“You already thanked me. Stop thanking me and go get some rest. We’re past the worst of it, and I can handle coordination from here.”
“You need rest too.”
She gave me a look that would have been intimidating if I didn’t know her better by now. “I’ll rest when this is over. That’s how it works when you’re running command.”
Dane appeared at my shoulder. “How about a compromise. Beau gets food and dry clothes, you take a thirty-minute break to do the same, and then we all come back here and ride out the rest of the night together.”
Sable looked like she wanted to argue, but something in Dane’s expression made her pause. Maybe she saw the same thing I was starting to see. That the three of us had formed a unit around her, whether she’d asked for it or not. That we weregoing to keep showing up, keep supporting her, keep proving we were worth the risk.
“Fifteen minutes,” she finally said. “But I’m eating here. Dane, there’s pizza in the break room from earlier. Beau, there are spare clothes in the locker room. And someone needs to tell Silas he can stop hovering outside the door.”
“I’m not hovering,” Silas called from the hallway. “I’m strategically positioning myself for optimal coordination support.”
Despite everything, I smiled. We were all disasters. All broken in our own ways, all carrying damage we’d learned to live with but never quite healed from.
But maybe Sable was right. Maybe we were the kind of disasters who could piece each other back together, one small moment at a time.
I changed into dry clothes and found my way back to the command center. Pizza was set up on the break room table, and someone had made fresh coffee. Sable was sitting with a slice of pizza she wasn’t eating, her attention split between her tablet and the radio.
When I sat down across from her, she looked up.
“How are you really doing?” she asked.
“Better than I expected.” It was true. I’d faced my nightmare and come out the other side. Had proven to myself that I could still do the job, that three years of guilt and self-doubt hadn’t broken something fundamental inside me. “Still processing, but better.”
“Good.” She picked up her pizza, took a bite, and made a face. “Cold pizza is terrible.”
“It’s a disaster responder staple.”
“That doesn’t make it good.”
I watched her eat, struck by how normal this felt. The four of us in a break room at midnight, eating cold pizza andcoordinating emergency response. It shouldn’t feel comfortable. Shouldn’t feel right. But somehow it did.
Dane leaned against the doorframe, coffee in hand. “Storm’s moving out faster than predicted. We should be clear by oh-three-hundred.”
“Good.” Sable checked her tablet. “All three shelters report stable conditions. No new emergencies in the past hour. We might actually get through this without any major incidents.”
“Define major,” Silas said, stealing a slice of pizza. “Because I’d call a vehicle in rising water pretty major.”
“Major means casualties.” Sable’s voice was flat, professional. “We got everyone out. That counts as success.”
“That counts as Beau being a badass,” Silas corrected. “Which we all knew he was, but it’s nice to have confirmation.”
I shook my head, uncomfortable with the praise even though part of me wanted to hold onto it. “Just did my job.”
“You did more than your job,” Sable said quietly. “You faced down your worst fear and came out stronger. That’s not nothing, Beau.”
Our eyes met across the table, and I saw something in her expression that made my chest tight. Pride, maybe. Or understanding. The recognition that we all carried damage, but that damage didn’t have to define us.
“Thank you,” I said again, because I didn’t have better words.
“Stop thanking me. Eat your pizza. And then we’re all going to take turns getting some actual rest because this crisis isn’t over and I need all of you functional when the next call comes in.”
It was an order, delivered with the same calm authority she used for everything. But underneath it, I heard the care. The concern. The fact that she needed us functional because she cared what happened to us.
That mattered more than I wanted to admit.
The rest of the night passed in shifts. Sable coordinated while we took turns resting, though “resting” mostly meant dozing in chairs or sprawling on the floor with our gear as pillows. By oh-four-hundred, the storm had passed completely, leaving behind flooded roads and downed trees but no major casualties.
