It was a cold and snowy Saturday night when Clay's phone rang and Stella instantly rolled her eyes. She knew what that ring meant.

"Where to this time? Oh wait… let me guess… you can't tell me right?" She said to him annoyed.

Clay was caught a bit off guard by her attitude. They were having a great night up until his phone rang. He understood it couldn't be easy for her and knew she was getting tired of it but this wasn't the first time he'd been spun up since they had been dating. She would usually give him a hard time about it but he figured it was something that she was finally coming to terms with. Apparently he was wrong.

"Where is this coming from? You know I can't control when we get called." He asked innocently, trying to avoid a fight that he knew was coming anyway.

"It's just getting a little old. Aren't there other teams? You guys literally just got back a couple of days ago."

That statement was what got Clay going. "Are you fucking kidding me? Old!? Stella, this is my job! You knew exactly what I was before we even started dating, what I do, what sacrifices would have to be made and you said you could handle it. You…" Clay was cut off.

"I can handle it! I jus…" Stella started to say before Clay returned the favor of cutting her off.

"Obviously you can't. We've been dating what, just over a year and you're already saying 'this is getting old?' Are you serious?" Clay was furious. He headed to his bedroom, slammed the door shut and started packing his bags. This was the last thing he needed to worry about before a mission. A mission that wasn't even a guarantee. When he had gotten the text it said that both Alpha and Bravo and were meeting up at base. It was Alpha's turn to spin up but there was a 50/50 chance Bravo would be needed to assist so command wanted both teams there for the briefing just in case.

Stella had continued screaming at him through the locked door. With every word he was getting angrier and angrier, but he kept his mouth shut.

"You are never here anymore! NEVER! I get that they need you and that it's your job but I need you too. I need you to be here for me sometimes." She yelled through the door.

That triggered a nerve with Clay. He grabbed his now packed bags, flung the door open and yelled back "You want to talk about being there!? Where were YOU when I came back from deployment? Huh? You weren't there. You were off playing 'professor' at some college with a guy I don't trust."

"That's not fair and you know it! It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I couldn't say no to that" She yelled back.

"How is it not fair!? I don't expect you to put your life on hold for me Stella, but if you're gonna give me shit about being there, maybe you should check yourself first."

"Don't you dare spin this around on me!" Stella said as Clay grabbed his keys and headed for the front door. He was done arguing. He was done with all of it. "Don't be surprised if I'm not here when you get back. I'm done with this shit." She said as Clay was closing the door behind him.

Clay heard her words through the door and opened the door back up. "Leave your key on the counter. Have a nice life." He said calmly and without a care as he slammed the door back shut and headed to his car.

Stella was speechless. She wasn't expecting him to let her go so easy and it pissed her off even more than she already was. She began packing her things. She wanted out of that apartment. She had quite a bit of stuff there and knew she was going to need help moving it out. She called Gordon to help her. He was the closest person to her and Clay's apartment and she wanted out of there. After she hung up with Gordon she tried calling Clay. She hated doing it and wanted to just be done with the whole thing but she couldn't let him get the last word, not when she had more to say.

Stella was calling Clay constantly and he kept denying the calls, partly because it was snowing so hard he was trying to concentrate on the road but mostly because he was just done. He didn't care to hear anything else she had to say. He had a potential mission he needed to focus on. Finally after about the 11th call he answered his phone. "What!?" He answered angrily.

"Woah man. No need to bite my head off. I was just making sure you got the text. You never replied." Jason's voice was heard over the phone.

Clay sighed in a bit of relief before replying. "Sorry, Stella and I just got in a huge fight and she keeps calling. I thought you were her. I'm on my way, I'll be there in about 20 minutes. The roads are terrible and it's snowing really hard so it's taking a bit longer than usual.

"Sorry to hear that. Drive carefully and I'll see you when you get here." Jason replied.

Clay hung up the phone and threw it back in the passenger seat. No surprise to him Stella called again. He rolled his eyes, grabbed the phone and shut it off. By the time he looked back up he had almost no time to react.

A van was stopped in the middle of the road after hitting a deer. Clay tried his best to avoid hitting it and tried to swerve right. The snowy roads took him further right than he wanted and his breaks became nonexistent on the ice and snow. Clay threw his arms up to protect himself the best he could as his car went through the guard rail and rolled to the bottom of the small hill, coming to a stop with the car half submerged in the icy stream at the bottom.

The family of four ran to the edge of the hill. Seeing the partially submerged car, three of them ran down to the bottom while the youngest, a 12 year old girl named Rory, called for help. After calling for help Rory began making her way down the hill to rejoin her family. Her dad stopped her halfway down and told her to run back up to the car and grab flashlights and the rope that they luckily had in the back of the van for him.

Although the stream was covered in ice, the current underneath was moving strong and the mangled car was barely hanging on to the edge. The dad wanted to tie the car off to a tree to ensure it wouldn't get swept away by the current so that he could get closer to help whoever was inside.

Rory returned quickly and watched as her dad and 16 year old brother quickly but carefully secured the car. Confident the car was going nowhere the dad could get a better eye on the passenger. He could hear the sirens approaching and considered waiting for help to arrive until he saw the water that was beginning to fill the car through the broken windows and the bloody unconscious driver that was sitting in it.

"We don't have time to wait. We need to get him out now. That car is filling up fast and that rope won't hold much longer if it gets any fuller. I'm going in." The dad said to his family.

They didn't like the idea of their dad entering the mangled car that was barely being held in place by a rope, filled with freezing water, but they didn't have much choice. The driver was going to die if they didn't get him out soon, if he wasn't dead already.

The mom sent Rory back up the hill to flag down the help that was coming, not wanting her to watch in case something went wrong. The brother was helping the dad and the mom was grapping whatever warm, dry clothes and blankets she could find in their van.

A boat load of flashing lights from firetrucks, police cars and an ambulance arrived and quickly sized up the scene. They blocked off the road in both directions and headed down to the car in the stream. A medic quickly checked the driver for a pulse and was relieved to find one. He wasn't happy with it but it was there, meaning he was still alive. The firefighters quickly stabilized the car a lot better than the rope was doing and carefully helped the dad out of the car. He was soaked up to his belly button and managed to gain a few cuts from the broken glass. Another medic sent him up to the ambulance to get warmed up and the cuts cleaned. Cops sent the rest of the family up to the ambulance with them so that they were out of the way for the firefighters to do their job.

One medic was keeping an eye on his condition as best as she could while another was put in a wetsuit and entered the back seat of the car. He placed the driver in a cervical collar and held his head in place while the firefighters cut the roof off the car. As the firefighters were cutting off the roof the medic keeping an eye on the driver had called for a helicopter. The snow had stopped but the road conditions were still awful. It would take the ambulance too much time to get to the hospital, time that they might not have.

Once the roof of the car was cut off they began cutting the door off in order to slide the driver out. By the time they had finally gotten him out of the car the helicopter was landing.

"Get him up to the helicopter now!" One of the medics yelled as they carried the backboard up the hill while another medic was cutting off the soaking wet clothes from the driver. As soon as the shirt was cut off they noticed the dog tags around his neck.

The medic carefully took the dog tags off as they reached the helicopter. As soon as the driver was loaded into the helicopter and it took off the medic walked over to a cop.

"Hey Ed. Can you call over to the base? Let them know," she looked down at the dog tags to read the name, "a Clay Spenser was in a serious accident and was flown to the Hampton Medical Hospital. See if they can contact his family. There was no phone or wallet found, must've gotten lost in the water.

"Yea no problem. He gonna make it?" Ed asked.

The medic shrugged her shoulders, she honestly wasn't sure, and then walked back to the ambulance with Ed to check on the family. Ed also wanted to get a statement from the family to try to figure out what had happened. Once everything was cleaned up the road was reopened and all the first responders went their separate ways.