Page 44 of Falling for My Grumpy Fireman

"Owen."

up into the black where the third floor used to be

"Owen. Hey. I've got you."

A hand. Cool, strong, wrapped around mine, and I come up out of the fire like a man breaking the surface of a lake, lungs first.

Lamplight. Rain on a roof. The cottage.

Nellie's perched on the edge of the bed in a t-shirt and sleep shorts, hair down, and her hand is in mine and my grip on it is white-knuckle hard. I make my fingers let go. They don't want to.

"You're all right," she says. Quiet. Nurse-quiet, the two a.m. voice. "You're in Willowbend. You're in my house. It's raining. That's all that's happening."

My chest is heaving like I climbed something. The sheets are soaked through. I stare at the ceiling, this ceiling, no holes in it, and put myself back together one board at a time while she sits there and doesn't rush me, doesn't pet me, doesn't say it's okay, because she knows better than anybody that sometimes it isn't and saying so is a lie.

The rain fills up the quiet.

Then, very soft, very careful, like she's stepping onto a roof she isn't sure will hold:

"Owen. Who's Claire?"

Everything in me stops.

Because I didn't tell her that name. I have never said that name in this town.

Which means the fire didn't stay in the dream. It came up my throat while I was under, out loud, into her house, into her hands.

I've been saying it. Maybe all night.

Maybe every night.

Chapter thirteen

Patient Compliance: Poor

NELLIE

Day four, and I catch Owen Peterson standing at my kitchen counter on a leg that has more hardware in it than my toolbox.

No crutches. No boot brace. One hand on the counter like that counts as medical compliance.

"Sit down."

"I was getting water."

"You were bearing weight." I point at the chair. "Sit, or I swear I will chart you as noncompliant and let Dr. Osei read it out loud at your follow-up."

He sits. Slow. Making a whole production of it, like the chair offended him.

"You know what my favorite kind of patient is?" I fill the glass myself and set it in front of him. "Unconscious."

"You're a ray of light, Greer."

"And you're a flight risk with a rod in your tibia."

I take the crutches. Both of them. I carry them to my bedroom and lean them against my closet where he can see them through the doorway and cannot reach them without crawling.

He watches me do it. "That's a war crime."