Nobody did.
My heart began pounding.
“Know what?”
He lowered his voice.
“Amanda, why don’t you put the cake down?”
That sentence frightened me more than his question.
“No.”
“Amanda.”
“Where is Tyler?”
My fingers tightened around the cardboard box.
Captain Reyes took one careful step toward me.
“He’s not here.”
“I can see that.”
My voice came out sharper than I intended.
“Where is he?”
One of the balloons slipped from my wrist and floated toward the ceiling.
Nobody moved to grab it.
Captain Reyes rubbed a hand across his jaw.
“There was an incident this morning.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“What kind of incident?”
“He was on a call.”
I stared at him.
Tyler had been on hundreds of calls.
He’d come home with bruises before.
Once, he’d needed stitches in his forearm.
Another time, he’d spent two days complaining about his ribs after part of a ceiling came down near him.
He always told me afterward.
Usually much later.
“What happened?”
Captain Reyes hesitated.
That hesitation made my knees weak.
“Is he alive?”
His eyes widened.
“Yes. Amanda, yes. He’s alive.”
I finally breathed.
It wasn’t relief exactly.
It was simply enough air to keep me standing.
“Then tell me where my husband is.”
Captain Reyes pulled a chair away from the table.
I ignored it.
“He was taken to St. Matthew’s.”
My stomach dropped.
“Why?”
“He got hurt.”
The cake nearly slipped from my hands.
A firefighter named Grant rushed forward and caught the edge of the box before it hit the floor.
“I’ve got it,” he said quietly.
I let him take it.
My hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t have held it much longer anyway.
“How badly?” I asked.
Captain Reyes looked directly at me.
“He was conscious when they transported him.”
That wasn’t an answer.
“How badly?”
“There was a warehouse fire this morning.”
He paused.
“Part of the interior structure gave way.”
My mouth went dry.
“Tyler and two others were inside. They got everyone out, but Tyler took the worst of the impact.”
I pressed one hand against my chest.
“He called me this morning.”
“I know.”
“He sounded fine.”
“That was before the call.”
The room blurred for a second.
I remembered Tyler standing in our kitchen.
“Don’t do anything crazy today.”
His smile.
His bag over his shoulder.
“Love you.”
Those had been completely ordinary words.
Suddenly, they felt unbearably important.
“Why didn’t anyone call me?”
Captain Reyes’s face tightened.
“We tried.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Amanda, we did.”
I grabbed my phone from my purse.
No missed calls.
No messages.
Nothing.
I held it up.
“There’s nothing here.”
Grant looked uncomfortable.
Captain Reyes frowned.
“What number do we have for you?”
I recited it.
He went still halfway through.
Then he looked toward the office.
“That’s not the number on Tyler’s emergency contact form.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
He repeated the last four digits.
They belonged to my old number.
The number I’d changed almost two years earlier.
For one ridiculous moment, I wanted to laugh.
Of all the paperwork Tyler remembered to complete, he’d apparently forgotten the form that mattered most.
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were.”
I looked toward the doors.
“I need to go.”
Captain Reyes nodded.
“I’ll drive you.”
“No. I can drive.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I said I can drive.”
My voice cracked on the last word.
That ended the argument.
Grant placed the cake on the table.
The balloons were still tied around my wrist.
I stared at them.
Bright blue.
Silver.
Red.
“Happy Birthday” was printed across several of them.
They looked obscene now.
I untied them and left them beside the cake.
Captain Reyes handed me my keys.
“He’s in good hands.”
I nodded, though I barely heard him.
The drive to St. Matthew’s felt twice as long as the drive to the station.
Every red light seemed personal.
Every slow car made me angry.
I gripped the steering wheel and repeated the same thought over and over.
He’s alive.
He’s alive.
He’s alive.
At the hospital, I practically ran through the emergency entrance.
The receptionist checked Tyler’s name and directed me upstairs.
I found him in a private room.
He was awake.
The moment I saw him, my legs almost gave out.
His left arm was strapped against his body.
There was a bandage near his hairline.
Dark bruising had already started forming along one side of his face.
But he was there.
Tyler looked at me and managed a crooked smile.
“Hey.”
I stopped beside the bed.
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak.
Then anger arrived right behind relief.
“You idiot.”
His smile faded.
“Fair.”
“You absolute idiot.”
“I know.”
I leaned down and kissed his forehead carefully.
Then I started crying.
Tyler reached for my hand with his good arm.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I will be.”
That was different.
I could accept that.
I sat beside him and held his hand.
He had a fractured shoulder, three cracked ribs, and a concussion.
The doctors wanted to keep him overnight for observation.
It could have been so much worse.
I knew that.
So did he.
After a while, Tyler glanced at me.
“How did you even know I was here?”
I wiped my face.
“I went to the station.”
His eyes closed.
“Oh no.”
“With balloons.”
He groaned.
“And cake.”
“Amanda.”
“Your favorite one.”
He gave a weak laugh and immediately winced because of his ribs.
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“You don’t deserve cake.”
“That’s cruel.”
I squeezed his fingers.
Then I remembered Captain Reyes’s first words.
“You don’t know yet?”
Something about them still bothered me.
“Tyler.”
He looked at me.
“Why did Captain Reyes act like there was something else I should know?”
His expression changed.
There it was.
Not fear.
Guilt.
I sat straighter.
“What?”
Tyler stared at our joined hands.
“The warehouse wasn’t empty.”
“I know. Reyes said you got everyone out.”
“Not everyone.”
I felt cold again.
“Tyler.”
He swallowed.
“There was a little girl trapped upstairs.”
I said nothing.
“The floor was already unstable. Reyes ordered everyone out.”
My chest tightened.
“Tyler.”
“I heard her crying.”
He looked at me.
“I went back.”
I stared at him.
He had disobeyed an evacuation order.
He had walked back into a collapsing building.
For a child he didn’t know.
“Did you get her?”
Tyler’s eyes filled.
“Yeah.”
I covered my mouth.
“She’s okay?”
“Not a scratch.”
The anger inside me broke apart.
I wanted to yell at him.
I wanted to hold him.
I wanted to tell him never to do anything like that again, even though we both knew that if someone were trapped inside a burning building, Tyler would probably make the same choice again.
Then he squeezed my hand.
“That’s not what Reyes thought you knew.”
I froze.
“What does that mean?”
He took a slow breath.
“The department nominated me for the Medal of Valor today.”
I stared at him.
Tyler gave me the smallest smile.
“And apparently they approved it.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then I laughed through my tears.
I had driven to the station thinking I was going to surprise my husband for his birthday.
Instead, Tyler had nearly broken my heart, saved a child’s life, and somehow still looked embarrassed by people making a fuss over him.
I leaned closer.
“You’re still an idiot.”
He smiled.
“Yeah.”
“But I’m proud of you.”
His eyes softened.
“That part I’ll take.”
The next morning, Captain Reyes brought the cake to Tyler’s hospital room.
The entire crew came with him.
So did the balloons.
This time, when they walked through the door, everyone was smiling.
The same cake I’d carried into the station with shaking hands was placed beside Tyler’s hospital bed.
The same balloons I’d thought looked ridiculous and out of place now floated above the room.
Tyler looked at me and laughed softly.
“You really went all out.”
I smiled.
“I was trying to embarrass you.”
“You succeeded.”
“Good.”
He reached for my hand.
And as his crew gathered around him, laughing and teasing him the way they always had, I realized how close that birthday surprise had come to becoming one of the worst days of my life.
I had arrived at the station expecting to embarrass my husband.
Instead, I learned how close I had come to losing him.
I learned that the man who sometimes forgot to update an emergency contact form, who hated birthday attention, and who complained about old photographs was also the man who had heard a child’s cries inside a collapsing warehouse and turned around when everyone else had been ordered out.
And as I watched the people who worked beside him every day celebrate his birthday from a hospital room, I understood something I hadn’t fully understood before.
Being married to a firefighter meant living with fear.
It meant missed dinners.
It meant changed plans.
It meant waiting for the sound of a key turning in the front door.
It meant knowing that sometimes the person you loved most would walk into a dangerous place while you could do nothing but wait.
But that morning, looking at Tyler surrounded by his crew, his arm injured and his face bruised but his eyes still warm, I also understood why those men had looked away when I first walked into the station.
They knew how close they’d come to losing him.
And they had been waiting for me to find out.
The balloons floated above us.
The cake sat untouched for a few minutes.
Then Tyler looked at me.
“Are we finally going to eat that?”
I laughed.
“Only if you promise not to do anything crazy.”
He smiled.
“No promises.”
And for the first time that day, I wasn’t afraid of the words.
I was simply grateful that he was there to say them.