Through The Fire

“Of course I came.” His fault that Malik was here—an accident, but one that should not have happened. Malik wouldn’t have been hurt if Rafe had been focused on the training exercise they were doing instead of the news that his younger sister Lisa was separating from her husband.

His dark eyes gleaming, Malik craned his head as Rafe came farther into the room. “If you don’t have a big vanilla malt hidden behind your back, you can leave right now.”

Rafe clicked his tongue. “That concussion must not be too bad since you’re cranky.” He pulled his hand from behind his back and set the tall paper cup containing his friend’s favorite dessert on the table pulled next to the bed.

Malik grinned, pressing the volume control to turn the television down. “Figured I should play on your sympathy—”

“Which won’t last long if you keep this up.” Rafe shrugged out of his leather bomber jacket, which he set on the chair in the corner.

“That’s you, all right. All bark. No bite.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.” Since Rafe was the foreman for a Type 1 hotshot crew of forest-fire fighters, part of the territory was making sure he came across as a major tough guy. Since Malik was both his roommate and his friend, just now he seemed more like a kid brother than simply one of the guys on the crew. Not that many years separated them, but a lifetime of experience did. Malik worked full-time during the summer, then went to school and skied in the winter while continuing to work part-time for the Forest Service. “I thought I’d been properly sympathetic—”

“If you don’t count yelling.”

Inwardly, Rafe winced. He had yelled. At the time he had been furious, a hundred percent of it directed at himself for not seeing the accident coming.

At his discomfiture, Malik grinned. “Speaking of biting and the screams of pain that come after…” He waited a beat while Rafe raised an eyebrow. “I bet you didn’t know they don’t sound alarms in hospitals. They want things to be calm,” he added, raising his hands to punctuate quotation marks around the last word. “About an hour ago, I’m lying here talking to a real pretty nurse, and there was this page for Dr. Firestone. She tore out of here like she was on her way to a fire.” He tore the paper off the straw and plunged it through the plastic top of the cup, then took a long sip of the malt. “About a half hour later she came back—I’m irresistible, you know—and told me that ‘Dr. Firestone’ is the code for a fire. She said they’ve had about a dozen false alarms over the last couple of days.”

“That’s got to be annoying.”

“That’s what she said. She told me that ‘Dr. Quick’ is for combative patients and ‘Dr. Avery’ is for a bomb threat.” Malik grinned. “And I’ve been thinking—”

“Always a bad sign.”

“I need something to get that nurse back in here to see me.”

“A page from Dr. Valentine?”

Malik laughed. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“Sounds to me like you’re going to live,” Rafe said.

“The doc told me I can go home in the morning. They just want to keep an eye on me overnight.” Another of his easy grins came, his teeth flashing white against his African-American complexion. “If you ask me, I think it’s because a certain nurse thinks I’m—”

“A klutz,” Rafe filled in.

“Man, don’t insult me like that.” Malik took another sip of the malt. “That’s real good. Thanks.”

“Least I can do.”

Malik grinned again. “You mean, since you tried to kill me.”

“Anything to get rid of a pest,” Rafe said deadpan.

“This mean you won’t be giving me a ride home? That’d actually be okay because that good-looking nurse—”

“Like she’d give you the time of day.”

“Like,” Malik returned in their good-natured banter.

Rafe studied his friend. Clearly, the obvious question didn’t have to be asked if the guy was going to be okay. Since he was thinking about girls and malts, he’d undoubtedly be his old self in a day or two. Rafe, though, was feeling old. As he had driven to the hospital, he had counted the fires he had fought since he was eighteen years old. One hundred and twelve, and he felt every single one. Those fires had taken him from the Everglades to inside the Arctic Circle in Alaska.

The nomadic life was the one he had wanted…once…which brought him full circle back to his sister. Her husband was walking away from everything Rafe had recently decided his life was missing. A woman to come home to. A child barely two years old. Now that Rafe was nearly finished with his master’s degree in fire science, he had choices. He could settle down and work on finding the right woman.

“You get much more quiet and I’m going to think I’m sitting here alone,” Malik said.

“Then turn up the TV.”

“You’re not thinking stupid things like blaming yourself for what happened to me, are you?”

Rafe met his friend’s gaze. “You know the drill about accountability.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s what makes you the best.”

There was nothing Rafe could say about that, so he remained quiet, folding his arms over his chest as he leaned against the wide ledge in front of the window. At his back, the glass felt cold. “Think it will snow?”

Malik laughed. “Hope so. Since I have a few days off, maybe I’ll head up to Breckenridge or Keystone for a little skiing—”

“Not the best plan for a man with a concussion.” If Rafe had the time, he’d head for Wolf Creek, which boasted the deepest snow in the state. The only drawback was the six-and-a-half-hour drive to get there.

Malik took another sip of his malt. “You’re sounding more like my grandpa every day.”

“Now who’s being insulting?”

Just then, the lights flickered, and the television went off.

“It’s definitely going to snow,” Malik announced, clicking on the remote for the television, which remained off. “You’d think a brand-new hospital would have built-in surge protectors.”

“You’d think,” Rafe agreed, glancing toward the hallway as the lights flickered again. The TV suddenly blared, and Malik turned it down.

The hospital had undergone extensive renovations over the last couple of years, the most recent being the addition of a new pediatric wing. According to a recent article in the Colorado Springs Sentinel, it had attracted the necessary grants and research money to become the premier orthopedic center for children in the western United States. The part of the article Rafe remembered best was a picture of a chapel at the end of the wing, which boasted a great view of Pikes Peak. That was something to check out before he left. He didn’t like hospitals much, but he always made a point to visit the chapels.

Once again, his thoughts returned to his sister and her little girl. He wished they lived closer, wished he could ease their heartache. He needed to do something more for them than simply including them in his daily prayers.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

“Fine.” Malik leaned his head against the pillow. “Might as well take a little snooze, especially since you’re so talkative.”

“Then I’ll head out.” Rafe grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair and headed toward the door.

“Hey.”

He turned around.

Malik grinned. “If you see that pretty nurse—the petite one with black hair all done up in a bun on the top of her head—send her in to see me.” He clapped a hand over his heart. “I think I’m in pain.”

Rafe shook his head and waved at his friend. “There’s a difference between being in pain and being a pain, you know.”