Jesse winced as the emergency room doctor wrapped the plastic splint around his swollen ankle. “Is it a bad break?” He’d seen the X-ray and could guess, but he wanted confirmation.
“I’ve seen worse. If you stay off it—and I mean really off it, no weight on that ankle for three days until the swelling goes down enough to put a hard cast on it—you’ll be back in action in six weeks.”
“Six weeks?” Jesse moaned and let his head fall back against the examining bed, listening to its paper cover crinkle in sanitary sympathy.
The doctor peered over the top of his glasses. “You could be off crutches and into a walking cast in three or four weeks if it heals well. But if you push it and try to go faster, you could end up needing surgery. You may need surgery anyway.” He peered again at the bandage on Jesse’s leg. It covered a nasty gash just above the break. “Come back tomorrow to get the dressing changed. We’ll see how the swelling has gone down by then. Ice every twenty minutes, ibuprofen for the pain, keep it elevated, you know the drill.”
Chief Bradens pulled aside the curtain, looking weary. “Another down. What the flu started, that porch railing finished. I’m going to have to call another department to send a few guys to hold us over until some of the others are back on their feet.”
“Sorry.” Jesse knew injuries were part of the job, and no one could have foreseen that the porch railing wouldn’t hold when he tripped and fell into it. Some small part of him—the part that keenly remembered Charlotte’s prayer for his safety not hours before—knew he was fortunate not to have been more badly hurt. Still, a larger and angrier part of him was ticked off at all the trouble this break would cause.
“Come on, Sykes, it’s not your fault. I’m just glad you’ll be okay to come back eventually.”
“Sure, in mid-August.”
“More like September, actually,” the doctor cut in. “You’ll need another two weeks of physical therapy after getting the cast off to get back into enough shape to go out on call.”
“And let’s not even talk about my time off the job,” Jesse moaned. Mondale wouldn’t take kindly to having to call someone else in to finish his jobs. Someone else working on Charlotte’s cottage? And the loss of income? Even with insurance, it would set his plan for the launch of Sykes Homes back a month if not more. Tonight was turning out to be a lousy evening on every front.
“Let’s worry about that tomorrow and get you home.” Chief Bradens began the paperwork while Jesse hoisted himself up with the pair of crutches that would be his constant companions for the next few weeks. “Have you got someone who can help you out tonight?”
His mom would be here in minutes if he called. Even Randy, busy as he was, might find a way to stay overnight if asked. Only Jesse didn’t want any of those people. He wanted Charlotte. Despite everything that was getting tangled further between them, the urge to do his recuperating in that overstuffed old plaid chair in the corner of Charlotte’s living room came over him like a craving. He’d even put up with Mo to spend his days sitting on that chair watching her putter around the house with that elated, decor-planning look on her face. Go figure.
That option, however, was off the table for now if not forever.
“I’m set,” he hedged, knowing the chief himself would find someone to stay with him if he wasn’t convinced Jesse had it covered. Right now he really wanted to be alone with his frustration. “Just get me home and I’ll deal with the rest.” His car was still at the firehouse, and he didn’t think he could drive it, anyway. One of the guys could bring it over later.
He and Bradens hobbled out to the chief’s red truck, the radio still chattering in the dash with all the usual post-incident communication. It had been a small fire, a holiday fish fry spilling over onto a back deck, more smoke and mess than any real damage. Only the deck was old and rickety, as Jesse and his left tibia had soon learned. Those mishaps—the ones that were so infuriatingly avoidable—made Jesse angry even if he didn’t end up hurt. If people would just bother to repair things like stairs when they broke, or—better yet—call in someone who knew what they were doing instead of trusting structures to a lethal combination of lumber store supplies and an internet tutorial. As every paramedic in the department knew too well, sometimes “do-it-yourself” turned into “hurt yourself” or “hurt someone else,” as tonight well showed.
“It’s late.” Chief Bradens sighed, looking at the digits on the dashboard clock.
“It’s so late it’s early,” Jesse managed to joke, pointing to the “12:25 a.m.” with a strangled smile.
“I hope we get a quiet night from here on in,” Chief Bradens said, breaking his own rule. It was a standing joke at the firehouse that hoping aloud for “a quiet night” nearly always guaranteed the opposite. The holiday incidents and short-staffing had really wiped the chief out.
“I hope we get a quiet weekend,” Jesse added. “We need a break.” He caught his own unintentional joke and laughed, glad to see a weary smile come to the chief’s face, as well. “Well, a different kind of break, that is.”
They drove to Jesse’s apartment in tired silence, listening to the back and forth of the radio chatter slowly die down as the department settled in. The guys on duty would be up for another hour cleaning and restocking before they got to go home to their families. Nights like this were hard under the best of circumstances, much less when they were short of staff, as the GFVFD currently was.
They pulled into the driveway of Jesse’s duplex. “I guess it’s a good thing you have the first floor.” Chief Bradens nodded to the pile of Jesse’s turnout gear in the truck’s backseat. “I’ll take your stuff back to the firehouse for you.”
Jesse opened the door and put his good foot—now sporting a paper hospital bootie, since he’d gone in wearing fire boots—on the sidewalk. He angled the crutches out of the truck and stood up. Everything hurt.
Chief came around the car. “You’re sure you’ll be okay?”
“Fine.” He’d keep his cell phone nearby and call Mom if he needed anything other than the ten hours of sleep he currently craved.
He was fishing in his pocket for his house keys when the beeper went off and they both noticed the radio in the truck spouting a crackle of commands. “Not again,” Bradens groaned.
If the chief didn’t look so drained and his own body didn’t hurt so much, Jesse would have made some crack about Bradens jinxing the night with his hope for quiet. Mostly he just shook his head as the chief hoisted himself onto the passenger seat to grab the radio handset.
“Gotta go. Smoke at 85 Post Avenue.”
“Go,” Jesse said, turning toward his house. “I’ll be fine once I...” He halted, frozen by the facts his tired brain had just this moment absorbed. Then Jesse spun around as fast as his crutches would let him, only to see Bradens’s truck speed away, lights blaring as the firehouse siren sent up its second wail of the night.
85 Post Avenue was Charlotte’s cottage.