Fade the Heat by Colleen Thompson Page B

hustling toward the ER’s entrance, which she remembered from her days riding the ambulance.
    Despite her earlier resolve, she nearly lost it in the hospital’s family consultation room, where she found Donna Rozinski, Joe’s blowsy and big-hearted second wife, slumped on one end of a comfortable-looking sofa across from a muted television. As Donna tugged absently at a long lock of her blond-streaked red hair, her green eyes remained dry. What struck Reagan most, though, was the way the outsized, forty-something woman, always so extravagant with both her laughter and her tears, seemed to have shrunk into herself…and how irredeemably alone she looked.
    Breaking from Jack’s side, Reagan rushed toward her, only to see her crewmember Cal Wilkins heading in the same direction, a cup of coffee in one callused hand, a diet cola in the other. For a moment, his jeans and plain gray sweatshirt jarred her, until she remembered that he was on vacation, supposedly at his brother’s Hill Country hunting lease. 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 itand 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’tbreathing 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