From Loyalty to Divorce

Chapter 5 — The Fireline

I parked crooked at the curb, grabbed Mia's overnight bag from the passenger seat, and ran. Morning light was only a pale bruise on the edges of the sky. The rest of it was sirens and smoke.

The hospital's main doors stood open but useless—an accordion of yellow tape and bodies in black jackets had sealed them into a wall. The air tasted sharp, like pennies and burned plastic. Somewhere inside, an alarm pulsed the same three-beat message over and over until it felt like a nerve in my teeth.

“My daughter is upstairs," I said, coming in hot and breathless. “Pediatrics. Post-op. I have to get to her."

A security guard stepped in front of me with both hands raised. His voice was even, the kind you use to stop a stampede with sentences. “Ma'am, you can't go in."

“I'm her mother." I tried to slip left. He mirrored me. We did that dance again, right, then left, like we were practicing something that had no music. “She just got out of surgery. She'll be terrified if she wakes up alone."

“I hear you," he said. “But the building's under emergency protocols. All non-responders are held here."

“I'm not a responder," I said. “I'm a mother."

Two more guards moved to either side of him, making the wall thicker. Smoke muscled out through the awning, and for a second it was like the roof exhaled and we all breathed in what it didn't want.

“Listen," I said, forcing my voice to stay level. “Room four-twelve. Name: Mia Hale. Eight years old. She has three little dressings on her stomach and a stuffed wolf under her arm. I left her thirty minutes ago to grab clothes. I promised I'd be back before she missed me. Let me keep one promise today."

The guard kept his hands where I could see them. “Pediatrics is being evacuated to the west lot. White triage tents."

“Then why are the doors blocked?" I asked.

“Because these doors aren't taking anyone in," he said. “Evac routes are internal and controlled."

“I don't need a route," I said, the words falling out before I could tame them. “I need my child."

“We'll get her out," he said. “Your job is to meet the evac team at the tents."

“What if they move her while I'm running in circles?" My throat burned. I swallowed and tasted ash. “What if they forget she can't walk yet? What if they put her at the end of a line because she's not screaming loud enough?"

“They won't forget," another guard said. He was younger, face tight with the kind of focus that comes from repeating orders you want to believe. “Name again?"

“Mia Hale," I said. “H-A-L-E."

He spoke into the radio clipped to his shoulder, then angled his head, listening, waiting. Static answered like weather. He looked at me, apology already forming. “Comms are patchy."

Of course they were. Comms are patchy when you need them most. Promises are patchy then, too.

A column of darker smoke rolled out from the side of the building, and the crowd pressed backward in a ripple. I leaned into the motion and planted my feet like I could pin the pavement in place. The first guard moved with me, one palm toward my chest, keeping distance without touching. “Back from the doors," he said. “Please."

“Is there another entrance?" I asked. “A service door? A dock? I'll crawl under something. I'll go around the side and up a stairwell. Tell me where they're taking pediatrics, and I'll meet them a floor early."

“It's not safe," he said.

“It's my daughter," I said.

His mouth pulled tight at the corner, like he'd heard that line before and knew it was the one nobody could argue with and still—still—he had to. “Ma'am, the instruction is clear: west lot. Blue line around the building."

“What blue line?"

He pointed to a painted stripe along the pavement, a path I'd never noticed until chaos rubbed highlighter over it. “Follow that."

“Will I be able to see into pediatrics from the west lot?" I asked. “If I shout her name, will she hear me?"

“No," he said, and he didn't dress it up. “But that's where reunification will happen."

Reunification. A word that only shows up when something has been torn.

“Tell me something real," I said. “How bad is it?"

“Fourth floor smoke condition," he said. “Some windows… compromised." His eyes flicked upward. “No flame showing on pediatrics when I left my post. That was ten minutes ago."

“Ten minutes is a lifetime when your kid's behind glass." My voice cracked and then steadied. “You have children?"

He nodded once. “Two. Boy and a girl."

“So you know," I said.

“I do," he said. “That's why I'm standing here keeping people from dying twice."

“Twice?"

“Once to the fire," he said. “Once to their panic."

A fresh alarm tone cut across the air, a sharp, descending wail that made everyone glance at the building like it had just spoken our names. The guard took a half step closer, lowering his voice. “Go to the tents. If her name makes the board before you get there, I'll send someone running to pull you forward."

“That's not a rule," I said. “That's you being decent."

“Maybe both," he said.

I looked at the doors. I looked at the blue line. I looked at the bag biting into my palm and thought about the hedgehog shirt and the purple book and the stupid glittery notebook that said WOLF PLANS across the front like strategy came in crayons. I could run now and be useful later. Or I could stay and break myself against this wall, and what would Mia get for that? A story about how her mother spoke loud and lost.

“Okay," I said, and the word scraped going out. “I'm going to the tents. If they move her, if you hear anything—"

“I'll send someone," he said again. He meant it. I believed him because I had to.

I took one step back. Then another. The crowd parted a little, like the sea getting bored. The blue line was there, a mark on asphalt that turned into a command if you let it. I turned to follow it.

A dull thud punched the air to my left. A side door three units down swung out hard enough to bite its own hinges. Smoke belched, thick and low. Through it came a shape bent double, like a hillside in motion, like a man trying to cover the sky with his own body.

I knew the gait before my brain gave it a name. Shoulders forward, head tilted to read the invisible battlefield in front of him, hands open the way alphas keep them when they're deciding whether to make fists.

Harrison.

He had his coat thrown over a woman and his arm clamped around her waist, half-carrying, half-dragging. Her fingers were white-knuckled in his shirt. Her hair stuck to his temple. The smoke smeared the edges of them so they looked like a picture taken in the wrong weather.

“Clear the way!" someone shouted, voice ricocheting off stone and glass.

The guards around me turned toward the commotion. The first guard glanced back at me once, just once, like he was checking to make sure the choice I'd made still held. My feet stayed where I had put them. My fingers clenched a fraction harder around the strap of Mia's bag until the canvas cut a clean line into my palm and the pain gave me something steady to stand on.

Harrison stepped out of the low cloud and into the open air, still bent over the woman he shielded. Emily. Her name surfaced in the back of my throat like a taste I couldn't spit out. He shifted his grip, lifted her over the curb the way you lift someone you've practiced saving in your head a thousand times, and set her into waiting arms.

The smoke lifted just enough to show the line of his jaw, the angle of his mouth, the way command lived in the corners of his eyes even when the rest of his face was a map of ash.

I stood there with the bag in my hand and the blue line under my feet and watched the man I married carry Emily out of the burning hospital.

The scene held—smoke, elbows, sirens, a coat thrown over a small shape—and then it cut to white.