Page 9 of Fighting For You

I never enjoyed these parties. I only came because my mother insisted. The people were my father's people, the conversations were my father's conversations, and I had learned a long time ago that my role at these events was to show up, shake hands, and confirm that Cliff Sullivan's surviving son was doing fine.

The door to the library at the end of the hall was open. This was where my mother sat me down to do my homework after that one call from school when the teacher told my parents I never sat still, fought with classmates, and never had my homework done. My mother stationed herself in the chair by the window every afternoon and watched me work until it was done. It went about as well as you'd expect. She didn't have the patience and I didn't have the focus, and most nights ended with both of us frustrated and nobody having learned anything.

Gage eventually relieved her of that duty, which we both appreciated. Between my mother and Gage, Gage was the better teacher. He'd sit across from me at the desk, spread out his own homework, and work through mine with me like it was no big deal.

The room still looked the way she kept it. The reading chair still by the window. Books lined up on the shelves, bookended with crystal figurines and little marble sculptures she'd collected over the years. And on the built-in beside the door, a row of framed photographs.

I picked up the one in the middle.

It was a photo of the three of us on the back lawn. I was maybe eight, Gage was thirteen. Beckett was between us, tongue out, ears up. Gage had his arm around my shoulder. I was holding Beckett's collar with both hands like I was afraid he'd run off.

Everyone was smiling.

I put it back and went to find my mother to say goodbye.

I took the long way home past the medical district where my father had spent more hours than he ever spent in our house.

The gas station a few blocks from CCMC was still open. I pulled in and put the nozzle in the tank.

The diner on the opposite corner had its lights on. Two women came out. Both of them in scrub bottoms and jackets, laughing about something as they walked to their car. I couldn't see their faces from across the street. Just the sound of their laughter carrying across the parking lot in the quiet.

I never got to say thank you to the woman who held me together when that beam collapsed. Never got her name.

I'd wondered ever since where she ended up. If she was still in Nevada at all.

The pump clicked off. I got back in the truck and headed home.

CHAPTER 3

The Primordial Spark

NORA

In astrology, the sign that launches the twelve-sign cycle and marks the beginning of a new season is Aries. A fire sign. Some astrologers call it the primordial spark because it represents the first burst of energy that sets everything in motion.

The sign that comes before Aries, at the tail end of the cycle, is Pisces, the sign of dissolution and chaos, which I've always found interesting, because the concept of creation and new beginnings coming after chaos is not unique to astrology.

In creation theories, whether posited by science or religion, creation is almost always preceded by some type of chaos. In the Big Bang theory, the universe begins as an infinitely dense, volatile point of energy expanding into everything. In the creation story, the earth is all darkness and chaos until God puts everything in order. In Greek mythology, the very first thing that exists is Chaos itself, and from it emerges the earth, the sky, and everything that follows.

It's also directly observable in nature. Stars are born inside collapsing clouds of gas and dust, all that disorder crushing inward until something at the center ignites. Aries season starts in spring, right when the earth wakes up from winter, months of cold and dormancy and bare branches, and then the world comes back to life.

There's something profoundly beautiful in the thought that across different traditions, separated by centuries and oceans and everything else, we've arrived at the same answer: there will always be new beginnings at the end of chaos⁠—

"You're still reading that?"

Kip was leaning in the doorway with his coffee.

"Excuse me for wanting a little whimsy in my life, Kip."

He dropped into the chair across from me. "What does it say for me today?"

I scrolled with exaggerated concentration. "Let's see. It says... try not to be an annoying coworker today."

"Me?" He put a hand on his chest. "Annoying? Everyone loves me."

To be fair, they did. Kip could make the whole station laugh during a twelve-hour shift and still have every chart done before handoff. He'd been at CCMC longer than most of us and wore it lightly, like the job had never managed to make him heavy. Some people just moved through the ER that way.

"Morning!" Lori came through the door with her bag over one shoulder.