Never Divorce a Wife Who Loves You Deeply novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Shoulder

A stranger pries Robin out of the fire while Scott stands on the shoulder with his son and the velvet box, and the stranger tells her his dash camera caught it all.

Yes.

That was the last word I heard before the dark closed over me.

I don't know how long I was gone.

Long enough for the smoke to fill the car from the roof down, since the roof was the floor now.

What brought me back was glass breaking right next to my head.

"Ma'am! Ma'am, can you hear me?"

A man's voice. Not Scott's.

I opened my eyes and saw a boot kicking in what was left of the rear window.

Then a face, upside down, with a T-shirt pulled up over the nose.

"There you are. Look at me. What's your name?"

"Robin."

"Okay, Robin. I'm Cal. I'm a firefighter. I'm getting you out."

He said it.

He reached in and felt along my legs through the smoke.

"You're pinned under the seat frame. I'm going to lift it. It's going to hurt."

"The car's on fire."

"I know. That's why we're doing it fast."

He disappeared.

For a second I thought he'd gone for good.

Then he was back with a long iron bar from his truck.

He jammed it under the crushed seat and threw his whole weight on it.

Metal screamed.

So did I.

The weight came off my shins by two inches.

"Pull your legs toward me. Now, Robin. Now."

I pulled.

My left leg came free. My right leg dragged behind it.

He got both hands under my arms and hauled me backward through the window frame.

Glass raked my forearm.

I felt the gravel of the shoulder under my back, then the dry grass.

He kept dragging me, twenty feet, thirty.

Behind us the SUV made a sound like a great breath going in.

Then it went up.

The heat came across the grass and hit my face.

Cal crouched over me until the worst of it passed.

When he sat back, his eyebrows were singed and he was breathing hard.

"You're okay," he said. "You're out. You're okay."

I turned my head.

Across the road, on the far shoulder, Scott stood by the guardrail with Joey on his hip.

Joey had his face buried in Scott's neck.

Scott's shirt was torn and there was blood on his hands.

He was holding the velvet box.

He saw me on the grass.

He looked at the car, and then back at me.

He walked over slowly, around the fire.

"You got out," he said. "Good."

That was all.

He didn't kneel down.

He didn't ask where it hurt.

"Scott," I said. "You left me in there."

"I had Joey, Robin. He could've been killed."

"You had time to dig for that."

I looked at the box in his hand.

He closed his fingers over it.

"Not now," he said, low, with his eyes on Cal. "Not in front of people."

Cal was standing up behind me.

He didn't say anything, but he didn't look away from Scott either.

A siren came up the grade, then another.

A hundred yards down, the truck driver sat on his bumper with his head in his hands.

A fire engine pulled up and started on the SUV.

Two paramedics came across the grass with a board.

One of them was a young woman with a ponytail, and she knelt beside me and cut my jeans open up the right leg.

"Oh, honey," she said, very quietly.

I didn't look.

"Tib and fib," she said to her partner. "And that arm needs a burn dressing. Who's with her?"

"Her husband's right there," Cal said.

The paramedic looked over at Scott.

Scott was sitting on the guardrail now, holding Joey in his lap, cleaning the soot off the velvet box with the tail of his shirt.

He was being very careful with the corners.

"Sir? Are you coming with your wife?"

He looked up.

"I need to stay with my son. He's been through a lot."

"We can take him too. There's room."

"He's terrified of ambulances," Scott said. "I'll follow in a car. My brother's coming."

The paramedic didn't say anything else.

She fastened the straps across my chest a little harder than she needed to.

Joey lifted his head from Scott's shoulder.

He looked at me on the board, at my leg, at the blood.

Then he looked at the box in his father's hand.

"Is Mommy's necklace okay?"

"It's fine, buddy. Look."

Scott opened the lid.

The little diamond caught the fire and threw it back.

Joey smiled.

It was the first time he'd smiled all day.

They lifted me.

Every step across the grass went through my leg.

Cal walked beside the board the whole way.

He had a phone in his hand, and he kept looking back at the guardrail.

At the ambulance doors he put one hand on the frame to stop them closing.

"Robin."

I turned my head.

His face was black with soot except around his eyes.

"I was right behind you when that truck came over," he said. "I saw you go over. I saw him climb out."

I didn't understand what he was telling me.

"I was pulling over and I watched the whole thing," he said. "He looked right at you. He stood on that shoulder with his kid for four minutes and never came back."

The paramedic reached for the door.

Cal held it one more second.

"My dash camera got all of it."

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