I was surprised to see them.
How did they know I was here?
The park was massive, and this rescue staging area was just one of several on the perimeter.
The flashing lights and emergency vehicles painted everything in pulses of red and white, making the familiar faces of my friends seem like a mirage.
Yet here they were, cutting through the organized chaos like they had a direct line to me, their expressions stark with a panic I had put there.
“Are you okay?” Jamie demanded, his hands fluttering over my arms and my face, checking for broken pieces.
His eyes were wide, red rimmed, and swimming with tears.
“Are you hurt anywhere?” Soren asked, his voice tight.
He was doing the same frantic inspection.
His sharp gray eyes scanned me with a medical intensity.
“I’m okay,” I said, my voice still hoarse from smoke and cold.
“How did you—”
“What is wrong with you?” they both interrupted in unison, their fear twisting into a sharp, desperate anger.
“Why would you run into a burning park?” Soren’s words came out in a choked rush.
“Are you out of your mind? Are you okay?” He reached up and swiped at his cheek with the back of his hand, a furious and frustrated gesture.
He was crying.
“Do you know how scared we were when we saw that clip?” Jamie’s voice wobbled.
“We saw it on the news. We saw you ducking under the tape and just… just running into the smoke. We were at my shop, waiting and wondering where you were, and then that… that video came on the TV screen.”
My stomach dropped.
I hadn’t thought about the news.
Of course they would be reports there.
“God, I was so scared,” Soren whispered, another tear falling.
He didn’t try to hide them now.
“I thought you were gone. I thought I’d just… lost you.”
“I thought you di—” Jamie’s voice hitched violently.
He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut.
“God, I can’t even say the word. I can’t.” He threw his arms around me, burying his face in my damp, smoky shoulder.
His whole body was trembling.
Soren was there a second later, his hug just as fierce, his arms wrapping around both of us.
It was a tight, desperate huddle.
They were both crying, their quiet sobs the most terrible sound I’d ever heard.
“Don’t you ever do that, okay?” Jamie’s voice was muffled against my jacket.
“I—” I tried to speak, to explain about the pups, about the trapped feeling, about how I hadn’t thought at all, I’d just moved.
“Don’t you ever do that!” Soren’s command was raw, stripped bare.
They both pulled back just enough to look at me.
Their faces were a mess of tears and fury and a love so stark it was painful to see.
It was a look that said this wasn’t up for argument.
It was final.
“For Christ’s sake, Holland, put your fucking self first for once!” Soren shouted.
I flinched, looking at him, completely taken aback.
“Don’t you care about yourself?” Jamie’s voice was softer but no less intense, his green eyes searching mine.
“Don’t you love yourself? Even a little?”
I hadn’t expected Jamie to join in like this.
His gentleness was usually a balm, not a scalpel.
“You’re important, do you know that?” Soren pressed, his voice dropping to a strained rasp.
He grabbed my shoulders, not hard, but with a grip that demanded my full attention.
“Do you realize that you’re also important? Not just the pups, not just anyone else. You. Your life matters. To us.”
The words landed like physical blows, each one cracking open something brittle inside my chest.
“Holland, if you don’t care about yourself, we do.” Jamie pointed a trembling finger between Soren and himself.
“We care about you. Please, Holland. Please.”
The plea undid me.
It wasn’t anger, not really.
It was terror.
The sheer, gut-wrenching terror of people who thought they’d lost someone they loved.
I had done that to them.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, the apology utterly inadequate.
But it was all I had.
What they said made total, devastating sense.
I loved those children so much that I’d risked my life for them without a second thought.
I hadn’t thought about myself, about my own survival, about the people who would be left behind if I didn’t make it out.
“Please don’t do that again,” Soren said, the fight draining out of him, leaving only exhaustion and a wet, shaky vulnerability.
“I won’t,” I said, and I meant it.
“I’m so happy that you’re alive,” Soren said, pulling me into another, gentler hug.
“Me too,” Jamie murmured, wrapping his arms around us again.
It was a big, soggy, messy pity party right there in the middle of the emergency lights.
And I let it happen.
Soon, a medic finally pushed through the crowd, her expression professionally brisk.
“I need to check the patient,” she said, aiming for me.
Soren and Jamie refused to leave, even when she gave them a pointed look.
They simply shifted, becoming a pair of anxious bookends on either side of me as she worked.
They hovered like they were my parents, or maybe my overprotective bodyguards.
She shined a light in my eyes, checked my pulse, listened to my breathing.
“Can you breathe well?” she asked.
“Does he look like he can breathe well?” Soren shot back, his voice still thick.
“Listen to him.”
“You’re not the patient, sir,” the medic replied evenly.
“I can barely hear him. That’s from the smoke, right? That’s bad.”
They took turns replying to her questions and generally getting under her feet.
Every time she asked me something, one of them would jump in with an observation, a worry or a second opinion.
They were terrified, and they were channeling it into being the most annoying, persistent advocates imaginable.
She eventually finished, looking mildly exasperated.
“You need to come to the medical center tomorrow for a full check-up. Smoke inhalation is serious. And that burn needs proper dressing.”
Even as she told me I could leave, Jamie and Soren kept firing questions.
“Are you sure he can go home?”
“I don’t think he’s okay yet.”
“What if he faints on the way?”
“Shouldn’t he go tonight?”
The medic packed her bag with a sigh.
“He’s stable. He’s alert. He has two very… attentive friends. He’ll be fine until tomorrow. Get him warm and let him rest.”
After the extended pity party and medical interrogation, we all went back to my apartment.
The walk was quiet, their arms linked through mine as if I might vanish if they let go.
Jamie and Soren refused to let me go home alone.
It wasn’t a discussion.
It was a decree.
The options were simple: I went to one of their houses, or they came to mine.
They chose mine.
And then, they refused to let me do anything.
It was as if I’d been declared permanently incapacitated.
The water for a bath?
Soren ran it, testing the temperature with his elbow like he was bathing a toddler.
“Not too hot, you’re probably in shock,” he declared.
Tea?
I hadn’t even asked, but Jamie appeared from my kitchen five minutes later with a steaming mug of something herbal and sweet.
“For the throat and the nerves,” he said, pressing it into my hands.
Pajamas?
Soren went into my bedroom and emerged with the thickest, softest pair I owned.
“Wear these”
Jamie turned the heater up until the apartment was almost tropical.
“We have to get the deep chill out.”
Gosh, they were such worrywarts.
They fluttered around me, tucking blankets, adjusting pillows and refilling my tea.
They wouldn’t let me lift a finger.