Thankfully, Lex appears a moment later with the small tank of nitrous oxide and a little mask, knocking me out of my thought spiral.
He kneels down, then straps it over the boy’s face. “Deep breath for me, kiddo. This is going to make you feel a lot better.”
“How fuckin’ much isthisgonna cost?” the dad grumbles behind me.
I glance at Lex. “I can’t punch him, right?”
Lex rolls his eyes, but the truth is, I know he’s thinking the same thing. And I get it—mostly. I get that even the smallest injury can goddamn bankrupt a family these days.
I hate it, of course.
I hate rolling up to calls and watching people debate if it’s worth risking their life over the cost of an ambulance, and it makes me bitter and angry. I took this job to help my family, and I hadn’t realized the way it was going to open my eyes to a lot of things.
But in this moment, I choose to ignore the dad because he’s not helping.
“I found a saw,” Easton says, barreling in with the tool. It’s the size of his arm, but the blade is thin. We use it from time to time to deal with fallen branches and other shit.
And it’ll definitely do.
My anxiety eases a bit when Lex takes it off him to start hacking away at the top part of the railing, and Easton doesn’t put up a fight about it. He knows damn well Lex is less likely to decapitate one of us.
After what feels like a hundred years and about six gallons of nasty bodily fluids soaking into my pants, Lex manages to get one railing off, which is exactly enough space for the kid to lean back and fall into his mother’s waiting arms.
I stand up and take several steps away, breathing a sigh of relief and taking in sweet, sweet, unsoiled air.
“I should have stuck with my line cook job,” I mutter in Easton’s ear, who’s watching the kid lie down so Lex can do his assessment.
He grins at me, though he doesn’t get too close, and I understand why. The smell is fucking rank. “Aww, honey. When we get back to the station, you can cook for me.”
I want to flip him off, but in reality, making a nice carbonara sounds like a goddamn dream. At any rate, the smell from the garlic bread I plan to make alongside it will hopefully cover up what I can’t wash off in the shower.
And if I’m lucky at all, this call will fade into the quiet void of all the other fucked-up calls I’ve taken over the years, andI’ll be able to sleep easy with a full belly, knowing that today we actually did something good.
TWO
NORTH
I’m mostly done rinsingmy hair when I smell it: garlic. But not just garlic. It’s jarlic. It’s the smell of cheap tomato sauce, badly done, badly baked crust, and something masquerading as mozzarella cheese. I know that smell. That smell is banned from this station, and everyone here knows it.
Those fuckers! Those absolute fucking fuckers! They couldn’t wait twenty goddamn minutes for me to get myself scrubbed down after that hellish call so I could make them the best carbonara of their lives?
Traitors! All of them!
Racing out of the shower, I throw my robe on, then storm into the rec room to find two cheap-ass pizzas from the worst goddamn shop in town, just as I suspected. Lex is determinedly not making eye contact as he sets them down, but Easton immediately throws his arm around me.
“You’re in a towel.”
“It’s a robe, dickhead. And you’re eating garbage! Literal garbage!” I thrust both open palms toward the table.
I hold my robe closed and wince when a bit of soapy water runs into my eye. I swear to god it’s probably a superpower thatI was able to smell the pizza, but these fucking assholes couldn’t wait for me to shower and cook?
“Breathe, North,” Easton tries.
I shove him off me. “Fuck you, fuck you.” I point at Lex and Easton. “Ozzie, you’re cool as long as you don’t touch that fucking pizza. Ted’s cool—wherever he is.” I wave my hand in a circle. Teddy is our fire marshal, and he rarely comes out of his office. “If Rune shows up, he’s cool, so long as he doesn’t touch the pizza, but Logan!” I cry as Logan starts to reach for the first box. “I will blacklist you from my food forever.”
He sags and looks a little sad, a lock of dark hair falling over his left eye. “Really? I’m so hungry, bud.” He still has that Canadian lilt to his voice, betraying his childhood in Toronto.
My eyes narrow further. “Who did this? Who ordered this garbage?”
