he realized it was times like this when a man would be tempted to question God. Death at the hands of the very monster he’d spent his life working to defeat just didn’t seem right.
And what about Andrea? He could clearly see her beautiful face. Big brown eyes filled with more compassion than he’d ever imagined existed. Her golden-brown skin. Her cute little upturned nose and full lips. He’d waited his whole life for a woman like her and now he would lose her, as well. He should’ve married her a year ago, when he first proposed. Why had he waited so long?
“Cal! You down there?” He heard a man’s muffled voice coming from somewhere above. It was Dwight. Marty had gone for help. Cal could sense more than see the group of firefighters peering over the edge a few feet above. He was too exhausted to speak, but he had to find the strength, otherwise his team would believe him dead.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” he called back and tried to lift his weight over the edge.
“Hang on! We’re coming!” Dwight called down into the opening.
Cal tried to lift his body again, and managed to get his left shoulder up over the edge. He hung, listening to the crackling wood and running feet. The feeling of helplessness was a new sensation. And not a pleasant one, Cal thought.
This blaze was probably the worst they’d seen in some time, and the closest he’d ever come to meeting the Grim Reaper. Cal felt large, strong arms clamp around his torso and start to pull him up. Then other hands grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him over the edge. Tommy took him under the arms while Jeff grabbed his legs and pulled up and over. The pair quickly rolled his large body back away from the edge.
“We’ve got him!”
From somewhere in the distance, he heard Dwight calling. “Let’s go! I can’t hold it much longer. Let’s go!” Dwight had been busy trying to secure an exit route for his team.
“Where’s Marco?” He looked in every direction, before noticing the small bundle tucked in Marty’s arms.
Braced between Jeff and Tommy, Cal used his own legs to run out of the building, despite his dizziness and nausea. A rhythmic bumping noise behind them signaled the others had caught up.
Following the path made by Dwight, the group quickly found the back entrance and exited into the empty alley. In the distance Cal could see the lights of an ambulance flashing, as well as the firemen’s ladder truck, and a couple of police vehicles. He found himself being twisted this way and that as Marty satisfied herself that her friend was still in one piece. The sound of scanners and radios were emanating from every direction.
Jeff tried to help guide him to the paramedics, who were now coming down the long alley to meet them halfway. Cal allowed the man to brace him as he watched the world spinning around him.
Cal took off his helmet and mask and shook his head hard, trying to dispel the feeling of vertigo that seemed to be lingering. He felt more than a little nauseous, and pushed Jeff away as he felt himself becoming sick.
Before the paramedics reached them, Cal turned toward the brick wall, and shielded himself as best as he could while emptying his stomach, his head spinning, his stomach churning. His friends closed in with worried expressions.
Unable to stand any longer, Cal leaned his back against the wall and hung his head in complete exhaustion.
He heard the paramedics quietly discussing the best way to transport their large victim. Then the stretcher appeared and Cal was laid out across it. He closed his eyes to stop the white clouds from spinning overhead.
“We’ll meet you at the hospital.” He heard Dwight in the distance. With his other team members wishing him well, the paramedics rolled Cal back to the ambulance and loaded him.
As the doors on the vehicle closed and Cal heard the siren sound, he silently wondered what was wrong with him. He’d been prone long enough to have regained some sense of equilibrium. But still he felt as if the world was spinning around him and he had no gravity.
He watched the technicians go about their routine, inserting the IV and dispensing the necessary medications. He answered their questions as best he could with head shakes and nods. He took a deep breath and decided that whatever was wrong would soon correct itself. He was Big Cal, nothing kept him down for long, not even a near-death experience.
He closed his eyes and thanked God for another miracle, the latest in a long line. His mind went to Andrea. He desperately needed to see her, to hold her, to know that she was real because that would mean that he was real. That he was still alive in all the ways that mattered.
Chapter 3
“Cal.” Andrea scooted up on her knees to use her full strength to rock the man beside her as he thrashed about wildly on the bed. “Cal!” She ducked, barely missing a swinging arm. “Cal! Wake up!” She pushed hard against his tense form. “Wake up!”
Large eyes opened in bewilderment. “What?” Cold brown eyes turned to her and the lack of recognition sent a chill down her spine.
“It was a nightmare.” She rubbed her hand along his jawbone. “You were having another nightmare.”
He looked in every direction seemingly surprised to find himself in her bed. Finally his troubled eyes settled on her again just before he ran his large hand over his face.
It had been almost a month since the fire in the Hadley building, and something deep inside of Cal had changed. Andrea sensed it and saw it in his behavior. In the past few days, Andrea had seen something she thought she would never see. Her fearless man had become hesitant.
Andrea had met Cal over a year ago, although she remembered it like yesterday. He’d come to visit Marty in the hospital where she was recovering from smoke inhalation. From the moment Andrea saw him, Cal had exuded a kind of larger-than-life confidence, and being the self-doubting person that she was, Andrea had been drawn to that self-assuredness. She’d known instinctively that he was everything she’d never known she needed, water to her parched soul.
Over the past year, they’d struggled to find their way through the complex maze of contemporary relationships and had seemingly come to the inevitable conclusion that they belonged together.
When Cal had proposed almost six months ago, her instant answer had been yes. And on that day something strange had happened to Andrea. Something that she was finding harder and harder to deal with. For the first time, she began to contemplate what it meant to be the wife of a firefighter. What she’d discovered was not good.
The never-ending sense of dread. The empty feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach every time he began a seventy-two-hour rotation. The feeling would not go away until he returned to her after a call, safe and sound. And the apprehension had not stopped there. It followed her to work where, as a nurse in the emergency ward, she became more aware of the number of firefighters that came through the E.R.
And on one horrible day, less than a month ago, she’d had her worst fears confirmed when she looked down at the gurney and saw that Cal was the patient. But something strange and wonderful had come out of the experience, something Andrea could not share with anyone, not even Cal. Something she was ashamed to admit gave her such pleasure. Cal had lost his sense of invincibility.
She could remember any number of times she’d been in the firehouse when the emergency call came in and Cal would take off with a sexy grin
