Primal Threat - Earl Emerson [16]
Even though their initial meeting at the accident nearly a month earlier was the genesis for all the pomp, they’d exchanged only a few words until now. “Looking for the restroom?”
“I was just standing here thinking.”
“And what were you thinking?”
“That I don’t like parties.”
“I don’t either. What’s your excuse?”
“Do I need an excuse? I just don’t like them.”
“I was sneaking away myself.” When Nadine smiled, it made her look even younger and prettier than when she’d first walked in out of the drizzle.
Zak made his way around her and headed for the bunkroom fifteen feet away. When he reached the door, he turned and looked back at her and thought for a moment he’d never seen anyone looking quite so blue. They were celebrating the fact that she was alive and not in a wheelchair, that her father was bestowing a hundred grand on the Medic One Foundation, but she looked like she’d just flunked a midterm. “Does that C-collar hurt your neck?”
“None of it hurts. I just want to be myself again.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve had some injuries over the years, and they’re never very pleasant.” And then, with a twinkle in his deep brown eyes, he added, “Want to look around the station?”
“What’s in there?” she asked, pointing to the bunkroom door.
“It’s where we sleep.”
“You’re sure it’s okay?”
“It’s not okay at all, but I’ll make an exception for you.” While he held the door, she hobbled into the bunkroom, handling her crutches with the skill of an athlete. “As I said, this is where we sleep. Where we change clothes. This is also where we hide out when the station’s full of people.” The bunkroom was a long, narrow affair built onto the old station during the remodel twenty years earlier. It had a men’s washroom at one end, a women’s at the other, and a long corridor off which were small cubicles formed from tall banks of lockers enclosing each bunk. Firefighters assigned to the station kept their uniforms, sleeping gear, and assorted personal effects in the lockers. “This is mine.”
She worked her way into his cubicle, glanced at the narrow bunk, saw the book he’d been reading atop a pillow, then turned to his open locker door and scrutinized the photos taped inside the door. “Do you mind if I ask who these people are?”
“That’s me alongside my two sisters, my mother, and my father. I think I was about ten.”
“You were a cute little guy. What are they all doing now? I mean, you’re a fireman, of course, but how about the others?”
It wasn’t something Zak had often been asked, or else he would have taken the photo down. A year ago one of the men on the other shift wondered why he didn’t have pictures of girlfriends on his locker instead of ancient family photos, but Muldaur, who had been nearby, replied for him. “Modern-day shutter speeds aren’t that fast. Zak doesn’t keep a girlfriend long enough for anybody to get a picture.” Recognizing the essential truth behind the joke, everybody had laughed, Zak included.
He hadn’t shared any stories about his family with anyone at the station and was mildly intrigued that he felt like telling a stranger. “The one on the end is Charlene. She was the oldest. Six years older than me.”
“She’s pretty.”
“Yes.” Even after all these years, Zak was amazed at how much it hurt to tell somebody about it.
“You put that in the past tense.”
“She’s dead.”
“Really? How did it happen?”
“She was driving me and my other sister