Beck tells me he understands with a nod, and that’s all the signal I need to step back to clear the way amid a flurry of activity.
As I walk through the doors of the ER and head back to the ambulance, a sense of unease washes over me as it always does after I transfer a patient. Unlike the doctors at Bayside, I don’t get to see these people through their care. I don’t get to know if they make it out alive in the end.
I may have been dealing with medical trauma for upward of ten years, both here and back when I was in the army, but it never gets easier. Not every case is the same. Not every life can be saved. But I’ll keep coming back every single day if that means I can play a small part in somebody’s second chance at life.
“You all right there, Moore?” Pete asks when I climb into the ambulance beside him.
I turn to face him, not sure how to answer. “Can we ever be okay after something like that?” I shake my head. “I hope everyone makes it out okay.” I reach for my seat belt. “Why?”
Pete shrugs and puts the vehicle in drive. “You seemed a little off at the accident scene. The way you yelled at that woman like you were all fired up—”
“She was in the way.” I cut him a look and roll my shoulders, feeling the tension mounting even though the hard part of our call is over. “Photojournalists love to jump on this stuff with no regard to the safety of others.”
Pete shakes his head and lets out a laugh. “Dude, didn’t you see her SUV? She’d been hit. She was just taking pictures of her car.”
Dread hits me, and just like that, I feel like the biggest asshole in the world. “You’re fucking with me.”
Pete hits the gas and starts to drive us away from Bayside Regional and the one block back to the station. “Definitely not.”
“I was such an asshole.”
He nods. “Yup.”
I groan and roll the back of my head against the headrest. “Well, fuck. This day couldn’t get much worse, could it?”
“I don’t know, man,” Pete says with another chuckle that has me confident that he’ll be talking about this at the station later.
I’m going to get so much shit for this.
“That chick was superhot. And the way you caught her, all heroic and shit. That could have been a storybook meet-cute right there. You blew it, bro.”
I glare at Pete, wondering when in the hell he became so confident that he could talk to his superior like that. “What the hell is a meet-cute?”
“You know,” he says. “When a couple in a romantic comedy meet for the first time in a super cute way. My girlfriend is totally into all that stuff.”
I huff and turn to face the window, trying to pull up a mental image of the woman from earlier today. Apparently, I had been too in the zone to recognize what had really been going on with her. “Yeah, well, I guess this is what you would call a plot twist.” I hold my hands up like I’m reading a movie poster. “Guy meets beautiful girl. Guy is an ass and loses beautiful girl before he ever had a chance. Guy ends up old and alone. The end.” I shrug, bitterness from my last relationship creeping into my chest. “Sounds about right, considering my luck.”
Pete pulls into the open bay, parks, then claps me on the shoulder and squeezes. “Or maybe just don’t be an ass next time.”
I reach over to punch his chest, but he’s already jumping out of the vehicle, leaving laughter in his wake. I’m left alone in the ambulance, kicking myself for handling a situation in such an uncharacteristic way.
While it’s hard to drum up an image of the woman to confirm Pete’s assessment about her looks, those wide green eyes of hers might just haunt me forever.
Maybe Pete had gotten one thing right. Maybe I’d blown my chance before I even had one.
CHAPTER ONE
ASHER
“Ahh, I can smell the polished wood, already.” I take a dramatic sniff as a show for my buddy Greg’s benefit and jab him in the side with my elbow. “This is just what you need, dude. You’ll see.”
We’re approaching Shipwrecked, our favorite sports pub and meetup spot. My goal is to snap my friend out of whatever daze he’s been in lately. Greg Weston is an anesthesiologist at Bayside Regional, so he’s naturally a busy guy, but there’s definitely something on his mind lately that I haven’t been able to pry from him.
Greg twists his lips in amusement. “After the week we’ve had… yeah, you might be right.”
“It’ll be fun,” I promise him again. If there’s anything I’m known for among my friends, it’s cheering them up when they’re in whatever funk work or life brought upon them. I expect tonight will be no different.
We open the door and are immediately blasted with classic rock music coming from the surrounding speakers. It’s mid-October, and hockey and basketball games play on the large television screens mounted on the walls. Loud voices fill all the empty spaces of the room, but the sound of pool balls cracking together then sinking into their rightful pockets serve as the true music to my ears.
After a long twelve-hour shift, a pit stop at Shipwrecked is a must, but it’s on rare nights like these that I’m able to round up my closest friends from the hospital. Beck is already waiting for us on the other side of the bar. He’s standing with Larsen Belle, a good friend of ours who also works at Bayside Regional, his head bent close to hers.
“Uh-oh,” I mutter, elbowing Greg in his side. “Looks serious.”
Greg glances in the direction I’m referencing and nods. “It does indeed.”
The two of us share an all-knowing grin, a secret message playing between us. Whatever static is in the air is about to change.
Greg tosses an arm around Beck’s shoulders while I approach Lars. “What’s this I see? Getting friendly with good ole Becky boy over here? I thought you don’t have time for relationships, Dr. Belle.”
Lars shoots me a glare, causing my smile to grow.
“I hate to break it to you guys,” Greg starts, “but we’re at a bar, not the hospital morgue.”
Lars tosses Greg a smile, seemingly appreciative of the change in mood. As one of the clinical psychiatrists at Bayside Regional, her work hours are already stretched to the max.
Beck nudges Greg, a dash of annoyance flickering across his expression. “Get off, kid.”
“I’m older than you, asshole,” Greg quips back with a shove. “And nowhere near as broody.”
We all get a laugh out of that, and I jump in, hoping to keep the amusement rolling. “What did the bartender say to the horse?”
“What?” Beck asks deadpan.
“Why the long face?” I puff out my chest, proud of that oldie but goodie I’ve been hearing around the fire station as of late. I lean into Lars, waiting for her to give me props, too, but she just wrinkles her nose. Then I look around, scoffing at my unamused group of friends. The bartender, Harry, mutters a “Cheers, mate,” and slides a glass over to me containing my usual order—Irish whiskey, neat.
I don’t have to order. He knows the routine. My twenty-four-hour shift ends at the station, and Shipwrecked is my first stop before I head home for a long winter’s nap. And when I can, I get my buddies to come along too. Since we all work grueling shifts in and near the hospital, it’s nice to let off some steam.