PART 1: The Ghost in the Machine

The road was a flat, gray ribbon stretching out into eternity, vibrating underneath the tires of my beat-up Ford F-150. I’d been driving for twelve hours straight, fueled by lukewarm gas station coffee and the kind of bone-deep exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix. My eyes felt like they were filled with sand. Every time I blinked, I saw the afterimages of things that weren’t there—a flash of tracers, the red dust of Ramadi, the hollow stare of a nineteen-year-old Lance Corporal bleeding out on a plastic tarp.

I shook my head, forcing the ghosts back into their boxes. Not here. Not now.

I was twenty-seven years old, but I felt a hundred. My name is Leah Torrance, though for the last eight years, everyone who mattered had just called me “Doc.” I was a ghost in my own life, drifting between the person I used to be—the daughter of a firefighter and a teacher in rural Oregon—and the person the Navy had turned me into.

A sign flickered ahead in the twilight: THE IRON SPOKE – 5 MILES.

My stomach gave a painful twist. I hadn’t eaten since North Carolina. I needed to stop, stretch my legs, and reset my brain before I hallucinated something that would put me in a ditch. I flicked the blinker on, the rhythmic click-click-click sounding like a slow heartbeat in the silence of the cab.

The Iron Spoke was exactly what you’d expect from a roadside dive bar in rural Tennessee. It was a squat, cinder-block bunker painted a peeling black, surrounded by a gravel lot packed with Harleys. Chrome glinted under the buzzing neon sign. The air outside smelled of exhaust fumes, wet asphalt, and the coming rain.

I parked the truck in the shadows, away from the rows of bikes. I checked myself in the rearview mirror. Dark circles under my eyes, hair pulled back in a messy ponytail that hadn’t been brushed in two days. I looked like a wreck. Good. Wrecks were invisible. People looked right through them.

I stepped out, the cool air hitting my face. I tugged my leather jacket tighter. It was heavy, comforting. It hid the ink that spiraled down my arms, the stories written on my skin that I wasn’t ready to share with the world. Specifically, the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor on my left forearm—the mark of the tribe I didn’t belong to anymore.

Inside, the air was thick enough to chew. It smelled of stale beer, fry grease, and that metallic tang of old blood and motor oil. A jukebox in the corner was wheezing out some old Waylon Jennings track, low and mournful.

The place was about half full. Bikers, mostly. The real deal, not the weekend warriors who polished their bikes with diapers. These guys wore cuts that looked like they’d been dragged behind a truck. Roadreapers MC. I clocked the patches immediately. I didn’t stare, but I saw everything. It was a habit I couldn’t break. Assess. Triage. Move.

I kept my head down and walked to the bar, taking a seat at the far end, away from the cluster of leather vests near the pool tables.

“Burger and a Coke, please,” I told the bartender. He was a skinny guy with nervous eyes. He glanced at the bikers, then at me, and nodded quickly.

“Coming right up.”

I sat there, staring at the scratches in the wood of the bar top. My hands were trembling slightly. Not from fear—never from fear—but from the adrenaline crash. I was six months out of the Navy, six months into a ‘normal’ life that felt more alien than the deserts of Helmand Province ever had. I was heading to Colorado for a job interview. Civilian EMS. Something safe. Something where the people I treated wouldn’t have their legs blown off by IEDs.

Just eat, I told myself. Eat, get back in the truck, drive until you hit the mountains.

But the universe has a sense of humor, and usually, it’s a dark one.

The trouble started when I got up to use the restroom. I had to walk past the main table of Roadreapers. There were seven of them. Big guys. The kind of men who took up space just to prove they could. As I passed, the air shifted. The conversation dipped.

“Check out the stray,” one of them muttered.

Laughter. Low, guttural, predatory.

I didn’t flinch. I didn’t look. I just kept walking, my boots thudding softly on the sticky floor. I’d heard worse from Marines who were high on painkillers and fear. I’d dealt with warlords in villages who looked at me like I was cattle. A couple of bikers in Tennessee didn’t register on my threat scale.

When I came back out, the dynamic had changed. The predator had left the pack.

He was waiting by my stool.

He was massive—at least six-two, pushing two-forty. A shaved head that gleamed under the neon lights, a beard that reached his chest, and arms like tree trunks covered in faded jailhouse ink. He was leaning against the bar, his boot resting on the rung of my chair.

I stopped five feet away. My heart rate didn’t spike. It actually slowed down. Combat calm. The world sharpened. I saw the heavy ring on his right hand. I saw the knife clip in his pocket. I saw the way his weight was shifted onto his back leg, ready to lunge.

“This seat taken?” he asked. His voice sounded like gravel in a blender.

I looked him in the eye. “That’s my seat.”

He grinned, revealing a chipped front tooth. “Don’t see your name on it.”

The bartender was wiping a glass violently at the other end of the bar, doing his best to become invisible. The jukebox seemed to get quieter. The air in the room pressurized.

I took a slow breath. “I’d appreciate it if you moved.”

The biker laughed, a sharp bark of sound. He turned his head to his buddies at the table. “You hear that? She’d appreciate it.”

The table erupted in laughter. It was a performance. I was the prop.

“Look,” I said, keeping my voice flat, devoid of challenge but firm. “I don’t want any trouble. I’m just passing through. I just want to finish my food.”

He leaned in closer. I could smell him now—stale tobacco and cheap whiskey. “Where you headed, sweetheart?”

I didn’t answer. Information was ammunition. I wasn’t giving him any.

“Don’t be unfriendly,” he cooed, his grin widening. He reached out.

Time dilated. I watched his hand move in slow motion. Thick fingers, grease under the nails. He put his heavy hand on my shoulder, his thumb digging into the divot of my collarbone. It wasn’t a caress. It was a claim. It was a test of dominance.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

His grin faded, replaced by a hard, ugly look. “Or what?”

The silence that fell over the bar was absolute. The pool balls stopped clacking. The conversations died. Every eye was on us.

I felt the heat of his hand through my leather jacket. I felt the ghost of every man who had ever tried to corner me, every moment of helplessness I had ever fought against. But I wasn’t helpless. Not anymore.

I calculated the angles. If I grabbed his pinky and twisted, I could snap the metacarpal before he realized what was happening. A strike to the throat would collapse his trachea. A kick to the knee would shatter the joint. I knew a hundred ways to dismantle human anatomy. I had spent eight years learning how to put people back together, which meant I knew exactly how to take them apart.

“Or I will break your wrist,” I whispered.

He blinked. He hadn’t expected that. He stared at me, trying to find the fear that should have been there. When he didn’t find it, he got angry.

He laughed again, but it was forced this time. “You hear this?” he shouted to the room. “She’s gonna break my wrist!”

One of the bikers at the table stood up. “Maybe we should teach her some manners, Tiny.”

Another one drifted toward the door, crossing his arms. Blocking my exit.

My tactical mind started mapping the room. Seven hostiles. One exit blocked. Improvised weapons: beer bottles, pool cues. Probability of extraction without injury: Low.

The biker—Tiny—tightened his grip on my shoulder. It hurt now. He was trying to crush me.

“Let’s see who can save you now, sweetheart,” he hissed, leaning down so his face was inches from mine.

I stood perfectly still. I didn’t pull away. I grounded my stance. I prepared to pivot, to drive my elbow into his solar plexus. I was going to go down swinging.

And then, a voice cut through the silence.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

It came from the corner booth, deep in the shadows. I hadn’t even noticed anyone sitting there.

Tiny froze. He didn’t let go of me, but he turned his head.

A man was standing up from the booth. He moved slowly, deliberately. He was older, maybe late forties, with gray hair cut high and tight. He wore a flannel shirt and jeans, blending into the background like he was part of the furniture. But now that he was standing, the camouflage dropped.

He walked toward us. He didn’t swagger. He didn’t rush. He moved with a terrifying fluidity, his hands loose at his sides. His eyes were locked on Tiny.

I recognized that walk. I recognized the set of his jaw. I recognized the specific frequency of the danger radiating off him. It was the same energy I felt in the mirror sometimes.

Wolf recognizing wolf.

The man stopped ten feet away. He looked at Tiny’s hand on my shoulder. Then he looked up at Tiny’s face.

“This doesn’t concern you, old man,” Tiny spat, trying to regain control of the narrative.

The stranger ignored him. He looked at me. His eyes were a piercing blue, and for a second, the hard mask slipped. He looked… tired. Sad. But underneath that, there was steel.

“That woman,” the stranger said, his voice carrying to every corner of the silent bar, “is a Navy Hospital Corpsman. She served with the Marines for eight years. Three deployments.”

My breath hitched. How?

He took a step closer. “She has saved more lives before breakfast than you will meet in your entire miserable existence. She’s pulled men out of burning Humvees while taking fire. She’s held boys while they died screaming for their mothers.”

Tiny’s grip on my shoulder slackened slightly, but he didn’t let go. He looked confused.

“And,” the stranger continued, his voice dropping an octave, becoming something dark and dangerous, “if you don’t take your filthy hand off her right now, I am going to make you regret the day you were born.”

The air in the room was electric. I stood in the eye of the storm, the biker’s hand still heavy on me, the stranger staring him down.

Tiny sneered. “You? You’re gonna make me regret it? Who the hell are you?”

The stranger didn’t blink. He reached into his pocket. The bikers at the table tensed, hands going to their belts. But he didn’t pull a gun.

He pulled out a wallet. He flipped it open and tossed a laminated ID card onto the bar counter. It slid across the wood and stopped right in front of Tiny.

“Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Hale,” he said softly. “United States Marine Corps. Retired.”

He paused, letting the rank hang in the air like a guillotine blade.

“And she,” Hale nodded at me, “was my Corpsman.”

PART 2: The Weight of the Anchor

The ID card lay on the scarred wood of the bar like a live grenade. Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Hale.

The name slammed into my chest harder than a mortar round. The memories flooded back, unbidden and violent. I saw him in the dust of Ramadi, shouting orders over the roar of a firefight. I saw him standing over a map in a bombed-out command post, his face gray with exhaustion but his eyes burning with that same terrifying resolve. I hadn’t recognized him at first—civilian clothes and five years of aging act like a disguise—but the voice… God, the voice was the same. The voice that had ordered men to their deaths and ordered others to survive.

Tiny stared at the ID. Then he looked at Hale. Then at me.

The gears in his head were grinding. He was a bully, not a soldier. He understood violence, but he didn’t understand command. He was trying to calculate if he could take the “old man.” He was looking at the gray hair, the slight stoop of tired shoulders. He wasn’t looking at the stillness. He wasn’t seeing the predator.

“Retired,” Tiny scoffed, though his voice lacked its earlier conviction. He squeezed my shoulder one last time, a petty, parting shot of pain. “Means you ain’t nobody now.”

Hale didn’t move. He didn’t raise his voice. He just tilted his head slightly, a shark adjusting its angle of attack.

“I am a man who has spent twenty years dismantling things much scarier than you,” Hale said. The calm in his voice was worse than a scream. It was the calm of a man who has already decided how he’s going to kill you and is just waiting for the paperwork to clear. “You have three seconds to remove your hand. One.”

Tiny’s eyes darted to his friends. They were standing now, shifting uneasily. They felt it too—the shift in atmospheric pressure. The difference between a bar brawl and a tactical dismantle.

“Two.” Hale took a half-step forward. His hands didn’t come up. They stayed relaxed. That was the tell. An amateur puts their hands up. A professional knows his hands are fast enough.

Tiny let go.

It wasn’t a surrender; it was a recoil. He snatched his hand back as if my shoulder had suddenly turned red hot. He stepped back, puffing his chest out, trying to salvage his pride in front of his pack.

“Whatever,” Tiny grunted. “Not worth the jail time for a washed-up jarhead and a…” He looked at me, searching for a slur, but the look in Hale’s eyes choked it back down his throat. “…and a girl.”

“Sit down,” Hale ordered. Not asked. Ordered. It was the Command Voice. The tone that bypasses the conscious brain and hits the lizard brain stem directly. Do it or die.

Tiny blinked. He looked at the table. He looked at Hale. And then, like a puppet with its strings cut, he sat.

The other bikers followed suit, sinking back into their chairs, suddenly very interested in their beers. The spell of violence broke, leaving the room trembling in its wake.

Hale didn’t look at them again. They were neutralized targets. He turned his eyes to me.

“You okay, Doc?”

Doc.

That single syllable cracked me open. I hadn’t heard it spoken with that specific inflection—that mix of respect, demand, and fatherly concern—since I hung up my uniform.

“Yes, sir,” I managed to whisper. My voice was steady, but my knees felt like water. The adrenaline dump was hitting me now, the shakes starting in my fingertips.

Hale gestured to the booth he’d vacated. “Grab your burger. Sit with me.”

I grabbed my plate and my Coke, my hands shaking enough that the ice rattled against the glass. I followed him back to the shadows. We sat opposite each other. The leather of the booth was cracked and cold.

Up close, he looked older than I remembered. The lines around his eyes were deeper, like canyons carved by worry. He had the same thousand-yard stare I saw in the mirror, the look of a man who is physically present but whose soul is still walking patrol in a foreign country.

“I didn’t know it was you,” I said, the words tumbling out. “I saw the walk, but I didn’t… I didn’t put it together.”

Hale took a sip of his black coffee. “I barely recognized you without the flak jacket and the dirt, Torrance. But I saw the tattoo.” He nodded at my arm. “And I saw the way you stood your ground. You didn’t flinch.”

“I was calculating the break,” I admitted, looking down at my hands. “I was going to snap his metacarpals.”

Hale smiled, a rare, fleeting thing that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know. I saw you shift your weight. That’s why I stepped in. You would have broken his wrist, his buddies would have jumped you, and I would have had to kill three people before the police arrived. Too much paperwork.”

I laughed. It was a dry, brittle sound, but it felt good. “Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. I’m just Marcus now.” He leaned back, studying me. It was an inspection. He was checking for wounds that couldn’t be bandaged. “I heard you got out. Six months ago?”

“Yes, s—Marcus.”

“How’s the transition?”

The question hung in the air between us, heavy and suffocating. How’s the transition? It’s the question every veteran asks, and the answer is always a lie. It’s fine. I’m adjusting. Good to be home.

I looked at this man, this commander who had led us through the valley of the shadow of death. I couldn’t lie to him.

“It’s hell,” I whispered. I picked at the label on my Coke bottle. “I feel… frantic. All the time. I’m driving to Colorado just to keep moving. I feel like if I stop, the silence will catch up to me and crush me.”

Hale nodded slowly. “The silence is the loudest part. In the sandbox, everything is noise. Chaos. Purpose. You wake up, you have a mission, you keep your people alive. Here? You wake up and the biggest decision is what kind of cereal to buy. It feels… trivial.”

“It feels fake,” I said. “Everyone is walking around smiling, drinking their lattes, worrying about their WiFi signal. And I just want to scream at them. I want to shake them and say, ‘Do you have any idea how fragile this is? Do you know what it smells like when a human body burns?’“

I stopped, realizing my voice had risen. I glanced at the bikers. They were still subdued, glancing over at us nervously.

Hale reached across the table. He didn’t touch my hand—he knew better—but he tapped the table near my fist.

“That anger?” he said quietly. “That’s grief. You’re grieving the person you were. You’re grieving the clarity of the mission. We all do it.”

“Does it go away?”

“No,” he said bluntly. “But you learn to carry it. It stops being a boulder on your back and becomes a stone in your pocket. You know it’s there, you can feel the weight, but it doesn’t stop you from walking.”

I took a bite of my burger. It tasted like cardboard ash. “I’m going for a job interview. Paramedic.”

“Good,” Hale said. “You’re a healer, Leah. It’s in your blood. You can’t turn that off.”

“I don’t know if I can do it out here,” I confessed. “In the field, if I lost someone… it was war. It was expected. Here? If I lose a kid in a car crash because I wasn’t fast enough? I don’t know if I can handle that guilt without the excuse of combat.”

Hale leaned forward, his eyes locking onto mine. The intensity was back. “Listen to me closely. You didn’t save those Marines because of the war. You saved them because of you. Because you have a gift. You have the ability to look into the abyss and keep working. That doesn’t belong to the Navy. That belongs to you. Don’t throw it away because you’re scared of the quiet.”

I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. I blinked them back furiously. Marines don’t cry. Corpsmen don’t cry.

“Why were you here?” I asked, changing the subject before I broke down in the middle of a biker bar. “Of all the bars in all the towns…”

Hale sighed, looking out the grimy window at the darkening parking lot. “I drive. Same as you. When the house gets too quiet, I get in the truck and I drive until the tank is empty. I ended up here.”

He paused, and then he dropped the bombshell.

“Actually, that’s a lie.”

I frowned. “What?”

He looked at me, his expression unreadable. “I didn’t just end up here. I was looking for you.”

The air left my lungs. “What?”

“I keep tabs on my people, Leah. Even the ones who get out. Especially the ones who get out.” He tapped the table again. “I heard you were struggling. I heard you left North Carolina in a hurry. I knew your route. I figured you’d take the I-40. I’ve been stopping at diners and bars for two days hoping to intercept you.”

My mind reeled. “You… you were tracking me?”

“Overwatch,” he corrected. “I was providing overwatch. I didn’t want to interfere. I just wanted to make sure you made it to Colorado. I was going to sit in that corner, drink my coffee, and watch you leave. Make sure you were safe.”

He gestured to the bikers behind us. “I didn’t expect the welcoming committee. But I’m glad I was here.”

I stared at him. The realization washed over me. I hadn’t been alone. For eight years, he had been the voice in my ear, the order in the chaos. And even now, six months later, miles from base, he was still there. Semper Fidelis. Always Faithful. It wasn’t just a slogan to him.

“You drove two days,” I said, my voice trembling, “just to watch my back?”

“You’re one of mine, Doc,” he said simply. “We don’t leave our people behind. Not in Ramadi. Not in Tennessee.”

He reached into his flannel pocket and pulled out a small, off-white business card. He slid it across the table.

“I run a program,” he said. “Veterans Outreach in North Carolina. But we have a network nationwide. Colorado, too. If you get out there and the silence gets too loud… if you feel like you’re going to drive off the road… you call this number. Day or night. Someone will answer who knows exactly what the sand tastes like.”

I picked up the card. It was simple. Hale Strategic Solutions – Veteran Integration. And a handwritten number.

“I’m not asking you to come back,” Hale said, standing up. “You have a life to build. A new mission. Go get that job. Save some lives. But know that you have a extraction team on standby. Always.”

He threw a twenty-dollar bill on the table. “Lunch is on me.”

“Sir—Marcus,” I stood up too. “Thank you.”

He looked at me one last time, a mixture of pride and sorrow in his eyes. “Stand tall, Leah. You earned that tattoo. Don’t let anyone make you cover it up.”

He turned and walked out. He didn’t look back at the bikers. He didn’t check his six. He walked with the utter confidence of a predator who knows he is the apex.

I watched him go, the bell above the door jingling cheerfully as he exited into the night.

I was alone again. But the booth didn’t feel as cold. The bar didn’t feel as dark.

I looked down at the card in my hand. Then I looked at my left forearm. I rolled up the sleeve of my leather jacket, exposing the ink. The Eagle. The Globe. The Anchor.

The biker, Tiny, was watching me. I caught his eye.

He didn’t sneer. He didn’t look away. He looked… ashamed.

He cleared his throat, standing up awkwardly. The room tensed again, but the aggression was gone. He looked like a scolded schoolboy.

“Hey,” he grunted.

I didn’t flinch. “Yeah?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I… uh…” He looked at his friends, then back at me. “That guy. Your CO?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was.”

Tiny nodded slowly. “He’s… intense.”

“He saved my life three times,” I said. “Make that four.”

Tiny looked at his boots. “Look. I didn’t know. About the service. About… any of it.” He took a breath. “I was out of line. Way out of line. I’m sorry.”

I studied him. It was a genuine apology. Fear had stripped away the bravado and left a man who realized he had almost made a catastrophic mistake.

“Apology accepted,” I said.

I picked up my helmet. I walked to the door, passing their table. Nobody moved to stop me. As I pushed the door open, I heard Tiny voice behind me.

“Good luck in Colorado, Doc.”

I stepped out into the cool night air. The rain had held off. The sky was clear, a vast canopy of stars stretching over the highway.

I walked to my truck, my boots crunching on the gravel. I sat in the driver’s seat and just breathed. For the first time in six months, the knot of anxiety in my chest had loosened. I wasn’t “cured.” The ghosts were still there. But they weren’t screaming anymore. They were just watching.

I put the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life.

I wasn’t running away anymore. I was moving forward to the next objective.

PART 3: The Silence Between Heartbeats

The mountains of Colorado aren’t like the mountains in Afghanistan. In the Hindu Kush, the peaks are jagged, hostile teeth trying to chew the sky. Here, the Rockies felt like guardians. Massive, silent, ancient sentinels watching over the valleys.

Three weeks had passed since The Iron Spoke. Three weeks since Marcus Hale had ghosted back into my life and reminded me who I was.

I got the job.

Of course I got the job. The interview had been a formality. The EMS captain, a weathered woman named Rodriguez, had taken one look at my DD-214 and my service record and just nodded. “Can you start Monday?” she’d asked. “We’re short-staffed and the calls don’t stop.”

“I can start now,” I’d told her.

And I did.

I was partnered with a guy named Miller. He was twenty-four, fresh out of paramedic school, eager, bouncy, and completely unscarred by life. He talked constantly. About his girlfriend, about his fantasy football league, about the new lift kit on his Jeep.

At first, his chatter grated on my nerves like sandpaper. I wanted silence. I wanted to scan the perimeter. I wanted to sit in the rig and wait for the inevitable disaster. But slowly, Miller’s relentless normalcy began to chip away at my armor. He was a reminder that the world wasn’t just blood and dust. It was also bad pizzas and messy breakups and excitement over a football game.

But the test was coming. I knew it. You don’t switch battlefields without facing a new enemy.

It happened on a Tuesday night. A storm was rolling in off the peaks, turning the roads slick with rain and sleet. The radio crackled to life, the dispatcher’s voice tight and urgent.

“Unit 4, respond. Multi-vehicle collision. I-25 Northbound, mile marker 140. Reports of a rollover, possible entrapment. Fire is en route but delayed.”

“That’s us,” Miller said, his eyes going wide. He hit the lights. The siren wailed—a sound that used to trigger my fight-or-flight, but now just signaled work.

We tore down the highway, rain lashing the windshield. My pulse was steady. Sixty beats per minute. The world slowed down. This was my element. The chaos.

When we arrived, it was a mess. A semi-truck had jackknifed, blocking two lanes. A small sedan was crushed against the median, crumpled like a tin can. Steam and smoke hissed into the rain. Blue and red lights strobed against the wet asphalt, painting the scene in a nightmare disco.

“Miller, grab the bags,” I ordered, my voice cutting through the noise. “I’m going to the sedan.”

I ran toward the car. The driver’s side was obliterated. I peered inside. A woman was slumped over the wheel, unconscious, blood matting her hair. But in the back…

A child’s scream pierced the air.

It was a sound that stops your heart. High-pitched, terrified, primal.

I wrenched the back door open. A little girl, maybe six years old, was strapped into a booster seat. She was thrashing, screaming for her mommy. Her arm was twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Hey, hey, look at me!” I shouted, trying to break through her panic. “I’ve got you. I’m Leah. Look at me!”

She looked at me, eyes wide with terror. “Mommy! Mommy won’t wake up!”

“We’re going to help Mommy,” I promised, though my triage brain was already screaming that Mommy was likely gone. “But I need to get you out first. The car isn’t safe.”

I smelled it then. Gasoline. Strong and pungent.

I looked down. A dark pool was spreading under the car, mixing with the rain. And near the engine block, a small flicker of orange.

“Miller!” I roared. “Fire! Get the extinguisher!”

Miller froze. He was staring at the gas. He was staring at the flames licking up the side of the hood. He was a kid who had learned about this in a classroom, not in a kill zone.

“I… we have to wait for Fire!” he stammered. “Protocol says—”

“Protocol is going to get them burned alive!” I snapped. “Get the extinguisher! Now!”

I turned back to the girl. The seatbelt mechanism was jammed. The metal was twisted. I couldn’t get it release.

The fire was growing. I could feel the heat on my face now. It brought it all back. The Humvee in Helmand. The smell of burning rubber and flesh. The heat that seared your eyebrows off before you even touched the flames.

Flashback.

I’m pulling Corporal Sanchez out of the burning vic. His gear is caught. The rounds are cooking off in the back. He’s screaming at me to leave him. I’m screaming that I’m not going anywhere.

“No!” I gritted my teeth, forcing the memory down. Here. Now.

I pulled my trauma shears from my vest. “Honey, I’m going to cut the strap. You have to be brave for me. Can you be brave?”

The girl was sobbing, coughing as smoke started to fill the cabin. “It’s hot!”

“I know. Close your eyes.”

I sawed at the thick webbing. It was tough. The flames were curling under the chassis now. The gas tank was right there. We had seconds. Maybe less.

I got through the belt. I grabbed the girl, hauling her out of the seat. She was light, fragile.

“I’ve got you,” I whispered.

I turned to pull her out, but my boot slipped on the slick pavement. I went down to one knee, jarring my shoulder—the same shoulder Tiny had grabbed. Pain shot down my arm, but I ignored it.

I looked up. The fire had reached the dashboard. The front of the car was engulfed.

Miller was there then, blasting the extinguisher at the base of the flames, coughing in the smoke. He was terrified, shaking, but he was doing it.

“Get her back!” I yelled at him. “Get her to the rig!”

“What about you?” Miller screamed over the roar of the fire.

“The mother!”

I dove back toward the driver’s seat. The heat was unbearable. My skin felt like it was blistering. I reached in, checking for a pulse on the woman’s neck.

Faint. Thready. But there.

She was alive.

“Miller! Backboard! Now!”

We worked in a frenzy. The fire was roaring like a living thing, hungry and angry. We dragged the woman out of the wreckage, moving her as carefully as we could while racing the explosion we knew was coming.

We got her onto the gurney and were running toward the ambulance when the gas tank went.

BOOM.

The shockwave knocked us forward. Heat washed over my back. Shrapnel pinged off the ambulance doors.

We didn’t stop. We loaded them in. I jumped in the back. Miller jumped in the front.

“Go! Go! Go!”

As we sped away, I looked out the back window. The car was an inferno. If we had been ten seconds slower…

I turned back to my patients. The little girl was crying, holding her arm. The mother was intubated, stable for now.

I sat down on the bench seat. My hands were covered in soot and blood. My jacket was singed. My lungs burned.

And I started to laugh.

It wasn’t a happy laugh. It was a release. A hysterical, jagged sound that bubbled up from my chest. I was alive. They were alive. I had done it. I had walked back into the fire and I had come back out.

Miller looked back through the pass-through window, his face pale and streaked with soot. “You… you’re crazy, Leah. You’re actually crazy.”

“Yeah,” I wheezed, wiping my face. “I’m a Corpsman. It comes with the territory.”

Later that night, after the adrenaline had faded and the paperwork was done, I sat on the back bumper of the ambulance in the hospital bay. The rain had stopped. The air was crisp and cold.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I pulled it out. It was a text from an unknown number. But I knew who it was.

Saw the news report about the I-25 crash. Hero paramedic pulls two from burning vehicle. Sounds familiar. – M.

I smiled. He was watching. Still. Always.

I typed back: Just doing the job, Marcus. Just doing the job.

I looked at the text for a long time. Then I went to my contacts. I scrolled down to Hale, Marcus. I hit call.

It rang twice.

“Hale.” His voice was rough, sleep-filled, but alert.

“Hey,” I said softly. “It’s Leah.”

“I know. You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. And for the first time in six months, it wasn’t a lie. “I’m okay. I… I think I found it.”

“Found what?”

” The new mission.”

I could hear the smile in his voice. “I never doubted it for a second, Doc.”

“Marcus?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you. For the bar. For… everything.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Just keep the line moving. We all have to carry the fire.”

“Roger that.”

I hung up. I looked up at the mountains. The sun was starting to crest over the peaks, painting the sky in shades of violet and gold. A new day.

I rolled up my sleeve. The Eagle, Globe, and Anchor was covered in soot, but the ink was as dark and permanent as ever.

I wasn’t a Marine anymore. I wasn’t in the Navy anymore. But the oath didn’t have an expiration date. To save life. To aid the injured. To serve.

I stood up, dusting off my pants. Miller was walking toward me, holding two steaming cups of bad hospital coffee.

“You good, partner?” he asked, handing me a cup.

I took a sip. It was terrible. It was perfect.

“Yeah, Miller,” I said, looking at the sunrise. “I’m good. Let’s go to work.”

The silence wasn’t scary anymore. Because I knew that even in the silence, I wasn’t alone. And more importantly, I knew that when the silence broke, I would be ready.