Emily's eyes filled.
"Daniel-"
"Please."
She stopped.
"I have needed to say this for three years. Let me get it out."
He took a shaking breath.
"I remember everything going quiet in my head. That's the weird part. It was loud around me, but inside me it got quiet. I remember thinking, this is the whole life I get. Nineteen years. That's it."
Cody slowly set down the rag in his hands.
Daniel looked at Emily.
"Then somebody grabbed the back of my vest and hauled me up. You were yelling at me to move. I couldn't believe you were there."
Emily closed her eyes briefly.
"You did most of the moving yourself."
Daniel almost laughed through the tears. "There she is. Still correcting the story so you don't sound heroic."
Cole, standing near the office doorway, crossed his arms but said nothing.
Daniel continued. "I learned later that you'd already gotten the vehicle moving. The others were clearing out. You were injured. You had every reason to leave. Then somebody realized I wasn't there and you went back."
Emily stared at the floor.
"You saved my life."
"We got you out."
"You saved my life."
The repetition stopped her the same way Cole's repetition had months before.
Daniel unfolded another paper from his pocket. It was a photograph printed recently.
A woman sat on a porch holding a little girl with dark curls.
"That's my wife, Rachel."
Emily looked at the photograph.
"And that's my daughter."
The little girl had one hand raised toward the camera, fingers spread, mouth open in a laugh.
Daniel smiled through tears.
"She's two."
Emily touched the edge of the photograph.
"She's beautiful."
"Her name is Emily."
The world seemed to tilt.
Emily looked up sharply.
Daniel's face crumpled.
"I named her after you."
The torque wrench fell from Emily's hand.
It hit the concrete with a metallic crack.
Nobody flinched.
Daniel crossed the remaining distance.
Emily met him halfway.
He was taller than she remembered. Older. Solid. Alive.
She wrapped both arms around him and held on.
For three years, the worst day of her life had existed in her memory as damage. A ruined knee. A career that stalled. Paperwork. Pain. Sleep broken by images she rarely described.
She had never allowed herself to think about what continued after she left.