Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 364(@200wpm)___ 291(@250wpm)___ 243(@300wpm)
But for me to get to a random box from her all these days later was odd.
But I opened the box, nonetheless, and wished I hadn’t.
Because inside were three things.
One was a photo framed in an ornate gold trimmed picture frame, another was a bear.
A tiny little bear dressed in a fireman coat and hat.
The other was a note.
I didn’t want to get rid of this. I’m cleaning up my house for a move, and I just couldn’t give it away. I’ll want it back some day…just not today.
I’m sorry for everything, and I’m also grateful.
I hope you’ll accept my apology for how I’ve acted, and that you will forgive me.
<3 Mia.
I held the firefighter bear in my hand, remembering what it’d looked like in that little boy’s clutched fists, and swallowed the lump that formed in my throat.
The tones dropped, and I looked up at the red light above the door and winced.
I had a headache. Had one on and off for months now.
Ever since I’d met Mia.
Although we hadn’t spent much time together, we’d been through so much in that short time, and I found that I missed her.
Missed a lot of things about her, actually.
Like the way she laughed, and the way she smelled.
The way her smile drooped on one side.
I found myself dreaming about her a lot, and I hoped that maybe this olive branch she offered wasn’t riddled with thorns.
Because I really did miss her.
Standing up, I tucked the bear into my pocket and jogged outside into the bay where the ambulance was.
Today, I was on the bus.
I enjoyed the ambulance.
Especially when I had someone to drive it for me since people were stupid when it came to emergency vehicles.
“Yo,” PD said as he got into the driver’s seat. “What was in the box?”
I pulled the bear out of my pocked and showed him.
He cleared his throat.
“Shit,” he said gruffly.
I nodded.
My thoughts exactly.
“What’d we get? I wasn’t paying attention,” I asked.
“Fender bender from what I heard,” he answered, pulling out a full thirty seconds before the rest of the boys on the truck pulled out.
In East Texas, when ambulances were dispatched, the engines always dispatched with them, regardless of whether it was just a medical call or not.
The drive to the scene of the accident was riddled with stupid drivers, the banes of my existence.
I was getting less and less tolerant of all the bullshit that some drivers pulled on the road.
How freakin’ hard was it to pull over to the side of the road when you saw the red flashing lights coming up behind you?
Personally, I didn’t think it was that hard, but people never failed to surprise me, something that was happening more and more lately.
“Uh, oh,” PD said.
I looked up and growled.
“Fucking amateurs,” I said.
There were four people in front of a smashed up car, and all four of those people were from a volunteer fire department that was stationed just outside of the city limits.
The area of Kilgore that I worked saw a lot of calls that ran along the border, and the fire department they were with tried constantly to pick up the calls that were in the city limits.
Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal because we always wanted the patient’s safety to come first.
However, HEMS, this particular EMS service, didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.
Which also meant they didn’t know other people’s asses from that hole in the ground. Which, in turn, wound up fucking up the patient even more than they already were.
And none other than Tom Spurgis, the head dumbass in charge, was the first one to walk up to me the moment I got out of the truck.
“Ahh,” he said. “If it isn’t my favorite person ever, Taima.”
I grinned.
“What kind of patients do we have?” I asked, opting for business instead of the who has the bigger dick’ game that Tom wanted to play.
Tom narrowed his eyes.
“Sixty-one-year-old female; chief complaints are chest pain and abdominal pain. From the seatbelt,” he clarified.
I nodded and walked to the car, stopping when another HEMS member refused to move.
“Move,” I ordered shortly.
The man sneered.
He was new.
Obviously, he didn’t know me, because if he did, he wouldn’t be posturing. Instead, he would be moving his fucking ass.
“Easton,” Tom growled. “Move so they can look.”
Easton moved, but I could tell it was with the utmost reluctance.
He gave me about three feet, and I took it, stopping next to the window while the rest of the firefighters behind me started to get their gear ready to unstick the door that was keeping her pinned inside.
“Ma’am,” I said.
She shifted just her eyes to me.
“Hello,” she said the moment she saw me, awareness flashing in her eyes. “I’m okay.”
She wasn’t okay. She was grimacing in pain, and she was holding her chest.