Danger, Willing Reader! Danger, Willing Reader! You have entered inkling's UnE!verse, and all bets concerning the characters, their lives, their careers, and their favorite Brady girl are off. The M's, both J and K, will vouch for me; I've been plotting this particular twist to the UnE!verse for some time now. /cackling.wav/ E!nter the following story at your own risk.

© 2000 by inkling. Standard "they don't belong to me they just come out to play now and then" disclaimers apply; could be dangerous if inhaled directly into the nasal passages without proper grinding and filtration. "Emergency!" and its characters © Mark VII Productions, Inc. and Universal Studios. All rights reserved. No infringement of any copyrights or trademarks is intended or should be inferred. The settings and characters are most definitely fictitious, even when a real name may be used. Any similarity to actual persons, living or deceased, or to actual events is purely coincidental and is not intended to suggest that the events described actually occurred.

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Counting Threes

by inkling

'What do you weave with wool so white?'
'I weave the shoes of Sorrow,
Soundless shall be the footfall light
In all men's ears of Sorrow,
Sudden and light.'

~~William Butler Yeats

"He who hesitates is lost," the saying went, and Mike knew he was lost, utterly lost, when he found himself wavering in the hallway, unsure which group to follow. Door number two or door number three, Monty? His hand reached for door number three, the host of Emergency room personnel disappearing through it along with the too-still figure on the blood soaked gurney. The door swung shut in the instant he hesitated, the knife of indecision cutting at his heart even as he looked at door number two. That doorway had already swallowed the multitude of white coats swarming in behind the paramedic with his tiny bundle.

Mike opened his mouth, but nothing would come out of his dry throat. His hands fell to his side, hung limply, useless as they had been all night long. They hadn't even been allowed to hold , might never touch again--

"Stoker?" A worried frown appeared in front of Mike, the tall figure in turnouts looking down, trying to see directly into Mike's eyes. Let him. All he would see was Mike's life ending. Mike worked his throat again, but there were no words, none. The only thing he knew was that passage to both doors was now blocked, denied, and Mike thought he might step around to be closer to one or the other. But when he made a motion to do so, the man's hands came up against his chest.

"Mike, you know you can't go in there. Let the doctors do their job. Come on, let's go to the lounge." The voice was soft, sympathetic, quietly reasonable--and the least bit gravelly with grief, grief Mike refused to acknowledge. Anger surged through him, but then it leached away as quickly as it had appeared. He blinked down at the hands preventing his passage, one flat against his turnout coat, the other clutching a handy-talky. Dark brown stains roped around the fingers, then sprawled across the back of those hands. Mike felt the knot of grief rising, choking his throat. Rayna's blood; there'd been so much of it during, after--the world grayed around him, going black at the edges before tilting away.

Someone swore, and Mike was jerked upright and dragged away from the doors. He protested feebly, but there was no denying the forces intent on moving him. When he could focus again he was sitting, head down between his knees. He stared now at a pair of boots and a pair of white sneakers, both Rorschach-splotted in rusty red. Someone's hand rested heavily on his shoulder. His brain took a long moment to process the voices above him, the square tiles they stood on as the floor of the doctor's lounge at Rampart. The tennis shoes and the hand left about the time he realized the words "shock" and "stress" and "low-blood sugar" they were bandying about had to do with him.

Stress? Shock? He resisted the insane urge to laugh, but they must have seen some movement because canvas-clad knees suddenly appeared in his limited field of vision. Mike refused to look up from the floor. He knew he'd drown if he made contact with the ocean of sympathy in the other man's eyes.

"Stoker? Mike?" One blood-stained hand came up to touch his shoulder, and Mike shivered beneath it. The hand dropped away, and the tennis shoes returned. This time it was a dark hand that held a cup out, placing it somewhere under his nose.

"Drink this, Stoker. When's the last time you had something to eat?" Mike didn't answer, just stared at the orange liquid in the cup as their hurried breakfast and his nothing since were confessed over his head. In reply the cup was held a little closer to Mike's nose. "C'mon, Mike. It's been a while since you ate. You're going to need something to keep you going."

Mike blinked, but the orange juice didn't go away, nor did either pair of feet. Finally, he looked up to meet Dr. Morton's dark regard, the doctor squatting in front of him. That was a mistake; Morton's gaze held not just sympathy, but knowledge, knowledge of all the things that could and did go wrong in the treatment rooms down the hall. Things Mike didn't want to know. Mike looked away, but his fingers curled reflexively about the cup when Morton put it in his hand and pushed it toward him.

"Dr. Morton? We need you in three."

Morton acknowledged the nurse's summons with a nod, and Mike stared at the cup, trying to remember if three was one of the rooms that he should be interested in. He ignored the long look Morton gave him before he stood, the whispered "Let us know if he needs anything stronger," the fact that his fellow firefighter looked like he might cry for a moment himself before he nodded.

The doctor left; his babysitter remained. Mike stared down at the cup he held. Orange juice. He didn't like orange juice, not this reconstituted garbage, anyway. He liked the fresh-squeezed stuff, had been trying to justify spending the money on a juicer so he could have it more often. Sometimes Rayna would squeeze it for him, but she'd been out of sorts lately and in no mood to play "besotted wife," as she called it.

Mike's hand trembled, and he closed his eyes, unable to shake the sudden image of Rayna's face, smiling up from beneath him. It had been two months ago, their limbs tangled in the sweaty aftermath of love, the roundness of her advancing pregnancy still strange between them. Mike had smiled down at her, laughed at her assessment of pregnancy as an incredible aphrodisiac, and bent to kiss her. The odd fluttering he'd felt against his own stomach hadn't registered at first, but then he'd felt a particularly hard kick. He'd raised himself up on his arms and stared down at her protruding belly.

"She doesn't like being squashed," Rayna had said, and laughed at both his wonder and his disbelief. Mike had rolled off of her and spent a long few minutes feeling and poking and prodding, completely and joyously mesmerized by the resulting manifestations of the small body within his wife's belly. And later, much later, Rayna had thrown her dilapidated red robe on and joined him in the kitchen, squeezing the orange juice while he put together a very late breakfast. She'd dropped the pitcher moments afterward. Staring down at the sticky juice all over the kitchen floor, glinting yellow in the sunlight, Rayna had uncharacteristically burst into tears. All his efforts at comforting her had failed, and he'd finally given up and just cleaned up the mess while a still sobbing Rayna had fled the room. Mike had found her huddled in their bed afterward, and he'd put his arms around her and held her as she sniffled into his t-shirt. And eventually they'd both wound up laughing over her muttered, scathing commentary on overly hormonal pregnant women.

Now, Mike's hand, in a sympathetic gesture two months late, spasmed around the Styrofoam cup. He watched disinterestedly as his fingers tore into the white foam, crumpling it; the juice spurting out around his clenched fist to drip down onto his turnout pants and then the floor. His keeper swore, then clomped away across the room. Blood-stained hands appeared seconds later with paper towels to wipe at the mess about Mike's feet.

But they couldn't wipe away the fact that orange juice sounded a lot like blood when it dripped onto the floor.

&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&

The rust-colored suds slipped from his hands and gathered at the bottom of the sink, sticking to the white porcelain like his toddler's bubble bath. Bloody water drained away as he carefully washed and rinsed all the way up to his elbows, but the foam remained, hissing slightly as the bubbles reluctantly popped. It was automatic to reach for the paper towel dispenser, and Roy did it without looking, his eyes on the slowly diminishing residue of this run. The dark foam was the evidence of his impotence, his failure. It wasn't that he hadn't tried, or done his best. There had just been so much blood... A thump and a long creak of metal hinges behind him, and Roy reluctantly looked up to meet his partner's bleak gaze in the mirror.

"They're headed for surgery now." The words were clipped, abrupt, angry and weary at the same time. Johnny shook his head and sighed, closing his eyes before pounding the wall with the side of his fist. "Brackett...Brackett wasn't holding out much hope." His other hand, clenched around their handy-talky, came up as if he wanted to launch it across the small bathroom, but he evidently thought better of the idea. The hand dropped and Johnny's shoulders slumped. In the harsh fluorescent glare of the overhead light, he looked as defeated and helpless as Roy felt.

"So much blood," he said. "So damn much blood."

Roy tossed his limp wad of used paper towel toward the wastebasket. Johnny was trying to process the tragedy, and for Johnny that meant words--lots and lots of words. Roy needed to process too, but for him that meant waiting, waiting until he was home, safely away from blood and tangled masses of metal that used to be vehicles; home, lying in his bed with his wife's arms around him and breathing the faint perfume of her shampoo, losing himself in the feel of her beside him, of--

"It's just so damn STUPID! So god-damned stupid!" Johnny glared at Roy, and the blonde paramedic made a vague gesture of support with both hands. More words; Johnny needed to get it out of his system. Looking up at the light above them, Johnny's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, and his voice was hoarse with grief as he went on. "I mean...what's the point, what's the use of all this training, of all this damn equipment, of--" He broke off, looked down and held his hands out toward Roy in a pleading gesture Roy understood all too well. What was the use of their hands, their skills, when they couldn't save one of their own?

"Yeah," was all Roy said, but his eyes met Johnny's across the few feet of cold tile that separated them, and knew his partner understood. After a moment, Roy found his voice again. "The rest of the guys?"

"Should be here any minute." Johnny moved over, leaned on one elbow against the wall, resting his head in his hand, hiding his eyes from the light. His hands were clean. He'd washed up earlier, in the examining room. Arms limp at his sides, Roy stared first at Johnny, then at the floor. Neither of them were in any hurry to head back out to the hustle and bustle of the emergency room, and their radio stayed blessedly silent. That silence settled on them for an immeasurable eternity, only to be broken by the thump and creak of the door. Johnny ignored the noise; Roy looked up at shocking peroxide blonde hair, spiked out four inches in all directions. Matt, one of the newer orderlies in the Emergency department. Bets were on as to what would last longer, Matt's hair or Brackett's tolerance.

"Hey, guys, Dixie's looking for you. Said she needs to talk to you, ASAP."

Roy nodded glumly, then again when Matt stared at Johnny's back. Motionless, Johnny hadn't responded to the summons. His hand still hiding the upper half of his face, his lips moved soundlessly.

"We'll be right there," Roy said, and Matt gave a sharp nod before ducking out the door. Roy took a deep breath, touched his partner lightly on the arm, and headed out of the bathroom, Johnny belatedly at his heels.

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a night ago you whispered
everything will be all right
who will blow the candle out tonight?
who will blow the candle out tonight?
~~John Tams

Mike tried not to stare at the clock on the lounge wall, marking the slow minutes crawling by, but he couldn't help himself. Every minute that passed without bad news was good news, wasn't it? The muted commotion outside the doctor's lounge didn't tell him anything; neither did the restless sounds from the other end of the room. Mike sighed and closed his eyes, forcing himself to look away from the clock mercilessly ticking off the minutes since he'd landed here, helpless and waiting. Surely they'd come and get him, let him be with Rayna before she died, wouldn't they? The clock ticked on, unheeding.

He wouldn't look any more.

Vinyl squeaked as he slumped further down on the lounge's couch, and he shivered. The unplanned side effect of ignoring the clock was being at the mercy of his memories, stop-motion replay of the engine crew, racing into the old McDaniels Classroom Center at the community college, their pounding feet not quite overwhelming the agonized cries echoing down the long tiled hallway. Mike had been in the lead from the start, pelting toward the one open door he could see, shoving his way through the crowd of students who hadn't been smart enough to get out of his way.

The burnt smell of old coffee brought him back to the present, and Mike opened his eyes to stare at another cup. Ceramic this time; coffee, this time. The hand that held it out was still rusty brown with blood. Mike swallowed back the knot in his throat and shook his head in minute refusal. He closed his eyes, willing the cup and its odor away, and seconds later his wish was answered. His clenched fists revealed sticky orange juice still on the one, and he listened again to the muted hospital noises, to the swish of turnouts. Smoke was sharp in his nostrils; they hadn't had time to clean up from the house fire at which they'd been. The office phone had been shrilling even as the engine backed into the station and Mike had scrambled to answer its summons, the first steps of his long journey to this endless waiting.

He had scribbled the office number on Rayna's palm early this morning as a joke, nothing more, and finally she had remembered her sleepy promise to call. He'd skipped lunch for her, savored instead the strange luxury of talking to his wife on the office phone. Much nicer than the day room where everything was overheard and fodder for both ribbing from his crewmates and the department's gossip mill. Mike had leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the desk as he'd seen Captain Stanley do a thousand times and enjoyed the entire two and one half minutes he'd had to talk to Rayna before they were toned out. The fire he still stank of had been two runs later, hours after he'd last heard his wife's voice in that phone.

He hadn't even had time to say goodbye.

The lounge door popped open, and Mike's head came up without his conscious willing of it. His feet moved, but they weren't propped on the desk in the office, they were sprawled untidily across the institutional flooring in the doctor's lounge. A head appeared in the doorway, blonde hair, spiked. No one Mike knew. Certainly not a doctor, or anyone really in charge. The punk hairdo disappeared before Mike got his eyes focused enough to tell if it was male or female spiked hair, and as the door closed he allowed his head to drop back against the couch. Closing his eyes avoided the sympathetic glance from across the room. He couldn't deal with sympathy right now; his own control was too fragile.

A doctor was paged, the call filtered and muted by the closed door; equipment was rushed by the lounge, a million tasks being performed by the hospital staff. Mike could do nothing but wait, wait and hope that the various summons and goings meant someone else's grief, someone else's loss. There was always a crowd in the waiting room; he'd seen two other squads parked by the emergency doors. His wasn't the only tragedy playing out here today.

It was just the only one that mattered.

The other end of the couch dipped and squeaked, and someone sipped coffee, but thankfully Mike was left alone. The image of those hands covered with blood flashed before his eyes, again, and he flexed his own sticky fingers in protest, felt the sore spots where he'd thought Rayna was going to crush his hands as she gripped them--was it just an hour ago?--writhing in pain. Mike stared down at the shapes of her fingers, redly etched onto the back of his hand. At least two of those marks would be bruises by tomorrow.

And suddenly, he was captured again by the strobing memories: Rayna, cold on the classroom floor, awkwardly curled about her swollen belly, bloody skirt twisted about her legs; her hair sweat-soaked and clinging to her face, dark as the blood from the lip that she'd bitten through. Sound intruded: the tense conversation between the engine crew and the squad, out on another, minor run; snippets of medical dialogue; Rayna's screams; his own voice, futile attempts to calm and comfort his wife, barking orders, answering questions...

Mike allowed himself one glance at the clock to break the cycle of memories. Eighteen minutes. Was that all the time that had passed since he'd arrived here in the squad? They'd known better than to allow him to drive. He'd been out of the vehicle before it even stopped, through the emergency room doors seconds behind the gurney bearing his motionless wife. She'd lain like that at the scene, too, once the paramedics had arrived with their boxes and tubes and ampules of salvation. Mike had allowed himself to relax a bit, daring to trust in the professionalism and skill of the paramedics, the doctors; trusting that his friends would save the day, and his family.

How wrong had he been?

Closing his eyes against crawling seconds brought up the bloody image of a plastic doll, rigid, waxy blue, delivered just outside the ambulance, washed into life on the tide of his? her? mother's blood. Mike opened his eyes and stared at the clock. Two more minutes. He could have sworn he heard a baby crying just before the treatment room door swung shut, but he couldn't be sure. Was their child a boy or a girl? Was he a father?

Was he a husband, or a widower?

A hand landed on his shoulder and Mike jerked. He knew who it was; he could smell the blood on it, over the smoke that layered over both of them. He flinched away from the hand, then looked over to meet Reynolds' concerned gaze.

"Wash your hands, Reynolds," he said, and the man frowned as Mike resisted the urge to add, "and don't touch me again until you do." Then the engineer's gaze followed his and he sucked in a deep breath.

"Shit," Reynolds said. "Sorry." He bolted for the sink on the other side of the room. Mike might have laughed, but he didn't know if he could stop once he started. Instead, he studied his own knuckles, took deep breaths of the familiar smoke smell, willed himself into patient stone, willed the grief and nausea away.

Reynolds was still at the sink, scrupulously scrubbing, when the door opened again. Stone wouldn't look, wouldn't care, wouldn't have this knot in its chest, especially when the slow footsteps hesitated, then headed his way. Two people, at least, and Mike sank further into the couch and waited their arrival with hunched shoulders.

"Mike?"

The voice was soft, hesitant, and unexpected, though why Mike wasn't entirely sure. Rampart was Johnny and Roy's second home when they were on shift; he shouldn't be surprised to meet them here. The towel dispenser clanked as Reynolds finished his ablutions. Mike braced himself and looked up.

Roy looked haggard, worn and old. Behind him Johnny looked even worse, and Mike's stomach dropped to his toes. He opened his mouth, but once again, words failed him. He gaped at the two paramedics. The hospital staff knew they were friends, crewmates, brothers. They'd sent his brothers to break the news to him, to tell him--

Mike's eyes shut and his mouth closed and then opened again but nothing came in or out. Someone ordered him to breathe, but he couldn't find the air and then he was shaken, hard, and he sucked in a breath and looked up at Roy.

"Wha...?" It was a croak, not a question, and Roy, one hand still on Mike's shoulder, frowned, confused. Behind him, Johnny's face twisted into a familiar scowl, then he moved, reaching past Roy to grip Mike's other shoulder. He squeezed and leaned over to look directly into Mike's eyes, into the end of the world.

"We don't know, Mike. The doctors are still with them both."

Both? Mike blinked, hard, trying to process the word: Both. Both. 'Both' meant two, and that meant he still had both a wife and a child. He took a deep breath, then, aware of Reynolds standing just behind the paramedics from 51s, he looked away, toward the window, then down at the floor between his feet. Johnny's hand fell away; Roy's remained, resting lightly on his back. Mike stared at the floor. Both. He still had them both. So far.

Mike took another deep breath, then looked up at his friends. Reynolds had backed away and was messing with the coffee maker on the other side of the room. The rows of coffee mugs ranked on the wall behind his 6 foot, 10 inch frame looked like a small child's tea set.

"I...I thought--" Mike broke off, shook his head, then looked back up just in time to catch the guilty glance exchanged by the paramedics. His face stoic, Roy buried both his hands in his pockets, and Johnny looked even more miserable. Blood spattered both their shirts; Johnny's had a long crimson smear down his sleeve. Cold dread began to leach into Mike's soul. "What is it? Why are you here?"

The door behind them swung open and Dixie strode in. She pushed her way between Roy and Johnny, and leaned over slightly, putting one hand on Mike's arm.

"Mike?" Her tone was gentle, her smile bright. "If you'll come with me, there's a young lady in Exam Two I'd like to introduce you to."

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Keep one gray stone
in a secret place, and when those you love
are broken or gone, listen...
~~Richard Hugo

The only thing remotely recognizable about the tiny bundle nestled in his arms was the eyes. The rest of the scrunched-up face just visible between the tightly wrapped blankets and the fuzzy pink stocking hat could have belonged to any one of his neighbor's many garden gnomes. Maybe the one out by her pampered White Bath Roses in particular; though any gnome chosen at random from Mrs. Caraveggio's extensive garden would do. But the large eyes that blinked sleepily up at him, so dark a muddy blue that the pupil was lost completely in the iris, were all Rayna's. They even shared her dark copper lashes; though the elegantly feathered eyebrows definitely favored the garden gnome theory of her genome.

"She's a real fighter, Cap," Wyatt said, his turnout pants creaking as he bent over and smiled at Mike's daughter. "You should have heard her in the ambulance. Once that naloxone kicked in, she came out of it fast. And boy, was she mad! 'Course, I'd be mad too, if I woke up when I was getting my stomach pumped." The paramedic's finger came out to gently touch the baby's cheek, beneath the tiny nasal cannula running under her stubby nose. She blinked and turned her head toward the caress. Wyatt grinned and dropped his hands back to his knees, staring proudly at the baby in Mike's arms. Not that he didn't have reason for his pride. Remembering the stiff blue doll that the paramedic had held just half an hour or so ago, Mike stared at the pink, healthy girl in his arms. He looked up at Wyatt's dark face, but the words were slow in coming. Wyatt saved him the effort. The man nodded and squeezed Mike's shoulder briefly.

The baby turned her head to the side again, making a small kitten noise as she did so.

"I don't think she likes that cannula," Mike said, holding her close as he reached up to pull the little hat further over her auburn curls. His fingers itched to remove the cannula; he wanted to remove the IV and the other tubes and wires too--and not only because of the discomfort they seemed to cause his daughter--his daughter! They were all too vivid a reminder of just how close he'd come to losing his and Rayna's child--how close he still might be to losing Rayna. Soft footsteps and a faint grape-like perfume preceded Rampart's neo-natal specialist across the room. Mike barely glanced up at Dr. Aguilera, her arms crossed and a clip board clutched in one hand. Wyatt stood as she approached, but didn't back away.

"I don't think she'll have to have them for long," the doctor said, smiling at his daughter too. What was about babies that everyone had to smile at them? The baby in question sighed suddenly. Her eyes drooped closed and didn't open again, and Mike froze. A few seconds later she snored slightly, and it was Mike's turn to smile. Definitely his child, then. Or did garden gnomes snore? Dr. Aguilera brushed short fingers with long red nails over the small knitted hat. Fluffy dark hair framed her oval face and a too-chipper smile. "Six pounds is a good sized baby, especially for four weeks early. We'll keep her in the neo-natal ICU for a day or so, until we're sure she's breathing well on her own and there aren't any other problems. But I think she's going to be fine."

A day or so... Mike swallowed, his throat dry. Rayna...

"Rayna wanted to breastfeed, room in..." he started, then trailed off miserably. They'd had such plans, done everything they could to make sure things went right. What had happened? Why was he sitting here holding what could very well be a motherless child? What in the world was he going to do with a baby to raise, and no wife--Mike shivered, refusing to finish the thought. Beside him, Wyatt backed off and made room for Dixie, the nurse holding out several plastic strips.

Dr. Aguilera's gaze was kind , and she rested her hand on Mike's shoulder as he shifted the baby to one arm. Dixie took his other arm and fastened the identification band around his wrist, then found the baby's arm in the maze of blankets and attached a second band around her tiny wrist before tucking it back in. Mike watched her take Dr. Aguilera's clipboard and fasten a third strip to it. That one must be for the mother. He swallowed hard, held his daughter a little closer. Would Rayna ever make use of that ID strip?

"That's all still possible, Mr. Stoker." Dr. Aguilera's voice brought his thoughts away from Rayna, from the dark void of not knowing what was happening with her. "It's not unheard of for babies to sleep twelve hours or so after birth. This little one will probably sleep for at least the next few hours, and then we'll see what we can do after that." One finger tapped the plastic around his wrist. "This ID band will get you in to see her in the NICU; I'd like to see you there as often as possible. For her sake..." Her voice trailed away and she cleared her throat, smiling and then stepping away, looking at her clipboard. It didn't matter, Mike knew what she meant.

"In cases like this, it's best to get the father bonding with the child as soon as possible, especially if..." Dixie had hurried him past the doctor's back, pulled him into the exam room and shut the door on the doctor's voice, the specialist unaware that the father in this "case" had overheard her words. It didn't take much imagination to fill in the rest of that statement.

Dixie must have seen something in his face now, because she suddenly appeared at his side, squatting down and touching the baby's head gently.

"So, Mike, does she have a name beyond 'Baby Stoker'?"

A name? The girl's name he and Rayna had agreed upon after hours of dickering and an out and out fight or three was Karen. Agreed? Hardly. Rayna had finally capitulated in the face of his stubborn refusal to even consider the name she wanted. The name she had insisted belonged to this child, should their baby be a girl, the name that Mike had flatly rejected, even as a middle name, was Zoe. It was Greek, meant 'life' or something like that--and Mike stared down at the tiny bundle of life in his arms, this new life, this life that almost wasn't...

"Zoe," he heard himself say, as if from a very long distance away. He hoped that somehow, wherever she was, in the next room or the next life, Rayna would hear him, and know that he'd finally heard her.

&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&

Ashes denote that fire was.
~~Emily Dickinson

Hank knew it was hopeless the minute he saw Roy and Johnny. Slumped on one shoulder against the wall beside the base station, Johnny stared at the floor; Roy, leaning back beside him, had both hands shoved deep in his pockets. Their silent island of grief made barely an eddy in the busy flow of trauma management about them. Hank hesitated, then slowed and stopped. Two orderlies pushed a gurney by him, and he closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself for what was to come. He'd made the most important phone calls from the station; now there was just this, and no getting around it. His path was clear.

Roy looked up immediately when he stopped in front of them; Johnny just stared into the distance. Hank wondered exactly who had thought it would be a good idea to put paramedics in blue. It only emphasized the dark crimson stains spattered on their uniforms.

"Guys?" he asked. Roy shook his head before he could get any thing else out.

"He's in surgery, but..." The paramedic's slumped posture said it all, and Hank tasted ashes. Damn. He'd hoped...

"Too much blood," Johnny mumbled. "He damn near bled to death while we were cutting him out. We couldn't even get in there to put on any pressure bandages on the surface stuff. He was in hypovolemic shock before we even got him out of the engine. And the god-damned driver of that god-damned cement truck is just gonna walk away, cuts and bruises, that's all." Johnny spat the last words.

Another empty gurney was wheeled by, a single orderly this time, and Hank barely sidestepped a nurse's headlong rush. She didn't even look up when she bumped his side, just pushed ahead with her clipboard. Hank watched her disappear into a treatment room. Well, no sense putting it off any longer. The family would be here soon; it would be best if they found their son's Captain already in place, ready with what cold comfort he had for them. He looked at his paramedics, opened his mouth to tell them he was headed up to the waiting room.

"Cap?"

Pushing his grief aside, Hank waited patiently, trying not to stare at the bloodstains until Roy finally looked at him, not lifting his head, just staring up from under his bangs.

"Mike's here, too."

Johnny made a noise like he was going to throw up. Hank threw one alarmed look at him, then turned back to Roy.

"What the--? How--Mike?" Hank swallowed, suddenly feeling as sick as Johnny looked. "What happened? Last I heard they had a still alarm at the community college!"

Roy nodded, his face grim. Traffic on the handy talky Johnny clutched in one hand caught them all by surprise, and Roy waited until they were sure it was another squad being toned out before he answered.

"It was Rayna. She had a class there tonight."

Hank, busy running through possible scenarios that would have left his engineer-temporarily-detailed-as-captain injured, took a minute to process Roy's statement. He stared blankly at them.

"Rayna? Wha--the baby?"

This time it was Johnny who moved, shook his head. Roy was inspecting his shoes.

"Looks like she's going to be okay," Johnny said. "At least as far as they can tell right now. Wyatt...he did a damn good job on her. The doc admitted her to the NICU, mostly as a precaution." Johnny resumed his stare off into the distance.

"Her?" Hank latched onto the small detail to avoid the larger.

Roy nodded, and smiled just a bit.

"Yeah. Little girl. She looks like Rayna, red hair and all."

"Good thing," Stanley said, but the joke was old and did nothing to alleviate the gloom. He hesitated, then took the plunge. "Rayna?"

Roy shook his head and shrugged, and Johnny was lost again in whatever web his grief had woven. Hands braced on his hips, Hank insisted on more information.

"What happened? I didn't think Rayna was due for another month."

"She wasn't." Roy's voice was soft, limiting his information to their little group while the hospital went on saving lives around them. "It was a placental abruption. The placenta separates prematurely from the uterus. Starts hemorrhaging. Sometimes it can be treated, isn't much of a problem. But with Rayna's age and her history of early and precipitous deliveries...between that and the severity of the abruption, she went into labor."

"More blood," Johnny muttered, before putting a hand over his eyes. "You know, I think I've seen enough blood today to last me two lifetimes." Hank looked at him, then at Roy. Nothing like living one of your worst nightmares to age a man. Roy shrugged, his expression bleak.

"She looked really bad when they brought her in. They couldn't control the hemorrhaging."

Hank rubbed a hand over his face, but it didn't work. Nothing about this day's horrors changed. A tech wheeled a portable X-Ray unit by; Hank watched it get eaten by the doors of an anonymous treatment room. A candy striper manhandled a loaded laundry basket down the hall, and Hank looked away before he had to see if there were any bloody sheets there. Damn, Mike and Rayna had been so excited about that baby. He felt a brief flash of guilt, thinking of his own three happy, healthy children. They'd been lucky; Andrea's pregnancies had been easy on all of them. Hank rubbed his hand over his face again, forced himself to remain present, to focus on the necessary details.

"Where is she now?"

"Surgery," Johnny whispered, and Roy closed his eyes.

Well, that was economical; he could handle both his disasters from the same place. Hank supposed he should be grateful for small favors. The next question was harder, but Roy saved him from having to ask it.

"Besides the abruption, the placenta was incomplete. They're going in to remove the pieces that are still attached, and try to stop the hemorrhaging. The doctors wouldn't really say one way or the other. She'd lost a lot of blood."

Oh god. Hank swallowed more ashes, closed his eyes, willed his voice to work.

"Mike?" he finally asked, dreading the answer. What would Mike do, left alone with a baby to raise? What was he doing now? And they had another tragedy for him, on top of the one with his wife. Roy was shaking his head.

"He went up to NICU after they took Rayna to surgery." He took a deep breath. "Cap...We...we didn't have a chance to tell him about Chet. He was in pretty bad shape and we didn't--"

"Don't tell him." The decision was instantaneous. Hank shook his head at Roy and Johnny's obvious doubt. "He's got enough on his plate right now; he doesn't need this. Just wait until we know something for sure."

"About who?" Johnny asked, and Hank resisted the urge to correct his grammar.

"He doesn't need anything else to worry about," he insisted instead. "We can tell him later."

Johnny still looked dubious, but Roy was nodding as they headed for the elevator and the room for waiting. The older paramedic had a family, he understood. For Johnny, the department was his family; it didn't make sense not to tell one member about another's disaster. But sometimes there was only so much a man could bear. They couldn't take Mike's worry about Rayna away, but they could save him this much. If Johnny and Roy's report was correct, there'd be enough time to add to Mike's grief, when maybe he'd had some good news to hold him up.

&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&

My heart, being hungry, feeds on food
the fat of heart despise.
~~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Roy's coffee slopped over his hand, but Johnny didn't seem to notice either Roy's exasperation or the mess he'd made when he jogged Roy's elbow. Marco's voice trailed off as he followed Johnny's gaze, and all three men watched Mike hesitate in the doorway, throwing a more than slightly panicked glance around the overly full surgery waiting area. Then, hunching his shoulders, his visible hand clenched into a fist, Mike turned and disappeared back into the hallway.

"He looks like hell," Marco said, shifting in his chair and rubbing his knee. The brace he wore beneath the loose chino slacks made his bad leg look half again as big as the other one.

"Can you blame him?" was Johnny's retort as, finally aware of Roy's futile search for a tissue, a napkin, anything to clean up his hand, he reached around Marco and grabbed a box of tissues from the small table there and tossed it at his partner.

"Does he know..." Marco started, and Roy shook his head, looking in vain for a place to deposit the sopping paper in his hand.

"No," he said, Johnny for once letting him speak. "We didn't have a chance to tell him earlier, and then Cap...Cap said to wait until we knew something for sure."

"It's probably best," Marco said at the same time as Johnny's "I still think he's gonna be pissed we didn't tell him."

"He's got enough on his plate right now," Roy said, already tired of this argument. "Don't you think?"

Marco acknowledged that point with a sideways nod, Johnny with a deeper scowl.

"I had no idea...I mean, I thought he sounded pretty shaky when he called the still alarm in," Marco said, staring down at his own cup of long-cold coffee. "But I had no idea...I would have sent the first available squad. I--"

"You did what you could, Marco. We all did. Some days there's just nothing you can do." Roy said, looking pointedly at a sullen Johnny, and the full weight of the day's events settled on all of them for a moment. Marco broke the silence.

"I heard he nearly passed out, right after they got here."

Roy'd had enough. He knew they didn't mean anything, he knew they were just processing, just trying to get a grip on the twin tragedies of the day, but he wasn't going to sit here and listen to Johnny and Marco gossip about Mike. He got up, held up his empty cup in answer to Johnny's questioning gaze, and headed for the coffee maker. A glance at the sludge in the bottom of the pot changed his mind. He tossed both cup and used tissue on top of the overflowing garbage can, and, putting both hands in his pockets, turned to look about the room.

He and Johnny were just two more uniforms in a room overflowing with them. Tight knots of firefighters in blue shirts conversed quietly with others in civvies; the department presence far overwhelming the civilians present. Over against the far wall, beneath a muted painting so abstract as to be impossible to decipher, Captain Stanley and Chief McConnike sat talking with Chet's parents and his sister and a black-suited priest.

Staring at Mrs. Kelly, holding tightly to both her husband's and her daughter's hands, it dawned on Roy that he didn't know if anyone had thought to ask Mike about calling his or Rayna's families. He looked at the door where Mike had so briefly appeared, then looked back to find Cap staring at him. When their gazes met across the room, Cap raised his eyebrows. Roy nodded, having already made the decision in the split second before Cap made his silent suggestion.

The lone figure of his friend stood at the end of the long hallway. His turnout pants an incongruous match with his uniform shirt, Mike leaned wearily against the pale pink wall, staring through the window into the night. Outside the softly lit hallway and several floors down, traffic moved like bright jewels against the black earth and Roy knew it would be cooling off now that the sun was down. Not that it ever got that cold here in Southern California, but this time of year it would cool off enough to make it safe to call this weather 'fall' as opposed to 'summer.'

"Mike?"

For a minute Roy thought Mike was going to ignore him, and he tensed, unsure whether or not to pursue this intrusion on his friend's vigil. Then Mike moved, shifted just enough to glance over at Roy, acknowledging his presence before turning his attention back out the window. Roy relaxed a bit, took half a step closer to Mike. Okay, he could stay.

"Mike, did you need us to call anyone for you?" Mike was shaking his head even as Roy asked the question. He didn't bother to look at Roy when he answered.

"Reynolds called them, when they got back to the station."

"Oh." Roy felt a flash of embarrassment; Mike's temporary crew was taking better care of him than his real friends, his real crew. But then Mike wasn't going to be part of 51s A-shift for much longer. "Well, if you need us to pick anyone up for you..."

Mike thought about it, and shook his head again.

"I think...I think Reynolds has it all taken care of." His shrug was a crippled, one-shouldered thing. "I...they won't be coming in until tomorrow morning, anyway."

"Oh." There wasn't much to say then, so Roy turned and stared out the window with Mike. He wasn't sure how long they stood that way. He only knew that the silence built for an uncomfortably long time--from his perspective anyway. Mike moved finally, his hand coming up to press on the window. Fingertips first, each one placed carefully against the glass, then slid out slowly until his entire hand was pressed flat against the clear pane. After a minute, he pulled his hand back, keeping his fingers on the glass until it was just the fingertips touching. Roy, watching Mike's hand, didn't hear what he said at first. "What?" Roy leaned forward a bit, peered closely at what he could see of Mike's face. His friend's lips were lifted in a slight, wry grin.

"I said, I slept with Dori."

The non sequitur baffled Roy. He frowned, trying to make the mental leap to whatever subject Mike was trying to bring up. Then suddenly the name processed. Dori? My god, did he really mean Dori? Roy opened his mouth and tried to think of something to say.

"Dori? When?" was all that came out, sounding more than a bit strangled. Roy flinched, and Mike's lips lifted in that tiny smile once more.

"Long time ago. About four years..." He paused, did the sucker thing on the window with his fingers again, glanced at Roy. "It was the third year after...after."

After. Mike didn't have to say anymore; Roy's nightmarish memories from today were already being overlaid by memories from years ago: Mike missing, not showing up for work; the engine company stopping by to find his house trashed and obviously broken into; the terrible discovery of Mike and his friend Dori trapped in the burning barn behind her house--and the even more horrific discovery of what had been done to them. They'd nearly lost Dori at the scene; they'd all been afraid they'd lost Mike forever in the haze of grief and self-recrimination he'd walked in for months afterwards. And Chet...Chet had been the one who'd smelled the smoke, called their attention to the fire when they were so consumed with their worry for Mike they'd nearly missed the opportunity to rescue him.

Roy stared at the wall behind Mike, trying to blink away the image of his friend, beaten and bloody, his face and torso covered in a fine maze of deliberate razor cuts...

Then another image appeared: Dori at the fireman's picnic three years after the attack. Laughing and flirting with them all, full-figured and vivacious, only the scars on her face had tied her to the pale woman he remembered from the fire and the hospital afterward. Mike had brought her to the picnic, seemed proud as any big brother to show her off, how well she was doing at putting her life back together. And never any indication from him that there was anything more than friendship going on between them.

"The year you brought her to the fireman's picnic?" he heard someone ask, and realized it was his own voice as Mike nodded. "Oh," he heard himself say in response, when what he was really thinking was, "Who knew Mike was a boob man?" And here they all thought Rayna and her abundant figure were just aberrations in the steady stream of beach girls and anorexic nurses Mike and Johnny and Chet and Marco had all attracted.

"Remember I took off, ditched you all that year?" Mike asked, his hand falling limply away from the window. He didn't look at Roy, just stared at whatever visions the glass held for him.

Roy nodded automatically. Each spring following the attack Mike had grown morose and sullen and more depressed as the 'anniversary' date approached. Cap and Roy had done their best to distract him by pulling him into their own family lives; Chet, Marco and Johnny's attempts to cheer him up had ranged from bar hopping to camping. Roy suspected all they'd really done was give Mike new fodder for his nightmares. He'd disappeared that third year, before they could con him into any of their "Let's help Mike forget" plans. There'd been a brief note on his door indicating he'd be back in time for work the following Thursday and nothing else. Anger flashed through Roy, fueled by today's grief. All that worry about Mike, all their efforts to help, and Mike had just let them fret while he was out...out...

Getting laid.

Small wonder he'd refused their help, with Dori on the side for comfort.

Roy took a deep breath and pushed his anger away. It wouldn't help matters; didn't even really matter at this point. Mike was a deeply private man, always had been. For whatever reason he'd chosen Roy as momentary confessor. Forcing himself to focus on his friend, Roy conjured up a small smile and what was supposed to be a forgiving expression. But Mike had turned away from him, back to the window. His face was visibly flushed, and Roy cursed his own inability to hide his reactions to Mike's confession. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Mike was talking again, his hand back up on the window, flexing and pushing at the glass.

"I...It wasn't my idea. She called a few days beforehand, wanted me to meet her up on the coast somewhere. I had no idea...I just knew it sounded better than whatever you guys would be planning. She... we..." Mike shrugged and pushed on the window pane again. "When I got there she'd only rented one room. She said..." His voice trailed off and his hand was still for a moment. Again it fell to his side. "She said she trusted me. Needed me. That maybe we both needed someone who didn't have to ask--didn't have to have the scars explained to them."

Still leaning against the wall, the fluorescent light from a nearby lamp caught Mike's face just right, highlighting the faint curving scars on his cheek. Roy stared at the scarring, then it was his turn to flush when Mike turned and caught him staring. Mike's lips twisted in a tiny smile, and Roy opened his mouth for another apology. He rarely noticed the facial scars anymore, and the tall engineer wore t-shirts to work all the time. None of his crewmates had seen the brutal scarring on his chest and stomach more than three or four times in the seven or so years since the attack. The entire thing had simply become part of Mike, who he was.

But again Mike hadn't waited for Roy's apology; he'd already turned away.

"I said 'no'," he said. "I wasn't about to. For one thing, I didn't want to think about facing San--her brother after anything like that. But..." Mike shrugged, the hand went to the window again. His fingers and then his palm slowly pressed flat against it as he spoke. "She'd brought a bottle of wine, a gift from Sandy. I'd brought a bottle of Cuervo. And we both...we'd both brought our memories. And then she had on this sexy little excuse for a dress..." Mike's smile was reflected in the glass before him, rather than shared.

"She seduced you," Roy said, trying to put the best face on it that he could. His hand firm against the window, Mike shrugged.

"I let her seduce me," he countered, and Roy could find nothing to say after that. Mike kept his hand on the window, and spoke so softly that Roy found himself leaning in to listen. "She was right. I hadn't dated...there hadn't been anyone...not since that night. No one to...and the time or two I did try... they asked so many questions about the scars it put me off entirely. It just wasn't worth it." Mike's gaze dropped, and Roy nodded automatically, even if Mike wouldn't see. No one said anything, and Roy finally had to break the silence.

"You seemed better, after..." he offered lamely. Still staring at his feet, Mike snorted; laughing or crying, Roy couldn't tell. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Johnny peering out of the waiting room; Marco followed him out into the hall, both men looking toward Roy and Mike. He shook his head and sent a sharp, silent "no" their way. Frowning, Johnny took a step toward them, but Marco grabbed his arm and said something. Johnny scowled, but Marco kept a grip on his arm until he nodded. Roy bit back a sigh of relief when both men turned to greet Coughlin and Sanders from 32s, just coming out of the elevator. All four headed into the waiting room a few seconds later.

When Roy turned back, Mike hadn't moved, except to lift his head to look back out the window and slide his hand further down the pane.

"I..." he started, then stopped. The silence lasted until Roy dared hope his time as confessor was over. Then Mike looked directly at Roy for the first time that night. The steady gaze lacked both apology and repentance--emotions for which Roy realized belatedly he was searching. Mike's voice was calm, regretless. "We kept...meeting. Off and on for a few months. She was down here for classes or something every week for six weeks or so. Then there was that haz mat seminar in San Francisco. After that I met her up in the mountains at her brother's cabin a couple of times...and back at the beach..."

Roy stared at Mike, trying to keep his shock to himself this time. Talk about keeping secrets. But Mike hadn't finished. This time the window muffled his voice as he spoke to it.

"Then...Dori, she met this guy in Sacramento. She came to see me; we'd planned a..."

Tryst Roy's mind supplied as Mike hesitated, but he pushed the thought away. Mike's recital resumed, the other man evidently ignorant of Roy's uncharitable internal commentary.

"We were at the beach, at...at that first place. When she showed up she was so excited. So happy. Told me I was the one who made this new relationship possible. Hugged me like I was her brother, told me I would always be special to her, but the upshot of everything was she...she didn't need me anymore." Mike shivered, and hunched his shoulders. "And all the way home that night all I could think was that she hadn't asked me if I still needed her." Another long pause, and then Mike did laugh, an ancient, wheezing cough. "What's funny is I think that's the first time I ever realized that I needed someone. Wanted someone. To come home to, to talk to, to just be with when things were rough at work or, or...whatever."

Mike's hand fell to his side again; the arm he leaned against ended in a tight fist. The gaze he turned on Roy was bleak, haunted by fears past and present.

"It was a year before I met Rayna, and I remember thinking for the longest time that there wasn't going to be anyone for me, that no one would ever be there when I got home; no one would ever worry about me when I was late, or there was a big fire, or anything." The words were ragged, hurried, stumbling over themselves, as if Mike was afraid they'd get away if he didn't say them fast enough. Roy reached out, put a hand toward Mike's shoulder, but he kept talking. Roy pulled his hand back and listened.

"I decided...I decided I would even answer questions about the scars, explain it all. I just...I just wanted someone. And there wasn't anyone, no one, and then, then I met Rayna--" Mike's voice broke, and he turned away from Roy, staring out the window again. "She never...she never even asked about the scars. Not ever. I finally told her about them, about all of it. Turned out she'd seen it on the news when it happened, and she'd figured out that it was me the first time we...when she saw...She was just waiting for me to bring it up. When I finally told her, she--" Mike broke off, the renewed flush on his pale cheeks obvious, even in the dim light. He swallowed hard, and his hand came out, another fist, rapping twice on the window. "I need her, Roy," he rasped, pressing his hand flat against the glass again. "I need her. The baby needs her, but I need her even more. I--What am I gonna do if--"

Roy reached out and squeezed Mike's shoulder hard, until Mike looked at him, his blue eyes dark caverns of grief in the muted light.

"Mike--" The usual helpful platitudes and encouraging words failed him, shriveled on the tip of his tongue as he faced his friend's fear, and Roy swallowed his own grief back. "She'll be okay, Mike," he finally offered, lamely, cursing himself and suddenly wishing for Johnny and his glib tongue. Why had he warned Johnny off earlier? "She'll be okay," he repeated. Mike stared at him for a moment longer, then nodded, like a man being thrown a life preserver he wasn't sure attached to anything. Still gripping Mike's shoulder, Roy barely heard his friend's whispered words.

"She has to be."

&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&

In the end, their best efforts to protect Mike failed. Hank took a deep breath, turned away from Mrs. Kelly's grief for just a moment and looked up to see Mike step into the waiting room, Roy at his heels. Mike stood stock still, staring around him, and Hank saw the frown growing as the fire department presence registered. He nodded to those who approached him, made some response to their congratulations muted by sympathy, but all the while Hank could see the wheels turning. Mike was anything but stupid and more observant than most. Standing slightly behind Mike, Roy caught Hank's gaze and spread his hands helplessly. Johnny and Marco peeled away from their group; the former firefighter limping behind the paramedic as they headed across the room toward their friends.

And then Mike's eyes found Hank, and it was obvious when the tear-stained presence of the Kellys next to him registered. Mike turned suddenly to Roy, trapping him against the wall. Hank excused himself from the Kelly family and headed over to defend his senior paramedic. Johnny and Marco made room for him beside Mike, just as Roy was finishing up his explanation.

"It was my decision not to tell you, Mike," Hank said, and found his own control near breaking when he met Mike's anguished gaze. "You had enough to deal with between Rayna and the baby; I didn't want to worry you until we knew for sure."

Mike looked away, blinking. Hank waited a second, reached for Mike's shoulder.

"There wasn't anything you could have done." Mike shook his head, swallowed, stared at the floor rather than the men gathered around him.

"I...I set that maintenance run up last week, before, before Battalion called about the detail at 32s..."

"It's not your fault, Mike. You couldn't have known, no one could have," Roy broke in, and, his hand still on Mike's shoulder, Hank flashed him a grateful look.

"Besides, you know Chet," Johnny added. "He was so thrilled to have the chance to drive the engine all by himself. He's been itching for an excuse like that since he passed the engineer's exam. You have to admit, when it comes to the engine you don't exactly share."

Johnny's attempt at humor fell flat, as Mike looked up, his face pale.

"Any time, anywhere," he whispered, as if by rote, staring at some specter no one else could see. Hank frowned, tightened his grip on Mike's shoulder as Mike repeated himself. "Any time, anywhere. And it always happens in threes..." From the way Roy and Johnny moved in to stand beside him, they had the same impression that Hank did, that his engineer was about to slide to the floor in a boneless heap. Mike shivered, then seemed to reconnect with the real world. He stared at Hank, horrified. "I...Chet said that. That he'd take my place any time, anywhere I... it was supposed to be me--"

"That's ridiculous, Mike," Roy said, and Hank was again grateful that at least one of his men had found his tongue. Marco's voice cut in.

"Mike, you can't say that. It was someone else's stupidity. The idiot driver missed the stop sign, it's his fault. If it had been you driving, you might not even have been at the intersection at that point."

"And then Chet would be okay," Mike said, looking sick. "I shouldn't have--"

Hank sighed, shook Mike just a bit, until the engineer focused on him.

"Mike, you can't say that. Marco's right, it was someone else's stupidity." Hank held his gaze, searching for his calm, rational friend somewhere in the haunted eyes staring at him. "It could have happened to anyone," he went on, but the arrival of a scrubbed out doctor in the doorway interrupted him. Tired, weary, the woman's shirt and hair were sweaty, and blood dotted her shoes. Half the room stood, and the entire room fell silent. Wyatt Sanders and Ellen Coughlin, 32s paramedics--Mike's paramedics, Hank told himself--shouldered their way out of the crowd. Still in uniform, Ellen's hand clenched around a walky-talky, they came to stand behind Mike with Hank and his own crew.

"Mr. Stoker?" the doctor enquired.

Someone behind them coughed, and someone else, Mrs. Kelly or her daughter, bit back a stifled sob. Beneath Hank's hand Mike shivered, then took a deep breath.

"Here," he said, and Hank's hand fell away from his arm as he stepped forward.

&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&~&

Who's to say where the wind will take you?
Who's to know what it is will break you?
I don't know which way the wind will blow.
Who's to know when the time has come around?
I don't want to see you cry.
But I know that this is not goodbye.
~~Bono & The Edge

Mike started to shake as the door to Rayna's room slipped shut behind him. He took a deep breath and clenched his fists, silently cursing the fool who'd designed turnout pants with cargo pockets but not pockets to shove your fists into. Staring at the floor got him past the enquiring gaze of a nearby nurse. After that it was only a few steps down the hall to a small sheltering alcove that had surely been set here for just such a purpose. He fell rather than sat in one of the two overstuffed chairs there, put his hands over his face and tried to collect the pieces of himself this night had scattered about the hospital.

Rayna would be all right. Rayna was going to be all right; she's all right... He closed his eyes behind his fingers and repeated his mantra over and over, but it had no effect on his trembling limbs. His wife was going to be fine, despite the fact that the doctors were still tossing out vague possibilities of renal failure and intravenous clotting. But he'd seen their eyes, seen their faces on a thousand runs in his years with the department. The danger passed, the fire out, all that remained was the overhaul--the healing.

Surrounded by the clear tubing of oxygen and IV lines, rich red blood dripping slowly through a vein into her depleted body, it didn't matter that Rayna had still been bluish pale, her usually dark lips barely blushed darker than her skin. It didn't matter that she didn't look much better than she had before the frantic surgery that had saved her life. None of it mattered, because when he'd taken her hand and called to her, she'd opened those cinnamon eyes and tried to smile at him. He'd shown her their twin plastic ID bands in answer to her whispered question about the baby, and gotten another faint smile. He wasn't sure she'd been awake long enough to hear the baby's name, but there would be time to tell her that later, when she'd slept off the rest of the anesthetic and could really hear him.

Later... What a wonderful concept; what an incredible word, especially since hours ago it hadn't looked like they'd have a later. Mike's throat constricted in a painful cramp around the lump that was his heart. They were both going to be okay, Rayna and Zoe--Zoe, his daughter--his wife--his family.

So why was he falling apart now?

Mike leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. He pressed his fingers against his eyes, willed the embarrassing breakdown away. He forced his body to stop its shaking, caught himself rocking slightly in the chair, and stopped that too. He'd made it this far, he could make it further now he knew everything was going to be okay...

Pressure was supposed to stop leakage, wasn't it? The tears escaped anyway, sliding down his face around his hands, making their salty, bitter way even into the corners of his mouth. Soundless, noiseless, undeniable. He'd come so close to losing them both, so damn close. The shaking started again; Mike battled and failed utterly to control it.

In the distance the soft noises went on, conversation, machines, shoes squeaking by on the tiled floor. But no one bothered Mike in his tiny refuge; the footsteps that paused twice outside it moved on when he ignored them. Wise nurses, here in the Surgical ICU. He had no idea how long it was before the constriction in his throat eased and the trembling finally went away, along with the tears. Mike took a deep, calming breath from behind his hands, and then another one. More footsteps approached, slower, older, passing by and then returning. Mike kept his hands up on his face, hunched his shoulders, willed this invader away.

"Mike?"

It was a long second before Mike wiped hurriedly at his face, and looked up to meet Captain Stanley's worried gaze. Stanley's mouth was working, but nothing came out for a second.

"Ray--Rayna? She didn't---she's not--"

Flushing, Mike shook his head. He opened his mouth, but Stanley had already moved on to the next worry. His frown deepened.

"The baby? She's--"

Again, Mike shook his head, forced himself to swallow the remnants of the knot in his throat, found his voice somewhere between his chest and his stomach.

"Zoe. She's--they're both fine," he croaked, and he was fighting laughter, not tears. Gripping Mike's shoulder firmly, Stanley looked both worried and relieved, and Mike closed his eyes and willed his ping-ponging emotions into stasis. A box of tissues was in front of his face when he opened his eyes, and Stanley sank into the chair facing his as Mike wiped at his nose and his still damp eyes.

"It all kind of catches up to you, doesn't it?" Stanley said softly, as Mike searched for a place to dispose of his used tissue. Typically there wasn't anywhere, so he just dropped it on the small table between the chairs. Hands limp in his lap, slumped in his seat, Stanley was watching him, waiting for an answer, so Mike nodded. The silence held and grew while Mike stared at their knees, the two of them plus the mealy green chairs nearly filling the alcove. Hank sighed and rubbed a hand over his own face. Like most grieving fathers, he looked suddenly years older than he had just last week, and Mike sank back into his own chair as he realized why Stanley had sought him out.

"Chet?"

Mike waited while Stanley avoided his gaze. Another deep sigh, the sheen of tears so recently in his own eyes now flickered and filmed over Stanley's.

"He didn't make it, Mike. They lost him on the operating table." Hank stared morosely at his knee, flicked an imaginary piece of lint away. "Brackett said...Brackett said it was a miracle they even got him here alive. They had to try, but...there never really was any hope."

A miracle. And here Mike sat with two miracles to his name tonight, two lives for his tally, while the Kellys sat upstairs mourning. Mike shivered again and hoped his companion didn't notice. The smell of smoke from his turnouts mingled with the antiseptic smells of the ICU; the other chair thumped on the floor as Stanley shifted in his seat. Mike stared at his knuckles and tried to sort it all out, reaching for answers, reasons, beyond the knotted clump of grief and joy. Maybe...maybe tonight's store of miracles had been used up; maybe, like he should have been in Chet's place in the engine, someone else should have been in Chet's place here at the hospital. Maybe Rayna or Zoe weren't supposed to be--

These types of things always come in threes, Rayna's voice insisted in his mind, and Mike shifted, his chair's turn to thump on the dingy carpet. There was a cobweb in the corner above Stanley's head, nearly indistinguishable from the ceiling tiles, but there, nonetheless. Rayna's belief in the synchronicity of threes was steadfast, no matter how often he'd tried to tell his intelligent, educated wife she was setting herself up for the fulfillment of her superstition with the very expectation of it. But if Rayna was right, then where was the third miracle? Where was the miracle that should have been Chet's?

Stanley cleared his throat, and when Mike looked away from the cobweb and at his Captain, the man's gaze was sympathetic.

"Kinda tosses you up inside, doesn't it? Leaves you not really knowing which way to jump."

Mike nodded. Two tragedies averted, one to walk through. Where was the third miracle? He stared at the cobweb again, wondered if he could find the small spider that inhabited it, wondered how it survived in this place of rabid disinfectant.

And suddenly, Mike knew. Any time, any where. Two weeks ago he'd laughed when Chet popped that statement off with his usual machismo; they'd both laughed. Tonight he'd been consumed with guilt over the conviction that it should have--would have--been his own life they were mourning instead of Chet's. Mike's father had died two months after Mike's eleventh birthday; his grandfather when his father was just a baby. If things truly happened in threes, Zoe should have been a third generation of Stokers to grow up fatherless. His stomach turned. Did Chet know just what a bargain he had made with his flippant statement? "Young soul" had been Rayna's assessment of the irrepressible firefighter, a soul new into the universe, still learning, still deciding between the paths before him. Had Chet's soul matured a little in this life, realized that it was time he step up to the cosmic table and ante up?

Zoe...His and Rayna's baby...would she have even been alive tonight if not for Chet's sacrifice? It had been a busy night for the County Fire Department; if Mike's engine crew hadn't taken it on themselves to call their own paramedics in off another, minor run, it would probably have been too late for both Rayna and the baby by the time a squad had been available. If he'd still been at 51s, would Mike would have been trapped, bleeding out in the wrecked engine when his wife called for him? Would there have been anyone available to help, any cavalry to ride in and save the day for mother or child?

Maybe it wouldn't have been just one but three Stokers, dead in one fell night.

Cap's chair thumped twice as he shifted, but Mike's shudder had nothing to do with that. He was the third miracle, all right, sitting here, with Cap, and if not for his third miracle there probably wouldn't have been a first or a second miracle.

He shivered again, suddenly chilled. Leaning back in his chair, Mike stared up at the faint grey shadow on the ceiling tiles and waited for the goose bumps to stop chasing themselves up and down his body.

The hard fact was that no matter how it all weighed out on the universal scale, Maat's or whomever else Rayna would summon, Chet was still dead. The Kellys were mourning their son while he was grateful for the lives of his daughter and his wife. Mike closed his eyes and wished for Rayna's calm presence; this was entirely her bailiwick. He liked to think her metaphysical approach to life was just part of her charm, that it didn't affect his own world view. But then he was back to the thought that it was all because of Chet that he was still here to appreciate his wife's charms, that she was still here to charm him, and Chet was still dead and--

Mike found himself fighting laughter again. No, this did not mean he was going to name his baby after Chet. God, no. He sat up and turned the laugh that threatened into a cough. Staring at his knuckles avoided Captain Stanley's curious gaze, but it didn't help him find his way out of this metaphysical morass. What had Hank said just a few minutes ago? Kinda leaves you all tossed up inside, doesn't it? Yeah. "Tossed up" was as good a way as any to describe him right now, the twin strands of grief and guilt for his friend's death weaving through and confusing themselves with the overwhelming relief and gratitude for the lives of his wife and child--and for his own life. Not knowing whether to continue laughing or start weeping, Mike swallowed hard, and looked up.

His eyes weary with grief, Mike's former Captain was smiling at him.

"Well, Captain Stoker, you're a father now. Don't you have a baby to show off?"

Finit

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Don't forget to feed the author! inkling@coho.net

Much muchas gracias to my own private, glow-in-the-dark cabal of toxic waste filters: JoAnn, Linda, MJ and MaryKateSensei. Like Flint, may my gratitude live forever--or at least until Dr. McCoy arrives to announce, "It's dead, Jim."

Thanks to those who shared their precious spare time and their technical expertise, Margaret-Anne Park, Pat Embury, and especially Dawn Valley. These gracious ladies have the real license to do this stuff. (Though I swear I do have an Artistic License around here somewhere...) Please assign all blame for any and all departures from rational, believable events to Muse!Mike and not these kind folks.

This story wove together threads from my previous stories that I always sort of knew intersected, but I wasn't quite sure how to make it work. As usual, Mike figured it out first and he shocked the hell out of me when he finally sat down to tell how things went. Hopefully it wasn't too confusing, even if you're not familiar with inkling's unE!verse.

To those who wonder, yes, this story was born in part from Johnny and Roy's infamous conversation in "Greatest Rescues of Emergency!", from which it could be intuited that our boy Chet was no longer among the living. Me being myself, I wondered just how the "stocky Irishman" had dearly departed. This little tragedy is what the demented muses sent me for my pondering. Hate mail may be sent to inkling@coho.net.