For a second, she almost said yes.
Then the truth returned.
"No."
Her voice shook.
"I'm a friend."
The word sounded painfully insufficient.
The paramedic nodded.
"We'll take good care of him. Has anyone contacted his family?"
Ethan looked up.
"His daughter."
Nora felt another wave of panic.
Lucy.
The twelve-year-old who had already lost her mother.
Who trusted Daniel to come home every evening.
Who had begun to accept Nora as a visitor without knowing the history connecting them.
"She's at school," Ethan said. "I can call Arthur Cole. He's the closest family we can reach."
Nora nodded immediately.
"Please."
Daniel regained consciousness briefly as the paramedics prepared to move him.
His eyes opened.
He looked toward the unfamiliar faces.
Then toward Nora.
"Nora?"
She moved closer.
"I'm here."
He stared at her.
For one heartbreaking moment, she saw recognition in his eyes.
Then he whispered, "The bridge."
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Yes."
He closed his eyes.
The paramedics continued their assessment and prepared him for transport.
Nora stepped backward.
She watched them lift him safely onto the stretcher.
His hands, usually so steady around tools and engines, lay motionless beside him.
She remembered those hands holding a peanut-butter sandwich.
Adjusting a cheap brass ring.
Steering a bicycle.
Then kneeling beside a motorcycle forty-six years later.
Her stomach twisted.
The ambulance doors closed.
One paramedic asked whether she intended to follow.
Nora nodded.
"Yes."
She retrieved her phone and bag, leaving the oil-stained white blazer behind.
Ethan approached.
His face was pale.
"Nora."
She turned.
"Yes?"
"He's been working too hard."
She looked toward the garage.
Ethan swallowed.
"I kept telling him to take a day off. He wouldn't."
Nora closed her eyes.
Then looked at him.
"Do you know which hospital?"
"Bellweather Regional."
She nodded.
"Thank you."
Ethan hesitated.
"Are you all right?"
For one moment, she almost laughed.
She was a woman who had endured business failures, public criticism, litigation, and personal loss.
She had spoken before thousands of people.
She had negotiated with executives who believed her company should not exist.
But she could not answer one mechanic asking whether she was all right.
Finally, she whispered, "I don't know."
Ethan nodded.
Then stepped aside.
Nora hurried toward her car.
And as she drove toward the hospital, the brass ring lay inside her closed fist.
Arthur Cole was eighty-four years old and still insisted that nobody in Bellweather knew how to repair a carburetor properly.
He had retired from the garage years earlier, but retirement had not cured his habit of arriving unannounced to inspect whatever Daniel and Ethan were working on.
His wife had died a decade before.
His niece Elise had been gone seven years.
And although Daniel was not related to him by blood, Arthur considered him family.
He had known the boy since Daniel was seventeen.
Had watched him become a mechanic.