“You should call your parents.”
“I did.” Collin ran his hand through his reddish hair and then removed his glasses so he could rub his bloodshot eyes, nearly the same color. “I didn’t tell them about Caleb, though. Steve only gave one statement, right? Then he passed out? I don’t want to freak them out until we know for sure that there is something to worry about. They want to know if they should come watch Chief Brown and the girls.”
He put his glasses back on and pushed them up on his nose. Ellie checked her watch. Nearly two p.m. She’d totally forgotten about her dad. Yeah. He’d need to be picked up from the senior center by five. They were sticklers for punctuality, and there was no way Ellie was leaving the hospital without some news of Amelia and Steve.
“Chet’s got that covered, actually. He got the girls from school, and he said he’d get Daddy tonight. Once Amelia is stable, I’ll go home and take over.”
Ellie couldn’t help but notice a brief look of pity from Collin as he wrapped his arms around her again. The initial comfort they brought had eventually dulled, and now it felt less like he was comforting her to give strength and more like he was consoling her for a loss.
“Well, if you need them, let me know. I’m gonna check in one more time and see if they heard anything. You just stay here and relax.” He kissed the top of her head and gave her another squeeze as though it were possible for her to relax in any way right now.
“Okay,” she said, searching the room for the least disgusting-looking chair. It was not the easiest search. All the padded maroon chairs looked like they were saturated with body oil and food stains. Since none of them were clean, she’d have to settle for one by an outlet. Halfway into her seat, she remembered her nearly dead phone that Chet had dropped off an hour earlier before leaving to grab the girls from school. “Hey, could you get me a charger from the gift shop?”
“Sure,” Collin said, waving as he headed into the hallway to make another in an unending stream of phone calls. A small part of her felt guilty that she was asking so much of him when he was just as worried about his brother as she was about her sister. At least she knew where her sister was, but the unknown? It had to be killing him.
Alone, Ellie settled back into the stained chair, too exhausted to care. She was already wearing a stranger’s sweatshirt and a pair of scrubs Collin had tracked down when the blood on the knees of her pants started to harden and rub against her skin. Why not hang out in a chair that half of Broadlands had cried and sweated and slept in?
The TV dully droning in the background held nothing but news reports of foreign wars and national politics. Each time she heard about death tolls or armed rebels, her mind went to the two people she loved who were also being treated for gunshot wounds just a few rooms over. It probably made her a bad person, but she cared far more about those two small lives than the whole slew of people that news anchor was going on and on about.
Soon, the monotony of the cream-colored walls and buzzing fluorescent lights somehow silenced all the conflicting voices in Ellie’s head enough to let her eyes droop and head bounce. She slipped into a restless slumber where she was a little girl in her childhood bed, the same one she now settled into each night at her father’s house. The room was different back then. Posters of unicorns with pastel pink-and-blue manes lined the wall, and the canopy bed she’d begged her dad for sat like a princess’s abode rather than the current drooping gray vestige that creaked every time she climbed into it. The light was different too, more amber and gold, less washed out and cold. She ran her fingers over the knitted pink-and-maroon blanket that covered her mattress, something her mother had made for her before she was born. Her mom.
Sometimes when she thought really really hard, she could remember a shadowy image of her, tall, dark haired, a smile that burst out of her face without warning. When people first started to claim she looked like her mom, Ellie would sit in front of a mirror and try to imagine what it would be like to have a mother with her eyes, her cheeks, her hair. To have a mother—period.
The phone rang in the other room. The shrill tone of the old rotary phone made a pit form in Child Ellie’s stomach. It was the phone from her father’s office. The sound of that metallic ring always meant one thing—fire. A fire serious enough to call the fire chief out of bed in the middle of the night—to wake his family—to pull Chief Brown away from his girls and leave teenaged Amelia to play mom to her little sister.
The ring of that phone used to make Ellie cry. Any time of day, she’d run to her father, wrap her fingers in the stiff fabric of his uniform, and nuzzle her face against the cool brass of his badge.
“Don’t go, Daddy,” she’d beg, tears always flooding her normally bright eyes. Her father was so big and strong back then. He’d always pull her into his arms and carry her like a little princess back to her bed. She loved being cradled there, feeling so safe and loved, but that feeling only made it worse when he’d lay her down in her bed, pull the tightly knit fabric of her blanket all the way up to her chin, and kiss her forehead good night.
Yes, she loved her father. Yes, she missed him when he wasn’t around. Yes, she wanted to wake up to him making breakfast in the kitchen in his boxers, but that wasn’t the reason she wanted him to stay.
She was afraid of losing him. She hadn’t been able to get over that fear since that fire, the one that had killed Tim, that firefighter who hadn’t looked much older than Amelia, who had been out on his first fire, who hadn’t just died from smoke inhalation but, according to those women talking during his wake, had died a painful death from the heat and the flames. Tim—who had to have a closed casket. She already lived her life without a mother. Amelia couldn’t fill in for her father too.
“Ellie,” he’d whisper, urgency mixed with tenderness and just enough understanding to let her know that he could read her fears. “I’ll be home soon, baby. I promise.” He’d place his large, callused hands on the back of her small, untested ones and carefully unwind them from his neck. “This is my job, honey. I know it scares you, but I can’t just not go.” He’d lean her back gently on her pillow and look deeply into her wide, wet, brown eyes. “I took an oath to help anyone in trouble.”
She’d sniff, considering the complications that a promise like that could imply. Which was more important? Saving people or comforting his daughter? She’d frown. Saving people, obviously.
“So, you’re like Superman?”
He’d smooth the creases on her forehead and trace the tiny tears silently racing down her cheeks, trying to hide a smile.