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.Maybe the rain had washed out his plans, or maybe some premonition had kept the fifty-year-old veteran home today.C.W.frowned at her, the brown skin of his forehead crinkled in confusion.“Figured you’d be on today or I’d’a called you, too.”Reagan said, “I’m glad you’re here, C.W.”“Same goes,” he said before leaning toward Donna.“Why don’t you have something cold while we wait for the doctor? You like a Diet Coke, right?”When she ignored the offered can, Reagan took it and set it on the narrow table beside the sofa.Unlike the impersonal waiting areas situated around both the trauma and medical sections of the ER, the family room was as cozy and inviting as if it were in someone’s home.It was also the spot where the ER staff ensconced the families most likely to be hearing the worst news.“I’m here, too, Donna” Reagan lowered herself into a crouch and fought off the tickle of a cough.“I’m here for anything you need.”Donna nodded but turned her face so she wouldn’t have to make eye contact.Rising, Reagan backed off, thinking of how she’d pulled away from Jack out in the car, how his sympathy had threatened to breach the fragile hull of her composure.Whatever happened to Donna’s husband, before this day was over, Donna risked sinking beneath a flood tide of heartfelt offers and kindly meant advice.Reagan remembered that much from her father’s death, remembered her mother shrieking, “I can’t stand it anymore.Why can’t they just leave me alone?”As she and C.W.stepped back into the corridor, she saw Jack out of the corner of her eye as he flagged down one of the nurses.For a moment, Reagan’s attention snagged there, painful as a ragged nail when it caught and tore on fabric.Would the small Hispanic woman tell him it was over—that someone was coming to tell Donna Rozinski her husband of two years was gone?C.W.touched Reagan’s elbow.Unlike most days, today the man’s age showed in deep grooves beside his brown eyes and a gray cast to his skin.“Nobody’s come out yet, but from what I hear, a ceiling came down on Joe, a heavy beam across the back.He wasn’t breathing when they pulled him out.Paramedics revived him, but—”“So he was alive, right? He was breathing on his own by the time they got him here?”C.W.nodded stiffly.“He was, with oxygen.Took a lot of smoke, though.His mask got knocked off.And they had to dig him out from under a big pile of debris.”“The captain’s strong.He’ll make it.”Her gaze locked with C.W.’s and dared him to defy her.When she’d first been transferred to the station, he had made no secret of the fact that he had no use for a woman on the crew.“ ’Specially one the captain didn’t bother asking me about first,” he had told her, “one that’s practically a family member to him.”Though C.W.was the only black man on the shift and he had never bothered taking a promotional examination, his courage, work ethic, and long experience made him far more a leader among the men than many who outranked him.So Reagan had set about winning him over, buying off the man in his own coin.If he charged into a burning building, she not only hung with him, she tried to learn from him and make herself useful in the process.If he decided to clean the fire truck when it came back filthy after a 3 A.M.blaze, she was in on that, too—even when she suspected he was only doing it to try to convince her to go back to the ambulance—or at least to transfer to another station.After a few months, he’d put the word out that she would make a decent firefighter, and, as she’d expected, the other guys fell right in line.His big hand grasped her forearm.“He’ll make it.He’s too damned stubborn not to.But even if he doesn’t, we’ll do right by him—and his family, too.”Reagan clasped his arm back and felt something flow between them, a kinship and a calling she would never in a million years be able to explain to the likes of Dr.Jack Montoya.Not even if it were the price he set upon his signature.“I’m sorry,” Analinda Alvarez told Jack.A tiny woman with short dark curls and huge brown eyes, the trauma nurse looked tired, yet pumped up on the breakneck speed of her work.“I haven’t heard anything about him.We have a lot of patients—there was some kind of rush-hour pile-up on the freeway.It’s a little early still, but we’ve already got the makings of another wild Friday night.”Jack nodded at his former coworker.He remembered all too well the accidents and knife wounds, the shootings and the overdoses, people rushing headlong toward mortality in their eagerness to celebrate the end of the workweek.He thought fleetingly of Luz Maria on the back of that macho asshole’s motorcycle.Maybe he’d call her cell phone later, make sure she was all right.“But you might try asking them.” The nurse gestured toward a pair of men who stood talking farther down the hallway.Jack spotted the blue uniforms of the Houston Fire Department and thought he recognized the older of the two men, a heavyset man with a graying brown comb-over, as Robert Anderson, an official who often made statements on the television news.As Jack approached, the men’s conversation ceased, and he introduced himself.The younger of the two, a wiry, dark-haired man with a wide gap between his front teeth, jerked to attention at the mention of the name.“You said Montoya.Are you Dr.Jack Montoya?”“Yes.I wanted to talk to you about—”“Can you show us some ID? Something with your address.”Despite his confusion at the request, Jack pulled out his driver’s license
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