were sorting the last of the patients, deciding who needed to go to the hospital and who could be discharged for home care.
Disasters started with a bang. Their starts were impossible to miss.
The resolution was always slower, harder to see, harder to track, harder to understand.
Sometimes, you didn’t even know when it was over.
You just kept fighting, you just kept going, you just kept pushing.
Until you ran out of things to fight, places to go, and obstacles to push.
-o-
By nightfall, the field center was being packed up. The fire had largely burnt itself out in most of the structures, and the fire crews had contained the worst of the damage in the final two. So far, Will knew of 11 casualties, but they had shipped off two dozen more critical patients. The final count would probably be worse.
But they had saved people, too. He tried to remember that as they packed up. He’d lost track of those patients, the ones who were stable, the ones he’d sent home altogether. People did survive disasters, after all. There was such a thing as hope.
When they were packed and ready, Will accepted a ride back to the hospital on one of the fire rigs. For as weary as Will felt, the fire crew looked even worse for wear. He and Helena offered to check the guys out before they left, but the crew just wanted to get home.
Will couldn’t begrudge them that. He wanted to get home as well.
Dirty and weary, he and Helena made their way back in the hospital. Tempting as it was to go home and sleep, Will knew how they had to look. He fended off the worst of the inquiries, and he made a note to work with Mikayla on an appropriate statement for the press -- tomorrow.
For tonight--
Well, tonight was a different story altogether.
He followed Helena, who marched almost on autopilot to the locker room. She turned abruptly on him, ordering him to sit down.
“Are we still doing this?” he asked.
“We are,” she said. “You still have an open wound, and you are positively disgusting.”
“Well, you can bandage the wound,” he said. He almost smiled. “Not sure you can do anything about the rest.”
She clearly did not want to smile, but her fondness betrayed her. “Oh, shut up,” she said, pulling out the first aid kit from the locker room. One great thing about hospitals: there was always medical gear on hand.
And there was always a doctor ready for a procedure.
Though this wasn’t like that.
Sitting there, while Helena gently cleaned and bandaged the wound, it wasn’t like that at all. Her touch was soft, and he could feel her breathing. She lingered close, smoothing the tape down, before she sat down across from him on the locker room bench and smiled.
“Now, how are you feeling?” she asked.
“I’ve told you a thousand times: I’m fine,” he said.
“And in the field, I let it slide,” she said. “But now, it’s just the two of us. There are no other pressures. No other commitments. No responsibilities. The job’s done, Will. How are you feeling?”
It was an appeal to something beyond duty. It was a draw to something deeper than his job.
Face to face, she was right.
This was just about them now.
After everything, it was just about them.
“I’m fine,” he said again, but the words were softer now as he held her gaze. “I don’t even feel the head wound. The worst of it is my scratchy throat.”
She looked at him, ever keen. “Are you lying to me?”
He blinked, as earnest as he knew how. “No, I promise. It really is just my throat.”
He wasn’t lying now, and she could see it. Satisfied, she nodded and eased back, climbing to her feet. “Yeah, me too,” she said reaching for her locker and opening it. “I’d hate to think what actual smoke inhalation feels like.”
Will got up after her, opening his own locker across the way. He did have an office -- and there were spare clothes up there -- but he kept extra supplies here as well. When he was on duty in the ED, sometimes making the trek back upstairs just took too long. “Grimy, I suspect,” he said, clearing his throat loudly and finding his own scrubs. They both turned away while they changed their shirts and pants. “Inside and out.”
“Uh, forget grimy. I feel absolutely disgusting,” she said, moaning a little as she reached for her deodorant, fully dressed now. “Blood, sweat and tears.”
“Go home, take a shower,” Will said. “And you know what? Take tomorrow off.”
“Oh, scandal!” she objected, putting on the deodorant under her shirt. “You are very by the book on shifts.”
“You did amazing work today, Helena,” Will told her. He put on his own deodorant, even if he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to make a difference with the smoke caked into his skin. “You’ve earned it.”
“Well, I will if you will,” she said, putting the deodorant back. She turned to him, beaming. “You were pretty good out there yourself.”
“It was just--”
“Part of the job?” she finished for him. She rolled her eyes as he put his deodorant away, too. “You are so predictable sometimes.”
He picked up the ruined scrubs and took them to the hazardous waste basket. It was an apt way to hide just how easily he turned red. “Well, reliability is a virtue, isn’t it?”
He turned back around and she had turned to face him. She was still grinning. “And are you a virtuous man, then?”
He brushed past with a light laugh. “That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
She was still following him. “You always talk like that, like you’ve got some deep, dark secret.”
“I do have secrets,” he told her.
She blinked up at him, intent. “They’re only secrets because you won’t share them,” she said. “That doesn’t mean they’re deep or dark.”
He sighed a little, feeling mildly crestfallen. All these months later, it still wasn’t easy to talk about. “I’ve told you I’ve made mistakes.”
“Right, which is why you have to work nonstop and can’t mix business with pleasure,” she said. “I just have to wonder what you did that possibly justifies all this?”
“All what?” Will asked.
“This!’ she said, nodding to him. “I know you’re Catholic, but you act like someone has hung a millstone around your neck. Or that you’re wearing a scarlet A or some nonsense.”
The airiness in his demeanor shifted. “Do you really want to know?”
She paused, almost surprised that he asked. “You’d tell me?”
“I would,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, as if she suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But her curiosity was just too keen. “Okay. What did you do?”
“I was involved with a drug trial, some heart medication that showed a lot of promise,” Will said. “I found out that someone I cared about -- someone I’d loved -- stole some of the medication to use on her sick mother. Instead of reporting her, I covered up for her, helped her keep it up. When the whole thing fell apart, I confessed what I’d done. The trial tanked, the hospital lost viable contracts with the drug company, and I got fired -- no excuses allowed. After that, I left Chicago, having ruined both my personal and professional integrity.”
It was a history he knew, of course. He’d gone over it in his own head countless times. And he’d owned it. He’d stopped denying it. He hadn’t tried to justify it. He hadn’t tried to outrun it.
But saying it out loud?
He hadn’t even said it to Adam.
To lay himself bare like that. To put himself out there for Helena.
It was a strange vulnerability. He was laying the last of his defenses down in front of her. She could hate him now. She could lose all respect for him. She could even out him to the rest of the staff he’d worked so hard to be worthy of.
And for a long moment, he thought she might. She stood there, transfixed in front of him, and he felt his self control waver.
Then, without a word, she reached out to him. She grasped him by the hands, and pulled herself closer until he could feel the rapid thrum of her heart close to his.
“So that’s it?” she asked him, voice no more than a whisper. “That’s the deep, dark secret?”
“It is,” he said.
“That you care too deeply, you love too much?” she pressed.
His brow furrowed. “That’s not--”
“It is,” she said. “I know you can’t see it, but it is.”
He tried to pull away, but her grip was firm and his willpower was shirking now. “Helena--”
“If you thought that this would push me away, then you’re an idiot, Will,” she said. “Because this only makes me want you more.”
With that, her fingers clasped hard. She moved up into him, on her tiptoes until her lips were pressed into his. The suddenness of the kiss was almost as startling as the deepness, and Will didn’t have time to think.
He only had time to react.
And he wanted her.
He wanted her so badly that it eclipsed his conscious thought. There was no more time for reason. There was no more space for self control. In a rush, he drew her into his arms, leaning into the kiss with fresh vigor.
She returned the sentiment until they were wholly enveloped. The two of them, still sweaty and smelly in clean scrubs in the locker room. It was reckless, it was stupid, it was--
Beautiful.
Will felt alive.
Well and truly alive in a way he hadn’t felt in almost a year.
The keenness of the feeling -- the realization of his own desire -- was sudden and overwhelming. All these months he’d kept a close hold on himself, exhibiting nothing but self control, and here he was, in reckless abandon.
And he could do it.
He could let go.
He could just let go.
It might be okay.
Or it might fall apart.
He was here to finish things, not to start them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away and releasing his hold on her. “I am so, so sorry.”
She trailed after him, looking bewildered at his sudden shift. “For what?”
He rubbed his hand over his face, shaking his head in horror as he realized what he’d been doing -- what he’d almost allowed himself to do. “I didn’t mean to do this.”
She looked like he might be talking gibberish. “But I did.”
He turned away, moving to the exit. “I never should have come in here with you. This was totally unprofessional--”
She reached out, grabbing him by the arm and turning him back toward her. “We were dirty and smelly. Of course we came to the locker room. There was nothing untoward; we do it all the time.”
“I should have invested in separate stalls--”
Helena looked outright incredulous now. “Are you saying that you think I kissed you because you didn’t install single stalls for privacy? Is that actually what you’re telling me right now?”
“No, of course not,” he said, feeling flustered. “We had a long, hard, and emotional day with lots of ups and downs. We were emotionally compromised, and there’s plenty of evidence that shows that our ability to make smart decisions is reduced--”
“No,” she said, cutting him off. “You’re not going to reduce this to an emotional outburst.”
“But it was--”
“No, Will, it wasn’t,” Helena said, raising her voice now. “You confessed something personal and private to me, and it was precious. And you laid your shame out there for me, and I fell in love with you a little bit. I fell in love with you and I wanted to kiss you, so I did. If you didn’t want it, then I’m the one who’s sorry.”
She was good at finding his weak spot. And he was just so good at breaking. “Helena, of course not.”
“Then what is the problem?” she said, demanding the answer now. “You’ve told me everything. You’ve confessed it all. And I still love you. So what could possibly be the problem?”
The problem. His mind raced and he found himself shaking. The problem.
Did he even know?
Could he ever forget?
It was all he could do to keep his voice steady as he spoke. “I’m still not good at relationships.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Because no one is good at things they don’t try.”
“No, Helena,” he said. “You heard what I said. I have a history.”
Her face screwed up. “I heard exactly what you said, sure,” she said. “And?”
“And,” he said, feeling like this should be self evident but he was struggling to remember why. “I’d be foolish to pretend like I’m even ready for one.”
“You keep saying that, and you keep saying that, and I want to respect your wishes, Will, I really do, but I think you’re in serious denial,” she said. She shrugged her shoulders flippantly. “We all have a history. Like, literally, all of us.”
He sighed, letting his shoulders drop. “Helena--”
“No, you shared your secrets, so try some of mine,” she said, speaking the words rapidly now as her emotions surged. “There was this one time in college when I dated a guy and his brother at the same time. Knowingly. I literally went out with the both back to back without telling either one, and to this day, I can’t give you one good reason why I turned two perfectly good brothers against each other and then broke both their hearts.”
He shook his head. “Helena--”
She wasn’t about to listen to him now. “And this other time -- I was older, like, old enough to know better -- I continued going out with a man who insisted on lying to me about his age. I mean, I found his driver’s license, and I showed it to him, but he swore up and down that he was really 28 like he said. I knew he was a liar, but I just liked him so much--”
“Helena, stop.”
“No, Will, you stop,” she said, turning her tone back on him abruptly. She was being firm, but there was no malice in her expression. She cared about him genuinely, and this was the first time he’d seen her with her own emotions not quite in check. “I may be speaking out of turn here, but this is a chance I feel like I have to take for my own sanity as much as yours.”
She paused to take a breath, before gesturing to him in a dramatic fashion.
“You are the epitome of self control,” she said. “You are the guiding force of this facility. You provide stability and direction unlike anyone else I’ve met while here. Anyone I’ve met ever, honestly.”
Will wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Okay--”
She went on. “Those are all admirable things, and I mean it when I say it’s a large part of what I find so impossibly attractive about you.”
She had paused again, and this time Will leaned into the gap. “But?”
“But,” she said, enunciating the word carefully and crossing to him and putting hand on his face. She let her fingers linger over his cut before cupping his cheek. “You deserve to be happy, too.”
Her touch was soft and sure, and it made him nearly fall apart. When he spoke, he could barely hear his own voice. “How do you know I’m not happy?”
The question was stupid, and Helena knew it as much as Will did. She didn’t back away; she didn’t turn back. “Because, I see the way your eyes light up at a trauma, when you are truly in your element, like they did today,” she said. “And you deserve that, Will. You deserve it all the time.”
What could he say?
What could he do?
Everything he wanted wasn’t what either of them needed. He’d learned so much this past year. He’d learned to be a friend. He’d learned to be a loyal subordinate. He’d learned to be a leader.
But love?
What did he know of love? He’d used Sabeena flippantly. He’d become a codependent mess with Hannah. And Natalie--
He’d lied to her and broke her heart and Natalie was half a world away, dangling like the biggest loose end in all of Will’s life.
“I swear to you, if I thought I could do it, I would,” he said. “You are brilliant. You are beautiful. But I can’t.”
She stepped back, clearly disappointed. But she wasn’t angry. In reality, she wasn’t even surprised. “I know,” she said. She lifted the edges of her mouth into a smile. “I just found you at exactly the wrong time, I think.”
“For a romance, maybe,” Will conceded.
She laughed, even if it sounded a little forced. “A romance? Please, don’t flatter yourself. I was just looking for a quick fling.”
He laughed at that, and she laughed with him. It was impossible to miss how good their voices sounded together, how good they felt together.
She tapered off first, and he was left with a small, breathless chuckle as he looked at her again.
“Maybe someday it’ll be different,” he said. “Maybe someday I’ll be different.”
She tipped her head to the side with a knowing smile. “Maybe someday you’ll be able to see that you already are.”
He could only nod at that, dropping his head down for a moment before looking up to her again. “Thank you,” he said. “Helena, you have no idea.”
“I think maybe I do,” she said with a wink. Her movements were guarded even as she composed her face impeccably. “Anyway. See you tomorrow?”
She was remarkable, as a doctor and as a person. Will didn’t know how she could do it, putting herself out there and not flinching when it didn’t go her way. It was more evidence, probably. That she deserved someone far better than him.
That was the way it worked, really. He had to break her heart before she got too attached. He’d let this go on too long. He wasn’t equipped to make it last, and he couldn’t hurt her more than he already had.
She was better off without him, he reminded himself, again and again.
She would always be better off without him.
And this time, he let the moment pass.
He let it slip away.
It was either the best decision of his life.
Or the worst.
“Yeah,” he agreed as she made her way to the door. “See you tomorrow.”