What’s your name?

“Brand Killien,” I mutter.

How old are you?

“Twenty-seven.”

Are you allergic to anything?

No.

Can we call anyone for you?

“No.”

I open my eyes when they jam an IV into my arm, and the lights are bright, and the medicine feeding into me blurs it all together.

A nurse’s face blurs in front of me.

“You’re going in to surgery, sweetheart,” she tells me.  I can’t see her face even though my eyes are wide open.   “Your artery was nicked.  They have to fix it.”

My f**king artery was nicked?

You’ve got to be kidding me.   I survived the bloody hills of Afghanistan.  I’m not going to bleed to death here.  No f**king way.  Holy shit.  Why didn’t I have them call Gabe or Jacey… just in case?

I try to mutter that, to tell them to call Gabe, but they can’t understand me.

Another face blurs over me, someone with black hair. “Everything will be all right, sir.  Just count backward from one hundred.”

The light swirls, the noise echoes.

Ninety-Nine.

Ninety-Eight.

Ninety-Seven.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I hear my father’s heavy footsteps stepping out of my little sister’s room, closing the door with a click, then leaning heavily on the bannister as he walks down the stairs.

Seventeen-Creak.

Sixteen-Creak.

Each of the seventeen steps groans, and then there is silence once again.  Staring up at the ceiling, I wait until I hear the muffler of his old truck fire up before I breathe again.

He’s gone.

Relief rushes through me and I feel stupid.  I’m six years old. I shouldn’t be so afraid.

But I am.

I get up to go to the bathroom, something I’d never do when he was still at home.  I wouldn’t risk it.  I tip-toe into the kitchen and grab a handful of cookies, being careful not to tip over the cookie jar onto the floor, before I make my way back to my room, running through the shadows, leaping into bed.

I turn onto my side and stare out my windows as I chew the chocolate chips.  My mother had made them tonight, specially for dinner, only my father wouldn’t let me have one.

“Boys who don’t watch their little sisters don’t get cookies,” he’d told me sternly, eyeing me with his cold blue eyes.

I’d gulp and peered through my eyelashes at Alison.  She was happily munching on a cookie, the crumbs gathering on the front of her shirt.  Her grubby fingers grasped her sugary treasure and she was oblivious to the trouble I’m in because of her.

“But I was watching her,” I told my father.  “I tried to make her come in and wash up for dinner, she just wouldn’t listen.”

My father was unsympathetic.  “She’s only four. You have to look out for her.  You’re bigger than she is. Are you telling me that you can’t take ahold of her arm and bring her in?  Are you that weak, Branden?”

I gulped, shaking my head.  “No.”

He shook his head, his steely eyes piercing me.  “I’m not sure about that.  If it happens again, I’ll have to teach you a lesson.  I’ll show you exactly how you can make someone smaller and weaker do what you want.”

Panic welled up in me then, and it wells up in me now, at the mere memory.

I don’t want to get that lesson.

I stare out the window at the lake, watching the water roll gently into the beach.  At night, the sand looks silver.  The gulls are asleep, so everything is silent but for the rippling water.

A white ball appears, floating to and fro in the tide, and I watch it for a while, watching as it floats, then disappears.

I wish I could be that ball and float far from here.

With a start, I open my eyes and the light is blinding.  I squint my eyes toward it, trying to process where I am.  Medicinal smells, sterile walls.

The hospital.

I groan, and my throat is raspy.  I recognize that feeling.  I must’ve had a breathing tube. Surgery.  I also recognize the foggy aftereffects of anesthesia.

What the hell?

A nurse bustles through the door, her eyes widening when she sees me awake. Her cool fingers find my pulse, counting the beats.

“Mr. Killien,” she smiles.  “I’m so glad you’re awake.  How are you feeling?”

I swallow again, trying to swallow past the raw throat.

“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “What happened?”

Her eyes are full of sympathy.

“You saved a bus full of kids,” she tells me.  “There was an accident, a truck ran a stop-sign and slammed into an ammonia tank.  There was an explosion.  Do you remember?”

I think on that, and I do remember.  I remember the smoke and the blood and the kids.

And then I remember the red-haired girl.

“There was a girl,” I tell the nurse.  “A woman, I mean.  Red hair.  I was carrying her when the building collapsed on us. Is she okay?  Did she live?”

God, she had to live.  She trusted me.  Her eyes, so big and blue, told me that.  She counted on me to carry her out and I didn’t.

My gut squeezes and I wince in pain.

But the nurse is already nodding.  “Everyone lived, Mr. Killien.  And I think you mean Ms. Greene. She’s here and she’s been asking about you, too. Can I tell her that you’re awake?  She’s been very worried about you.”

Ms. Greene?

I nod and the nurse smiles.

“I’ll tell her. She’s been waiting here for the last several hours.  She was lucky- She and her parents only sustained minor injuries.  She didn’t want to leave until you woke up.”

I sigh with relief.  Even though I couldn’t carry her out, she’s okay.

Thank God.

I close my eyes, my mind fuzzy from anesthesia.  The room spins outside of my eyelids, but inside of them, it’s black and still.

And then someone clears her voice softly.

I open my eyes.

They instantly meet the blue-eyed gaze of the girl.

Ms. Greene.

For a second, there’s something familiar there, something that niggles at me. Do I know her?

But I scan the rest of her… the long dark red hair that flows halfway down her back, her slender body, her lush chest and hips.   Even through the fog of medicine, my groin registers her obvious beauty.