Karen Stanley's eyes were red-rimmed and swollen and her cheeks were streaked with the silvery trails of dried tears, all of which scared the living daylights out of him. In the four years that he'd known her, she'd never been anything other than perfectly composed and in control, and he couldn't shake the mental image of exactly how lifeless Hank Stanley had looked when he'd been lifted into the ambulance.

"He's in Recovery," she hiccupped. She sniffed and blew her nose on a damp handkerchief. "They say – both doctors said – that the surgery went well and that he should make a full recovery, whatever that means. One of them, the second one, said that he was going to be fine."

Her expression and her tightly clenched left fist clearly said that she wouldn't believe that until she actually saw her husband with her own eyes.

"But I think his definition of fine and mine are very different."

He almost opened his mouth to explain the difference between 'fine' and 'going to be fine,' but then his common sense kicked in so he nodded sympathetically instead.

"Just so you know," he said, trying for that reassuring tone that Cap used in these situations and pretty sure he was coming up short, "Roy DeSoto treated him on scene and I understand Dr. Brackett treated him in the ER, so he was in excellent hands."

She hiccupped again and pressed the handkerchief against her mouth.

"That bad, huh?" she said, voice wobbling a little and she huddled into her long cardigan as if she was cold.

He had no idea how to answer that. There was an unspoken rule for dealing with the wives of injured firefighters: reassure them but never outright lie to them, and there was no way he could do the first without violating the second.

"You're telling me that he was hurt badly enough," she stumbled on the words, "that he needed the best paramedic in the county and the best ER doctor in the state?"

"That's not what I meant…" he said immediately.

"Stop torturing him, Karen. He's trying to reassure you."

He didn't recognize the plump blonde woman who'd spoken up. Crammed full of the wives and other immediate family members of the injured firemen, as well as the extra seating to support them all, Brackett's office was stuffy and overly warm in a way that seemed more uncomfortable than the fire he'd not too recently left. The main ER waiting area was overflowing with off-duty fireman, from the rank and file up through at least one Deputy Chief, some of whom he recognized as he pushed his way through the noise and that particular concentration of testosterone and stifled anxiety that always accompanied a line of duty injury.

"Kathy Wozniak, Mike Stoker," Karen said, waving her hand between the two of them. "Mike is Hank's Engineer. Kathy's husband is…"

"Captain Wozniak from Station 22," he said, in nodding recognition. "Our other paramedic, John Gage, was the one that took care of your husband, ma'am."

"I don't want to be reassured," Karen said, voice firming into something recognizable. "No offense, Mike; I just want to see Hank. Actually, I'd really like for this entire day to be a bad dream. Do you know that Roy and John treated a friend of mine this afternoon? I still can't believe it; she's way too young for something like that," she shook her head, eyes widened in disbelief, "and I was so upset about Jackie the whole rest of the day and then…I mean I always knew it could happen but I guess I never really thought…." She swallowed and her expression slipped a little. "I need to see him, I need to hear my husband tell me that he's going to be okay, not some surgeon I've never met before."

"Me too," Mrs. Wozniak said fervently. "But, I wouldn't mind talking to your paramedic. I can't seem to get a straight answer about what happened to Dan."

And now he'd dug himself and Gage a hole that he wasn't sure they could climb out from.

He pushed his way from a crouch in front of Mrs. Stanley to his feet. "Let me see what I can find out."

And then because even if he wasn't the guy in charge of A shift, he was the second in command, he stepped carefully over handbags and the extended legs of people he didn't recognize – probably family members of the guys from 22s – until he reached Mateo Lopez, the eldest of Marco's siblings standing to the left of his mother's chair.

"¿Cómo es tu madre?"

"Preocupado. ¿Cualquier noticia sobre mi hermano?"

Mike shook his head and fumbled a little for the right words. "Voy a ver qué puedo aprender."

"¿Es el fuego sigue ardiendo?"

He nodded; he hadn't heard any news in the last hour that would indicate otherwise and even when the upper floors were brought under control, that cable vault would burn for a while.

Mateo nodded back at him and Stoker knelt briefly next to Marisol Lopez who smiled at him with watery eyes and patted his cheek. He didn't need to say anything else since he knew she'd heard every word he'd said to her eldest son; he was just paying respects to the Lopez family matriarch.

The Kelly family was four chairs over and he made his excuses as he sidled sideways and over and through the family bunched into those chairs, and by Steve Ferrara who was hunkered down in front of a woman whose face was buried in her hands, long blonde hair covering both sides, shrouding her face from view. Kelleher's wife? Maybe his girlfriend; could be either. He'd heard Mattie Kelleher's girlfriend looked a lot like the wife from whom he'd separated, but he'd tried to stay away from the salacious details. Chet would know.

He nodded to Ferrara whose expression was not particularly encouraging and then reached Mrs. Kelly.

Wiry, nervous Eileen Kelly didn't quite look old enough to be Chet's mother until one actually met her eyes, which was difficult as they moved continually around the room, anxious and seeking. Her smile was a slight thing and her fingers fluttered in her lap, moving through the decades of the rosary and mouthing the words to prayers she knew better than her children's names. The beads of it were Connemara marble, Chet had told him; a present he'd given his mother on the day he'd successfully completed his probationary year.

"Michael, is there any word? Any updates on my Chester?"

He ignored her predilection for full formal names; the only one who escaped it was Cap because she was more than happy to use his formal title instead.

"No, ma'am. I'm going to see if I can find out if there are any updates on Chet or the others, but wanted to check on you and your family first."

He pushed his way to the door of Brackett's office and through it to the relative coolness of the waiting room. Scanning the corridor, packed with more fireman than a standard First Alarm assignment, he sought and finally found someone in a white coat, standing next to John Gage who was leaning onto the counter where Dixie McCall usually held court.

"…though the severity of the tear is not entirely clear," Brackett was saying to Gage who was nodding. "We're going to have to wait until the swelling and inflammation go down before we determine whether surgery is required."

"Probably twisted or turned when the blast hit," Gage said as Stoker approached them.

Brackett shrugged. "There's really no way to know; at best we'd only be speculating. The head of Orthopedics will make the call but I think he'll try non-surgical treatment first, physical therapy and a knee brace, and continue monitoring." He grimaced. "Which would be fine for the average guy off the street, but knowing the physical demands of your jobs…"

"Yeah," Gage sighed. "You're talking months of trying a non-surgical solution and then probably a lot more months, maybe a year to recover if you have to do the surgery." He looked past Brackett and tried to paste on a smile that wasn't very convincing. "Hey, Mike. You're just in time for the latest updates. Chet's got an Anterior Cruciate Ligament tear in his right leg, meaning he totally messed up his knee without actually breaking any bones. He also has two broken ribs, first and second degree burns on his legs and right forearm and a ton of bumps and bruises."

So Chet was essentially fine except for not being able to walk or run or climb on his right leg, which was a prerequisite for doing his job. Months with no Chet Kelly at the Station loomed in his mind: quiet months, prank free, no Gage and Kelly sniping; it sounded dreary, it sounded awful.

Brackett sighed heavily and paced around the counter to the coffee pot where he poured himself a cup, but Stoker was conscious that his eyes never left them. He wasn't sure if it was the hollow look in Gage's eyes or the raspy voice but Brackett was eyeing his paramedic as if covertly diagnosing him.

"Marco's got a concussion; he lost consciousness for a couple of minutes and has some of the standard symptoms – headache, dizziness, light sensitivity, you know the list – plus a fractured ulna, bruising, muscle strain, and so on. The biggest worry is that he ate some of the smoke from that fire and the doc from Pulmonology is worried about his O2 Sats."

"Exactly how much smoke?" Mike asked carefully, trying to tamp down on his rising panic. "They were all wearing air bottles, you saw that, and I know for a fact Marco checks his gear as thoroughly as I do."

"The blast might have knocked his mask off, Mike," Gage said as he leaned further onto the counter, rocking gently back and forth. "You know that. Or perforated the hose. Who knows? We both know what chemicals were in the air inside there. Even a few minutes of breathing that air…"

Brackett stepped forward. "The paramedic on scene…"

"Eddie Shafer," Gage said.

"… intubated him as soon as he determined that Marco was showing a hint of upper airway edema. We did a bronchoscopy and saw a little inflammation, which we're treating, but it's confined to the upper airway. We don't see any in the lower airway passage or the alveoli. We'll continue to monitor it and his O2 sats, but for now he's doing okay."

Okay, but not fine, Stoker noted. Not even 'going to be fine.'

"Their families want to see them," he said. "I'm not sure who talked to Cap's wife or Mrs. Wozniak but they have a lot of questions and I'd like to get some answers for them, but most of all, they want to see their husbands. When is that going to be possible?"

Gage stood up suddenly and spun around to face Brackett, almost colliding with the doctor's coffee cup. He immediately raised his arms, apology or just making sure he couldn't do any further damage, Stoker wasn't exactly sure, and then rested his back against the counter. Over his shoulder, he said, "Doc was about to give me the update on Cap when you got here, Mike."

Brackett drained the coffee cup and then replaced it by the pot.

"He came through the surgery very well."

"Endoscopy?"

Brackett shook his head. "No time, Johnny. Dr. Cleary did an exploratory laparotomy and ended up doing a splenectomy, surgically repairing a laceration in the liver and resecting a piece of the small intestine that had been perforated…"

"Did he have to do an ileostomy?"

"No need. There was enough healthy small intestine left to sew the ends back together."

Gage let out a deep breath, relaxing back against the counter. "Good, I'd hate to be the one who had to explain that to his wife."

"Somebody needs to," Stoker interjected. "Someone needs to tell her what's going on. I've never see her so…" He mentally flailed, searching for the right word, "…distraught."

"Well, of course she is," Gage said. "I mean, what kind of wife wouldn't be kind of scared, considering."

"Actually, she was fine," Dixie said from behind Stoker. She strolled up to the counter, raised one perfectly groomed brow and Gage straightened and backed away from her counter, coming around to the front of it where he belonged. Then she frowned. "Where's Roy?"

"Home," Gage said. "Mike dropped him off on our way here."

"He wanted to see his wife, let her know that he was okay," Stoker added. "He said he'd get her to drive him over, meet us here."

"Smart man," Dixie said.

"So how did Cap's wife go from fine to distraught?" Gage said, scratching the back of his head and then rolling his neck, loosening the accumulated tension of the last twenty-four hours.

"Well maybe fine is a little bit of an exaggeration, but she's obviously made of tough stuff and held together pretty well when Dr. Cleary talked to her about the abdominal surgery, even asked a few insightful questions about the long term risks of his spleen being removed…"

"So…" Gage said and was instantly silenced with a look.

"It was when Dr. Hickman from Orthopedics finished talking to her about Hank's dislocated shoulder, fractured wrist and the fractured metacarpals and phalanges in his left hand…"

Suddenly Brackett groaned and covered his eyes with his right hand. "Don't tell me…"

"Oh, you better believe I'm going to tell you," Dixie said sharply. "They had to cut his wedding ring off to set the fractures and that idiot…"

Brackett winced, obviously and almost exaggeratingly winced.

"…tossed the pieces of the ring in with the medical waste." She huffed and glared at Brackett. "Again."

"Uh-oh," Gage said, quietly.

"Dix…" Brackett said.

"It's a wedding ring, Kel," she spat out, teeth clenched. "What kind of idiot…"

"A bachelor kind of idiot," he immediately replied, and then softened his response. "I'll talk to him."

"Good," she said. And then she smiled, one with a slight edge. "And when he complains to you about how I made his scrub nurse sort through all of the medical waste to retrieve the pieces of that ring…"

Stoker finally released the breath he'd been holding and Brackett started to laugh.

"You didn't!" he said, between laughs, in a voice that said he darn well knew she had.

"You bet your ass, I did," she said. "And after I sterilized them, I gave the pieces of that ring to Karen Stanley so she could have it remade if possible. That's when she started to cry."

Stoker swallowed the sudden lump in his throat and all four of them looked away for the necessary second or two that it took to regain composure and some measure of professional distance.

Then he cleared his throat.

"So," he said, "as I mentioned a little earlier, Cap's wife and Mrs. Wozniak would really like to see their husbands. And Marco and Chet's mothers didn't say so, but I'm pretty sure they'd really like to see their sons. I'm guessing Kelleher, Ostrander and van der Heijden's families want to see them too. When is that going to be possible?"

Dixie glanced at Brackett who looked back at her and they both frowned.

"Mike's our acting Cap," Gage said quickly.

Brackett looked at Gage and then back at Stoker. "Well, I'm not the treating physician…"

"You're the head of ER," Stoker interrupted, politely, firmly.

"Okay," Brackett said, taking a step back and then giving Stoker an obvious once-over. "I'm not the treating physician for Captain Wozniak so I'm not up to date on his condition – other than some generalities that I'm not at liberty to discuss since you're not the acting Captain for his station – but the treating physician, Dr. Schroeder, and I can meet with Mrs. Wozniak, answer her questions." He took a breath. "Your Captain's still in recovery and he's…"

"Groggy," Dixie interrupted. "Still very groggy. I just came from there."

Brackett grimaced. "I don't know whether that's the effects from the anesthesia or if his concussion is a contributing factor, but the when is going to depend on him, on when he's ready to be moved to a room. Probably ICU, since what he's presented with has been fairly typical primary blast injuries, meaning we're going to need to monitor him closely over the next 48 hours…"

"There was no sign of lung injury," Gage interrupted. "And no apnea or bradycardia."

"No," Brackett agreed. "But there are classic blast pattern abdominal injuries and what initially looked like a TM rupture. It turned out to be a hemotympanum without perforation but we'll have an ENT specialist in later today and run another skull series, just in case. And of course, we'll need to monitor his lungs."

Gage caught his eye and Stoker nodded unhappily, understanding and agreeing. Waiting and watching for possible new, life-threatening symptoms to manifest was not something that would go over well with Cap's wife, and it sure didn't fit his definition of 'going to be fine.'

"Chet is in the process of being moved to a room right now. As soon as he's settled," Brackett and Dixie exchanged another glance and she nodded, "his family can see him. He's awake but in a lot of discomfort so I'm going to guess that his doctor would ask for the visits to be fairly short. Dix'll be able to tell you the room."

Stoker nodded, waiting.

Brackett shifted and his face went through a few expressions, finally ending in a sigh.

"Marco's intubated and is receiving high-flow humidified oxygen to displace the carbon monoxide from his hemoglobin. Do you think his family is up for seeing that?"

Good question, Stoker thought and glanced over at Gage who was obviously worried. It was never easy seeing someone you knew personally breathing through a tube. Bad enough when it was a colleague or friend, it had to be substantially worse when it was a family member, especially a child, even a fully-grown adult child.

"I don't know," he said. "But I think the Pulmonologist and I should talk to Marco's brother and let him make that call."

"Fair enough," Brackett said. "I'll give Rosenblatt a call, have him meet you down here."

It was as if a silent signal had been given. Brackett turned around and picked up the phone and Dixie walked away, purposefully, but he had no idea where she was going. Gage shrugged and walked towards Stoker.

"You know, I'm not acting Captain," Stoker said in low voice, just for Gage's ears.

"So?" he said with a shrug. "You're our Engineer and we all know that you're gonna make a hell of a Captain one day, Mike. That's close enough in my book."

And then he walked past, headed towards the Ambulance Only entry where Roy DeSoto had just arrived.

Stoker stood there and watched him, wondering once again exactly why everyone on his shift seemed to think that he wanted to be a Captain.

A/N: sg1robinson, sorry for making you miss your important appointment. Getting a review that the story had you that engrossed made my day, thank you!