These Ties That Bind

“No kidding. I’ll see what I can do.”

They separated and accelerated in their separate directions.

In his rearview mirror, he watched Sara pull a U-turn and speed down the highway after him.

Dark smoke still rose from the wreckage. With all the chemicals and plastics used in manufacturing these days, car fires burned hot and intense. That fire could spread to his fields and reach the house.

He couldn’t think about that now.

Rem flew through town, blaring his horn for the length of Main Street. Sara caught up and stuck to his tail like contact cement, her horn blaring in unison with his.

Someone was sitting in Sara’s passenger seat, someone as tall as she. Finn? Had he grown that much since Rem had seen him around town at Christmas?

The woman in his backseat had stopped moaning. Maybe she’d passed out.

The shops passed in a blur.

On the highway on the far side of town, an ambulance passed headed toward the accident scene. It would take too long to stop, wait for the ambulance to turn around and then transfer the patients over. Best to just keep going.

Rem got back on his cell and told 9-1-1 to cancel it and to hook him up to the local hospital in Haven.

While he waited to be patched through, he checked the girl. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. She’d started to shiver.

Shit!

She was getting worse.

He didn’t have anything to cover her with.

Finally, the hospital came into view and he screeched into the emergency entrance, narrowly missing a car.

A few nurses he knew stood outside the doors with stretchers. Randy took the child from the front seat and placed her onto one of the gurneys.

“She’s in shock,” Rem said, jumping out and rounding the SUV.

“Got it,” Randy responded, wheeling her into the hospital.

Kelly and Phil went to the back for her mother.

“Careful. She’s got head injuries—concussion, for sure—and a broken arm and we’re pretty sure some busted ribs.”

“Park your car,” Kelly told him, her voice calm but rushed. “Then get a nurse to help with your injuries,”

His injuries? What was she talking about? He was fine.

He parked the Jeep and ran back to the emergency doors. Just inside, white coats and nurses’ scrubs swarmed the two stretchers. Nurses ripped plastic from IV needles and inserted them into the uninjured arms of the patients.

On her stretcher, the child glanced around, her eyes wide and scared. When her gaze settled on Rem, she seemed to settle. He gave her a thumbs-up.

Her tremulous smile tugged at something deep inside him, as though there were already a connection between them. What was that Asian proverb? If you save a life, you become responsible for that life? Forever after that, you were obligated to take care of them. Or was that just a myth? For whatever reason, Rem did feel responsible. He wanted to be able to fix her, to take away her pain and fear.

In a whirlwind of activity, the two patients were taken to examination rooms, followed by nurses and doctors. The gurneys disappeared behind closing doors and suddenly all was quiet.

In the vacuum, Rem bent over and struggled to breathe, air searing his throat as it passed through his windpipe. He hadn’t realized he’d inhaled that much smoke. Didn’t matter. He would live. He hoped like crazy those two would be okay.

When the adrenaline that had carried him this far gave out, his knees buckled. He grasped the counter of the nurses’ station.

If he’d slept through the crash…

Or what if he’d already been out working, taking care of animals on someone else’s ranch…

Those two might be dead now, one on the road and the other burned to death in the backseat of their car. Sara would have helped them when she came along. Could she have climbed into a burning vehicle, though? He didn’t know. Her shock after her brother had been burned had been profound. He just didn’t know how much of that she’d got over.

Nausea rose into his throat along with memories he’d grown damn good at repressing, but here they were now, vivid and too real, brought on by the scent of roasted flesh—a ball of fire, Timm Franck’s screams, the other children running away, parents scrambling to put out the fire. Sara frozen in place and staring at her injured brother.

The stinking horror of it rang in Rem’s conscience—your fault. Your fault. Those words—your fault, Rem—had dogged him for twenty years. Far too many years.

He’d put his worst memories behind him, but today’s crash, that burning girl, played havoc with his equilibrium. Maybe he felt this connection to her because he’d saved her from getting burned as badly as Timm had.

Sara ran past him. On her way through the examination room doors, she said, “Sit down before you fall on your face.”

Rem stumbled to a blue plastic chair, one of a row, and sagged into it.

That poor kid.

He slumped against the chair and his back burst into flame. Howling, he shot forward. What the hell? He stood and tried to see his reflection over his shoulder in the side of a chrome vending machine, but the finish was too dull.

“Where’s your shirt?”

Rem turned. Finn Franck stood in front of the machine with a fistful of change, staring at Rem’s back and his hands.

He’d combed masses of jet hair across his forehead like a modern-day Beatle look-alike. With silver-gray eyes he’d inherited from Sara, the kid promised to be a heartbreaker one day soon.

He’d grown a lot since the last time Rem had seen him. Must be taller than Sara by now.

He was turning twelve in a couple of weeks. Rem knew his birth date. He knew a lot about him.

“When I heard the car crash I jumped out of bed.” Rem finally answered the boy’s question. “Didn’t have time to get fully dressed.”

“There’s a long scratch on your back. It’s bleeding.”

Must’ve happened when he pulled the girl out of the car.

Finn stared at him, unnerving him. “Does it hurt?”

“It didn’t until a minute ago.” Rem had driven all the way out here with his back against his car seat and, in those adrenaline-fueled moments, hadn’t felt a thing.

“I saw you go into the burning car,” the boy said. “That was cool. Really sick. You were great.”