Trial by Fire Read Free

torn off a part of his body.

Chapter Three
    N ick threw his hands over his face, elbows in the air, as Ray’s anguished cry told him all he needed to know about Ben’s condition. Ray’s firstborn child and only son was dead.
    He wailed out his own lament, oblivious to Karen and Bob, the paramedics who worked quickly to swap Cale’s tank for their own oxygen mask. He sat up, clutching the mask, straining to see the boy.
    He saw Ray fall onto his son’s body and lift him up, as if by holding him he could bring him back to life. Issie’s smoke-stained face twisted with momentary despair. Then, wiping her tears, as if rolling up her sleeves, she abandoned the body and ran over to Nick.
    â€œIs he all right?” she asked Karen, as if Nick couldn’t speak for himself.
    â€œSmoke inhalation,” Karen said. “Airway doesn’t seem patent. Nasal hairs are singed. Carbonaceous residue in the nose and mouth. He needs immediate transport. Also several pretty bad abrasions…Second-degree burns on the legs…”
    â€œLet us take him,” Issie said. “Nick’s a friend of mine. You take care of Ben.”
    Nick couldn’t take his eyes from Ben, limp in his father’s arms. “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Nick managed to croak out.
    She seemed to ignore him as they lifted his gurney into the ambulance. “There was nothing we could do,” she said in a dull monotone, as if he hadn’t already seen the tears streaking through the smoke stains on her face. “He was probably dead before the fire.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œThere’s a bullet hole through his head.”
    â€œBullet hole?” Nick tried to sit up again. He hadn’t seen a bullet hole, not with all the smoke and soot and rubble covering Ben. He wanted to ask where it was, but he couldn’t make his voice function, and as Issie hung the bag and began to examine his legs, pain shot through him, clearing his mind of anything but that.
    Steve Winder jumped into the unit. “Ready to go?”
    â€œYeah,” she said. “Radio in, Steve. I need permission to intubate before the airway closes.”
    â€œIntubate?” Nick choked. “No, I don’t—”
    â€œNick, let me be the medic, okay?” Issie said. “I have to do it to keep it open, or it’ll be so edematous that I can’t get a tube in. But I’ll do the nasotracheal.”
    He heard Steve talking to the receiving physician, and the doctor giving them the go-ahead. He tried to hold himself still as Issie threaded the painful tube into his nose and down his trachea. “I know it hurts,” she said as she worked rapidly. “But I have to use as big a tube as I can get in, just to keep the way open. That’s good. Don’t try to talk.”
    But Nick had so many questions. If Ben had a bullet hole through his head, who had shot him? Had Ben started the fire, or had the killer?
    He arched at the pain as she checked his burns again.
    â€œSecond degree, partial thickness, Steve. Eight percent. He feels it, all right.”
    As Steve radioed that into the receiving physician, Nick tried to remove his mind from the pain. She opened his clothes carefully, trying not to peel any cloth from the burns. “Nick, where else are you in pain? I only see burns on your legs.”
    He pointed to his right side. She began to palpate him. “Feels like broken ribs,” she yelled to Steve. “Possible internal injuries.”
    But Nick’s mind wandered from his own injuries to the fire chief and deacon in his church, who had just encountered one of the worst tragedies of his life.

Chapter Four
    S usan Ford ran two stop signs and a red light, then screeched around a corner. The smoke billowing above the trees on Antoinette Boulevard was her target. She didn’t know who had called to tell her that her son had been found in the fire. She