by Callie Hart
Coat? Check.
Purse? Check
Car keys? Check.
Twenty hours after the shift from hell began and it finally looks like it’s ending. I always feel like a fraud when I put my civilian clothes back on. Like I’m only pretending to be a functional member of society, someone who shops at The Gap and remembers to color co-ordinate their jacket to their handbag. I’m most at home in my scrubs, but people tend to look at you funny if you do your grocery shopping in a pair of blues.
“Night, Sloane. You working tomorrow?” Jerry, one of the orderlies, is here almost as much as I am. He’s a young guy, twenty-two perhaps, with a growing family to feed. Works every hour God sends.
“Sure am, Jer. Catch you for some coffee?”
He grins. “Count on it. I’ll need it after tonight.”
I’m within sight of the exit when I start to get nervous. This is where it always happens. The fourteen-foot stretch of floor space between the reception and the entrance is like some kind of magical hot spot. Nine times out of ten, something or someone will charge through that door while I’m occupying that space and I’ll end up turning right back around.
Ten feet.
Five feet.
I hold my breath.
I’m at the door. Seattle’s autumn wind buffets me, whipping my hair up as the doors slide back to reveal a clear night sky beyond, a bruised shade of royal blue. I breathe a sigh of relief. I did it. I’m free and clear for a whole seven hours. I’m going to spend every single one of those seven hours in bed and it’s going to be amazing.
I’m in my car, pulling out of the parking lot, when a souped-up black Camaro screeches around the corner, nearly crashing straight into me. We both manage to brake in time, but barely. The driver of the Camaro leans on their horn, shattering the peace of the nearly empty parking lot.
I can’t see whoever’s at the wheel but I know they want me to get the hell out of the way. There’s only one reason a car would come tearing at breakneck speeds into a hospital lot and that’s because of an emergency. I reverse so hard my tires spin.
The Camaro roars up the sliding doors that I just left behind and a wave of regret washes over me. I might as well kiss those seven hours goodbye—I’m a glutton for punishment.
It takes me thirty seconds to park up and run back inside. A nurse is already calling for assistance over the tannoy, and a guy in black is hunched over a child on the floor. There’s a blood-soaked duvet abandoned by his side, and he’s slapping the child, the little girl, in the face. I skid to halt beside him, not thinking. I grasp hold of his wrists and shove him back hard enough that he topples sideways and lands on his ass.
“Move away from her. Let me see.”
A guttural, choking sound comes out of him as I make a quick observation of the little girl. She’s not as young as I first thought, but she’s tiny. Her pale blonde hair is died pink with blood. The insides of her wrists are torn to shreds, and it takes me a full second to compose myself. She really meant it when she did this to herself.
“How much blood did she lose?” I check her pulse, bend down to place my ear over her mouth. Any breathing sounds? Faint but there. Pulse is thready but present, too. I look up, still waiting on my answer, and the guy who brought the girl in is propping himself up by his elbows, staring at me with his mouth open. His eyes are huge, the color so dark it’s almost black. Looks like he’s in shock.
“Listen, I really need to know how much blood she’s lost,” I tell him.
“I—I don’t know. She was in the bath.” He whispers the words so quietly I can barely hear him. The front of his T-shirt clings to him, hugging his chest—he found her in the tub, went in and fished her out. Suresh Patel, one of the on-call doctors, arrives on scene a second later and we get the girl onto a gurney. Her body temp is low, her stats uneven. She’s a coin toss at best.
I’m sucked back into the hospital as I work over the small woman. Hours pass. We replace liters of blood and end up having to wrap the girl in four blankets before she finally picks up enough for us to attempt surgery to fix the mess she’s made of her wrists.
It’s five in the morning by the time I go looking for the guy who brought her in. I find him sitting in a corridor, elbows resting on his knees, head resting in his hands. He looks up and sees me, and then does the damnedest thing: he gets up and starts to walk away. Fast.
“Excuse me. Hey!” He stops but doesn’t turn around straight away. He waits a beat, like he’s building up to it. “I need some details from you about your girlfriend. You can’t just leave her here to wake up alone.”
Finally, he turns. His jaw is clenched so tight the veins in his temples throb with the flow of his pulse. He just stares at me. His shirt has dried out now but it’s still clinging to him in the most distracting fashion, the arms of the material rolled up one turn to reveal strong, tattoo-covered biceps. Ink in black and blue and red surges down his arms in waves. His almost black hair is spiked every which way, tousled, still wet; delectable. I kick my own ass when I realize I’m checking him out.
You’re mad at him, Sloane, remember? He was just leaving. Going to walk right out of the door.
“You think you can at least give us some history before you vanish into the sunset. Or sunrise,” I say. He blinks at me, and then folds his arms across his chest. He opens his mouth to say something and stops himself. Scowls. He turns toward the door and it looks like he’s considering bolting anyway. Bastard.
“On second thoughts, if this is because of you, then maybe you should go,” I say. There are no bruises on the girl’s body but I’ve seen enough cases of domestic violence to know that it’s not always physical. A broken spirit can be just as damaging as a broken bone. This guy could have made his girlfriend’s life so miserable that she simply wanted to end it. The scars on her arms say this wasn’t the first time she’s tried it, either.
Tall, Dark and Handsome glares at me with a pure fury that makes me rethink my suggestion. He faces me properly, like he’s committing to sticking around now, and finally speaks. No, he growls. “I’m not her boyfriend. And I’m not leaving her.”
My stomach lurches. That…
That voice.
Holy…I hold my fingertips to my lips, scrutinising every last square millimetre of him. “Do I know you?” I whisper.
A cruel smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “No.”
Relief floods through me, but my body refuses to accept the sensation. “I could swear I recognised your voice.”
“I was born here. We all sound the same, sweetheart.” He continues to deny it, but with every word my stomach twists a little further. I hear that voice in my dreams; I’d know it anywhere. I’m not wrong. I am so not wrong. This…this is him. The guy who brought in the tiny, broken girl is the very same guy who tied me up and fucked me senseless two years ago. The guy who took my virginity. His brooding eyes are fixed on me with such intensity, that I know he’s just waiting for me to realize.
“I—I need to know who your friend is,” I stammer, and he smiles. It’s a breathtakingly wild and treacherous thing, seeing this guy smile. The gesture’s so sharp it could flay a man alive.
“Carrie. Her name is Carrie.”
“Insurance?”
He shakes his head. His eyes never leave mine. “I’ll pay.”
“You’ll need to go speak to reception. Give them your credit card details. And your name.”
He smirks, looks down at his shoes and then raises his eyes to mine again so that he’s looking up at me from under those dark eyebrows. “I’ve got cash. And you don’t need to know my name. Better if you didn’t. Better you forget I was ever here.”
He starts pacing backward, arms still folded across his chest, and I act without thinking. A part of me is already wondering where the nearest phone is so I can call the cops, but the rest of me follows him down the corridor. Damn, stupid body.
“Wait! I—don’tmakemedothis!”
“Do what?”
/>
“I don’t know! I—it was you. Admit it. Admit that it was you.”
“I didn’t hurt Carrie.” His smirk vanishes, replaced by a cold and calculating stare.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
He pouts, and any remaining doubts I might have had are banished just like that. Those lips—I may not have seen them in the dark, but I sure as hell felt them. He’s the guy. He sees it now. Knows that I know for sure. “Maybe I do know what you mean. That doesn’t change the fact that you should forget I was ever here. Best for everyone involved. You don’t want to know me, sweetheart.”
His arrogance is freaking unprecedented. I take four hurried steps and stab my index finger into his chest. “You!”
Up this close, he’s so tall it’s frightening. “Me,” he agrees.
I ask him the one question that’s been burning in my mind for the past two years. “Did you have anything to do with Eli’s death?”
He looks away, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth. That’s a yes if ever I saw one. “Let’s just say Eli and I had a disagreement.”
“Fuck! I knew it. Did you take Lex’s paperwork?”
He’s like Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde. One minute he’s standing there, watching me like I’m a genie and I might disappear in a puff of smoke any minute, and then he’s pure, raw anger. He grabs hold of my wrist and moves with lightning speed, shoving me roughly back against the wall. The corridor is empty at this time of morning so I’m completely alone and vulnerable. His hand closes around my throat, just tight enough to terrify the shit out of me. “You like feeling like this, Sloane?”
Hearing my name come out of his mouth makes my eyes well with tears. He’s known who I am all along. I shake my head. “No,” I gasp.
“Then you need to treat Carrie, make sure she gets better. I’ll be coming back for her in two days. Don’t let the goddamn shrinks near her. Don’t let them section her or I’m gonna be seriously pissed.” His body presses up against mine—he’s like a wall of muscle and testosterone that’s trying to possess me. I’m too frightened to do anything but nod my head. Something changes, then. I could be fooling myself but I think I see his eyes soften. “Do you remember?” he whispers.
I nod.
“And when you close your eyes?”
I know what he’s asking. I nod again. “Yes.”
“Do it, then. Close your eyes.” His hand tightens fractionally, making me gasp. I take one long hard look into the bottomless depths of his eyes and then, just like the last time, I do as I’m told. I close my eyes.
His lips brush lightly against mine, and my mind stills. His breathing is fast, ragged and hot against my mouth. It has the most devastating effect. I’m practically tearing myself apart over how conflicted I am. Should I kiss him back? Should I knee him in the balls? He blows all argument right out of the water when his tongue darts out and meets my parted lips. He slowly teases it over my mouth, so carefully, lovingly, like he’s tasting me. I react on impulse. I open my mouth wider, welcoming him inside. He doesn’t accept the offer, though.
“Two days, Sloane. Two days and I’m coming for you,” he whispers.
The next thing I know I’m sinking to the floor. When I open my eyes, all I see are his black boots walking away.
The coffee at Fresco’s is particularly bad today, but that’s no great surprise. Everything here tastes bad. The bagel I'd tried to force down my throat for breakfast might as well have been made out of sawdust. There are a thousand different, but more importantly palatable coffeehouses in the greater Seattle area, but Fresco’s is a tradition for Pip and me.
We've been meeting here ever since we were poor, struggling students and their drip coffee was all we could afford. I see my best friend arrive, looking immaculate as ever. Her hair is swept back into a classic chignon and her pantsuit is perfectly creased in all the right places. I look like a tramp in my cuffed-up jeans and my long-sleeved t-shirt.
Pippa breezes through the café, grinning at Marcus the barista, who will have her regular double espresso on the table precisely sixty seconds after she sits down. She dumps her Louis Vuitton onto the bench beside me and slumps down into a seat.
"Morning, stranger." It's been a week since I've seen her; that's a lifetime for us. She gets comfy, giving me a wink. "What's so urgent it couldn't wait until after I'd finished with my twentieth slightly deranged patient later on today?”
Pippa opted for psychology instead of medicine. We graduated at the same time; she's been certified by the Board of Psychiatric Medicine for the last fourteen months. She works out of an office downtown, dealing with patients who have been sentenced with mandatory therapy in one form or another. A lot of violent offenders walk through her doors. She could easily have chosen to work with Prozac-happy, depressed housewives but she wanted more. Said it felt better to help those who really needed it.
I stare into the bottom of my empty coffee cup, suddenly doubting whether I should tell her anything that happened yesterday. But…but I think I need to. She's my best friend, but she's also always been able to see things from an unbiased point of view. That's exactly what I need right now.
"If I told you I had a patient who had an issue they needed to talk through, you'd already know I was talking about me, right?"
"Yep."
"Okay, well, I won't bother with that spiel then."
Marcus drops her coffee off. She sips at it, raising one eyebrow at me. "Would save some time, yes."
"Okay, well…” I just need to spit it out. “I had sex with a guy."
She spits her espresso back into the tiny cup. "What? Who? When?"
I cringe. This is going to be really bad. Pip’s thought I'm going to be the last virgin standing for a long time now. "It wasn't recently. It was…it was two years ago."
Her shoulders stiffen. The incredulous look she was sporting a second ago, turns into something much colder. She's pissed. I knew she would be. She puts her coffee down, staring at the tabletop. "Why didn’t you tell me?"
"It wasn't…it wasn't something to sit around and dissect over a tub of ice cream, Pip. It wasn't something I was exactly proud of¸ either."
"What does that mean? My God, you weren't raped were you?"
"No, no, of course not. But…" This is the part where I either tell her the whole truth or I go for a watered-down version. I’m a complete coward in the end. She would never think badly of me for what I did but I just can't bear the shame of admitting it. I sold my virginity for information. Information that I didn't even get, which means I sold it for nothing. "I didn't know the guy. I didn't even know his name. I…I was drunk and we did it in the dark. I couldn't have even told you what he looked like until yesterday."
Pip closes her eyes and presses her fingertips into her forehead.
Please don't think I'm a slut. Please don’t think a slut.
“Sloane, jeez…” she groans.
"I know, I know."
"I don't even know where to begin with this."
"How about after the judgemental part?"
"Oh, babe. I would never, ever judge you. I'm just…I just wanted something special for you. Y’know, romance, red roses, champagne, fireworks…"
I should have known she would never judge me. I push my bagel crumbs around on the plate sitting in front of me, pouting. "Oh, there were definitely fireworks. None of the other stuff, but definitely fireworks."
She sighs and then reaches across the table, removing the plate so she can hold my hands in hers. "So this has been playing on your mind for two whole years and you didn't tell me why?"
"Because it wasn't exactly normal sex, if you get me."
Pippa looks like she doesn't understand, and then realization dawns on her face. "So…you let some guy screw you and he was into some freaky stuff?"
"Pretty much."
"And wait, you said you didn't even know what he looked like until yesterday. What happened yesterday?"
"He came into the hospital. H
is friend tried to kill herself."
She exhales. "I need another coffee for this." She orders one for herself and one for me, and when she comes back she has more questions prepared. "I just don't get it. How did you know it was him?"
"His voice is quite distinctive. I practically came out and asked him if he was the guy and, well, he didn't deny it."
"Okay, so aside from the obvious conversation we should not need to have about you making smart choices, why are you cheering your nails off over this guy? You haven't heard a peep out of him since this happened?"
"No."
"So what?"
"So…he kind of kissed me."
"Ah.”
"And it was kind of while…" I take a deep breath. Here goes nothing. "While he kind of had me pinned up against the wall…with his hand around my throat." Pippa’s eyes are probably the most expressive part of her body—they almost double in size.
"He attacked you?"
"It was more of a threat."
"Why on earth would he do that?"
"He doesn't want his friend to be sectioned. Probably thought I could pull some strings and have the whole incident brushed under the carpet."
She snorts. "Well, good luck with that, buddy. Girl tries to kill herself, she gets automatic couch time with a professional at the very least. But anyway, he forcefully kissed you?"
"No. I sort of…allowed that."
"Fuck, Sloane. I don't know, this almost sounds like grounds to call the cops to me. Why the hell did you let him do that? Is he unhinged? Are you unhinged?"
I let out a bitter laugh. "That's a possibility on both counts."
She laces her fingers together, frowning. She's not supposed to frown; it gives too much away. "You already know what I'm going to say to you, don't you?"
"Yeah. I do." I sigh. The weight of this whole thing is an impossible burden on my shoulders. It feels good to have shared even a small part of it, and I’m not done yet. "There’s something else, Pip. He might know something about Alexis."