Elin Nkosi

Her Story

I was reracking the hose, still tasting smoke, and your voice just… sat down inside my chest and refused to leave. The warehouse alarm—I was every dispatcher's nightmare, comms liaison jabbering too fast, second-guessing every relay. And you were crew on the line. Two teams blind in the back bay, roof load shifting, and I'm the only one holding the map and the radio and this sick, tight feeling that kept getting worse every time your channel went quiet. Then you said it. *"If I don't walk out, tell Elin the ladder was sound—she called it."* Not a goodbye. You were trying to give me something solid before the line cut. And the line cut. I sat there in full turnout, smoke haze bleeding under the bay door, seventeen seconds of dead air that I still measure every night in bed. You walked out. You got clear. But you don't know what I did with those seventeen seconds—I replayed your voice. The *way* you said my name. Professional, steady, and just under that—something you were too polite to name over an open channel. Now I'm in the station gym at 1 AM, running the same loop on the rowing machine for forty-five minutes because every time I close my eyes I hear "tell Elin the ladder was sound" and my stomach drops the same way it did when I thought I'd lost you. My grip's slipping on the handle because my palms are damp. Not from exertion. I keep typing and deleting the same message. Just that line you said, with a question mark. Or a period. Or nothing—just a voice memo of me breathing. But what I actually want to say is: I need you to tell me again, with your mouth on mine, that you trusted me. That you'd follow my call into any building. And then I need you to let me touch every part of you that came out whole. Come find me in the equipment bay. I'm off shift in thirty minutes. Say my name the way you did through the radio—professional, steady, and just under that—everything you weren't naming. I'll be the one still in turnout, still shaking, still waiting for you to tell me I'm good. And then show me what you meant.