“Jonas,” I manage. “Jonas McClane.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“I don’t know. I heard a crash. Maybe… maybe five minutes? Ten?”
“That’s okay. You did the right thing calling.”
His reassurance lands somewhere far away from where my body is currently operating.
They move fast, efficiently, with the kind of speed that isn’t frantic because it doesn’t need to be. Equipment appears frombags like conjured objects. A blood pressure cuff tightens around Dad’s arm. Electrodes are pressed to his chest. Oxygen hisses into the air with a sound that feels too loud for how quietly everyone is speaking.
“Jonas, can you hear me?” the kneeling paramedic says, his voice pitched low but firm.
My father’s eyelids flutter, and his mouth moves.
“That’s good. Stay with me, mate.”
Mate.
The word does something small and devastating inside me.
“What medications is he on?” Aaron asks, already writing.
I list what I can remember, stumbling over names, over dosages, over the reality that I should know this better.
“That’s okay,” he says again. “You’re doing fine.”
The other paramedic looks up briefly. “We’re going to get him onto the stretcher.”
The room fills with controlled motion. The scrape of metal legs extending. The rustle of fabric and the coordination of hands that trust each other completely.
“Miss, I’m going to need you to step back a little.”
I don’t remember moving, but suddenly I am against the far counter, my fingers gripping the edge so hard my knuckles ache.
They lift him onto the stretcher. He makes a small, uncertain sound, and it slices through me more cleanly than anything else tonight.
“I’m here,” I say, though I don’t know if he can hear me.
They secure straps, adjust oxygen, and call out numbers that blur together.
I feel like I am outside my body, slowly drifting away.
“Hold still,” Aaron suddenly says, drawing me back into the here and now, and I realize a second too late that he’s crouched in front of me, my foot in his hand.
Something cold drags across my skin, making me flinch uncontrollably, a quick swipe that stings sharper than it should. He wipes again, more deliberate this time, clearing away the blood, his grip steady and unhurried. There’s the brief pressure of gauze, firm fingers wrapping it tight, like this is just another task in a long line of them. The sting registers somewhere distant, as though it belongs to someone else.
I don’t look down.
I don’t move.
By the time he straightens, his coworker has my father secured, lifting the stretcher, adjusting lines, voices sharpening back into focus around me.
“We’re transporting,” his coworker says.
Aaron smiles at me, stepping back into motion like he was never separate from it. “You can follow us in your car. Do you feel okay to drive?”
I nod before my body has decided whether that’s true.
