Tyler had answered countless 911 calls. He knew the drill—sirens, urgency, decisions made in seconds. But that morning carried a weight he couldn’t explain. Something felt… off. Even before dispatch rang in.
“Male, sixties. Collapsed in driveway. No response.”
They tore through traffic—another routine call, or so he thought—until they turned onto a street that made his stomach twist.
It looked familiar.
Too familiar.
The sagging gate with the broken latch. The hydrangeas his mom used to trim every spring. The cracked driveway where he’d scraped his knees learning to ride.
Memories hit like a punch to the gut. Tyler blinked hard, hoping he was wrong. But he wasn’t. He knew this house. He had grown up here—before the divorce, before everything fell apart. A place he hadn’t stepped foot near in years. And now, fate had dragged him back to it wearing his uniform and a stethoscope.
He didn’t have time to process the knot of emotion in his chest. He and his partner, Sarah, leapt from the ambulance as an older woman waved them down, panic etched across her face.
“He’s inside! Hurry!” she cried, voice cracking under the weight of fear.
Tyler followed her in, heart pounding—not from the emergency, but from every memory crowding in with each step: his dad’s old cologne, the soft groan of the floorboards, echoes of arguments and laughter long gone.
Then he saw him.
A man collapsed in the driveway. Unconscious. Pale. Lips tinged blue.
Neighbors hovered helplessly nearby, their faces tight with concern. Tyler moved into autopilot. He crouched, checked the airway, searched for a pulse. Started compressions. The same steps he’d done a hundred times before—only this time, his hands trembled ever so slightly.
There was something about the man. Something he couldn’t shake.
His features. His build. The way his hair curled at the temple.
Tyler’s gut clenched.
This isn’t just a patient.
Still, he pushed the thought down and worked. Kept counting. Kept breathing for him.
“Tyler! Got a pulse!” Sarah’s voice yanked him out of the haze, and for a moment, relief flooded in.
They lifted the man onto the stretcher, secured him, and loaded into the ambulance. Tyler focused on the rhythm of the siren, on his breath, on not letting his hands shake.
It wasn’t until they reached the hospital, until the ER team swarmed in and took over, that he finally let himself breathe.
He peeled off his gloves and wiped sweat from his brow, trying to quiet the thoughts clawing at his brain. Then one of the nurses called out the man’s name from the chart.
And everything inside Tyler stopped.
It was his father.
The man he hadn’t spoken to in over a decade. The man he had just brought back to life.