Page 19 of Fighting For You

That was Josie. On the floor she ran a department with twenty-two years of authority and a look that could stop a resident mid-sentence. Off the floor, she brought a sixteen-year-old boy a pillow and a hot meal from her own kitchen and told him his sister was going to make it.

"What happened to the house?"

He was quiet for a moment. "It's gone, Nora."

I already knew. The orange glow at the bottom of the stairs, the sound the house made while I crouched by the window, how fast the smoke had been moving. But hearing him say it was different.

"Everything?"

"The fire department said the first floor was fully involved by the time they got there. The structure's still standing, but there's nothing left inside. Everything in it is gone."

Our parents' things. The photo albums I kept in the hall closet. My father's fountain pen. My mother's recipe notebook, the one she kept in a drawer in the kitchen, her handwriting on every page. My crystals on the shelf, right where I left them. Thirty years of a family in that house, every mark a small history nobody else would ever know.

I pushed it down. There would be time to feel it later. Right now Ian was sitting in a borrowed shirt in a hospital chair, watching my face for a sign of what came next, and he needed me to be the person who had the answer.

"We'll figure this out."

He nodded.

"Jesse's family said I can stay with them," he said. "Until we figure things out."

"That's good. That's really good, Ian."

He picked at the blanket edge. "What about you?"

"I'll sort something out once I'm discharged. Don't worry about me."

"You always say that."

"And I always do, don't I?"

He almost smiled. It didn't quite land, but I could see it trying.

I held his hand and watched the monitor trace my heartbeat in green. For a few minutes neither of us said anything, and the quiet felt like enough.

The door opened and Gracelyn stepped in, still in her scrubs, her badge swinging from the lanyard around her neck. She stopped when she saw me sitting up.

"Oh, thank God." She crossed the room and hugged me, careful of the IV line, her arms tight around my shoulders. "I was so worried about you."

"I'm okay."

"You were unconscious for two days, Nora. That is not okay." She pulled back and assessed me like a patient. "How do you feel?"

"My throat hurts. My chest is tight. Everything else is fine."

"They had you on a ventilator the first night. The smoke inhalation was bad."

I looked at Ian. He was still in the chair, watching, and I could see the two days on him. The dark under his eyes. He'd been sitting in that chair since Monday.

"Ian. Go to Jesse's."

"I'm fine."

"You've been here for two days. Go take a shower, sleep in an actual bed. I'm awake. Gracelyn's here."

He looked at Gracelyn. She nodded at him.

He stood up slowly, like the chair had shaped itself around him. He slung his backpack over one shoulder and stopped at the side of the bed.