The next few hours dissolved into something shapeless.
Fragments.
Noise. Light. Hands that weren't mine pulling me back when all I wanted was to stay.
Someone said my name. Someone else told me to move.
I didn't.
Not until they made me.
The paramedics pushed me aside, their voices sharp, efficient—clinical in a way that felt obscene against the chaos in my chest. Metal screamed as they brought in the Jaws of Life, the sound cutting through the storm and straight through me.
I watched.
I couldn't not watch.
Watched as they tore the steel apart like it was nothing.
Watched as they pulled him free.
Reid didn't move.
Didn't fight.
Didn't even breathe the way he was supposed to.
His body hung between them—too still, too heavy—like something already halfway gone. The white sheets they laid him on turned red too fast. Too much.
Too wrong.
My stomach twisted violently.
I thought I was going to be sick.
I didn't leave him.
I couldn't.
