Consumed

His stare swung back to her. “First of all, I’ll do what I want with my eyes. And second, I’m a little distracted by that.”

When he pointed over her shoulder, Anne cranked her head around. Up on the ceiling, that climber was hanging upside down by four points of contact, his hands clawed around two grips, his feet braced against a pair of others. His thigh muscles were vibrating, his forearms shaking. Drops of sweat fell like to the mats that were a good twenty feet below him, their soft impacts ringing out in the silence of the crowd, a metronome marking the time that was running out for him.

The kid was in good shape, for sure, well muscled and lean. But he’d let enthusiasm get ahead of his skills and strength, and now he was freaked out and stuck. Without a safety harness on.

Chris was talking to him. “Just stay where you are, my man. We’re coming for you.”

Anne ran across. “Let me run a harness up to him—”

“Chilli’s on it.” Chris dropped his voice. “I told him to stop. But he mounted the wall before I could—”

The guy’s foot fell free and the crowd gasped. Chilli, the other receptionist, was going as fast as he could, stepping into his own harness and buckling himself in. Good luck, Anne thought. Even if he moved like the wind, things were degrading too fast overhead and this was going to get bad. Time to get her phone—

“I’m already calling it in to EMS.” Danny put his cell up to his ear. “He’s going to hit hard.”

“Hang on, my man!” Chris called out.

The fifteen or so people let out another gasp as, sure enough, the guy lost his other foothold and swung free, all Spidey between two ’scrapers without the web. God, those hands. They were getting more slippery because of the sweat, and with all that weight hanging off them?

Anne went over to the crowd and held her arms out wide. “Let’s back up, folks. Way back.”

She put herself in front of a young girl, who had to be about twelve or so. “Hey, I love that shirt.”

The girl looked down. “I, ah . . . it’s my camp.”

“I went to Camp Hill, too.” Those eyes returned to the ceiling, but Anne took a step so she was once again in the way. “What cabin were you in?”

“It says it right here.”

Just as the girl glanced at her shirt and pointed to the name, there was a collective cry, followed by a hard hit.

Anne looked at the mother and said in a low voice, “Take her into the locker room, right now.”

That snapping sound? Had been the sound of at least one, maybe two tibiae breaking.

* * *

Danny ended the call into emergency services just as the kid lost his grip and fell in precisely the wrong position. Well, wrong assuming he didn’t enjoy the fireworks that came with a pair of compound fractures: He went straight down to the mats, knees locked as if he were going into a pool, arms pinwheeling. Like that was going to help.

The landing would have been a solid ten—if this were the Jackass Olympics and Steve-O was a judge. Instead, it was a fund-raiser for an orthopedic surgeon, the left leg sustaining a compound fracture that sent the broken bone out through the skin of the shin.

As Anne held the crowd back, Dan front and centered with the climber, now patient, taking one of the writhing hands in a strong grip. Junior was sporting the T-shirt of one of the local Catholic private schools, and between the Proactiv complexion and the clear issues with risk assessment, it was obvious they were in minor territory.

Not that people who had reached or surpassed the age of consent couldn’t be morons, too.

Kettle. Black.

“Stay still,” Danny said. “Help’s coming.”

“Is it broken? Is my leg—”

The kid lifted his head to look down his body, but Danny cut that bright idea off at the pass. Adding a visual to the pain was not going to help considering the lower part of that leg looked like a human anatomy exam.

“Stop moving, my man.” Danny pushed those shoulders back to the mat. “I want you to relax and take some deep breaths. What’s your name?”

“David. Dave Richmond.”

“Hey, Dave, I’m Danny. I’m a trained medic—how old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Are you allergic to anything?”

“N-n-n-no. Aw, man, my mom’s going to kill me.”

“Any underlying medical conditions?” Other than a garden-variety case of hormone-linked stupids. “Anything I need to know about?”

“No—what’s wrong with my leg? I can’t feel anything.”

Probably shock, but spinal injuries could be sneaky, and until there was a rule-out, they couldn’t take anything for granted.

“Just lie still, ’kay? How can we reach your mom?”

Anne came over and knelt down. “How we doing?”

For a split second, Danny was back in the past, the two of them out on an emergency call, bent over a patient, assessing vitals, calling in status to the ERs, going on transport. She was always his partner—

Had been. Had been his partner.

And yeah, it was fucked up to get all nostalgic about him and Anne dealing with pain and suffering and injury, but he missed that connection. That day-to-day contact. That sense that he didn’t have to say things to her; she just knew.

Because her brain and his worked the same way.

“Dave’s doing great.” In a low voice, Danny added, “Little shocky.”

“Looks it. Who’s coming on the call?”

“We are.”

Anne’s face got tight, but she hid that quick by addressing the climber’s buddy, who was all nervous off to the side. “Can you get his ID for us? From whatever locker he was using?”

The blond-haired kid looked at the break and swallowed as if he were in conversation with his gag reflex. “Yeah. Is he— Is he in trouble? I told him not to do that.”

“We just want to take care of him. So if you could get his wallet and phone, it would be a huge help.”

The friend walked off, and Anne got up and spoke to the two receptionists. Frick and Frack, the bearded nonconforming conformists, were as agitated as the Instagram set could get about anything other than the inhuman atrocity of almond milk instead of soy in their matcha lattes. Or maybe he was just being unfair as he read into their vaguely annoyed expressions.

Nah.

Distant sirens grew louder and louder, and then flashing red lights penetrated Mounteria’s glass front, strobing the kid’s panicked face. And then the friend was back with the wallet.

Danny took it, flipped the thing open, and cursed. “You’re seventeen, not eighteen, Dave.”

“I’m almost eighteen.”

“The law doesn’t count ‘almosts.’ So how about we get a parent on the phone? We’re going to need to get consent for treatment.”

“Your mom’s gonna be so pissed,” the buddy muttered.

Dave shook his head. “Can’t we just take me to the hospital—”

Danny cut that shit off, his patience running out. “No. Let’s get Mom or Dad on the horn. Now.”

Chapter 20

When members of the 499 arrived with a stretcher, Anne stepped back and needed a distraction so she chatted up Chris again. It turned out Dave of the broken leg was a serial PITA who hadn’t been properly checked in, and both receptionists were finished with his act.

“You’ve done the best you could. It’s going to be fine.”

As she spoke, she was mostly talking to herself. Moose, Danny’s old roommate, was at the head of the stretcher and Emilio Chavez was on the back end, the pair advancing through the open space with purpose. Both men were dressed in working uniforms, the shirts with the fire-service crest on the pec and the navy blue pants, the uniform Anne used to wear every day and night.

The men faltered when they saw her. And again when Danny stood up.

Then Moose snapped out of it. “Hey, you two. What have we got here?”

Danny looked at her. She looked at Danny.

“Compound—”

“Fell from the ceiling—”

“—fracture due to—”

“—resulting in a compound—”