Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Bjorn is screaming for his mother as she is laid gently on a stretcher. She tries to sit up, but she is pressed back down again, and an oxygen mask is secured on her face. She looks okay, but I know that doesn’t mean anything necessarily. Fire is dangerous in so many ways.
I look at the man who rescued her, and who pushed me away from the fire. He is still standing next to the stretcher, having pulled off his respirator and shed his jacket. It looks like it has been melted a little in the flames. How did Freya survive? The gods must have been looking down on her.
The man is focused on her entirely. He has dark reddish hair, and brown eyes in which fire licks when he turns to glance at me. He’s handsome. But most men are. Being visually appealing doesn’t mean anything. The fact that I feel like I just got kicked in the gut when he makes eye contact with me might mean something, but there’s no time to think about that.
The medics start to load Freya into the back of the ambulance.
“Go with her!” Mila insists. “Don’t let them take her alone. I’ve got Bjorn. I’ll come after.”
She needn’t worry. I am not going to let Freya out of my sight.
“I’m coming with her,” I say, moving toward the stretcher and the ambulance. “I’m her sister.”
The medics don’t say yes, but they don’t say no either, which I think is the same as yes in this situation. I scramble into the back of the ambulance with the medics, and with the firefighter who saved her. It’s a tight fit as we take off for the hospital.
I keep silent to allow the medics to work on Freya. I take her hand and I hold it and I pray that she is going to be okay. The memory of the fire is seared into my mind. How quickly everything can be destroyed. All the work. All the love. All the life that was lived in that home. And now all I really care about is that Freya is okay.
The ride is not long. Seven minutes, and she is being wheeled away into the emergency room, and I am not allowed to follow. I find myself standing outside the hospital with the firefighter.
“What’s your name?” He speaks with a gruff tone that immediately puts my back up. I am not in the mood to be hit on right now.
“Oh, fuck off,” I say.
It’s already starting. He’s going to want to know who I am, and then he’s going to want to know if I’m married. I should have worn a fake ring when I went out to get bread.
He gives me a frown.
“I’m not interested,” I tell him.
“I’m not interested either,” he returns in a low growl. “But I need your name.”
“Why?”
“For the incident report.”
“Muffy Hoffbrau,” I say, giving him the name of the girl I didn’t like in kindergarten.
I step past him, intending on storming into the hospital. I did hear them say I couldn’t go in, and should wait in the waiting room for an update on her condition, but fuck literally everything about that. Freya doesn’t have anybody besides me right now, and if anything happens to her I won’t forgive myself.
That same hand from earlier grabs the back of my collar and yanks me back with the force of my own momentum.
“The hell are you doing?” I curse at him for stopping me.
“You’re not allowed to run into the emergency room. You’ll get in the way.”
“What’s your name?”
“Thor,” he says.
“Of course it fucking is,” I curse. “Let me go. I need to be with my sister.”
“They will call you when she’s stable enough to be seen. If you go in there now, you will be underfoot and will make everything worse.”
“She’s pregnant.”
“Exactly,” he says, giving me a slight tug, because he still hasn’t let go of me. I feel like Bjorn must when people are restraining him from one of his many excellent ideas. It’s frustrating as hell. Bjorn screams at the top of his lungs and bites when that happens. I’m actively considering both courses of action myself right now.
“She needs me.”
“She will be sedated,” he says. “She won’t even know you are there. Can I let you go, Muffy, or are you going to keep being a problem?”
“What do you think?”
He snorts.
“Let me go.”
“No.”
I try several methods to make him let me go. I try kicking him. That doesn’t work very well, or indeed, at all. I bite his arm. That makes him grunt.
“You’re a feisty little thing,” he observes accurately.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” I say, pushing past him one more time. This time he’s not stupid enough to grab me again. I have no interest in being dictated to by a man. He might have saved Freya, and I can apologize to him later if I feel like it. But right now I have to get to my sister.