“I don’t know! Help me find her!”
“I got out pretty early,” he told me as we weaved our way back through the gathering. “I didn’t see her come out, Tom.” His own voice was struck with fear she hadn’t come out.
“She’s here,” I told him confidently, desperately. “She has to be here.” I was trying so hard to hold on to that. My blood began to run cold as we reached the edge of people with no sign of January. “She’s here. She’s here.” I repeated over and over.
“Okay, okay,” Jason said, pacing the outside of the crowd. “We must have missed her. We had to have.”
My body began to shake in trepidation, in terror. I noticed a police cruiser nearby and ran to it. The back doors were open and I noticed a bullhorn sitting on the floorboard in front. I ran to the passenger’s side and opened the door, grabbing the horn. My trembling hands fumbled with the on switch and I numbly tried to work the buttons. I leaped onto the hood of the car and peered over the crowd.
“January!” I yelled as everyone’s shocked expressions turned my direction. “January MacLochlainn, are you there?!”
People began to search around themselves, searching for the name I’d just called out, but there was no answer and the dread began to run icy in my veins.
“January?” I asked them. “Please,” I begged as horror slowly thread through my words. “January, please. Please, answer me.”
But nothing.
My eyes searched rapidly but my body shuddered at the realization that she wasn’t there. The bullhorn slipped from my fingers, tumbling to the cobblestone below. Women surrounding the car drank in my shaking body and knew what the silent response meant. Many of their hands went to their mouths, a recognition of my supposed loss. The sight of their conclusions made me want to vomit. I jumped from the hood and ran smack into Jason who stood there, drawing the same conclusion of those around me.
“She just couldn’t hear me,” I told him.
“Of course,” he said, but his glassy eyes betrayed his words.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “She’s here. She’s here.”
“Tom,” he said quietly, placing his hand on my shoulder.
“No!” I said, throwing it off, but my body shut down and I was forced to drop to my knees. “She’s here. She’s got to be. She’s got to be.”
An ambulance blew by and the hope that’d been dying in my chest roared back to life.
“The hospital,” I told the ground.
“Come on,” Jason said, dragging me to my feet.
We ran up the block and hailed a passing cab. Jason told the driver to take us to the nearest hospital using his pocket translator. I was relieved we were moving but no matter how fast we were moving, it still wasn’t fast enough for me and I sat at the edge of my seat, hunched over the window, staring at the traffic ahead. My knee bounced at an ungodly pace.
I examined Jason’s face quickly, noting that neither of us seemed to have inhaled any smoke. Our mouths and noses were clear of black unlike a few I saw back at the club. I thanked God for small favors.
“She’s going to be there,” Jason said, reassuring me.
“I know,” I said, but not as confidently as I’d have liked.
I rubbed the palms of my hands together quickly and silently prayed that she would be there. We pulled up to the entrance of the hospital and jumped from the cab, leaving Jason to handle the transaction. I ran through the emergency doors and frantically searched the blackened faces of those who’d already arrived, but none of them matched my January’s. My heart flipped in my chest.
I ran up to a nurse. “I’m sorry. Do you speak English?”
She gave me a sympathetic smile and searched around the desk around her, finding a girl sitting at a desk nearby. She grabbed the girl’s sleeve and said something in French. The girl jumped up and took in my sooty clothing.
“Yes? I speak English.”
“Oh, thank God! I’m looking for a girl. She was in the fire.”
“What is her name?”
“January MacLochlainn,” I told her.
The girl typed on her keyboard and began shaking her head. “I’m sorry but there is no one here by that name.”
“What?” I asked in disbelief. “Are you sure? Can you check again?” I asked, my body back to trembling status but this time in exponential form.
“Of course,” she said and typed yet again. The expression on her face told me she’d gotten the same result.
“No, I’m sorry, sir. I have no one by that name. Can you describe her for me? There were several patients who couldn't be identified.”
“Uh, she was wearing a black dress,” I told the nurse. “She’s about five ten, or, uh, two meters tall, long brown hair, green eyes.” She’s amazing, unselfish, intelligent, sexy as hell. Her mere existence justifies mine.
“Just a moment,” she said and ran to the back.
Jason came up to me, his eyes asking me the news.
“They don’t have anyone in their system with January’s name,” I explained, feeling like my body was on autopilot. “She’s checking the patients who couldn’t be identified.”
Jason nodded.
I nervously paced the length of the receiving desk, running my fingers through the length of my hair over and over. Jason sat in a nearby chair, his thumbs drumming his thighs. Both our gazes were riveted by the doors for what felt like hours before the nurse came through with a smile on her face.
“She’s here,” she told us.
“Thank God,” Jason told me, slapping his hands to his face.
The worry, anxiety and helplessness I’d felt for the past hour came flooding from my body and I collapsed to the floor, unable to hold myself up. She weakened me in every way possible.
“Christ,” I whispered to the tile below me. My eyes filled with unshed tears and I fought to keep them in. I needed to see her.
Jason helped me as I struggled to my feet.
“How is she?” I asked when I had control of myself.
“She’s in a room and resting comfortably. She was burned slightly on the hip and is awaiting a physician.”
“Can I see her?
“Are you her spouse?”
“No, her- boyfriend.”
“I’m sorry but you’ll have to wait here until she’s released then.”
“Fine,” I said, falling into a chair by the ER entrance.
Jason sat beside me.
“Jesus,” Jason said simply beside me but the emotions of our ordeal were packed into the name.
“I know,” I said, my body still trembling from the adrenaline.
We were silent for a few minutes, trying to recover from the worry.
“I thought I was going to lose...” I began to say but couldn’t finish, choking on my words.
“Tom, it’s cool now,” Jason offered when I didn’t continue.
I breathed deeply and let it out slowly. “I almost had her in there, Jason. I had her fingers in my hands but wasn’t able to save her. I’ve failed her so miserably. I’m so ashamed of myself.
“If I had trusted her the way I should have from the beginning, I would have escorted her there instead of making her attend alone, making her search me out alone, making her save herself...alone.”
“You can’t beat yourself up, Tom. How would you have known the place was going to light up like the Fourth?”
“I can and I will. I let my past affect my future and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do that. I feel like a coward.”
January
I was shivering cold in that hospital bed. The temperature coupled with the fact that I was burned and that my adrenaline was starting to wear off was making me shiver. When the nurse came in to tell me that Tom and Jason were out front and looking for me, I felt such extraordinary relief that they were okay that I started to cry, but that didn’t mean I wanted to see Tom or even Jason for that matter.
Everything culminating in that moment before the fire was overwhelming and everything after was just plain cumbersome. Tears were the only relief I was being afforded in that moment because the hospital was busy I’d discovered after I’d woken and I was at the bottom of the priority totem pole. I’d have to wait for pain relief.
The burn wasn’t that bad. I’d probably have a little bit of a scar there but not much else. My dress wasn’t stuck to my body or anything. I’d been pushed against a railing near the source of the fire and couldn’t pull myself away because the crowd was edging me against it. I was one of the first out and therefore sent to the hospital immediately after being checked for injuries.
About an hour after, I was aware that Tom was waiting for me, they moved my gurney out into the hall to treat some of the more pressing patients. It was another two hours before they saw and treated my minor burn. At four thirty in the morning, they discharged me right there in the hallway and not a moment too soon as I was getting ready to curse them out in French and walk out on my own.
I needed to decide what I was going to do about Tom. To be honest with you, I didn’t even want to see his face. I wanted to walk right past him, flip him the bird for being so screwy with me and then head to my uncle’s in Ireland. I knew I would quit that lousy job if I saw Jason within five feet of me but also knew that would be a bad idea. I needed the money. I needed the connections. One thing I could definitely not compromise though was working with Thomas Eriksson ever again.
Tom’s treating me with such distance was one thing, something I could forgive. His leaving me to fend for myself at the club was something he would have needed a damn good excuse for and probably something I would have been able to listen to, but my near-death experience blew that chance right out the door.
My heart stopped in my chest. The decision had come without any consideration as to what it would do to my well-being. My brain wanted nothing to do with Tom any longer, but my heart screamed for me to run to him.
No, you’ve listened to your heart so much, January. It’s time to be sensible. He’s repeatedly shown you that he doesn’t care for you the way you care for him. He’s obviously still in love with Kelly. He’s pulling away out of guilt.
I stood up and removed my hospital gown in the bathroom, replacing it with my sooty, torn couture masterpiece. Oh well. I walked with purpose out the double doors and into the lobby.
One foot in front of the other one, I deliberately avoided eye contact with the lobby and burst through the front doors of the ER. Just when my stomach was settling the worry Tom would find me, I heard his voice, making my heart jump into my throat.
“January?” he asked groggily. Not a word from me, brother.
I hailed a passing cab but he didn’t stop. Jerk.
“January, are you okay?” he asked.
I sighed. Loudly. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking,” I told him, an arm raised for an oncoming cab.
“Where are you going?” he asked, confused.
“As far away from you as I can get.”
“Shit,” he said under his breath. “January, please just hear me out. I-I’m an idiot.”