Page 27 of Venus
I’m in the middle of a delivery when Callie sneaks into the room.
I give her a smile, but she doesn’t even seem to register that I’m there.
Instead, she goes straight for the attending and whispers in her ear.
After a short conversation, my charge nurse approaches me and quietly says I need to head to the nurse’s station immediately for an emergency.
I give her a strange look. As if the baby currently crowning mid-push isn’t enough of an emergent situation.
My hands freeze, just for a second, but then I do as I’m told.
I peel my gloves off, toss them in the trash can, and give my hands and arms a good scrub before stepping out of the delivery room.
I walk to the station with half-haste and half-hesitation. I turn the corner, and everything just…stops.
Jackson is standing there in full gear, covered in soot. Helmet off, eyes red-rimmed and filled with pain. The kind of expression that you only give when there’s news no one wants to say out loud.
I rush to him. “Carter? Oh God, is he okay? ”
He doesn’t answer. He grabs my wrist and firmly pulls me along with him. My heart is beating out of my ribs as I practically have to jog to keep his pace. “Jackson, please, what happened?”
He doesn’t look at me. “You need to see it for yourself.”
He brings me straight to the ER, where the lights are too bright and the smell is too sterile. But there’s a new smell now, something that makes your stomach curdle. Burnt flesh.
We stop in front of a triage room, and I feel like I can no longer breathe.
Carter is laid out on the trauma bed like a lifeless doll. Tubes are down his throat. IVs are in both of his arms. Half of his face is burned, and his clothing is stuck to his cooked flesh in chunks. The rest of him looks inhuman. his arms are blistered and raw.
The kind of damage you don’t come back from unscathed.
If . If you come back from it.
The world tilts and I catch myself on the wall of the hallway as an ER nurse bumps into me, rushing into the room with more supplies. My hands cover my mouth as I try to hold back the vomit in my throat.
It’s like I can’t breathe. The air is wrong. People are moving around him in an ugly, tragic dance of life-and-death.
“What happened?” I choke out .
Jackson’s next to me, staring at his friend. “Warehouse fire. He was in there with Trevor looking for two missing civilians when the building came down on both of them. We heard his mayday but…but it was too late. The smoke hit the flashover point and there was nothing we could do to get them out.”
“Where’s Trevor?”
Jackson paused. His silence was more than answer enough. He shakes his head. The world stops moving, and my stomach sinks to the floor.
“Carter held on long enough for us to get him out but he crashed in the ambulance on the way here and…” his voice breaks and we can’t finish his sentence.
I stare at the man in the trauma bed that I swore I couldn’t fall in love with. The man I pushed away over and over because I was afraid of caring too much.
“He’s stupid in love with you,” Jackson says, and it’s what forces the tears to fall from my eyes. “He’d want you here if he—”
Another voice crack. He doesn’t have to say it.
I shouldn’t but I push my way into the room and swoop under the bodies rushing past to grab Carter’s wrist. One of the only places left that wasn’t burnt raw. The only place safe to touch him. I close my eyes, block out the world and feel for his pulse.
And that’s where I stay.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I stand by his side for hours, until the triage is complete and they move him to the burn unit for observation. Jackson and I are there the entire time. Some of his team comes to visit, but Jackson and I are the only two that stay day and night.
Carter is burned. Badly. Second-degree burns over a third of his body, and third degree in big, thick patches across his back.
His stability is shaky at best. Every alarm going off fills me with dread, like it will be the last one.
He pulls through every time, but it doesn’t do anything to settle my uneasiness.
In the middle of the night, Jackson finally dozes off, giving me a completely quiet moment in the chaos. I rest my forehead on that little patch of unburnt skin on his wrist, the only place I can safely touch.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper to his still, gauze-covered body.
“God, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner, but please don’t die on me Carter.
Let me have the chance to love you, okay?
Please . I was so stupid for thinking I needed control.
That I had to suppress my feelings, even after you told me you’d stay.
And when I finally realized what I had right in front of me… it might have already been too late.”
In the morning, I stand in the corner with Jackson while the workers on shift in the burn unit take care as they change Carter’s gauze. They unwrap him like a mummy, and that sickness creeps back up my throat as I’m forced to look at his blistered, broken body.
Callie, bless her, arrives mid-day with a change of clothes for me and a turkey sandwich from my favorite sub shop just to keep me going.
The room is filled with get-well-soon cards, flowers, and balloons from the entire community. One card in particular got me.
It’s from the young son of one of the workers he and Trevor saved that day. Words like ‘hero’ and ‘awesome’ fill the card, and at the end, the boy writes about how he wants to be a firefighter too, so he can save someone’s dad just like Carter did.
I set the card to the side and hold my face in my hands as I cry, thinking about how if Carter doesn’t make it, he’s going to die thinking he was unloved because I was too afraid of my own feelings.
I wipe my face and go back to holding his wrist like I could transfer some of my life into him.
“Don’t leave forever when I finally figured out how badly I want you to stay.”
The next time the burn team comes in, the doctors talk about nerve ending and skin grafts, therapy for the dysmorphia that comes with burn injuries to the face.
Trevor’s parents come to visit. His mom, who looks like a saint if I’ve ever seen one, collapses to her knees and prays for Carter, telling his sleeping body how proud she is of him and how happy he’s alive, thanking him for trying to save her son.
They must be close, because she fusses over him like a mother would, demanding answers about his condition and prognosis.
It warms my heart to see how much people in his life care for him. But none of that matters if he dies, does it?
Well into the night, when the rest of the world is asleep, I’m stroking Carter’s wrist when I swear I feel a muscle twitch. My head jerks up, and I’m suddenly fully awake. I throw my empty coffee cup at Jackson’s head to wake him up too.
“What!?”
I nod down. “Look!”
We both observe Carter’s wrist for what feels like a solid hour, but he doesn’t move again.
“I swear…I felt…”
And then his fingers twitch. Two of them .
I let out a sound of pure relief and lean over him, carefully cradling his head without touching him.
“Carter! Carter, it’s me. It’s Venus. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
From under his bandages, his swollen eyelids flutter open, and I can’t help the tears streaming down my face. Jackson’s crying too.
“You’re in the hospital,” Jackson says. “You ever scare us like that again, I’m kicking your ass.”
Carter starts fighting against an invisible force, probably unbearable pain, so I hit the nurse call button and gently stroke his wrist some more.
“Carter,” I whisper. His eyes drift to me.
“Victoria. My name is Victoria.”
He tries to say something, but all that comes out is a hoarse breath. I shake my head and place the most featherlight and careful of kisses to his bandaged nose.
“My name is Victoria, and I love you too, Carter Westwood.”