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The rain in Los Angeles never felt like a cleansing force. It didn't wash the city clean; it just made it feel heavy, oily, and precariously slick.
Eddie Diaz stood under the dripping aluminum overhang of the park’s picnic shelter, zipping his jacket up a little higher as he watched the downpour finally taper off into a cold, misty drizzle. The ground at the base of the canyon was already saturated, the grass squelching audibly underfoot. But the sky had promised a brief, gray window of dryness, and after three days of being cooped up indoors, Christopher was vibrating with a restless energy that threatened to tear the house apart.
And he wasn’t the only one.
"Unca Eddie! Look!"
Eddie looked down, an automatic smile softening the harsh lines of his face as Jee-Yun tugged insistently on the hem of his jeans. She was decked out in bright yellow rain boots and a matching slicker, looking like a little, determined duckling waddling through the puddles.
"I see it, Jee," Eddie said, crouching down to her level to inspect her prize. "That is a very impressive, very slimy worm."
"It's gross," Christopher noted from his spot on the picnic bench. He was grinning, though. He had his crutches leaning against the table and his phone in his hand, but he was watching his younger cousin with that protective, older-brother air that always made Eddie’s chest ache with a fierce kind of pride.
"It's nature," Eddie corrected, standing up and ruffling Chris’s damp hair. "Okay, the rain is holding off for now. You guys have twenty minutes to run off the crazies before we head back to Casa Diaz for the ultimate movie marathon. Stay off the climbing frame, though. It’s way too slippery."
"Got it, Dad."
Eddie leaned against the wooden pillar of the shelter, watching them move toward the paved walking path. The park was beautiful, situated right at the base of a steep, winding hillside—the kind of classic California geography that looked amazing on a postcard, but felt deeply ominous to a firefighter after a week of torrential rain. He scanned the ridgeline instinctively. The vegetation looked dark, heavy, and waterlogged.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out to see a text from Buck lighting up the screen.
Buck: Shift is dragging. Bobby is making us scrub the underside of the engine. Save me.
Eddie snorted, his thumbs flying across the screen.
Eddie: You volunteered for the overtime, Buckley. Character building.
Buck: Tell that to Chimney. He’s pacing a hole in the floor worrying about his lieutenant exam results. How's kid duty?
Eddie: Everyone knows he aced it. Tell him to breathe. We managed to find a little bit of sunshine, so I'm hoping they'll burn off some energy and be nicer to me. Heading home for s'mores and movies soon. Wish you could join.
Eddie slid the phone back into his pocket and looked up to check their perimeter.
Christopher and Jee-Yun were about fifty yards away. Chris was moving slowly but steadily on the wet pavement, pointing something out in the trees to Jee-Yun, who was happily stomping in a puddle near a large, reinforced concrete drainage pipe that ran deep under the walking path.
Then, the sound started.
It wasn't thunder. Thunder rolled, cracked, and echoed from the sky. This was a low, guttural groan—a violent vibration that traveled up through the slick grass and the soles of Eddie’s boots before the noise even registered in his ears. It sounded like a freight train derailment happening directly underground.
Eddie’s head snapped up.
High above the park, the ridgeline simply blurred. The trees didn't snap in the wind; they began to slide, surfing a massive, swelling wave of brown sludge that was gathering speed with terrifying, geometric progression.
The earth had liquefied.
"Chris!" Eddie screamed, the sound tearing raw from his throat.
Christopher turned, confusion etched into his features. He was too far away; he hadn't felt the vibration through the pavement yet.
"Run! Chris, move! Grab Jee!"
Eddie didn't wait to see if they understood. He sprinted. He hit the wet grass and his boots immediately skidded out from under him, but he scrambled forward, not caring that his knees slammed into the mud. Adrenaline flooded his system so fast his vision narrowed to a pinpoint tunnel.
The low groan erupted into a deafening roar, a physical wall of sound that rattled his teeth in his skull. The hillside was coming down. Thousands of tons of mud, jagged rock, and uprooted trees were cascading toward the walking path, a churning brown tsunami meant to consume everything in its path.
Eddie's tactical brain fired in overdrive. No time to outrun it. The parking lot is too far. The wooden shelter will be splintered into toothpicks.
He reached the pavement just as Christopher looked up, stark terror finally seizing the boy's face as he saw the towering wall of earth looming above them. Jee-Yun froze mid-stomp, her dark eyes wide and uncomprehending.
"Dad!"
"Down!" Eddie grabbed Christopher by the back of his jacket and practically scooped Jee-Yun up by her yellow coat with his other arm. He looked around wildly, the smell of crushed pine and raw, wet earth suffocating him.
The drain.
It was a large concrete culvert, maybe four feet in diameter, set deep into the embankment to divert flash-flood rainwater. It was sturdy. It was reinforced.
"Inside! Now!" Eddie shouted, his voice barely audible over the roaring mountain.
He threw them into the opening, ignoring Christopher's yelp of pain as he hit the concrete. "Go back! Crawl as far back as you can and curl up!"
"Dad, what are you doing—!"
"Go!"
Eddie shoved Christopher’s legs, forcing his son deeper into the dark, echoing pipe. He shoved Jee-Yun in right behind him. "Hold her, Chris! Do not let go of her!"
The roar was right on top of them now. The gray light at the mouth of the pipe turned a violent, churning blackish-brown. The air pressure spiked so hard it popped Eddie's ears, stealing his breath.
There wasn't enough room. If the mud packed into the mouth of the pipe, it would act like a syringe, pushing the debris all the way through and crushing them. Or, at best, sealing them in to suffocate in the dark.
Eddie didn't think. He didn't weigh the options or consider his own survival. He simply acted.
He wedged his body into the mouth of the pipe, facing outward toward the avalanche. He braced his heavy boots against the curved concrete sides, locked his knees, and grabbed the upper rim of the pipe with his bare hands. He curled his head down, tucking his chin to his chest, turning his own back into a flesh-and-bone bulkhead between the mountain and his children.
"Dad!" Christopher screamed from the dark behind him, a sound of pure, helpless terror.
"I've got you," Eddie grit out, trying to comfort his boy
Then, the world ended.
The impact was immediate and catastrophic. It felt like being hit by a speeding semi-truck that refused to hit the brakes. The mud slammed into Eddie’s back with crushing, unimaginable force, pinning him instantly against the edges of the concrete.
He screamed, but the sound was violently swallowed by the sludge.
Debris—heavy branches, jagged rocks, pieces of twisted metal fencing—hammered against him in the dark. Something heavy and sharp slammed directly into his left shoulder blade, and he heard the sickening, wet crunch of his own bone giving way.
The pressure on his chest was immense, squeezing the air out of his lungs like a tube of toothpaste and utterly refusing to let him draw it back in. The freezing mud rose around him in seconds, burying his legs, packing tight around his waist and torso. It sealed against the back of his neck, forcing his face downward toward the scant inches of breathable air remaining at the top of the pipe's arch.
He held on. Muscles tearing, vision going white with agony, he locked his grip. He screamed internally as his body became the only structural integrity keeping the pipe from filling completely.
Not them, his brain chanted as the darkness closed in. Take me, but not them.
And then, the light was gone.
----
"If I have to polish this chrome one more time, I'm going to polish a hole right through the bumper," Buck complained, tossing the rag into the sudsy bucket with a splash.
Nearby, Chimney was checking his phone for the tenth time in as many minutes, the screen illuminating his anxious face. "Still no results. Damn, the rain is coming in again. I really hope Jee’s not caught out in that. She'll be super grumpy later if that princess dress she insisted on wearing this morning gets wet."
"Relax, Chim," Buck said, though his own brow furrowed as he glanced toward the bay doors, watching the heavy rain batter the glass. "Eddie's got them. He’s probably got them back in their pajamas at home by now. A Diaz movie marathon, aka a slumber party at 2:00 PM. He’s the responsible one, remember? Not the one who loses kids at the zoo."
"That was one time!" Chimney protested.
"Alert," the PA system blared, instantly cutting off the banter. The bay lights flashed a stark, unforgiving red. "All units. Structure collapse and reported landslide. Griffith Park, Western Canyon entrance. Multiple casualties reported."
The blood drained from Buck’s face so fast it left him swaying, a sudden wave of dizziness crashing over him.
Chimney froze, his phone hovering halfway to his pocket. "Griffith Park?"
"That's..." Buck stammered, his throat suddenly bone-dry. "That's where they were going this morning. Eddie said... he said the playground near the canyon."
Bobby was already moving, his face set into a grim, unreadable mask. "Gear up. Now!"
The ride to the scene was agonizingly silent. Usually, the headset was a steady stream of chatter—logistics, strategies, bad jokes meant to break the tension of the unknown. Today, the only sound was the wail of the siren and the relentless, deafening drum of the rain against the roof of the engine.
Buck sat with his knee bouncing uncontrollably against the floorboards. He had tried calling Eddie. Straight to voicemail. He had tried calling Christopher’s phone next. It rang and rang in his ear until it abruptly cut off.
"They probably just lost signal," Hen said softly from the seat across from him. She reached out, her hand wrapping firmly around Buck’s knee to still the frantic bouncing. "The cell towers always go down in weather like this."
"Yeah," Buck croaked, though his chest felt painfully tight. "Yeah, that's it."
Beside him, Chimney was staring straight ahead through the windshield, his jaw locked so tight a muscle jumped rhythmically in his cheek. He looked like a man turned to stone.
"We’re two minutes out," Bobby announced from the front, his captain's voice cutting through the thick dread in the cab. "Listen to me. We treat this like any other call until we know otherwise. The likelihood of it being them is low. They're probably at home right now, okay? We focus on the job. That is how we help them. Understood?"
"Understood," they chorused, though their voices were thin and brittle.
When the engine turned the final corner, the sheer scale of the devastation silenced them all over again.
The hillside was simply gone. In its place was a massive, jagged scar of brown earth that had flowed down the incline like wet lava, burying the playground, the picnic area, and a large section of the parking lot beneath tons of thick, churning sludge. Ancient trees were snapped like toothpicks. A sedan was half-buried in the muck, its trunk pointing uselessly toward the gray sky.
"Oh, god," Chimney whispered.
They scrambled out of the engine. The rain was still falling in sheets, turning the mud beneath their boots slick and treacherous.
"Cap, that’s Eddie’s truck!" Buck shouted, his arm shooting out to point.
The dark pickup was parked at the far edge of the lot, miraculously untouched by the slide—but it was empty.
"They were here," Buck said, his voice rising in an uncontrollable spiral of panic. "They're here."
"Spread out!" Bobby commanded, his voice projecting over the chaotic din of arriving police units and ambulance sirens. "Search the perimeter! Look for high ground! They might have run when they heard it coming!"
"Eddie!" Buck screamed, cupping his gloved hands around his mouth. "Christopher!"
"Jee-Yun!" Chimney was already sprinting toward the edge of the slide, his heavy boots sinking inches into the muck with every step. "Jee!"
Nothing answered them. Just the heavy sound of the rain and the terrifying, wet shifting of the settling earth.
Buck scanned the devastation, his trained firefighter brain violently warring with his terrified heart. Where would he go? Eddie wouldn't have run for the car; the parking lot was too far from the playground. He wouldn't have stayed out in the open.
Buck's eyes tracked the brutal flow of the mud. It had swept right over the main walking path, burying everything in its wake.
"The culvert," Buck breathed.
"What?" Hen asked, appearing beside him with the heavy med kit slung over her shoulder.
"There's a storm drain," Buck said, his eyes widening as the realization hit him. "If they were right here, Eddie would know it was too late to outrun it. He'd use the drain for cover." He pointed to a massive mound of mud piled ten feet high against the concrete embankment. "It’s buried."
"Cap!" Chimney yelled, waving his arms frantically. "The storm drain! They might be in the storm drain!"
Inside the pipe, pain had transcended feeling; it was a blinding, white-hot static in Eddie's brain.
He couldn't feel his legs anymore. That was probably bad. But he could feel his back—every square inch of it felt like it had been set on fire and crushed in a vice. The sheer, crushing weight of the earth pressing against him was immense. He was bent almost entirely double, his scraped hands clawing desperately at the rough concrete rim of the pipe, his knuckles bone-white.
The mud had completely filled the opening, packing tight and heavy around his body. He was the cork. If he moved, if he relaxed his agonizing tension for even a fraction of a second, tons of suffocating mud would pour in and drown the kids.
"Dad?" Christopher’s voice was small, trembling, and terrifyingly close to his ear in the pitch black.
"I'm... here, bud. It's okay," Eddie wheezed. He couldn't take a full breath. His ribs felt like a shattered cage that was slowly collapsing inward, piercing his lungs. "Are you... okay? Is Jee...?"
"She's crying," Chris sniffled. "It's dark, Dad. I can't see anything. Why is it so dark?"
"The mud... covered the hole," Eddie gritted out. He tasted hot copper in his mouth; he’d bitten completely through his lip when the impact had thrown him forward. "Just... sit tight. Uncle Chim and Uncle Buck... are coming. Your dads are coming, Jee-Bug."
"Daddy, are you hurt?" Chris asked. It wasn't really a question. "You're making that sound."
"What sound?"
"The one you made when you came back from the hospital... after the bad man hurt you."
Eddie squeezed his eyes shut in the dark, hot tears leaking out to mix with the grime coating his face. He forced his voice to be steady, even though it tore from his throat in a ragged whisper. "I'm okay, mijo. I'm just... keeping the door shut. I need you... to be brave for Jee. Can you do that?"
"I'm scared."
"I know. Me too. But... they're coming."
Above him, the immense pressure shifted. A fresh wave of agony washed over him, black spots dancing wildly behind his closed eyelids. He groaned loudly, entirely unable to stop the sound. The debris was grinding his chest mercilessly into the concrete lip of the pipe. He was pretty sure his left collarbone was in pieces.
Worse, the air in the pipe was already getting heavy. Stale.
"Chris, buddy," Eddie gasped, fighting for a thimbleful of oxygen. "Check... check the other end. Is there light?"
He heard the soft sound of shuffling behind him in the dark.
"No," Chris whispered, his voice trembling harder. "It's... it's got bars. And leaves. It’s blocked too."
Panic, cold and razor-sharp, pierced through Eddie’s hazy veil of pain. If the other end was blocked by storm debris, and his own crushed body was sealing this end... they were in a sealed tomb. The oxygen supply in the pipe was entirely finite.
And Eddie was using up the vast majority of it with his labored, panicked panting.
Calm down, he violently ordered himself. Slow your heart rate. Buy them time.
"Okay," Eddie breathed. "Okay. Just... stay low. Stay near the floor."
"Dad, you're not moving," Chris said, his voice rising in pitch as panic took hold. "Why aren't you moving?"
"Can't," Eddie admitted. "Stuck."
"I'll help you! I'll pull—"
"No!" Eddie barked, the force of the shout triggering a wet, hacking cough that sent fresh fire through his chest. "Don't touch me, Chris. Don't... pull. If I move... the mud comes in. Do you understand?"
Silence stretched in the dark. Then, a small, broken, "Yes."
Eddie hated this. He hated that he couldn't protect his son from the terror of this moment. Hated that he couldn't hold Jee.
"Sing," Eddie whispered. He could feel his consciousness slipping, sliding away like water down a drain. The pain was becoming a dull, roaring ocean in his ears, distancing him from reality. "Sing to Jee."
"What?"
"Sing... the song Buck likes. The... Beatles."
Eddie’s grip on the concrete rim was failing. His fingers were completely numb. He tried to re-anchor his hands, crying out as his broken ribs shifted sickeningly. He had to stay conscious. He had to be the wall.
Behind him, shaky and heartbreakingly off-key, Christopher’s voice cut through the suffocating dark.
"Here comes the sun... doo-doo-doo-doo..."
Eddie rested his bloody forehead against the freezing, packed mud. Hurry, Buck. Please.
"Here! Dig here!" Buck was screaming, tearing at the packed earth with his bare, bruised hands.
Bobby was right there, grabbing the back of his turnout coat. "Buck! We need shovels! Using your hands is too slow. Chimney, get the trench kit! Hen, get the shoring!"
Buck ignored him entirely, clawing savagely at the sludge until someone finally shoved a heavy spade into his hands. He attacked the earth with a violence that frightened the other firefighters, throwing wet earth behind him like a machine.
"We have to be careful, Buck!" Bobby warned over the roaring rain, his voice tight. "If we shift the weight wrong, we could collapse the pipe or cause a secondary slide!"
"They're in there, Bobby! They're running out of air!" Buck’s face was streaked with mud and rain, his eyes wild and desperate.
Chimney was beside him a second later, digging with equal, frantic ferocity. "How deep is the opening?"
"Bottom of the swale," Buck panted, heaving a massive shovelful of wet earth over his shoulder. "Maybe... maybe four feet down."
They dug. The sky kept pouring, turning the hole into a treacherous soup bowl. They had to drag over the pumps just to keep the muddy water from filling the excavation site and drowning whoever was inside.
"I hit something!" Chimney yelled, his shovel clanging dully. "Concrete!"
"Clear it!" Bobby ordered. "Gently!"
Buck dropped the shovel and fell to his knees, frantically wiping the freezing mud away from the curved gray surface. It was the top arch of the pipe.
"We need to find the opening," Buck said. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees, following the curve of the concrete. "It should be right... here!"
He dug down with his fingers. The mud here was packed incredibly tight, choked with heavy branches and jagged rocks.
Then, he saw it.
A hand.
It was gripping the edge of the concrete pipe, the knuckles scraped bloody and white with tension, the fingers tinged blue with cold. A distinct, silver watch was strapped to the wrist.
"Eddie!" Buck screamed. He reached out, grabbing the hand with both of his own. It was terrifyingly ice-cold. "I found him! I found him!"
Chimney dropped heavily into the pit next to Buck. "Is he moving? Is he conscious?"
"Eddie!" Buck yelled, putting his face as close to the mud-impacted opening as he dared. "Eddie, can you hear me?!"
The hand didn't move.
"He's blocking the opening," Bobby realized, looking down from the treacherous edge of the pit, horror dawning on his face. "He’s plugging the hole with his body."
"We have to pull him out," Chimney said, reaching down to grab Eddie’s wrist.
"Wait!" Bobby shouted. "If he’s acting as a shield, the moment you move him, that unshored mud is going to rush straight into the pipe. If the kids are directly behind him..."
Buck froze, his hand still gripping Eddie’s forearm. He looked at the towering wall of unstable sludge pressing directly against Eddie’s back. If they pulled his best friend out right now, they’d bury Christopher and Jee-Yun alive.
"We have to shore it first," Bobby ordered, jumping down into the hole with a heavy piece of plywood. "Buck, Chimney, you have to clear the mud away from around his back while we place the shoring. We have to relieve the structural pressure before we move him."
"He's not moving, Cap," Buck whispered, his voice shattering. He squeezed Eddie’s wrist, searching. There was a faint, terribly thready pulse fluttering under his thumb. "He's... he's barely there."
"Then work fast!"
They worked with a surgical precision born entirely of desperation. Buck scooped the freezing mud away from Eddie’s shoulders, flinching violently as he revealed the dark, blossoming bruising and the sickening way Eddie’s head hung entirely limp against the muck.
"Eddie," Buck pleaded softly, his tears mixing with the rain. "Come on, Eds. Wake up."
As they cleared the final layer of mud away from Eddie’s ear, a muffled sound drifted out of the narrow gap in the pipe. A small, terrified voice, singing in the dark.
"...and I say... it's alright..."
Buck let out a broken sob. "That's Chris. I hear Chris."
At the muffled sound of his son’s voice—or maybe it was the grounding touch of Buck’s hand—Eddie groaned. His frozen fingers twitched weakly against the rough concrete.
"Eddie?"
Eddie’s head shifted slightly, lifting barely an inch out of the muck. One eye was completely swollen shut, the other bloodshot, glassy, and unfocused. He coughed, a terrible rattling sound, spitting out dirty water and mud.
"B-Buck?" It was a breathless, broken rasp.
"I'm here, Eddie. We're here. We've got you."
"Don't..." Eddie wheezed, his body violently tensing up again as his instincts fought his exhaustion. "Don't... move me. Kids... behind."
"We know," Chimney said, his voice thick and wavering with tears. "We’re shoring it up right now. We’re gonna get them out. Is Jee... is she okay in there?"
"Alive," Eddie whispered. His chin dropped back down, his last reserves of strength failing him. "Hurry. Can't... hold... much longer."
"We're coming," Buck promised, his hands flying as he dug faster. "Just hold on, Eddie. Don't you dare let go."
Eddie didn't answer. He just squeezed his one good eye shut and held the line.
The world was a rapidly narrowing tunnel of gray mud and black edges for Eddie Diaz. He was floating, untethered, somewhere between the soul-crushing weight on his spine and the desperate, terrified singing of his son echoing behind him.
"...little darlin'... I feel that ice is slowly melting..."
Eddie wanted to tell Chris that the ice definitely wasn't melting. It was in his veins. The cold had seeped straight through his clothes. He wasn't wearing his turnout gear—just a thin flannel shirt and a denim jacket. That explained why he was shivering so violently that his teeth were clacking together, sending fresh, blinding spikes of agony radiating from his shattered shoulder.
"Almost there, Eddie. Almost there."
That was Buck. Buck’s voice was the anchor. It was the heavy rope tying his drifting mind back to the surface.
"Struts are set!" Bobby’s authoritative voice cut through the endless rain. "Pressurize! We need to create a solid ceiling before we pull him!"
"Chim, get the collar," Hen ordered from above, her voice tight, professional, and controlled.
Eddie felt hands on him. Warm hands. They were gently touching his freezing neck, tracing his jawline. He wanted desperately to lean into that warmth, but his body remained frozen in its rigid, protective curl.
"Don't move, Eddie," Chimney’s voice was right at his ear, shaking slightly despite his training. "We're going to slide the backboard under your chest. On my count. One, two, three."
Something hard and plastic wedged beneath his bruised ribs. It hurt. God, it hurt. Eddie let out a strangled, breathless cry, his lungs hitching in his chest.
"I know, I know," Buck soothed, his large hand gripping Eddie’s uninjured arm so tightly it might leave bruises of its own. "I've got you. Just let go, Eddie. You did your job. Let us do ours."
Let go?
If he let go, the mud would take them.
"Kids..." Eddie slurred, his eyes rolling back under his heavy lids. "Mud... coming in."
"We shored it," Bobby promised, leaning far down into the pit. "We built a wall, Eddie. The kids are safe behind it. We need you to move so we can get to them."
Safe.
The word finally penetrated the suffocating fog. The sheer, adrenaline-fueled tension that had been holding Eddie’s broken body together like a steel cable suddenly snapped. He didn't make a conscious decision to pass out; his body simply decided it had fulfilled its contract.
He went completely limp.
"He's out!" Chimney yelled. "Pulse is thready! We need to move him now!"
"Pull!" Bobby commanded.
Buck grabbed the heavy straps of the backboard, Chimney grabbed the shoulders, and together they heaved backward. There was a sickening, loud sucking sound as the mud finally relinquished its hold on Eddie’s body. The sludge instantly tried to follow him, rushing forward into the void, but it slammed harmlessly against the thick plywood shoring the 118 had frantically installed seconds earlier.
They dragged Eddie clear of the pipe, hoisting his limp form up out of the muddy pit and onto the wet, flattened grass of the ruined park.
Buck scrambled up after them, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird beating its wings. Seeing Eddie in the gray light was somehow worse than seeing him in the dark hole. He was coated head to toe in brown slime, his lips were a terrifying shade of blue, and his left shoulder was slumped at a deeply unnatural angle. His breathing was frighteningly shallow, wet, and rattling in his chest.
"Hen!" Buck shouted, dropping hard to his knees beside his best friend. "He's not—he looks bad."
Hen was already dropping beside him, trauma shears out, ripping open Eddie’s ruined flannel shirt. "Breath sounds are severely diminished on the left. Possible hemothorax. His core temp is dropping fast. We need to tube him and get him warm. Chimney, I need you right here!"
Chimney hesitated, his hands hovering over the trauma bag. He was looking back over his shoulder at the dark, open hole of the culvert. "Jee..."
"Go," Buck said. His voice was hard, his eyes locked on the pipe. "I'll get them. You save Eddie."
Chimney swallowed hard, nodded his pale face, and turned his absolute focus to his medical bag.
Buck turned back to the pipe. The plywood shoring held the mountain of mud back, leaving a narrow, terrifying gap just big enough for a man to crawl through. He clicked on his right-angle flashlight.
"Christopher?" Buck called out, his voice trembling as it echoed off the concrete. "Chris? It's Bucky."
Silence. Then, a small, terrified sob in the dark.
"Buck?"
"I'm coming in, buddy. Stay right where you are."
Buck dropped to his stomach and army-crawled into the pipe. It was intensely claustrophobic, reeking of rot, wet earth, and old leaves. The bright beam of his light cut through the gloom and finally landed on two small, huddled figures at the very back of the drain, pressed tightly against an iron storm grate.
Christopher was sitting with his legs splayed out in the shallow water, his back flat against the rusted bars. Jee-Yun was entirely enveloped in his lap, wrapped tightly inside Christopher’s oversized jacket. Chris had his arms locked around the toddler so tightly his knuckles were white. He was shaking violently, his dark eyes wide and unblinking in the sudden glare of the flashlight.
"Buck," Christopher breathed, the sheer relief causing his small frame to slump forward. "Is my dad...?"
"He's okay," Buck lied immediately, without a second thought. He had to. "The paramedics are with him right now. He's going to the hospital."
Buck reached them. He gently checked Jee-Yun first—she was crying softly, clearly scared and shivering, but she looked miraculously unhurt. "Hi, Jee. Uncle Buck is here. We're gonna go see Daddy, okay?"
He looked up at Christopher. The boy was covered in cold mud, his glasses missing, his pale face streaked with dirt and heavy tears.
"You did good, Superman," Buck whispered, his throat closing up so tight it ached. "You kept her safe. You saved her."
"Dad was the door," Christopher whispered, staring blankly past Buck at the empty space where Eddie had been wedged. "He wouldn't let the mud in. He made sounds, Buck. He made really bad sounds."
"I know," Buck said, reaching out a muddy glove to cup Chris’s freezing face. "I know he did. But we have him now. Come on. Let's get out of this hole."
Getting them out was a blur of passing children up into waiting, eager hands. Chimney abandoned his station the second Jee-Yun cleared the opening, snatching her up and burying his face in her wet, muddy coat, sobbing openly into her hair.
Buck carefully helped Christopher onto the waiting gurney. "My legs hurt," Chris murmured, wincing as he stretched them out.
"We'll get you checked out," Buck promised, securing the blanket around the boy's shoulders. He looked anxiously over his shoulder.
Fifty yards away, the ambulance carrying Eddie was already revving its engine. The siren wailed to life, screaming through the rain as it tore out of the parking lot.
"Go," Bobby said, appearing quietly at Buck’s elbow. "Ride with Chris. I'll drive the engine. Chimney's going in the other rescue with Jee and Hen. I'll call the chief, tell them to take the 118 offline."
Buck nodded, hoisting himself into the brightly lit box of the second ambulance right behind Chris. As the heavy doors slammed shut, abruptly cutting off the roar of the freezing rain and the chaos of the scene, Buck reached out and enveloped Chris’s small, muddy hand in his own.
"Is he gonna die?" Chris asked, his voice so small and hollow it seemed to echo in the sterile space.
Buck looked at the boy—this incredibly brave kid who had already lost a mother, who had survived a tsunami, and who had just spent an hour trapped in the suffocating dark, listening to his father suffer in agonizing pain.
"Not if I have anything to say about it," Buck vowed, his grip tightening reassuringly. "Your dad is the absolute most stubborn person I know."
--
The hospital waiting room was a very specific kind of purgatory. It smelled offensively of harsh antiseptic and stale, burnt coffee, under lit by humming fluorescent lights that gave everyone a sickly, exhausted pallor.
Chimney sat completely frozen in an uncomfortable plastic chair, Jee-Yun fast asleep on his chest. She had been given a clean bill of health by the ER docs—just cold and profoundly frightened. Maddie had rushed in from the dispatch center an hour ago, still in her headset uniform, tears streaming down her face as she gathered them both into a desperate, crushing hug.
Buck was pacing. He had washed the worst of the mud off his face and hands in a tiny sink, but his turnout pants were still heavy and damp. Christopher was sitting in a wheelchair near the rain-streaked window, his leg locked in a fresh brace—he’d badly sprained his knee in the initial scramble to avoid the mudslide. The boy was staring blankly at a muted daytime TV show, utterly exhausted but refusing to sleep.
"Buck, sit down," Bobby said gently, stepping into his path. He handed Buck a small paper cup of water. "You're going to wear a hole right through the linoleum."
"Why isn't anyone coming out?" Buck snapped, the frustration boiling over before he immediately deflated, rubbing a hand over his tired face. "Sorry, Cap. I just... the last time I saw him, he was gray. He wasn't breathing right. He looked..." *Dead,* his mind supplied. *He looked dead.*
"He had a tension pneumothorax," Hen said softly from where she was leaning heavily against the wall, her arms crossed tight over her chest. "And severe hypothermia. Plus the massive crush injuries. It takes time for the surgeons to stabilize all of that, Buck."
"He protected them," Chimney whispered, his hand gently, repetitively stroking Jee-Yun's dark hair. "Chris said Eddie practically threw them backward into the pipe and then... he just blocked it. He knew exactly what was coming. He used his own body as a sandbag."
Chimney looked up at Bobby, his dark eyes red and swimming with unshed tears. "He saved her, Cap. He saved Jee. He *has* to be okay."
"He told me to sing," Chris said suddenly, picking at a loose thread on the thin hospital blanket draped over his knees. "In the dark. He said to sing the Beatles so Jee wouldn't cry."
Buck turned away, pressing the heels of his hands brutally into his eyes to stop the tears.
Just then, the heavy double doors swung open, and a doctor in blood-spattered blue scrubs emerged. The 118 moved as a single, cohesive unit, instantly swarming him.
"Family of Edmundo Diaz?" the surgeon asked, looking at the exhausted crowd.
"We're his family," Bobby stated, his captain's voice leaving absolutely no room for argument.
The doctor nodded slowly, looking down at his clipboard. "He’s out of surgery. It was... complicated."
Buck stopped breathing. The floor felt like it was tilting beneath his feet.
"He sustained a severe crush injury to the thoracic cavity," the doctor listed, his tone grave. "Four broken ribs, a completely shattered scapula, and a punctured lung, which we’ve successfully repaired. He also has significant soft tissue damage to his back and shoulder muscles. However, the primary concern right now is rhabdomyolysis—dangerous toxins released into the bloodstream from the crushed muscle tissue—which can severely affect the kidneys. We currently have him on dialysis to help filter his blood."
"Is he... is he going to wake up?" Buck asked, his voice trembling.
"He is currently heavily sedated to manage the immense pain and to keep him perfectly immobile while the internal repairs hold," the doctor explained gently. "But his vitals are finally stabilizing. He is critical, but given what he survived, I am cautiously optimistic. He’s a remarkably strong man."
The collective, shuddering exhale in the waiting room was palpable. Hen covered her mouth with a gasp, and Maddie buried her face in Chimney's neck.
"Can we see him?" Christopher asked, leaning forward in his wheelchair.
The doctor looked at the battered little boy and offered a tired, sympathetic smile. "Briefly. Only two at a time. He desperately needs rest."
***
The ICU room was dim, illuminated only by the cold glow of the medical monitors. The rhythmic, mechanical *beep-beep-beep* of the heart monitor was the only sound over the quiet hiss of the oxygen.
Buck pushed Christopher’s wheelchair slowly into the room, his heart in his throat.
Eddie looked impossibly small in the center of the large hospital bed. That was what always terrified Buck the most—how incredibly fragile his best friend looked when the protective armor and the adrenaline were stripped away. Eddie was hauntingly pale, his skin almost blending into the white sheets. A nasal cannula fed oxygen into his nose, a thick cluster of IV lines snaked into his arms, and his entire upper torso was wrapped securely in heavy, thick bandaging.
"Dad?" Christopher whispered, the word catching in his throat.
Buck parked the chair flush against the bed and firmly locked the wheels. He reached down, carefully helping Christopher stand up on his one good leg so the boy could lean against the mattress.
"Hey, Eddie," Buck whispered, his voice thick. He reached out and gently laid his hand over Eddie’s. It was warmer now. Thank god. It wasn't the terrifying, deathly ice-cold of the mud pit.
Eddie didn't move, but the steady rhythm on the heart monitor hitched slightly, as if his subconscious recognized the voices.
"He looks like he's sleeping," Chris observed softly. He reached out a trembling hand and tentatively touched his father's bruised cheek. "Dad? It's Chris. We're safe. We're not in the dark anymore."
Buck bit his lip hard to stop the sob violently threatening to escape his chest. He pulled a rigid plastic chair up to the opposite side of the bed and sat down heavily, keeping his hand securely wrapped around Eddie’s forearm.
"You scared the absolute hell out of us, Eds," Buck murmured, his thumb swiping back and forth over Eddie's skin. "Bobby almost had a heart attack. Chimney hasn't stopped crying for three hours. You can't... you can't do this to us."
They sat there in the quiet for an hour. Nurses came and went, checking lines and charting vitals. The rest of the team cycled through the hallway, standing silently in the doorway, offering silent prayers and soft smiles before retreating.
Eventually, the exhaustion won. Christopher fell asleep, his head resting heavily on the very edge of the mattress near Eddie’s hip. Buck stayed awake, his red-rimmed eyes locked onto the glowing green numbers of the monitor, willing them to stay perfectly steady with sheer force of will.
It was just past 2:00 AM when Eddie finally shifted.
It started small—with a deep frown, a painful crease appearing between his dark eyebrows. Then, a low, gravelly groan rumbled deep in his throat.
"Eddie?" Buck was on his feet instantly, leaning over the bed rail. "Eddie, can you hear me?"
Eddie’s heavy eyelids fluttered. They were fighting the heavy pull of the sedation, twitching as he struggled to drag himself back to the surface. Slowly, agonizingly, they peeled open. Brown eyes, hazy with drugs and unfocused with pain, rolled around the dim ceiling before finally landing on Buck's face.
"B..." The sound was barely a puff of air.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's me," Buck smiled, a fresh wave of tears finally spilling over his lashes and tracking down his face. "I'm right here."
Eddie’s gaze drifted sluggishly downward. He physically couldn't lift his head off the pillow, but his eyes caught the familiar mop of curly brown hair resting on the edge of his bed.
"Ch..."
"He's right here," Buck assured him quickly, leaning in close so Eddie wouldn't have to strain to hear. "He's asleep. He's safe, Eddie. Jee is safe too. Maddie and Chim took her home to get warm. You got them all out."
Eddie let out a long, shuddering breath of profound relief. His eyes squeezed tightly shut as a fresh wave of sharp pain obviously hit him, lines of tension returning to his face. But when he opened his eyes again, the druggy haze had cleared just a fraction. There was clarity there.
"Bad... day... at park," Eddie rasped, his voice sounding like torn sandpaper.
Buck let out a wet, genuine laugh, scrubbing a hand over his wet eyes. "Yeah. Yeah, man, I’d say so. Maybe we stick to the Diaz movie marathons for a while, huh?"
Eddie moved his fingers, just a painstaking fraction of an inch, until his fingertips brushed lightly against Christopher’s hair. He couldn't pet him, couldn't hold him close, but just the physical contact seemed to settle something deep within his chest. The deepest lines of tension drained completely from his bruised face.
"Buck," Eddie whispered, his eyes sliding back to meet Buck's.
"Yeah?"
"Knew you'd come. Always do."
"Always will, Eds," Buck promised fiercely, squeezing Eddie's arm. "I got your back. Go to sleep, man. I'll be right here when you wake up."
Eddie’s eyes were already drifting shut again, the heavy cocktail of painkillers and sheer physical exhaustion aggressively claiming him. But his hand remained anchored, touching Christopher’s head, while his other hand turned ever so slightly on the sheets, his pinky finger weakly catching and hooking around Buck’s.
"Not... going... anywhere," Eddie breathed out, a final vow before he slipped back under.
The heart monitor beeped steadily—a strong, beautiful, rhythmic reassurance in the quiet room. Buck sat back down in his chair, his thumb brushing over Eddie's linked finger, watching the steady rise and fall of his best friend's chest. And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Buck felt like he could finally breathe again.