Nancy Holder - Daughter of the Flames

As Izzy approached, Cratty put his arms around her, giving her a tight hug. She stiffened, but he didn’t notice.

He said, “Your father’s in good shape.”

“The defib—”

“Wasn’t used. But what the hell happened to you? ”

“Just a fall,” she said as she pushed past him and ran up to her father’s gurney.

His eyes were closed.

“Daddy!” she cried. “Daddy!”

The orderlies pushed the gurney through the double doors, Izzy holding Big Vince’s limp fingers. Yolanda and Cratty brought up the rear.

Inside the building, a short man in dark blue scrubs barked orders at the two men, then said to Izzy, “We’re taking him in.” He held up a restraining hand. “You can’t go with him. Let us do our job. Besides, you look like you need help.”

“No,” she protested, but Cratty took her arm.

“You know the routine,” he reminded her. “They need their space.”

The gurney zoomed on past her as the trio hung a left and disappeared down a corridor.

“You two were in a building?” Yolanda asked him as she led Izzy to the left, through a door marked Emergency Waiting Room. “The one on fire?”

“We got the hell out of there as soon as the real firemen showed up,” he concurred, puffing air out of his cheeks. “Had a couple of rough moments.”

“What were you doing in there?” Izzy asked sharply. All her alarm bells were going off at once, and at full volume.

“We were on a detail,” he said, locking gazes with her. “Confidential.”

She didn’t know what to say. They kept walking, past people sprawled in rows and rows of orange-plastic chairs, looking pale and sick and tired of waiting.

Cratty flashed his badge and the three passed through to a second security door to the curtained sections filled with ER cases. Her father was lying on his gurney with a sooty face and bloodshot eyes barely visible above an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth. When he saw Izzy, his eyebrows met over his nose and he tried to take off the mask.

She knew he was staring at her injury. “It’s nothing, Big Vince,” she insisted, touching her cut.

The dark-haired nurse who had just wheeled a blood pressure monitor to the side of the gurney said, “We’ll look at that.”

“It’s fine,” Izzy repeated. But the truth was, her vision was blurring and she was dizzy. “Maybe I’ll just sit down.”

And then she fainted.

I t’s the gun. They will shoot him with the gun. It will stop his heart.

Izzy woke up in a softly lit room.

Pat was bending over her, the tan lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes softened by the dim illumination. But the worry on his face was evident, and she was touched.

“You passed out,” he said by way of greeting. He had on a sweatshirt that read Dallas Cowboys and a pair of jeans. Off-duty attire, since he wasn’t undercover. He looked sexy…and worried. “They’re keeping you under observation.”

“My father…”

Pat chuckled softly. “He’s awake, alert, and ready to leave. They want to keep him overnight, but frankly, I fear for their lives.”

She smiled at that. “Where’s Cratty? And Yolanda?”

“Back in the world. Yolanda’s very worried about you.”

“That’s so sweet,” she said.

An IV had been inserted into the back of her hand. Her gaze trailed up the clear plastic tubing to the bag hanging from a metal carrousel.

“Your electrolytes were out of whack.” He smoothed her hair away from her forehead. His fingers were calloused, but his touch was gentle. “They’re running some tests. Just as a precaution.”

His voice was low and steady. She felt calmed by his air of quiet authority.

“What happened, Izzy?” he asked her, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Yolanda said you freaked out in the restaurant.”

“I…” She didn’t want to try to explain it to him. It was all beginning to fade. She had seen her father, hadn’t she? “I had a funny feeling…” She trailed off.

He urged a cup with a straw to her lips again. “It’s okay, darlin’. You don’t have to talk if you’re too tired.”

They sat in stillness for a moment—or what passed for stillness in a busy hospital. Doors opened, shut. The PA system paged a doctor. Machines beeped.

After a few moments Pat said, “I had a funny feeling like that, once.”

She looked up at him. He nodded calmly, but she could see the sorrow etched in his face. She assumed he was talking about his wife. She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

She said, “Is my father very upset? About me? He knows I’ve been admitted, right?”

He nodded. “Yes, he knows. And he’s upset. Bombastic is more appropriate, I’d say. But that’s because he loves you.”

She sighed heavily. “If he’s upset now, it’ll be nothing compared to telling him I want to go the Academy.” She considered. “If I can still get in. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Neurologically,” she elaborated.

“Don’t go looking for trouble,” he chided her gently.

“Why was John Cratty partnering with him?” she asked him. She debated about telling him about all the weirdness in the Prop room. But if she was wrong, she could bring a man down for nothing.

“Can’t rightly say.” Pat’s face was blank. She got it: private Department business, some kind of organized raid, something he wasn’t at liberty to discuss.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one who had felt a twinge of wrong around Cratty lately. That decided her.

“About Cratty,” she said.

He gave her a little nod. “Yes?”

“Nothing firm, nothing provable.”

“Same here,” he said.

“Whoa.” She nodded back. Their gazes locked. “I feel better.”

“Me, too, Iz.” He took her hand.

She took a deep breath, then said something that would humiliate Big Vince if he heard her say it. “My dad is…over fifty, Pat. He’s gone through a lot. Please remind whoever’s in charge of this Cratty thing. If it’s dangerous…”

“Understood.”

She was grateful to her core that he did understand. Suddenly it was the best thing in the world that the man she was attracted to was a cop. She was a cop’s daughter, and she wanted to be a cop. It was the only world she knew—no matter how dangerous or strange.

Pat had had to go back to the station. The physician on duty refused to release Izzy until she could prove that someone was going to stay with her for the next twenty-four hours.

She thought about staying with Aunt Clara, but their place in Queens was always pure bedlam. There would be endless calls between Clara and Big Vince, and a lot of yelling. Yes, she did love her big, noisy Italian family, but she needed some quiet tonight.

When she called Aunt Clara and the phone was busy, she took that as a sign not to pursue it. Then Yolanda arrived, telling her that her shift was over and she could take her home with her. “That okay?” Yolanda asked her excitedly. “I’d come to your house but Tria is working tonight so I need to watch Chango.”

Izzy raised a brow. She was fairly certain that chango meant “monkey” in Spanish. She rethought her decision. Except that Clara had five children, two dogs and several very noisy finches.

One night won’t kill me, she thought, making her decision.

“Okay. Thanks so much,” Izzy said.

“Bueno,” Yolanda said, clapping her hands. “Now, let’s go see your father before we go.”

Finally. Izzy had been begging them for hours to take her to him.

The doctor agreed to prepare Izzy’s discharge papers on condition that she sit in a wheelchair while Yolanda did the steering. Bouncing along, radiant in her helpfulness, Yolanda wheeled Izzy to an elevator.