Chapter Text
The firefighters of the Kearney Volunteer Fire Department all unloaded from the truck, some of them snickering a little about the last call they'd been on. Sometimes, their lives were on the line, and it was high stakes. Sometimes, calls kept them up at night. And sometimes, they had to pull a man's hand out of a toilet drain.
"Hey, Peterson." Jason Fowler, one of the firefighters on the shift, called to Chris as they undressed out of the hot and heavy gear. "Cards or food?"
Hanging up his own gear as he got out of it, Chris considered that for a moment. "Food and then cards?" he suggested with a raised eyebrow after a moment.
"Sounds good. Maybe we'll have time to actually eat it, too," Fowler chuckled.
"Let's definitely hope so," Chris agreed with a wry chuckle of his own, then let out a heavy sigh as he finally hung up the last of his gear. "I'm starving."
Fowler nodded readily in agreement, making a show of rubbing his stomach dramatically. "Me too." He made his way into the kitchen and started heating up his lunch for what felt like the thousandth time.
Following the other man through, Chris did the same, then joined his friend at the table as they ate. And this time, they finally got to actually finish their food. Barely.
Fowler had just put his fork down when the alarm went off. "Shit." He sighed a little, standing back up and heading back toward his locker to get ready.
Chris internally groaned a little too, but dropped his dishes in the sink and followed Fowler to their lockers. "What've we got this time?"
The captain spoke as they hurried into their gear. "Not much right now. MVA, two cars. Unknown victims, unknown condition. Those of you medically trained take point when we get on scene, the rest of you assist."
"Yes sir," Chris dutifully responded as he got into his gear, shifting right back into work mode like he was capable of doing at a moment's notice.
They loaded up and got going, only taking a few minutes to get to the scene of the accident. It was clearly a bad crash, the car flipped over the pickup's front end and strangely smashed in toward the cab.
Fowler grimaced at the sight. "I'm betting DOA."
"It's not looking good." Shifting his tools in his hands, Chris reluctantly had to agree with his colleague's initial assessment as he approached the wrecks. "Probably gonna have to pry these guys apart either way."
"Which one you want? I'll take the other." As the other ACLS certified firefighter on the team, Fowler was qualified to make an assessment.
Chris looked between the vehicles, taking just a split second to decide. "I'll take the car, you take the truck." As he spoke, he was already hurrying towards the car in question.
Fowler nodded, taking off with his bag.
Reaching the car and prying the door open, Chris quickly assessed the driver's condition, but it didn't take long before he stepped back again. "DOA," he called to Fowler, shaking his head a little just as two ambulances and a police cruiser arrived on scene and began preparing to do their jobs.
"Damn," Fowler said, but gave it no more thought before he gestured to the truck. “This one's still alive, but he doesn't look good. Gimme a hand."
"Coming," Chris nodded, and briefly signalled for one of the ambulance crews to start extracting the first driver, then turned his attention to Fowler's guy in the truck. But he didn't get very far before he froze, recognising the driver despite the blood still running from a cut in his forehead and covering half his face. "Jesus Christ. Jack? Jack, you awake?" Moving straight past Fowler for now, Chris immediately closed the distance to the older man and tried to assess his condition.
"Hey, slow down," Fowler said as his brows furrowed. "He needs a C-collar first. You know this guy?"
"Yeah, he's my father-in-law." Still focusing on the older man, Chris went straight to doing a sternal rub to check for consciousness, but didn't get a reaction. Then Chris turned back to face Fowler again. "Definitely unconscious, and barely breathing. We gotta get him out."
Fowler quickly came up behind him with the C-collar. "Okay, let's get this on him and get him out, then you back up. You know how this works." He quickly moved around Chris, securing the collar around Jack's neck.
Helping out as best he could, Chris almost reluctantly conceded the point while they worked. "Yes sir, I know."
"Good."
They worked together to get Jack out of the vehicle, and Fowler started a roadside assessment. "Diminished breath sounds on the right. Possible collapsed lung. Blood loss, unsure of volume, definite head injury," he relayed to the paramedic as they rolled the gurney up. "Airway clear for now." He stood back, letting the EMTs work.
On the other side of the police line, two of the officers were struggling with someone who was trying to break through. It was hard to tell who, until a voice familiar to Chris called out, worried and desperate. "Jack?!"
Chris whipped around at the sound, spotting exactly the person he expected to see. Roger had made it to the scene. "Hey, don't come any closer." Giving Jack and the paramedics a quick glance, Chris then began approaching Roger instead. "You gotta stay behind the police line. He's alive, and they're working on him, so just let them do their job. Okay?"
Roger stopped struggling against the officers, and turned worried and helpless eyes on Chris instead. "What the hell happened?! I was talking to him, and..."
Vaguely gesturing for the officers to let him handle Roger, Chris came to a stop in front of him. "We don't exactly know yet what happened, but it looks like a head-on collision," was where he started, not quite able to hide his own anxiety despite his outwardly unaffected and business-like mask.
Roger’s jaw set tightly, and he swallowed hard. "How bad? How bad is he, Chris?"
"Well, he's alive, and he seems to have gotten away with... relatively minor physical injuries," Chris started, glancing briefly back towards where one ambulance crew were loading up the body of the other driver while the other crew got Jack loaded up into the other ambulance. "But that's all we know right now. He's still unconscious, so we won't know the full situation until he wakes up."
Roger nodded, his eyes following Jack’s prone form on the gurney. "Okay. Okay," he said, clearly in shock and with no idea what to do now.
"Yeah. So just..." Trailing off, Chris seemed to need a moment to turn his thoughts into words. "Look, Michelle should be home from work now, so I'll call her when I get back to the station. So why don't you head to the hospital, and… wait for her there?"
"Yeah," Roger said, his voice shaky. "Okay." He turned to walk away, but after a few steps, he stopped and turned back. "What about the other one?" he asked tensely.
Chris hesitated for a moment at that, glancing briefly back towards where the ambulance with the body was starting to drive off. "He, uh... didn't make it."
Roger didn't say anything. He just nodded, a short and harsh movement. Then he turned without another word and got back in his car, heading toward the hospital.
Watching Roger drive off, Chris let out a small and slightly shaky sigh, then turned back around to see what the situation was now.
The other guys had just finished separating the cars, the tow truck working on getting the stranger's car loaded.
Chris quickly approached the scene, making his way to Jack's pickup. Though it was well and truly smashed up, most likely beyond repair, it looked like it should still be possible to get into the cab. So Chris made his way over with the intention of doing just that.
The inside was a mess, papers and miscellaneous items thrown around in the cab. The mirror laid in the floor, and the dash bent strangely. On the passenger seat, strangely unharmed, sat a feather, the knot still in the leather binding from where it has hung from the mirror.
Chris needed a moment to recognise it as the feather he'd seen hanging in Jack's house multiple times. But then he picked it up, breathing a small sigh of relief at its good condition, as he knew just enough to know why that feather was significant.
Laying it carefully back on the seat for a moment, he busied himself with gathering whatever papers and items he could salvage, which thankfully included Jack's cell phone and overnight bag. And then he picked the feather back up again before getting back out of the vehicle.
The firefighters all loaded up in their fire truck not long after, getting out of the way of the tow trucks. Fowler studied Chris as they drove. "You okay?"
"Huh?" Having been busy looking through the papers he'd been able to salvage, Chris looked over at his coworker at that. "Yes sir, I'm fine."
Fowler just nodded at that, and just kept an eye on Chris quietly the rest of the trip back.
Chris got out along with the others, staying mostly quiet as he headed back to his locker and got out of his jacket. And then he paused, taking a moment to put the papers and feather into Jack's bag.
The captain approached him as he was getting changed. "Call your wife. Go home."
Looking up from where he'd been in the middle of getting his boots off, Chris shook his head a little at that. "It's fine. I can still finish my shift," he told the other man in that business-like way he usually spoke while in the thick of a call. Years of training, both as a soldier and as a first responder, had taught him how to shove his own feelings aside at work.
The captain sighed. "That wasn't a suggestion, Chris. Look. You've just had a nasty shock. And now you have to deliver that shock to your wife. Go. If not for you, then for her."
Though Chris briefly looked like he wanted to argue, he couldn't deny the captain had a point about Michelle at least. So as he stood back up again, he nodded at that. "Alright. And I'll be back at work for my next shift."
"If you need time, take it," the captain said with a nod.
"Yes sir." Straightening his back a little, Chris nodded again at that. "But I'm sure I'll be fine."
The older man nodded. "Now get outta here."
"Yes sir," Chris said again, giving the captain a brief nod before picking up Jack's overnight bag and making his way to his car to drive back home.
*****
Michelle hadn't been home long. In fact, she had just gotten the kids settled with a snack and TV and had sat down at the table to grade papers.
Pulling up outside their house, Chris took a moment to take a deep breath, then got out and made his way into the house. He set Jack's bag against the wall in the hallway, then instead of heading straight to the shower like he usually did, he made his way to the kitchen. "Hey."
"Hey," she smiled, but it was replaced with a confused frown when she saw his face. "You're home early."
"Yeah, I know. I, uh..." He trailed off as he moved to sit down, briefly glancing around them to make sure they were out of earshot of certain curious pairs of ears. "We just got back from a car accident, and... your dad was one of the drivers. One of the other guys had to pull him out of his truck."
She frowned, as if she didn't understand. "What?"
"Far as I could tell, it looked like the other guy got into the wrong lane and hit your dad head-on. Truck's probably beyond repair, and your dad was still out cold when they took him to hospital." Resting his forearms on the table, Chris let out a slightly shaky exhale.
She blinked a little, her frown deepening. "What... Is he... okay?" She didn't look like she was processing the news at all.
Chris cleared his throat a little as he shifted in his seat. "I don't know yet. I mean, he was alive when I saw him, and he didn't have any major visible injuries, but... we can't really know the full situation 'till he wakes up." Assuming he does in fact wake up, he deliberately didn't add, though the look on his face probably said it for him.
She stood, nodding, as the colour drained from her face. She said nothing, just turned and started packing up her work.
Getting back to his own feet too, he watched her quietly for a moment. "I, uh... I told Roger you'd meet him at the hospital. Figured it's a fair bet you'd wanna go."
"I'm sorry," she sniffled after a beat of silence. "I..." Her eyes welled.
"No, it's okay, honey." He came up to her, gently turning her towards him and pulling her into a hug. "I get it."
She went, crying quietly when she settled in his arms.
Letting out a shaky exhale of his own, he let her cry against him for as long as she needed. "I'm sorry."
After a few minutes she pulled away, wiping her eyes. "Can you stay with the kids?"
He nodded a little as they broke apart. "Of course, if that's where you need me."
"If you want to call the sitter, you can meet me there?" She needed him, but the kids needed him, too.
"It's up to you, love. If you need me to stay, I'll stay. If you need me to come with you, I'll call the sitter and come meet you at the hospital."
"Yeah, just... Just meet me. Okay?" she said shakily.
"Alright, I'll do that." Nodding a little at that, he let out a heavy exhale, then moved towards the phone to call the girl across the street who'd babysat for them a few times now.
"Thanks. Tell them I love them," she said as she grabbed her keys and made for the door.
He assured her he would, then turned his attention to the phone as she headed out. Michelle offered him a small, shaky smile in return before walking out the door.