The Beat and The Pulse Box Set 1

by Amity Cross

  “Not generally,” I replied honestly.

  He sighed like he didn’t know what to do with me. I didn’t know either, so at least we weren’t alone in that.

  “That other doctor said you were the one who found me,” he said after a moment. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Did I need to?” I asked. “It’s my job to treat people who need treating, not to take credit for it.”

  “Why shouldn’t you? I would’ve left my sorry ass out there.”

  Taken aback by his negative tone, I asked, “Why would you say that about yourself? Surely there are plenty of people who care about you.”

  Sadness flickered through his eyes, but it was so quick I almost missed it. “I don’t know a single person who’d rescue me like you did.”

  I scoffed. “It wasn’t a daring rescue.”

  “No, but you didn’t just step over me,” he shot back. “You dragged my sorry ass inside.”

  “It’s my—”

  “It’s your job,” he said thinly. “I get it.”

  This wasn’t going so well. It was my job, at least that’s how I saw it, but Josh had taken it as meaning something more. Was he that alone in the world that he saw any kindness, no matter how small, as the biggest deal in his entire life? It would explain a great deal, but I hoped it wasn’t true. Everyone should have someone even if it wasn’t romantic.

  “I’ll cut you a deal,” he declared, his tone changing.

  “A deal?” I asked slowly.

  “Don’t sound so suspicious,” he teased. “It’s simple. You tell me something about yourself, and I’ll tell you something about me. Equal measures.”

  “Equal measures?” I asked, tilting my head to the side. “What’s that mean?”

  “You tell me something and I’ll tell you something back in equal weight.”

  “Is that some kind of sports metaphor?”

  He laughed, his eyes lighting up. He was so damn sexy it hurt to look at him. My gaze fell to his lips, and I wondered what it would be like to kiss them…to feel him lick—

  “So,” he prodded, breaking me out of my naughty thought pattern, “what are you going to tell me? Better be juicy.”

  The word juicy ran off his tongue and I flushed. When he laughed in triumph, I knew he was totally onto me. The man had to be psychic. Yeah, he was psychic.

  I thought for a moment and tried to formulate something that might get him to reveal something about his situation to me. I was dying to know how he’d come to be here at all.

  “In fifth grade, I got into a fight with another girl because she kept putting shaving cream in my locker,” I said, hoping he’d reciprocate. “I got tired of it, so I launched myself at her and gave her a bloody nose and a black eye. I was suspended and grounded for a week. I’m not really a fighter. That was my only foray into punching on. How about you?”

  “I’ve been known to fight,” he said, the suspicion in his voice giving away that he was onto me.

  “If you fight, then it’s my medical opinion that you don’t anymore. At least whatever kind of fighting it was that put you here.”

  He narrowed his eyes, and I knew I was right on the money. A fight had put him here. A fight he’d consented to.

  “Sparks,” he said thinly.

  “I’d like to know you some,” I said. “But I’m not going to tiptoe around something that will put your health and continued use of your legs at risk just to save your pride. If you get pissed at me, then you get pissed at me.” I shrugged. “That’s the life I’m in.”

  His chest rose as he took a deep breath. He let it out in a long sigh that seemed to stretch on forever.

  “I thought you’d be a woman who dished out tough love,” he murmured, staring across the room.

  “I’m only guessing at what happened to you, but it’s that easy, Josh. One hit the wrong way and you’re out. Gone. Done and dusted.”

  “I know,” he hissed.

  Meeting his gaze, I said, “Then know I can’t condone it as a doctor.”

  He stared at me for a full minute before nodding. “Advice noted.”

  I didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know he had no intention of listening to me, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I could give him all the professional advice I wanted, but he had to be open to hearing it. The more I sat here staring at him like a lovesick teenager, the more I realized he was just a typical macho male.

  “So tell me something else,” he said. “Something a little less fucking depressing.”

  “I really don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “This place is my whole life. The hours are long, the work is demanding, and it’s hard not to throw yourself into it completely. It’s not a standard nine to five job.”

  “I bet it ain’t.” He shifted on the bed. “I bet it takes a lot of school, too.”

  “A lot of sacrifice,” I agreed.

  “I hear you moved from New York.”

  My gaze snapped up to meet his, and I narrowed my eyes. It seemed Gunner had been weaving her magic on poor Josh. When I asked her to cover my rounds, I didn’t mean for her to stick her nose in where it wasn’t needed. She meant well but shit. Sometimes, I wish she would just chill over the boyfriend shit. Some women—aka, me—were happy enough without a man.

  Then what are you doing here with Josh, Holly?

  “Yes, I did,” I replied slowly.

  “Seems like a step down,” he murmured. “Why? Not that I’m complaining.”

  I felt my throat constrict as the image of the man I’d thought I loved entered my mind. Scrubs bunched around his ankles, and hers, as he ploughed his cock into her from behind. Their startled looks as they saw me standing in the doorway. The pain that tore through my heart. The moment I ran down the hall and vomited into the nearest toilet bowl.

  I’d been such a blind fool. The stupidest bitch there ever was. Everyone knew. Everyone but me.

  “Sparks?”

  My phone beeped loudly from where it was clipped to the waistband of my scrubs. Hospital issue for alerts—the modern-day pager. It kept ringing as I made a grab for it, my heart beating double-time in my chest.

  “Shit,” I cursed, glancing at the message. It was from Archer.

  “Emergency?” Josh asked, his brow creased.

  “Yeah, I’ve gotta go.” I fumbled with the phone, hooking it back onto the waistband of my scrubs.

  “Will I see you before I go tomorrow?” he asked as I scooped up my tablet.

  “I don’t know,” I said hastily, my mind firmly on the fucked-up tumor I was about to help Archer carve out of a kid’s spine. My gaze met Josh’s, and I regretted the fact that this was probably it. There wasn’t enough time to get to know anything about him and this silly attraction. Maybe that’s all it was. A silly crush on a mystery man.

  “Good luck,” he murmured, his gaze falling away. He was disappointed? Was I reading it right?

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my shoulders sagging. “I’ve really gotta go.”

  He nodded once, and I spun on my heel, running from the room and down the hall where I thumped my fist on the elevator call button.

  When I reached OR Three, Archer was already suiting up, and Sammy was being wheeled into the theater.

  “What happened?” I asked as the door swung closed behind me.

  Archer glanced up and grimaced. “He took a sharp turn an hour ago,” he explained. “There was too much risk trying to bring his symptoms under control with meds, not with the surgery looming. It was now or never.”

  I sighed and looked at the little boy as the anesthesiologist readied him to go under. He couldn’t hold on another twelve hours until we were scheduled to operate. The poor kid. I thought about his parents, who were probably huddled in the waiting room upstairs, and tears prickled behind my eyes.

  “Scrub in, Hol,” Archer said, turning on the nearest tap. “We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

  11

  Josh

  I sat in th
e waiting room down the hall from the ER, my broken arm cradled in my lap.

  My duffle bag sat at my feet as I watched the comings and goings of the Emergency Department of St. Vincent’s. Occasionally, an ambulance would scream up the driveway outside, and a gurney would be rolled in among a furor of activity from the doctors and nurses, and then things would go back to a dull roar.

  I’d been discharged over an hour ago, but I wasn’t keen to go anywhere else just yet. Something seemed to be unfinished, and it had everything to do with a certain doctor. Never in my entire life had I found myself so hung up over a woman that I waited in a cesspool of human deterioration hoping to see her.

  But Sparks hadn’t come back.

  A body flopped down onto the seat beside me, and I stiffened. Glancing at Dr. Gunner, I remembered she said this was her scene. The ER.

  “Mr. Caplin, right?” she asked, knowing full well who I was.

  “Josh,” I replied. “You don’t have to be pro now that they let me out.”

  “Josh,” she said with a wide smile. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m cool.”

  She glanced around the waiting room at the old people and the mothers with their kids who had fallen off their bikes and cracked their arms, and then turned back to me.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t here for her if that’s what she was getting at, and the more time that passed, the more I forgot why I even bothered sticking around.

  “She’s still in surgery,” Dr. Gunner declared, leaning back in the crappy plastic seat. “At least, I’m pretty sure she is. Archer said it would take at least twelve hours or more.”

  She was operating with the clean-cut superhero that was Dr. Archer. Stiff competition.

  Thinking back to when Sparks had come to see me last night, I couldn’t remember the time, but it seemed like it was about that long. How anyone could stand there and be that amazing for any amount of time, let alone twelve hours, was beyond me. Just another bullet point in the long list of reasons why Dr. Walsh was way above my pay grade.

  “I can get a message to her if you like,” Gunner offered when I didn’t answer.

  She looked so hopeful I almost caved, but if Sparks wanted to see me outside the hospital, she would’ve already done something about it. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the slow burn of disappointment still sat heavy on my chest.

  “Nah,” I said, rising to my feet. “It was never going to work out, anyway.”

  Gunner went to open her mouth but I was already walking away, my duffle bag clutched in my left hand. I was a two-week long flirtation, a stress reliever. Probably well needed considering the poor kid she was currently operating on. I shouldn’t be pissed about it—that would make me a fucking bastard. It was the exact same thing I did to the string of women who came before her. The same but without the sex, that was.

  It was better I walked away now than sit in that stupid seat waiting for a woman who was never coming back. That was the metaphor of my fucking life if I ever saw one.

  The doors swished open as I approached, and I stepped out into the world. I didn’t realize how much I missed the sun until I felt its rays on my skin. The sounds of inner city Melbourne reached my ears, and the quiet of the hospital ward upstairs seemed dull in comparison. Cars, trucks, and buses roared past, a tram dinged in the distance, and a cool breeze rustled through the trees that lined the little grassy patch behind the hospital.

  Everyone had someplace to be, someplace they were wanted and needed. Everyone but my sorry ass. Nothing was in my orbit, and even though I had an apartment I rented, it still wasn’t anywhere close to being home. I hadn’t had a real one of those since I was nineteen. Eight years drifting…

  Strolling forward, I began to walk away from the hospital, but then I saw a woman hunched over on a bench. A woman in a white coat. A woman with fire for hair.

  My heart twisted before soaring with hope, and I moved closer. I didn’t know her, not really, but I knew it was her. I stood behind her and almost didn’t say anything, but it was a last chance kind of moment, so I took it.

  “Sparks?” My voice came out uncertain. Distant and far away.

  She straightened up and wiped her eyes before turning. “Josh. I thought you’d been discharged.”

  “Just now,” I lied, stepping forward. She didn’t need to know I’d been waiting for her, but I reckon Dr. Gunner would tell her later on, regardless. “Are you all right?”

  Her hair was even more brilliant in the sunlight, and I knew I’d picked her nickname right. It shimmered with flecks of deep red and orange as she moved, like she was some kind of angel made of fire.

  She shrugged. “Long night.”

  Taking a deep breath, I rounded the bench and sat next to her, dumping my bag by my feet.

  I stared down the side street to where traffic zoomed back and forth down Nicholson Street. A tram rumbled by, crammed full of morning commuters. “You were operating on that kid.”

  She glanced at me, drawing my gaze to hers, and I saw that her eyes were red with tears, her skin red and puffy. It hadn’t gone well.

  “Josh…” she choked out, and she didn’t need to ask…or explain. I just raised my left arm and she fell against me, resting her head on my chest while she cried, her shoulders shuddering.

  She cared, maybe too much, but I didn’t know how else she should be reacting when a kid had died on the table. Her table. Her patient. I’m sure she did everything in her power, but it didn’t make it any easier when the grand scheme was against her from the start.

  All I knew was I’d be an asshole if I walked away from her now, regardless of what she did or didn’t want from me. It was just a good thing to do, and since I had nowhere I wanted to be, I did it.

  Raising my right hand, I trailed my fingers through her hair, the cast making the gesture awkward. She felt good in my arms. She was a tiny thing, tall and willowy, and her scent still reminded me of oranges. Something tropical with a touch of spice that brought all kinds of fruit to mind.

  “I knew,” she said through a shuddering breath. “I knew there was a chance he wouldn’t make it. I advised against it, but we were his last shot.”

  “Knowing doesn’t make it feel any less shitty,” I murmured, resting my cheek against the top of her head.

  “His parents put their faith in us, and we couldn’t help him.”

  “They knew the risks, Sparks. I know you. You would’ve told them straight up. You sure didn’t sugarcoat it with me.”

  Her hands curled into my shirt, and she pressed against me, her body fitting alongside mine like a piece of a puzzle slotting into place.

  “It’s the job,” I said, offering her own words back to her. “You can’t save everyone.”

  “I know,” she murmured. “Sometimes, it just gets a little too much.”

  We sat for a moment, and as I rubbed my left hand up and down her arm, we just existed. It was really fucking nice until she extracted herself from my arms and sat up.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I didn’t mean to pile my shit on you.”

  As we sat there in silence on that stupid bench, I knew she was the only person I wanted in my life. I didn’t know what it was, but there was something drawing me to her like a magnet. There was a definite attraction there, I couldn’t deny it, but there was also something else I didn’t understand. I just wanted to be around her despite the intimidation factor.

  Lifting my hand, I plucked the pen from her pocket as her surprised gaze followed my movements. Sliding my right hand under hers, I balanced her palm over my cast. Using my left, I wrote my phone number along her soft skin in shaky lines. When I was done, I clicked the pen and slipped it back into her pocket.

  “Use it,” I said. “Any time. For anything.”

  Sparks stared at the back of her hand, her face hidden from mine by a wall of fire. Running my fingers a
long the strands, I tucked it behind her ear, the scent of her perfume heavy on the air.

  When she didn’t say anything, I shoved down the bitter taste of disappointment and picked up my bag. Rising to my feet, I hesitated, waiting for a miracle that never came.

  “See ya, Sparks,” I murmured and walked away.

  The shithole flat I kept in Northcote in Melbourne’s north was cold as ice when I opened the door.

  Stepping across the threshold, the place was familiar, but at the same time, it wasn’t. It’d been two weeks since I’d been here last, and it was still the same empty piece of shit it always was.

  Luckily for me, the power was still on, there was some food in the freezer, and my car was still parked in its spot in the yard below. Like that was the prize at the end of this story.

  Dumping my bag on the couch, I breathed in deeply, but all I got was the disgusting scent of mold. Crossing the room, I opened the windows and let the breeze waft through the pitiful remains of my life. It was just another room with nothing but my thoughts in it. Thoughts that didn’t need thinking ever again.

  No fights meant no money coming in. I had some saved, but it wouldn’t last forever. What was I supposed to do now that my only income stream was cut off?

  Wandering into the bathroom, I flicked the light on and stared at my battered face in the mirror. It was much better than it had been when I first woke up. My black eye had faded to a splotchy yellow, and almost all of the cuts had healed. I’d have some gnarly scars to add to my collection, but nothing to get all worked up about.

  Staring down at my cock, I thought about giving myself a hand job since it’d been a while, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it still worked after being numb for a week. A twitch didn’t mean nothin’. It’d be hard work with my left hand since I favored my right, but that was still encased in an inch or so of plaster.

  I could think about Sparks… Shit, Sparks crying in my arms over a kid. Even though I was alone and nobody would ever know, I still couldn’t bring myself to fist my cock and think about her.

  I stared at my reflection again and wondered why the hell I was born anyway.