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It’s the worst day of Sam’s life for several reasons, the least of which is that he’s never liked train travel. Sure, Abby waxes poetic about her Eat, Pray, Love tour, but Europe, this is not. There’s no romanticising Phoenix to L.A., no matter how much she tries to dress it up. Plus, there’s a young woman in combat boots who won’t stop playing whatever alternative electronic sound passes for music these days.
Abby goes to the bar, leaving Sam to wonder how he got here, really.
And then the train derails.
Sam doesn’t remember a whole lot of the immediate aftermath: he’s in and out of consciousness. Gravity shifts, turning the world on its side. His vision swirls and blurs. There’s immense pressure on his chest and it hurts to breathe.
“Sam?” someone calls.
Sam tries to raise his head, but it hurts too much. Why does it hurt?
“Sam?” A man’s voice, far away but getting closer. “Sam, can you hear me?”
Sam manages a response. No words, but sound.
“Sam!” the man says, and he’s right in front of Sam now. Sam blinks, trying to clear his vision, and the world crystallizes into sharp focus. The man who’s been calling his name is a firefighter, fully suited up, climbing up over seats to get to Sam. He’s climbing up because the car is turned on its side. Imagine that.
“Hey, Sam,” the firefighter says, once he reaches him. “How are you feeling?”
Like shit, actually, but that doesn’t seem helpful in this instance. Instead, Sam takes a stinging breath in. “It hurts…” he grits out, “hurts when I breathe.”
The firefighter nods and starts checking Sam out, talking to him in that calm, matter-of-fact tone that Abby uses in tense situations. And then, Sam remembers. Oh, god, Abby.
“Please,” Sam says. “My fiancée. She’s on the train.”
Sam’s vision still has a few streaks in it, so that must be why the firefighter’s face goes all strange. “She’s okay,” he says, and for some reason, Sam believes him.
The firefighter leans into his radio and has a quick conversation with his captain. Asks for the jaws. Sam almost wants to laugh. He’s always wondered about those. He’ll get to see them in person. They must be huge, but then, how could they be so mobile?
“We got you, Sam,” the firefighter says. “Help is on its way.”
The firefighter keeps looking Sam over. He’s relaying things about Sam’s status to the other firefighters climbing up and into the train car. “He’s got a collapsed lung from the blunt force,” he says. “O2 levels are dropping. I can relieve the pressure, but we gotta move this beam off him.”
Beam? Christ, no wonder Sam can hardly breathe.
The firefighters set up some sort of hydraulic system. It’s hard to keep track; Sam keeps blacking out. They lift the beam—not much, barely a shift, even—and some of the pressure eases just for a moment. Sam isn’t sure if it hurts more or less. He isn’t sure if anything even hurts anymore, he’s in so much pain. The beam lifts just a bit, and someone screams deeper in the train car.
Oh, no. Sam had hoped he was the only one trapped here, but he’s not. He can hear the second firefighter talking to someone, asking them how they’re doing. It’s the young woman from before. The one with the music. She can’t be that much older than Tess.
Something cold settles in Sam’s stomach.
“Alright, Sam,” the first firefighter says, and he’s young, too. He pushes something into a line in Sam’s arm. When did he put that in? “This is for the pain.”
Sam wants to tell him not to bother: the pain is so all-encompassing that he hardly notices it anymore. Instead, what he says is, “It’s her or me, isn’t it?”
The firefighter looks at him. He’s got a mark above his eyebrow. An injury? A scar? He shakes his head. “No, that’s not what we do. So, tell me about your fiancée. When’s the wedding?”
Sam could talk about Abby all day. He could talk about her until he’s blue in the face. Mention how fucking lucky he is to have found a woman who is willing to be his partner in every aspect of life, who is willing to be a friend and confidante to his daughters. Say how much he loves her dedication to craft, whatever that may be: pottery, golfing, caretaking. But there’s no way he can explain all that in the limited time—limited breath—he has left. “June,” Sam answers. “She wants to wait until the girls are done with school.”
“You’re a father,” the firefighter says. No doubt he’s factoring that into the calculation he’s running in his head: who lives, who dies. If Sam were kinder, he wouldn’t make it harder for the kid. But something deep within Sam is primal and selfish, so he tells the firefighter the names of his teenage daughters.
“Tess and Natalie.”
The firefighter’s poker face cracks, just a bit.
“Okay, I’m calling it,” the third firefighter, the captain, says. “We start with the girl, we get her out.”
That feeling Sam had earlier is starting to feel justified. Prophetic.
The second firefighter nods. “Copy that.”
“No,” the first firefighter, Sam’s firefighter, says. “It’s going to crush Sam’s other lung. He’s going to die.”
“I am aware of that. The protocol dictates that we save whomever has the better chance and Eddie’s saying that’s the girl.”
The first firefighter looks at the second firefighter—Eddie, Sam supposes—with betrayal. “No,” he says, louder.
“Her vitals are stronger.”
Sam doesn’t catch what happens next. There’s a bunch of quick back and forth, and Sam’s starting to feel cold all over now, not just in his stomach. The firefighters are arguing, he understands that much. Sam’s firefighter wants to find another solution. Sam’s firefighter doesn’t want him to die. Sam’s firefighter is offering his own life as collateral.
“He’s a father,” Sam’s firefighter says. “He has two daughters, Tess and Natalie.”
Sam is a coward.
“This is too risky,” the firefighter captain says.
“I am willing to take that risk.”
“It’s not yours to take. You can’t just rush into any dangerous situation and assume it’s going to be okay. Because sometimes it’s not and I am tired of being on the wrong side of those hospital visits.”
Hospital visits. Sam remembers Natalie’s tonsillectomy. She had been too young to really understand how little risk the situation posed. She cried for hours about anesthesia, about hospital food, about staying overnight. All Sam could do was hold her hand and tell her that everything was going to be okay.
Sam doesn’t have anyone to hold his hand and tell him it’s going to be okay. He should be happy that no one he loves is here to witness this awful thing. Instead, he just feels alone.
When Sam fades back into the present, his firefighter is gone.
“How we doing, Sam?” the second firefighter—Eddie—asks.
Sam wants to tell Eddie that it’s okay that he wanted to leave Sam for dead. It’s his job. “How’s the girl?” Sam asks in response, and hopes that covers it.
“She’s hanging in there,” Eddie says.
“I’m really sorry,” the girl says.
Sam frowns. “For what?”
“That you got hurt. You were really nice to me.”
Christ, she really is young. “Sorry you’re going to miss your gig,” Sam replies.
“Neither of you guys are missing anything,” Eddie says. “We’re getting you out.”
A few more tense moments pass. Then, everything happens so much. There’s yelling about a basket, and the girl gets lowered down from the outside of the train car. Then, they’re lowering Sam down in the basket.
Fuck, what even is a basket?
Abby is there on the ground. She runs to Sam as he’s being wheeled into an ambulance. “You talk to the girls?” Sam asks, because it’s all he can think about right now: he hasn’t texted, Tess will be worried.
“You’re so amazing and brave,” Abby says. “They’re going to be really proud of you.”
And Sam’s paying attention to her, he really is, but something catches his eye. “Hey. Hey, man.”
It’s his firefighter. He stops in front of Sam, dirty and bloody and every bit the part of a lifesaver Sam’s voice breaks oddly. “Thank you.”
“Buck,” Abby says. “Thank you.”
Sam’s firefighter looks between Sam and Abby, and—hold on, did Abby say…?
“You’re Buck?” Sam asks. Young, hot, handsome firefighter Buck? Buck, who never knew when to quit and who didn’t take no for an answer—but not in a rapey way, Abby would always clarify, like she thought Sam would think she was some degenerate who hung out with deadbeats and criminals—Buck, who was going to get himself killed on the job, being a fucking hero because that’s what he was. Abby’s Buck, who she told Sam about late one night after maybe too many drinks.
“The one who got away?” Sam had asked.
Abby’s face had screwed up into something painful. “The one I left behind,” she had admitted, the words leaving her in a whisper, like the whole situation was a part of her life that she found deeply shameful.
The firefighter—Buck—smiles. It doesn’t look anything but perfunctory. “Good to meet you, Sam,” he says, and then he’s gone.