CHAPTER TEN | DESIREE
I blinked open my eyes and was immediately blinded by a flash of bright light beaming down from the shiny chrome sky. I dragged my hand towards my face to shield my eyes, and that’s when I realized something was wrong.
Like, wrong wrong.
I was on my back, my entire body was stiff and numb, and my lungs felt like they had been filled with a gallon of sand.
My mind raced with questions, where the hell am I?! What happened, and how did I end up here?!
I forced my eyes open again, and this time I squinted through the bright light until the chrome sky came into focus.
Turns out it wasn’t a sky at all; it was a ceiling. I could see the fuzzy shape of my reflection hovering directly above me. My eyes widened as they flicked around, taking note of my surroundings, the IV drip, the soft beep of a heart monitor, the sterile smell of bleach and isopropyl alcohol.
Am I in a… ambulance?!
I tried to push myself up, but a heavy hand clamped down on my shoulder and eased me back down onto the stretcher.
Once the back of my head touched down on the crunchy paper pillow, a face popped into view above me.
“Welcome back, sleeping beauty!” the female EMT grinned down at me. According to the name badge embroidered on her black shirt, her name was ‘OLIVIA BECK.’
“Wh-what--” I tried to mumble, but my throat was too dry. The words turned into a wheeze, and then the wheeze turned into a full-blown coughing fit.
Once I had recovered, the EMT offered me a water bottle and helped prop me up on the stretcher so I could take a sip.
“You inhaled a lot of smoke,” she said. “You’re probably going to be a little hoarse for the next few days.”
“Great,” I mumbled in a dry, raspy voice. “As if it wasn’t hard enough teaching a unit on dystopian literature to an AP English class that has apparently never picked up a book before, now I get to do it sounding like Kermit the freaking Frog.”
“Wow,” the EMT raised her eyebrows. “Well, that answers one of my questions.”
“Huh?”
“When someone comes back to consciousness after fainting, I ask them a series of questions to ensure that they’re fully cognizant and self aware,” she explained. “You just answered question number three, ‘describe your current profession.’”
“Oh,” I frowned. “I figured you’d just ask me what today’s date is, or to name the current president.”
“Eh,” the EMT shrugged with a smile, “I try to avoid questions that can elicit an emotional response.”
“Fair enough,” I said. Then I frowned, “Wait… did you say I fainted?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “Which leads me to question 4, ‘what’s the last thing you remember?’”
I pressed my eyes shut and tried to trace back to my steps.
“The school was on fire,” I said slowly.
“Good!” Olivia said encouragingly. “What else?”
“One of my students was missing. I ran back into the building to look for her. The hallways were filled with smoke and I could barely breathe. I was running around in circles. And then I saw--”
Rory. His face flooded my mind.
“What?” the EMT pressed. “What did you see?”
I flicked open my eyes and his face disappeared.
“Can smoke inhalation cause hallucinations?” I asked. Then I added quickly, “Hypothetically speaking, of course…”
“What kind of hallucinations?” Olivia looked intrigued.
“I don’t know,” I shrugged casually. “Like… maybe an old acquaintance?”
The EMT frowned, and I had a feeling that I wasn’t exactly acing her series of questions.
“Did you see someone you know inside the building?” she asked.
“No,” I said quickly. Then, reluctantly, “But I think I saw someone I used to know…”
“And you think it was a hallucination?” she asked. “Why?”
“Because it’s impossible,” I said. “It couldn’t be him. I haven’t seen him in over a decade, and… it’s just impossible.”
Olivia’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, then she leaned on the edge of my stretcher and asked,
“Could you describe him for me?”
“Umm…” I felt my cheeks turn pink and I swallowed nervously.
“Did he have black hair?”
“Yes…”
“Dark, kinda miserable looking eyes?” Olivia continued. “Thick beard?”
“Huh? Wha-- how did you know that?!”
“Was he dressed like a fireman?”
My eyes popped wide open and I jolted up on the stretcher. I was officially freaked out.
“Just… sit tight,” Olivia said, holding up a hand to calm me down. “There’s someone I think you should see…”
I watched as Olivia stood up and crossed the narrow ambulance, then she pushed open the door and poked her head out.
I couldn’t hear what she said, but almost immediately I saw the door open further. Then the EMT stepped aside and Rory climbed into the ambulance.
The bus shook with his weight, and he was so tall that he had to bend his neck to stand over me on the stretcher.
He looked so different, but the little pieces of Rory that I remembered were still there, that straight nose, those dark eyes…
I wasn’t hallucinating. He was real… and he was really here.
“I’m going to give you two some alone time,” Olivia said. She slipped around Rory, then hopped out of the ambulance and slammed the door shut behind her.
Rory’s eyes never left me. They held me tight, like a harness. I remembered how safe I used to feel when he was around; like I had a guardian angel that was always looking out for me.
“Long time no see,” he said finally. His lips twitched, and I could see the faintest hint of a smile through his beard.
My mouth fell open and I heard a soft exhale roll from my lips. There was so much that I wanted to say, and so many questions that I wanted to ask… but I couldn’t find the words.
Suddenly I had the chills. I wasn’t even cold, but my entire body started shaking and shivering.
“Oh, Des…” Rory noticed right away. His eyes filled with gentle guilt, and he pulled off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders. It was warm and heavy… so heavy that my shoulders sagged underneath its weight. There was something comforting about the pressure, and there was something even more comforting about the way it smelled like him; like cologne and ash, and something familiar… something that brought me right back to that night at the park.
My lungs still ached, but I took a deep inhale of him anyways.
God, I had missed that smell. When we were younger, I couldn’t get enough of it. I would lean close or drop my head on his shoulder, just so I could breathe him in.
For a second, I was lost, high on pheromones and whatever the hell was pumping into my veins from the IV drip bag… then I snapped back to my senses and immediately stiffened under the weight of the fireman’s jacket.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him bluntly.
“I work at the fire department,” he said. “Firehouse 56. We got a call this morning about a fire at the school, and--”
“No,” I stopped him. “I mean here, as in Hartford. What are you doing in Hartford?”
“Oh,” he said. “I moved back.”
“Why?”
He looked slightly hurt by that question, and he didn’t say anything for several seconds.
“Why?” I repeated. “Why now? After… how many years?”
I knew damn well how many years it had been, but I didn’t want to admit that. I didn’t want him to know that I cared as much as I did…
“Eleven years,” he said softly.
“Eleven years,” I repeated, “And you just… show up out of the blue?”
“It’s complicated,” he said wearily.
“Oh, it’s complicated?” I sneered. I knew that I was getting emotional -- worse, I was getting mean -- but I couldn’t help it. I had been holding the emotions in for so long, and now the dam had broken and everything was pouring out of me.
“What about when you left without saying goodbye?” I asked. “Was that ‘complicated’ too?”
His eyes ignited with hurt. I had seen that same look in his eyes so many times, but I had never been the one to cause it.
“Did you think I did that on purpose?” he asked me. His voice was so low, that I almost couldn’t hear it over the hum of the heart monitor. “Des, the Connecticut State Police were at my house. They had already arrested my stepfather for assaulting an officer, and they had my mother in handcuffs on the curb. I didn’t have a choice… they dragged me out of the house.”
I was silent. There had been so many times that I attempted to fill in the blanks about what happened that night, after the police showed up at Rory’s house. I had written and re-written so many fictional accounts of that night in my head, but it still remained a mystery to me.
“I didn’t want to leave,” Rory said gently. His eyes were burning, and his jacket was heavy on my shoulders. “And I never would have left without saying goodbye to you, Des…”
“But you did,” I whispered.
I knew that I couldn’t blame Rory for what happened that night. I knew that it was outside of his control. But Rory had eleven years to say goodbye, and he never did.
When he left that night, he vanished into thin air.
“Can we talk about this?” Rory asked me.
“We’re talking right now.”
“No. Not here…” he shook his head. “Can I meet you? Dinner, maybe?”
Do you know how many times I would have given anything for ‘dinner’ with Rory over the last eleven years?
I wanted to say yes… but instead, I found myself shaking my head slowly and glancing down at my hands.
“I don’t see the point,” I said. “We’re practically strangers now. I don’t know you anymore.”
“Des--”
“It’s been eleven years,” I told him. “The past is the past. Ancient history.”
He looked crushed, but before he could say anything the ambulance door opened behind him.
“Knock knock!” the EMT said, climbing back up into the bus. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Rory was just leaving.”