by Fields, MJ
“Ryan.” I jerked from Dr. Ragland’s touch. “I’m going to give you some time.”
“Time? I was supposed to have years. That’s the time I wanted.” People moved past me, their hands grazing my arm for comfort. Comfort? Really, there was no such thing as comfort.
“Dr. Montgomery.”
I threw my hand back and pushed Polly away. “Get away from me, don’t talk to me, you should have kept doing chest compressions. You gave up on her. Get away from me.” The sound of scampering feet on the travertine tile soothed me.
When the only sound in the room was the humming of the fluorescent lights above, I bent over Deirdre. I trailed my index finger down the bridge of her nose before bending and pressing my forehead against hers. I wanted to say something, anything, “Aggggghhh.”
Today had been the day for a lot of lasts—the last morning to make love to her, the last morning to hand her a cup of coffee, the last morning to watch as she dressed our daughter Callie. “Noooo.” The bark of pain that shot through my knees as they hit the unforgiving tile was nothing compared to the agony shredding everything that lived inside me. The shaking in my hands made it almost impossible to grasp Deirdre’s hand when I reached for it. “Callie, you can’t leave Callie, she needs you. I can’t do this alone, I don’t know how—”
“This is your fault.”
I turned my burning eyes to the doorway, to Deirdre’s mother, who was standing just inside the room staring at me with nothing but unfettered hatred in her eyes.
“You did this to her. My daughter’s dead because of you.”
“Louise, calm down,” Fred, Deirdre’s father, tried to reason with her.
“No. If he loved her, then he would have allowed her to be a stay-at-home mom and raise her daughter. She’d still be at home with Callie and not sprawled out on some cold piece of metal.”
“Louise, stop it.” Fred wiped his own tears as he tried to hold Louise back. “Deirdre didn’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, she loved being a doctor. We have a beautiful granddaughter because she knew that Ryan would support her.”
“No. Louise is right.” I was still kneeling beside the operating table, and I curled in on myself, burying my face against where I still clutched Deirdre’s hand. “I should have forced the issue. If I had, I’d still have my wife and Callie would still have her mother.”
“See? He’s the reason she’s dead.”
“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.” Polly stood in the open doorway. Louise’s eyes went molten with anger, but Polly stepped forward. “A woman has lost her life today, a husband lost his wife, and a daughter lost her mother. I don’t know who you are, but I suggest you remember that before you say anything else. This is a hospital, have some respect.”
“I am her mother!” A lilac painted nail pointed directly at Deirdre. “You cannot kick me out.”
“I can, and I will. Your being her mother makes your behavior even more deplorable. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Fred, being far more reasonable than his wife, nodded. “I apologize if we’ve caused a disruption. This is a . . . shock. We’ll go wait in the waiting room. Would you please come get us . . .” Louise started to argue, but Fred grabbed her arm and hauled her back out to the hallway, Polly following and shutting the door softly behind her.
Hours later, I made it home, not sure how, but I did. I didn’t sleep, and when the sun rose the next morning, I watched it with disdain. My wife would never see another sunrise. More anger followed as my day unfolded. Contempt for the second mug I pulled from the cabinet out of habit. Contempt for the neighbor who hugged her husband in the doorway before he left for work. Fury at every other driver on the road as I made my way to the funeral home.
I was glad my mom stayed with Callie. My daughter didn’t need to see the way I sat in my car in the parking lot and broke.
Tuesday . . . I went to work. Busy. I needed to stay busy.
“Ryan, do you have a moment?” I turned to Dr. Mike Gallway, one of the hospital’s grief counselors. He was nice and all, I just didn’t need anyone trying to get me to talk about my feelings.
“I know why you’re here. I don’t need you.”
“I beg to differ. Besides, you’ve been ordered to come see me.” Mike handed me a piece of paper.
I sat in his office, listening to him talk about grief and healing as I stared out the window that overlooked the courtyard. In the middle was a statue of the Mother Mary. Mother . . . my daughter no longer had a mother. The statue was added to the long, long list of things that I hated.
One
Sadie
Damn, I made this shit look good.
I stared at myself in the mirror for what had to be the tenth time this morning, making sure that my pins were perfect and my shirt was pressed. The only things that weren’t sexy were the boots, but hey, I didn’t mind them, since they were part of the standard uniform of all motorcycle deputies. Who would have ever guessed that I, Sadie Kathryn Lazar, would become a motorcycle deputy? I still got butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it. I mean . . . why wouldn’t I? I was getting ready to roll out on two wheels of county-owned property, and it would be up to me to save the people of Orange County, Florida from danger. Okay, more often than not I was saving them from their own stupidity, and I wasn’t doing it alone, but whatever. There were other deputies and city police officers and state troopers, but I was part of that team. I was twenty-eight fucking years old, and even though I wasn’t a kid any longer, this was a lot of responsibility. A lot of pressure.
I grew up watching Cops with my daddy. I was all about bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do thanks to that show, and I never wavered from my career choice.
My ten-minute warning alarm signaled it was time for me to get my ass in gear. After sliding my gun into its holster, I grabbed my helmet and marched out of my small duplex. I opened the door to my tiny garage, which was truly meant for storage, and rolled out my motorcycle before reporting in to dispatch.
“Thirteen twenty-two, ten-eight.”
“Orange County copies. 05:57 hours.” Dispatch confirmed that I was logged in and on duty.
I fired the engine on my bike and then rolled back on the throttle. To many, the roar of the engine might as well have been a foreign language, but to me, it was my native tongue.
As the early morning sun warmed my cheeks and the wind whipped against me, I hummed and maneuvered through the rush-hour traffic. It wasn’t even ten minutes after beginning my shift that my call signal rang out across the radio.
“Thirteen twenty-two.”
“Thirteen twenty-two, go ahead.”
“Are you available to support a search at Mills and Colonial?”
“Ten-four, show me fifty-one, be there in under five.” After letting dispatch know that I was on my way and less than five minutes out, I upped my speed, only slowing when I spotted the three deputy vehicles along a side road. “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked Colton. The guy had been on the force about as long as I had.
“Hey, Sadie, this is one of those stories that is totally Cops worthy.”
“Oh, do tell.”
“It seems that Wanda”—he pointed to a tall woman in gold stilettos and a catsuit (the pleather kind, not the furry kind)—“and her best friend Pammy are no longer best friends.”
“Why?” I asked with all the fake concern I could muster, and Colton nodded with his own fake concern for their friendship.
“Wanda believes that Pammy stole her client.”
“Well, that isn’t a very best friend-like thing to do, is it?”
“Nope. Not at all.” Colton was clearly trying to keep himself from laughing.
“Apparently, his name is John, and he’s a very loyal . . . client.” Colton raised an eyebrow.
“It’s six o’clock in the fucking morning. If that doesn’t say loyal, I don’t know what does. So, why the sudden change of heart from our friend John the Client?”
&nbs
p; “Oh.” Colton finally lost it and let out a chuckle. “I’ll let them tell you. I don’t want to deprive you of any of the joy.” Colton gave me a knowing grin and I shook my head as I flipped him off and made my way over to the two women.
I walked over. “Oh, good, missy, you need to arrest her. She’s a thief.”
“I ain’t no thief, I’m a hooker.” I looked over my shoulder to Colton, who had moved to stand with Dan and Enzo. All three were watching me with bored expressions. I knew better, and would pay each one of them back for this nonsense. Three male deputies, and they called me.
“Ladies, since the dispute has to do with business, this is actually a civil case and not criminal. You need to get an attorney and sue through the courts. Perhaps you can even try to get loss of income.” Yeah, I said that last part with a straight face, looking to all the world like nothing more than a helpful officer handing out helpful advice.
“Wanda, I ain’t taking no Johns from you,” Pammy said. “I’m gonna be truthful, okay? I stole some of your Oxys. But, girl, you got so many from that guy you blew, you didn’t even miss none.”
I wanted to groan. Fuck, I needed to do a search.
“Okay, ladies,” I said as I pulled out black plastic gloves. “I’m going to need you to step away from each other. If you could please face the car.”
“What you doing, bitch? You ain’t arresting her, she’s my best friend.” Wanda, who just seconds ago was claiming that they were no longer friends, looked ready to fight for said friendship.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need for you to step back unless you would like to wait in the back of one of those patrol cars.” Being called a bitch was my official breaking point. For a second, I thought she was going to argue, but then Enzo opened the door for her and she quickstepped back four or five paces. Pammy didn’t bother to argue as she assumed the position and pressed her palms flat.
Between the two women, I found seven Oxycontin and a few rocks of heroin, so off to the station they went.
By mid-morning, the heat coming off the asphalt mixed with the hot engine made sitting in traffic feel like being in a sauna. I was sure that I wouldn’t be half as miserable if the county got with the program and stopped making us wear polyester. It was plastic for god’s sake. But I was in no position to complain, since I was still technically a rookie—well, a rookie motors deputy. I’d been a deputy for a few years, which was required to interview for a position on the motor squad.
Most days, I spent part of my day patrolling schools for cocky assholes who thought they were too important to slow down for buses or school zones. The rest of the day, I patrolled the streets looking for speeders. I learned pretty fast who had the best coffee—it was the Wawa, by the way.
That was where I was headed when the distinct sounds of metal hitting metal, of tires squealing across asphalt, and of brake pads grinding the rotors drowned out the sound of my engine. I grimaced and turned my bike toward the sound. Cars were already backing up and making way for the emergency responders who had somehow beat me to the scene. Several drivers, who’d clearly forgotten they weren’t supposed to leave the scene of an accident, made U-turns after they came to the realization that this was going to delay their morning. When I got close to the scene, I knew it wasn’t going to just delay my morning—it was going to fuck my afternoon as well, so I called in to dispatch.
“Thirteen twenty-two.”
“Thirteen twenty-two, go ahead.”
“Copy, signal four, multiple vehicles with road blockage and probable injury with fatalities, location Rollins and Orange, directly in front of Florida Hospital. Need assistance with traffic control, send FD with rescue. Standby for the twenty-eights involved and further information on any injuries.”
“Orange County thirteen twenty-two, copy all, FD is in route. Orange County all units, copy signal four, Rollins and Orange, all units responding please report back.”
I pulled to the shoulder and quickly removed my helmet before moving to the ambulance that was on its side.
The paramedic was standing at the back of his truck waiting for me. “That guy”—he gestured to a blue Mercedes that looked as if it had lost a game of Chicken with a light pole—“had been tailing us for the last few blocks and running lights with us,” he shouted at me, as if I needed to worry about an arrest at this very moment on top of everything else.
“Got it. Did anyone on your team sustain any injuries? Were you incoming or outgoing from the hospital?”
The back doors to the ambulance were wide open, and I peeked in. The inside was a chaos of medical supplies and equipment, but thank god whoever was on the stretcher had been strapped down and locked in. If not, he probably would have been far worse off than he had been when he’d been loaded into the ambulance. The two paramedics were working to try to free the gurney, so I moved to the next vehicle, which was a blue Mercedes. The driver was still inside, and every window was shattered. Even though I was wearing heavy-duty riding gloves already, I slid a black pierce-proof glove overtop.
I reached through the window and unlocked the door so I could open it before squatting to get a good look at the driver. He was unconscious, and the rattling sound coming from his lungs was something I’d heard close to twenty times before. It was created by blood and air in the lungs and was generally preceded by slight body reflexes. Not all sweet and clean like they showed in the movies—no, this was real life, and that was the sound of a man dying. “Hey, I need some help over here!”
A hand touched my shoulder a second before a soothing male voice said, “I have it from here. My staff is helping with injuries, so you do what else you have to do.”
“Thank you.” I looked up into piercing blue eyes and then dropped my attention to his scrubs and white lab coat. Embroidered in yellow thread on the left side was the name Dr. Ryan Montgomery. “Thank you.” I took a step back and let him get to work as I reassessed the situation. Two other officers had pulled up and were working to reroute traffic. Orange County Fire Department was on scene, and they were helping extricate people from the cars and transport them into the hospital. All in all, there were five cars and one ambulance involved in the accident, and I already had a general idea of what had happened, I just needed to confirm it.
Pulling my pad of paper and pen out of my front pocket, I walked over to the paramedic driver I’d spoken to when I’d arrived on scene. “First, are you okay and was your patient okay?”
“We’re fine, just shaken.”
“What were you saying about the driver?”
“The guy in the blue Mercedes started tailgating me a few blocks back. When I slowed through intersections, he’d inch close and slide through the light on my tail. I was just getting ready to call him in, when that car”—he pointed toward a red Camry—“failed to yield the right of way. I don’t know if the driver just didn’t see me or what, but he ended up tagging the other car and sent him spinning. That car”—he pointed to another one—“came toward me and swerved but wasn’t fast enough and ended up clipping my front end, which sent me spinning. I hit the curb and we toppled.”
I let out a huff and shook my head. People really were idiots sometimes. “I’m sorry you have to deal with all of this, so I’ll try to be quick and get you the copy of the report. If you don’t want to wait for it, I can have a copy sent over for you.”
“I’ll wait. Thanks for the offer, though.”
“Any time. I’m going to need to get your driver’s license info.” He handed it to me, and I jotted it down along with his phone number before handing it back to him.
As I wrote up the incident, I kept glancing over at the blue car. I needed to get the driver’s information, but I was afraid that we were going to notify his next of kin. It was a call no one wanted to make, even though it had to be done. Ryan Montgomery and a few nurses were still there, and they had gotten the driver out of the car, but none of them were actively working on him. The doctor lifted his arm to check his watch and then wrot
e something down on a piece of paper that he had pulled from his pocket. As I approached, someone draped a white cloth over the man they’d just called time of death for, and Dr. Montgomery sat back on his heels. The man looked pale and exhausted, which I could understand.
“Doctor Montgomery, I’m sorry to bother you, are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It doesn’t matter how many times I lose someone, it never gets easier and car accidents get to me.”
I also understood that. No matter how many times we saw some messed-up shit, things still got to us.
“I think we all have that one situation that’s hard to navigate.” There was a short pause and then I asked, “Would you mind if I checked to see if he has ID on him?”
I almost hated to ask, because Dr. Montgomery looked a little lost in his own world, but I didn’t want to be here any longer than I needed to be.
“No, let me help you.” He bent and reached under the man to slide his wallet free from his back pocket. “Here you go, Officer . . .”
“Actually, it’s Deputy”—I pointed to my star-shaped badge—“Sadie Lazar. Thank you, one of the detectives will be in to talk with you shortly since there was a fatality.”
“No problem. I should get back inside. I’m sure the ER is going to be crazy today.”
“Thanks again.” I headed off, sweat dotting my temples as the morning sun beat down on me. I moved on to the next non-severe injury, taking down everyone’s information and asking questions as it got hotter and hotter outside.
By the time I had everything I needed to process my reports and the scene had been cleared, my stomach was growling. I walked over to my bike and grabbed several bobby pins. I kept my hair braided so it didn’t tangle while I rode, but I needed it up and off my neck.
“Hey, I noticed that you were still out here. I brought you some sustenance.” I turned around and was face-to-face with Dr. Blue Eyes, who was holding out two bottles of water and a white paper bag. I hadn’t taken time earlier to admire him, but he truly was good looking, he reminded me of… I couldn’t remember the guy’s name, Wonder Woman was in love with him, shit. God, his mesmerizing blue eyes and his mouth that looked as if it was dying to break into a grin. He had the kind of lips that if I ever tasted them, that’s what I’d want for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.