I feel like such an idiot, but I try to act like it doesn’t matter. “You seemed calmer when I touched you. You were saying we needed to get out, and I played along. I agreed and told you we would. That seemed to make you relax, but then . . .” My cheeks blaze hotter. I really should have gone back to bed. Maybe after seeing him like that, I needed the comfort of being close to him. “You didn’t seem to want to let me go, and I was afraid you’d have another if I left. I thought maybe you’d sleep better if I was there.”
“You played along?”
“Yeah.” Sighing, I smile at him. “I worked nights for a while. I never really adjusted to the schedule, so I was constantly overtired, and when I actually managed to make myself sleep during the day, I’d have these crazy dreams that I was at work and no one was helping me. I’d sleepwalk and talk to my roommate—eyes open, like I was totally awake. I’d demand that she help me with patients and apparently get really pissed if she told me I was dreaming or tried to get me to go back to bed. She eventually learned it was easier to play along. She’d smile, nod, agree to help me. Yes, she’d help me with the IV on the patient in 301C. Yes, she’d call the doctor to follow up on Mr. Frasier’s reaction to the new pain meds. It was the only way I would relax enough to go back to sleep.”
He arches a brow. “That’s crazy.”
I laugh. “She loved to regale our friends with stories of my sleepwalking when we were at parties.” I shrug. “It seemed to work for you too.”
“It’s clever.”
I hesitate a beat, not sure if I’m crossing a line by asking. “Is it the warehouse fire? Is that what the nightmares are about?”
His expression is cautious as he meets my eyes and nods.
“You tried to get Max to leave before the building collapsed, but he wouldn’t.”
“We got a report that there were kids on the second floor. We were working off a line, trying to get to them so we could get them out, when we were told to leave the building.” The words are spoken in a monotone—he’s more a robot reporting an event than a man divulging a traumatic experience to a friend. “I couldn’t see him very well, but he turned around at the same time I did. I thought he was behind me, and when I realized he wasn’t, I had to follow that line back in through the smoke. I should have known he’d be stubborn. He could be reckless, and it wasn’t the first time he’d gone against orders trying to make an impossible rescue. I was shouting for him on our portable, but then the building started coming down and I had to make a choice.” He shakes his head. “In together, out together,” he whispers, “but he never came out.”
“You tried.”
“I should have tried harder.”
“Carter.” I reach out to touch his arm, but he stands and shakes his head. I wonder if he has the nightmares a lot or if seeing Isaiah last night triggered something. “It’s not your fault—the fire, what happened to Max. You know that, right?”
“Of course I do.” He squeezes the back of his neck, then stretches. “Do you want the first shower?”
Just like that, the conversation is over. It doesn’t have to be. Maybe he needs someone to make him talk about it. Maybe that someone should be me.
I take a deep breath. “I blamed myself when Heath died.” The words aren’t as hard to say as I would have thought. Maybe because I’ve carried them for so long. Or maybe because I know Carter needs to hear this from me.
He blinks at me, and I can see the struggle playing out on his face—the internal war between exposing a broken part of his soul to help me with a broken part of mine, and keeping everything locked down so he doesn’t have to admit he isn’t whole.
“We were fighting when he left for work that night.” My stomach knots with the memory. Heath was so jealous, so angry, and there was nothing I could do to make it right. “He was killed during a routine traffic stop. The guy was high and had a bunch of heroin in the car. Heath should have called for backup, but he was in a mood.” I turn away, not wanting to see the sympathy in Carter’s eyes. “He was pissed at me, so distracted by our argument that he was reckless. And it got him killed.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Carter says softly. “You weren’t even there.”
“Maybe I wasn’t there physically.” I tap my temple. “But I was there.”