“Get his arm?—”
“Watch the leg?—”
“Fuck, is he okay?”
Austin dropped onto the tread beside me. “Hey,” he said, steady and calm, palms up like I was a spooked horse. “Hey, look at me.”
I was very aware of the fact that my chest was heaving like I’d just sprinted, that my hands were trembling where they gripped the wood.
“I’ve got it,” I ground out, trying again to lever myself up. My prosthetic slid with a useless little squeak and slammed back into the edge of the step. The jolt shot straight into the socket. My vision went white at the edges.
“Jesus, Wes,” Austin said quietly. “You don’t. Not like this.”
Hands closed under my arms, trying to help. Someone’s fingers brushed the metal of the prosthetic, trying to steady it.
“Don’t move, man,” another voice urged from somewhere above or below. “You’re gonna hurt yourself worse.”
Down on the floor, someone said the words that gutted me clean.
“He shouldn’t be up there.”
The words weren’t cruel or mocking. Just honest. The kind of thing a guy says when he’s worried about liability and the fact that his boss might crack his skull open on a jobsite.
It landed like a punch right under my ribs.
He shouldn’t be up there.
He doesn’t belong on his own site anymore.
Austin blew out a breath, then let his hand drop to the socket carefully. “Okay,” he said, voice firm. “I think the best plan is getting the leg off, yeah? Then we’ll get you down slowly.”
Humiliation scorched hot across my face. “I can?—”
“Or,” Austin cut in, “you let me help you so you don’t eat another stair. You have to pick one.”
The crew had gone quiet. I could feel them hovering on the stairs, on the landing, radiating a mix of concern and not wanting to make it worse.
My fingers dug into the tread until my knuckles ached. Every worst-case scenario I’d ever played in my head about something like this happening—this exactly, this helpless, stupid scramble in front of my own crew—lined up with military precision.
I forced my hand away from my sides and reached for the leg.
Unlocking the prosthetic up here, with an audience, was ten times harder than doing it in my bedroom. My fingers fumbled. The sweat that had broken out across my neck made my grip clumsy.
The socket finally loosened. I eased the leg off, every inch sending fire through the raw skin at the end of my thigh. I had to clamp my jaw shut so I didn’t make a sound.
“Got it,” one of the guys said too brightly from below when Austin passed the prosthetic down. There was an awkward shuffle as he caught it. “I’ll, uh ... put this somewhere safe.”
Like it was a posthole digger or a damn drill.
I stared at the spot where the leg had been, at my jeans wrinkling around nothing. The air on my stump felt cold and exposed, even through the denim.
Austin slung my arm over his shoulders in one practiced movement. “All right, man,” he said. “Nice and easy.”
Someone braced at my other side, ready to catch.
We started the descent.
With no prosthetic to balance me, every step was a lopsided, graceless negotiation—good foot down, pause, adjust. My thigh burned. My hip throbbed where it had hit. My pride lay in pieces on the plywood.