Scene XXI – Shopping District
Chuck sprinted for the fiery entrance to the store, fully intending to rush inside. Sarah couldn't be dead. She might be hurt, but Sarah Walker always found a way to survive.
He pulled up about ten feet from the entrance; the sheer heat from the blaze pushed him back. He desperately looked around for something to shield his skin, or maybe some water to douse himself before going inside. He was on a street; there was nothing.
Taking several deep breaths, he gathered himself.
As Chuck was about to launch himself forward, a strong hand gripped his arm. He angrily whirled around to find a police officer standing there. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked.
"My girlfriend is in there! I'm going in after her." He turned to run inside, but the officer's grip grew tighter, stopping him cold.
Furious, Chuck whirled back around. "Let me go!"
The officer's face was sympathetic. "I'm sorry, son. It would take a miracle for anyone to survive that blast."
No. Sarah had survived far worse than this in her time. She had to be alive. Chuck, using an ominously quiet voice that he didn't even know he had, warned, "Let. Me. Go."
The grip remained firm. "I am sorry." Determination and genuine regret dominated the officer's expression.
Several sirens sounded in the distance. Chuck didn't hear them. He yanked as hard as he could, trying to free himself.
Before Chuck knew what had happened, he was pinned on the ground on his stomach, facing the store. The man had used a move that Sarah had vainly tried to teach him to counter a few times; even if he had gotten the hang of how to defend against the move, he never would have expected it.
Chuck struggled futilely to find a way to escape the officer's grasp. His movements became more violent and more desperate, to no avail. "Sarah!!"
The officer refused to let him up. Chuck howled in frustration, unable to escape.
Time ceased to have any meaning; things moved in slow motion around him. Every part of his psyche thrashed in denial, unwilling to believe what he had just seen.
Flames licked the air as they hungrily fed on whatever it could find. Smoke hovered around the storefront, as if it was just another curious bystander. People stared and pointed at conflagration, miraculously contained to the one store. Stunned, the spectators covered their mouths and voiced occasional sounds of shock. A few even directing curious looks towards the police officer pinning down the lanky thrashing figure; trying to figure out how the two fit into what had happened.
Little of it registered with Chuck; he only saw the fire that raged mercilessly through the store that Sarah had entered. Nothing else mattered.
Chuck's desperation gradually gave way to anguish as the reality of the situation sunk in. His struggles weakened, but his eyes remained fixed on the store, hoping against hope to see Sarah somehow emerge from the flames unscathed.
She was Sarah. She could do anything. However, with each passing moment, Chuck knew the odds of her being alive were dropping … and dropping fast.
Suddenly, firefighters were attaching hoses to a nearby hydrant. Two jets of water streamed into the store, generating angry hisses from the protesting flames. He heard the sound of objects being knocked around and blown apart from the sheer force of the water. Chuck's struggles intensified in response to the chaos, as if freeing himself could somehow help to rescue Sarah.
The bulk of the flames were extinguished, but an impossible amount of smoke still poured out of the store, obscuring everything. A pair of firefighters, a tall black man and a shorter white woman, went into the gutted, smoke-filled store. Each was covered head-to-toe in protective gear including a breathing apparatus; the woman carried a heavy blanket while the man carried a large red axe.
A few minutes later the two emerged, lugging a prone body cradled between them in the blanket. They lowered the blanket to the ground in front of a pair of paramedics. The woman shook her head before picking up another blanket; the pair disappeared into the smoky interior again.
The paramedics opened the blanket and gave the body a cursory inspection. Their expressions clearly conveyed that there was nothing they could do; they wrapped the body up again.
Chuck shook his head in dismay. That wasn't her. Sarah was all right. She had to be all right.
The firefighters emerged again, laden with another blanket-wrapped body. The scene with the paramedics repeated itself. Chuck shook his head, still not wanting to believe it. His imploding heart was a leaden weight of pain that pulled his chest and chin inexorably towards the ground. "Sarah," he whispered brokenly, his lips almost low enough to kiss the pavement.
The firefighters emerged again, motioning urgently to the paramedics. One of the medics grabbed his kit while the other grabbed a rolled-up stretcher from the ambulance.
The smallest ray of hope shone in Chuck's heart. He watched each firefighter quickly fit one of the paramedics with a mask and a small oxygen tank; the four men rushed back into the store.
Reinvigorated, Chuck's struggles intensified. "Let me go! You have to let me go!"
"No," the policeman answered. "You can help her most by letting these men do their work. If she is alive, and that would be a miracle, she won't be in good shape."
Given some hope that Sarah might have survived, Chuck calmed down and started acting a bit more reasonably. "Will you at least let me up? I'm going to have a bruise in my back for a week."
The officer looked doubtfully down at Chuck. "OK, but I'm going to shoot you in the leg if you start heading anywhere near that store."
"All right, all right." Chuck gratefully took a deep breath as the knee disappeared from his back. He pushed himself to his feet a moment later, shifting from one foot to the other as he waited for the men to reemerge.
More than anything, Chuck wanted to go check the two bodies lying on the sidewalk, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. Part of him was terrified of what he would find. It had to be Sarah alive in the store. It had to be.
The men were taking entirely too long to return. He nervously paced back and forth, cognizant of the policeman's threat. Every few seconds there was a new noise from the remains of the store, causing Chuck to jerk his head hopefully. The firefighters were checking that the fire hadn't damaged the structure of the building to the point where a collapse was possible. An irrational part of him was angry that the firemen kept making noises that sent his heart racing, and that they weren't doing anything to help Sarah.
After an interminable amount of time, Chuck saw the back of one of the paramedics emerge from the gloom. The man took step after careful step as he navigated through the debris on the floor of the store, carrying a stretcher with the help of the other medic.
As they stepped through the empty door frame, out of the store and into the sunlight, Chuck caught glimpse of an unmoving body covered by a blanket up to the chin - along with long, blonde hair streaked with soot streaming off one side.
His heart leapt.
Chuck took a step towards Sarah without checking with the officer; the iron grip returned to his upper arm. "Not yet, son. Let the paramedics do their work." Chuck didn't like the idea, but the implacable officer wasn't about to let him go.
The medics set the stretcher directly onto a rolling gurney. They slid a mask over Sarah's face to help her breathe and set up an intravenous feed of clear liquid, inserting the needle into her arm under the blanket.
Focused on the stretcher with Sarah, Chuck was suddenly surprised to see a reporter and a cameraman near the other two bodies. The reporter had pulled back the blankets back to reveal the faces of the deceased; the cameraman was shooting down, capturing the faces for the local news.
One of the medics angrily went over to the cameraman and pushed him back while shouting angry words about having respect for the dead. He shoved the cameraman away from the scene, but not before the man had gotten a shot of Sarah as well. Part of Chuck knew he should be worried about that, but right now, all he could think about was Sarah's health. Blown covers could be dealt with later.
The policeman let Chuck go as he left to help clear the angry reporters from the scene. It took a moment for Chuck to realize that he was free to act; when he did, he rushed over to Sarah.
As Chuck came upon the stretcher, his anxious smile quickly faded into concern. Sarah looked terrible. Her face, like her hair, was blackened by soot from the explosion, but was also covered with red and white heat blisters and peeling skin. In fact, it was nearly impossible to recognize her, especially with the mask across her face. He longed for her to open her eyes or twitch a muscle so he could know that she was OK, but she didn't move.
"Excuse me. You can't be here," the other medic said, continuing his work and barely even glancing at Chuck.
"She's my girlfriend." The words felt strange coming out of his mouth; it was the first time he had used the term for Sarah where it actually was the truth, and here she was, badly burnt and lying on the stretcher. The whole scene was surreal.
"What's your name?" the medic asked.
"Chuck. How is she?" Staring down at her, he was afraid he knew the answer.
"She's had a rough time of it, Chuck. We need to get her to the hospital as quickly as possible."
"Can I hold her hand?" Chuck asked.
"That's not a good idea. But you can ride along with us."
He would have to settle for that. Almost believing she was dead a minute earlier, he was happy to settle for that, although he longed to do more. "She's not moving at all," he observed.
"We've given her something to keep her still," the medic said. "Given the burns on her body, it's best for her to remain as motionless as possible. More comfortable, too."
Chuck wondered if her training might lead her to need a stronger dose to be comfortable. "She's kind of resistant to medications. Are you sure you gave her enough?"
The corner of the medic's mouth turned up slightly. "She'll be comfortable. Let's go," he added, the last part meant for the other medic, who had just returned from his altercation with the reporters.
The two pushed the rolling bed over to the ambulance. Lining up the gurney with some raised tracks on the floor of the truck, the medic pushing from the rear gave the gurney a slightly stronger shove, forcing the legs to fold up and allowing the bed to roll directly into the back. One of the medics jumped in and indicated Chuck should do the same. Awkwardly, he climbed in the opposite side. The other medic shut the doors behind them.
Chuck took a seat on a long bench up towards Sarah's head as the medic in back fastened down the gurney. He heard the other medic climb in through the driver's door; soon, the truck lurched forward, sirens wailing, as the vehicle pushed its way between fire trucks and spectators before it accelerated down the street.
Chuck was staring down at Sarah from his seat on the bench in the back of the ambulance, trying to assess just how badly she was hurt.
She seemed to be breathing fairly easily, if a bit weakly. From what Chuck had learned about burn victims from Ellie over the years, he thought that was a good sign. Also, the paramedic in the back of the truck seemed to be fairly calm. He was muttering some things into a communicator, presumably letting the hospital know they were on the way.
Despite the good signs, he couldn't feel quite as calm when looking at Sarah's face. She was still as death, other than the occasional shallow breath, and the explosion had clearly gotten the better of her. He realized she might scar badly or lose some of her hair. He didn't care.
Assorted memories flashed through his mind. With perfect clarity, he remembered looking up at the Nerd Herd desk to see her for the first time. He remembered her anger and strength when he had questioned whether he could trust her. He remembered the various times she had looked after him, carefully explaining how things worked or breaking things to him gently rather than just ordering him around, as any other agent would have done. He remembered the way she had protected him, the way that she had saved his life time and again.
Mostly, he remembered the way she so often made him feel like the most important person in the room. She wasn't perfect about it – there were times she had withdrawn when she was afraid of admitting her feelings to herself or showing them to others. Still, he had no illusions
In that moment, everything unimportant was stripped away: the Intersect, the spy world, the complicated nature of their relationship. She was what mattered. He didn't know what he would do if he lost her. He couldn't lose her.
He badly needed to tell her that. He had no idea whether she would hear him, but he needed to try.
He knelt down as best he could in the cramped space. He began to whisper into her ear, so that if she could hear, she would be the only one.
"You know Sarah, when I originally found out about … everything, I viewed it as some kind of cruel curse. All of a sudden, I was in danger all the time, spending my days in a world I didn't understand. Honestly, I hated it at first."
Chuck swallowed hard. "As time went on, though, I found myself doing things that I never would have believed possible, and I came to see all this as a kind of gift. I had been in a rut since the whole Stanford thing, and I began to wonder if this was just some karmic, Zen-like repayment to balance the ledger. After all, I was starting to believe in myself for the first time in forever and that's something that never would have happened, if Bryce hadn't sent me the Intersect.
"But lately, I've come to realize that, when you said the Intersect wasn't the reason that I've started getting good at my 'other job', you were right. The Intersect wasn't what gave me confidence in myself again. It didn't believe in me or help me out of tough spots or save my life; and it certainly wasn't what wakes me up smiling most mornings. The thought of spending a few precious minutes with the Intersect isn't what keeps me going during the tough days.
"Bryce may have sent me the Intersect, Sarah, but that wasn't the gift. You were the gift. I was lucky when I became the Intersect only because it meant I got to have you in my life. And I'm not at all ready to not have you in my life, so I need you to keep fighting, OK?"
Sarah's eyes, crusted with burn blisters and peeling skin, slowly flickered open to reveal remarkably bright blue eyes. In the midst of an unfamiliar face covered in terrible burns, he recognized those eyes – and those eyes clearly recognized him. His face erupted into a glad smile.
Her lips, crusted with chapped skin and traces of blood, slowly parted as she took in a breath. With a low, croaking voice, she said, "I'm so sorry, Chuck."
His smile took on a tender tinge; he found himself wishing he could hold her hand. He settled for stroking her hair, remarkably undamaged, if very dirty. "Sorry? For what?"
Sarah shifted her neck and cleared her throat. In a normal voice, she said, "For putting you through all that."
Chuck was puzzled at her sudden seeming strength. "Wait, what?"
Sarah turned her head to look at the paramedic. "I assume we're clear?"
With an amused glance at Chuck before looking at her, the medic nodded.
Sarah sat up. The blanket dropped down, revealing perfectly undamaged skin and clean clothes from the neck down. She stretched her jaw and started scratching; bits of 'skin' and 'blister' and other gunk rained down. "God, that stuff itches. Can we get it off now?"
"Turn 'em off, James," the medic called up front. The sirens cut off moments later.
Chuck finally put it all together. "You mean…" Of course. She was fine the whole time. He pushed himself back into his seat and slumped down, throwing his arms into the air in dismay. "I'm a complete idiot."
"Hey," she called immediately, getting him to look back at her. "You're not an idiot," she said intently, those brilliant eyes conveying all kinds of meaning beyond what she was saying.
Chuck just stared at her for a long moment, trying to sort it all out. Finally, he sat back up, intending to lean over to kiss her to show how glad he was that she was OK. However, as he leaned over, his eyes dropped down to her lips and he quickly stopped. "Maybe you should get that stuff off your face," he mumbled awkwardly.
He realized that it was probably a fortunate break that the make-up slowed him down. With the other agent sitting right there, he had already done enough damage with his whispered speech – even if the agent couldn't hear what he said, there was likely no mistaking the emotion on Chuck's face – and attempting a kiss on top of it was truly stupid. Her reaction when he started to move towards her, like a guilty teenager scared that her parents might catch them, only confirmed that notion.
He leaned back on the bench and stared gloomily into space, wishing there was a hole he could crawl into. Despite her reassurances, he felt like a complete and utter fool.