The Firefighter Who Rescues Me

Chapter 3 ♚ Another Miracle

My body collapsed on the hard ER bed with the same relish as if I were tucking into a hearty meal after a day's worth of work. My eyes zeroed in on the weird stain on the ceiling, until I could no longer keep them open and finally, let my consciousness drift.

When I came to, it was because a loud voice announced my name. I felt as though I'd drank my weight in Molson last night, rather than almost dying.

"Huh?" was my intelligible answer to what turned out to be my new boss's greeting.

Lance stood by my bed. I recognized him from his Linkedin picture. He was a forty-something-year-old lumberjack version of Santa Claus. His brown hair showed the first hints of silver atop his head and in his thick beard, and the red checkered flannel shirt he wore with sleeves rolled up his arms revealed almost as much ink as I had.

"Goodness, I never expected to meet you in these circumstances," he said, his sun-reddened forehead crinkled with concern.

"You and me both." I cringed as I maneuvered myself to a sitting position. "Tell me this whole saga didn't get me fired before even starting."

His eyes widened for a second, before his mustache stretched into what I figured was a grin. "Fortunately for you, accidents outside of the work environment don't fall into possible termination reasons."

I squeezed my fists so tight that my bones crunched, all with the effort it took not to cry. "Even if I lost my papers in the process?"

"Ah, don't worry about that." He waved his hand like we weren't talking about the very reason I was alive. "Kevin told me the situation and I took care of it."

"Who?" I asked.

"Kevin," he repeated, as though that made sense by itself. When it was clear that I was just as lost, he continued, "Your doctor. He explained the situation and I called the firefighters. They got you."

Did they? I recalled the condition my SUV had finished its life with, the metal scrunched up like some giant had used the whole vehicle as a fucking accordion. If my backpack with the documents wasn't part of the debris that the rest of my belongings had become, then it might take a miracle for someone to be able to retrieve it from the wreckage.

Miracles were real and a thing that kept happening to me despite not deserving any. If people said that three times was the charm, this was it, I was all out with just having survived the wreck. The first miracle was that I'd survived protests that had turned violent, just like the one that had taken my big brother. The second miracle was surviving my ex. Finding my papers would be a fourth miracle and what were the odds of being so loved by the heavens?

As if to answer the question, the angel strode into the ER right at that second.

It was funny how he seemed to bring the early morning sunlight with him as he traversed the short distance from the entrance and to the front desk. There, a nurse pointed in my direction and the impossible blue eyes turned to me.

I squeezed my jaws shut against the impulse to become a cartoon, mouth hanging open and tongue waging. That wasn't me anymore. This had to be a psychological thing, where a survivor felt attachment to their savior, because I wasn't attracted to men any longer. I didn't trust any of them as far as I could throw them.

Unfortunately, as the firefighter walked closer, I realized that he wasn't the kind of guy I could pick up and pitch over a bar.

I turned back to Lance, just to test if I felt any of the same. The Santa Claus vibes didn't necessarily make me trust him, but he sure was way less scary than a firefighter I felt an inexplicable attraction to.