Sweet Justice

She looked up in surprise. “Bunny slippers. They were bunny slippers. You saw her, then? When they pulled her out?”

His cheeks flared with color, and he ducked his head. “I—er—me and another firefighter, we were the ones who pulled her out. And you’re right. It was a really hot fire. This place—” he waved one long arm to encompass not just the waiting room, but the burn center itself “—it’s great. They can do miracles here.”

“You know it, then? It’s a good place?”

“Yeah, oh, yeah. My dad...”

A spasm of pain crossed his face as his words trailed off. He chewed on his bottom lip.

“Your dad what?” Mallory said. She needed to hear something hopeful.

“Well, he was here. There was this warehouse fire, see, and he got trapped in it—”

“Oh, so that’s why you’re a firefighter,” she guessed, laying a palm against his forearm. She should have realized it would be something like that, him giving back after seeing a family member hurt.

“Well, sort of, I guess. He was the fire chief. He—he went in to help rescue another firefighter.”

“He’s okay now?”

“Uh...no, I’m afraid not. He didn’t make it. But—” He turned to her, his own hand covering hers where it lay on his arm. “He was a lot worse than Katelyn sounds—he had burns on nearly three quarters of his body, and, well, it would have taken a miracle for anybody to survive that.”

Mallory sagged back into the stiff, unforgiving chair. It wasn’t quite high enough to rest her neck, and too straight to find a good position in. “Oh. I’m sorry. This has to be hard for you to come here.”

She couldn’t have done it—gone to the hospital waiting room in Macon, back home, where she’d heard the news of her parents’ passing. Maybe she should have been strong enough, but ever since then, she’d given a wide berth to hospitals of any sort, especially that one.

Andrew’s face creased into an aw-shucks-it’s-nothing smile. “No. I wanted to come. When you’re part of the club—this awful, awful club—you know what somebody else is going through, and you... Well, you want to make it better. I’m just sorry you haven’t had more encouraging news.”

“I haven’t had much news at all, but I expect they’re busy, and I... To tell the truth, I haven’t been here that long—only since about, oh, a little after noon.”

Andrew chuckled. “It’s after five o’clock already. You’re lost to Hospital Time.” He squeezed her hand, seemed to realize what he was doing and then moved his own from hers. Mallory felt the waiting room’s chill air bite into her at the absence of his warm hold.

Andrew was ducking down, pulling up the bag. He placed it in his lap. “My mom put a care package together for you—she’s good about stuff like that. She thought you might need a few things.”

“Oh, she shouldn’t have—” Mallory protested.

“No, she wanted to. She remembers, see? How it was with her when Dad was...well, here. And she knew the family probably wouldn’t want to leave, not this first night anyway. Say, where is the rest of the family?” He craned his neck around, spied the old man. “Am I disturbing your... Is that your dad?”

Mallory’s throat closed up on her, and this time, she couldn’t hold back a tear as it slid down her cheek. Embarrassed at her loss of control, she swiped it away. “Uh, no, that’s somebody else. This is it. Just me. Katelyn and I lost our parents in a car wreck nearly five years ago.”

“Oh, man.”

Andrew’s eyes held so much compassion that she had to look away. “It’s okay. We get by.”

And they had. Until now, they’d made it. It had been tough. It had meant short-selling the house they’d grown up in, letting go of some dreams, working two jobs at times, getting creative to make her paycheck stretch. Katelyn always complained that Mallory pinched pennies so hard that they’d spit out nickels.

She’d kept Katelyn out of the foster care system, and she’d managed to put food on the table, and keep Katelyn in school...

I’ll do anything. Anything. Just please, please, pull through, Katie-bug. Please.

“Well, uh...” Andrew cleared his throat. “Ma wasn’t sure how many folks you’d have with you, so she sent a lot.” He reached down and patted the cooler.

“I—I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing to say. Here—this bag, it’s got, hmm, let’s see...a blanket, a pillow...oh, and Ma sent a toothbrush and toothpaste and some hand sanitizer.”

“Oh, wow. I was just wishing for a blanket. She must have read my mind.”

“Ma says to tell you that the nurses will give you another blanket if you ask—the waiting room can get kind of cold. Oh, and don’t forget that the Southeast Burn Foundation will put you up. Just ask the nurses, and they’ll get you hooked up with the right person. They’ve got this hospitality house for the families, and they provide one good meal a day.”

Mallory felt herself blinking back still more tears. So much kindness, and when she’d been feeling pathetically sorry for herself.

“Ma knew, if you were anything like her, that nobody could pry you away from this place tonight, and you’d probably headed up here without much thought of anything but getting here.” Andrew patted the lid of the cooler. “She sent, hmm, fried chicken, butter beans, mashed potatoes and sliced tomatoes, and some apple cobbler for dessert. Oh, and tea. I hope you like iced tea, because she sent a whole thermos of it.”

“There’s no way I can possibly eat all of that...”

Andrew nodded toward the man on the couch, who was now snoring gently. “Share it, then. That old fellow looks as though he could use a good meal. And the apple cobbler will keep for your breakfast.”

“Please, won’t you have some with me?” Mallory asked.

“Uh...” Andrew ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Ma’d skin me alive if she knew I’d eaten up some of the food she sent you.”

“I don’t want to eat by myself.” The confession surprised her. What was it about Andrew Monroe that made her feel so...not alone?

“In that case, even Ma would tell me to join you,” he said with a grin and a definitive nod. “She’d surely want me to encourage you to eat.”

She managed a small portion of the delicious supper, swallowing it past the lump of fear in her throat. Every time a person in a white coat or scrubs walked by the door, Mallory found herself tensing. Her mind simultaneously prayed they were coming to tell her something and hoped they would go past if it were bad news.

Then, as Andrew was helping her stack the food back into the cooler, the door opened. There stood the doctor, her phalanx of white-coated interns and medical students behind her.

Mallory froze. She felt Andrew take the plastic container of mashed potatoes from her. She turned and numbly accepted the doctor’s outstretched hand in its proffered shake. The woman sat in the chair across from her.

“Okay, well. She is...stable. It’s been a real battle, I won’t lie. We’ve got her on three pressors to keep her blood pressure up, and she’s continuing to need maximum support from the vent. We’ve assessed the burns to her legs and feet, and, as I told you before, we’re dealing with twenty percent of her body surface. The burns are...well, the majority of the higher ones are at least second degree, and she has third-degree burns on her feet. That is serious. Also...do you know if she came in contact with a live electrical wire? She has burns on her hand and torso that appear to be from electric shock.”

Mallory shuddered. “I—I wasn’t there—I—”

“No,” Andrew spoke up. “I was part of the responding fire department. The house didn’t have power. We always check and get the power company to shut it off. There’s no way she could have gotten an electrical shock. She was fine when I heard her—she was conscious and alert when I had to evacuate a fellow firefighter of mine. She got burned in the time it took for us to go back in after her.”

The doctor gave him a dubious look. “The burns on her hand and arm and torso are consistent with, say, a frayed extension cord. Maybe she came in contact with an exposed wire and it knocked her unconscious? It’s the least of her worries, but it makes me concerned that we may have missed deeper wounds.”

“I can assure you,” Andrew insisted. He was leaning forward now. “There was no power to that house, not that I know of.”

The doctor held his gaze, turned to take in the curious faces of her flock of junior doctors, and shrugged. “I’ve seen a lot of electrical burns in my time. And this? Despite what you say, it looks like one. We’ll treat it as we see it and keep an eye out for anything else.”

She rose from her chair and looked at Mallory. “Do you have any questions?”

“When can I see her?” Mallory husked. “And—and is she—she...” She couldn’t form the words.

“You can see her briefly in a few minutes, but I warn you, we have her in a medically induced coma. The next twenty-four hours are critical. Please rest assured that we are doing all we can. It’s a miracle that she’s made it this far, but...well, if it makes you feel any better, we’ve seen worse burns.”