“You’re with us,” I said before I remembered I hadn’t meant to. The words landed and put something back where it had been in his eyes.
Doc took Luke’s wrist and read the rhythm there. “Cold,” he murmured to the captain. “We’re all cold. He’s a little more of it.”
“I’m fine,” Luke said, because men like him are trained by nobody and everybody to say that word. Then he did the other thing men like him sometimes do when it’s safe enough: he let someone else’s jacket get put on his shoulders without arguing about dignity.
The radio on the captain’s chest spat syllables she’d been waiting for and didn’t want. “Upstream retention basin overtopping,” dispatch said. “Secondary wave expected in approximately eight to ten minutes. Traffic control reports compromised joints on the south end of the bridge. Advise clear.”
