Page 128 of No Good Fight

Alex kept the sleeve over Mrs. Vance’s mouth. Alex got the window open. Alex set off the alarm. Alex protected someone else while smoke filled her lungs and then she used her body to protect the other woman.

Josh looks at me from across the waiting room. He doesn’t tell me to stop moving. He doesn’t look away either.

“She got her out,” he says finally.

I drag my gaze to him.

He swallows hard. “Mrs. Vance. She’d be dead if Alex left her behind to try and save herself.”

I nod because if I try to speak, the sound that comes out will not belong in a hospital waiting room or any public space.

The doctor comes through the doors a few minutes later. Maybe an hour. Maybe three. I’m not sure because time has stopped behaving in ways I can measure or even understand.

Everyone stands.

She looks at Alex’s parents first. “Alex is still unconscious.”

Her mother makes a sound so small I almost miss it.

“We’re treating the smoke inhalation and monitoring her oxygen levels closely. She also appears to have struck her head when she lost consciousness. The CT shows swelling on the brain.”

The room holds completely still.

Brain. Swelling.

I know those words. I know all the words she says after them. Monitoring. Neurology. Too early to know. Watching pressure. Keeping her stable.

I understand every piece of it.

None of it gives me anything to do to help her.

I can break a window. I can crawl through smoke. I can carry her out of a burning room with my knees sinking into wet grass and my hands locked beneath her body.

I cannot reach inside her skull and make the swelling stop. I can’t drag the smoke out of her lungs.

The doctor is still talking when Josh’s hand closes around my arm.

This time, he isn’t holding me back.

He’s holding on, because he’s just as close to breaking as I am.

25

ALEX

I wake up fighting the bed before I understand there is a bed, and for a few terrifying seconds, all I know is that my wrists won’t move the way they’re supposed to.

My right arm jerks against something soft but firm, the rail rattles beside me, and pain splits bright behind my eyes hard enough to make my stomach roll. There’s plastic in my nose, tape pulling at the inside of my elbow, a clip on my finger, and noise everywhere. Beeping. Shoes. Fabric. A woman’s calm voice saying my name like she’s already said it more than once.

“You’re safe.” I know that voice.

Ryder appears beside me so fast he must have been in the chair right next to the bed. He’s unshaven, eyes red, hair a wreck from dragging his hands through it, and there’s a bandage near his temple that my brain cannot understand yet. Soot darkens one of his fingernails even though the rest of him looks scrubbed raw. He reaches for me, stops before touching my arm, and closes his hand around the bed rail instead.

“Alex,” he says, and my name sounds ruined.

The nurse moves on my other side, one hand near my hip, not holding me down so much as giving my panicked body a place to stop. “You’re in the hospital. You were pulling at your oxygen and IV when you were disoriented, so we used soft restraints to keep you from hurting yourself. I’m taking them off now.”

Ryder reaches for the water cup on the rolling tray without me having to ask, waits until the nurse frees my second wrist, and then brings the straw close without pushing it against my mouth. The first sip hurts all the way down. I drink anyway because his hand is shaking, and for some reason my brain decides that is the thing I need to fix first.