Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Taylor Holloway

  I’d just finished patching up a little girl who took a nasty fall from a tree and maybe fractured her ankle when I heard Martin’s voice down the hall. The hospital was so horrifically overburdened that we had every available MD down in the emergency department, and we only had twelve on duty total. A lot of nearby hospitals were still on bypass from the shooting—meaning they were turning away patients—and that meant we were receiving far more people than usual on a much smaller staff. The four area hospitals had never faced an event like this, and we were horribly underprepared.

  So, it was with joints already aching and lingering heaviness in my heart that I was trying to keep up with the backlog. I’d been on my way to try and slurp down some coffee when I heard Martin’s raised voice.

  “Please just stay there!” he yelled at someone. “Put it down.”

  I followed the sound around the corner to one of the private rooms and found Martin standing with his hands raised in front of a young man. It took me a long, tense moment to realize what I was seeing.

  The man’s face was strangely familiar. It was an average face, with close-set eyes, ruddy red cheeks, and lines on his forehead that looked out of place with his otherwise youthful appearance. Too late, I realized it was a face I had seen before. He was the mass shooter, and he was holding a gun on Martin.

  “Just breathe,” Martin repeated. “Just stay calm,” he told the man.

  The gun was pointed right at Martin’s center of mass. The shooter, whatever his state of mind, was holding the gun purposefully even if it was trembling slightly. He’d already killed so many. What was one more?

  In that moment, time seemed to dilate, stretch out, and slow down.

  The shooter turned to me, saw that I was holding the door open and his eyes widened. His grip on the gun tightened and I nearly screamed. Somehow, I managed not to. It probably saved my life.

  “Shut the door,” the man ordered me in a voice that seemed simultaneously both weak and unhinged. “Stand against the wall, both of you!” I froze, too shocked by the sight of the gun to do anything. “Right now! Move!” he repeated, his face turning paler.

  I complied numbly, staring at the gun and at Martin in turn before taking the slowest, most careful steps toward Martin and the wall.

  Is this how I’m going to die? Shot by some crazy person for no reason at all?

  My body was pumping out so many stress hormones that I felt lightheaded and dizzy.

  “Please, put the gun down,” I heard myself saying. My voice sounded terrified, which was exactly what I was. I didn’t know the first thing about how to talk someone down. “I’m Aimee by the way,” I babbled. “What’s your name?”

  The gunman blinked. “Cameron.”

  I hadn’t been expecting him to reply like that. It was then that I noticed that Cameron looked fairly ill. He was swaying slightly on his feet and holding all his weight on his left leg. Distantly, I remembered that he had suffered a gunshot wound in the firefight. He was sweaty, an early sign of infection, and if I had to guess, he was probably running a high fever.

  “Is your leg bothering you?” I asked, trying to stay conversational even as Martin and I stood against a wall with a gun on us.

  Cameron nodded.

  “Do you want me to take a look at it?”

  “Are you a nurse?” he asked.

  At my side, Martin stared silently back and forth. I begged him with my eyes to stay quiet and let me try with Cameron and he inclined his head slightly to indicate that he would.

  “Yes,” I replied shakily, thinking that maybe a nurse would be less intimidating to him than a female doctor. If he was mentally ill enough to kill a bunch of people, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to have serious authority issues. Sometimes men with anger or authority issues had problems with young, female doctors. “I’m a nurse here at the hospital. Nurse Aimee.”

  Cameron swallowed and winced. He was obviously in pain. “I want your help with my leg, but I can’t let you leave,” he said to me. He sounded almost sad. “Either of you. You know who I am.”

  “Why does that mean we can’t leave, Cameron?” I asked carefully, moving forward just one step. He was about four feet away from me.

  “Because the police are looking for me.”

  “Were you hurt in the accident yesterday?” I asked, inching forward again. He was three steps away.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me what hurts?” I stepped forward again.

  “I’ve got a bullet in my calf,” he said. “It feels like my leg is going to fall off. It feels like it’s on fire.”

  I stepped forward one more time. I was only about a foot away now. “Do you want me to look at it?”

  “I’m sorry,” he told me, wide eyed and nearly crying. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Do what?” I was shaking from head to toe.

  “You know what,” he whispered.

  I did. He meant killing me. Me and Martin.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “Don’t touch me!” he yelled, firing the gun at the ceiling. I froze, shocked by the incredible noise of the gunshot. I hadn’t realized they were so incredibly loud.

  I was frozen, but Cameron seemed to have snapped out of whatever trance he was in. He grabbed me by the forearm and held the gun against my head. I could feel the heat of the muzzle singeing my hair. The smell was awful.

  This is it, I thought to myself. I should have told Brandon that I loved him.

  59

  Brandon

  I’m just a doctor. I was trained in the minimum combat stuff that the army requires, but I was never meant to use it. But when I burst into the room to see a mass murderer with a gun to Aimee’s head and my dad as a hostage, something in me broke.

  The nurses had tried to keep me out of the room, screaming that the mass shooter was in there with Aimee and my dad. Unfortunately for the three of them, I was about six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier than the biggest of them, and I had the mother of all motivators on my side. So, shrugging them off was easy. Getting in the room was not the issue.

  Getting out alive and with my loved ones intact would be.

  The gunman had Aimee gripped by the forearm with a small caliber pistol to her head. She looked tiny and frightened. It was a small gun, and certainly not the one that he’d used yesterday to kill all those people, but more than enough to kill us. He whirled and turned to me when I entered the room and, in that moment, his aim wavered and the barrel slipped off Aimee and towards the wall.

  I moved on instinct. I would like to claim that I put my military training to good use, but I didn’t. There was no technique to what came next. Whatever primitive reptile brain was left over from evolution to keep me and mine alive when the predators came was unleashed. In a moment of pure rage and unthinking fear, I lunged at him.

  All I knew was that I had to protect Aimee. No matter what.

  The man was smaller than me. If there’d been no gun, there would have been no contest. The weight of our collision pushed Aimee away and the gun went off again before being knocked out of his hand and sliding across the floor. But in that moment, I wasn’t thinking about the gun. I was just thinking about the man I needed to hurt. I tackled him to the ground, and he went down easily, clearly suffering from some injury.

  Once on the ground, a good smack of his head against the floor and he wasn’t waking up soon. I felt the bone give against the floor, a sickening egg-break of a feeling. A blow like that and he might not ever wake up again.

  Then, in a breath, Aimee was screaming and all of a sudden people were rushing everywhere. The sound from the gunshot was ringing in my ears but not nearly as loudly as my pulse. I took a shuddering, horrified breath.

  Had I just done that?

  Had I just killed someone?

  I’d never in my life physically attacked anyone like that. I might be full of anger, but never, never violence. I was horrified
by it and grateful for it. My mind didn’t know how to deal with my reality.

  “Oh my God,” Aimee was repeating. “No. No. No. Please no.”

  With shaking hands, I pushed myself away, only to realize that the gun hadn’t gone off harmlessly at all. Although it hadn’t even been pointing in the direction of anyone, the bullet must have ricocheted because my dad had a dark stain against his midsection.

  I reached my dad just in time to see that he had a through and through gut wound. There wasn’t a ton of blood yet, but most of it was probably inside him. I could only pray that he didn’t have any serious organ damage. Still, there was going to be substantial bleeding.

  My dad was staring at me openmouthed. He wasn’t able to speak and was breathing shallowly. I doubted he was even aware that it was me in front of him. I grabbed his hand tightly in mine and supported his shoulders to keep him upright. I knew from experience that if he fell down, we’d lose precious seconds trying to lift him again. He needed to stay standing up until we had a way to get him to surgery.

  “It’s going to be okay, dad,” I told him. My hearing was starting to come back now, although my ears were still ringing. Adrenaline had taken over and I was starting to see my dad as a patient instead of my father. I needed that clarity. “I’m right here.”

  “Get me a gurney!” I barked at the nurses who sprang into horrified action. “We have to get him upstairs to surgery right fucking now!”

  60

  Brandon

  “Brandon, you can’t,” Aimee begged, even as she grabbed a rubber tourniquet and a long, sharp needle. “It’s too dangerous.” She swiped an alcohol pad over my arm with a practiced but shaking hand.

  I gritted my teeth and exposed my left forearm to her. “Go on, do it,” I urged, and she obeyed, sliding the needle in and finding a vein. We both knew there was no time to waste. My dad needed blood. “We have to get him transfused or he’ll die. He’s already lost so much.”

  “Yes, and you can let me do the surgery while you give blood,” she insisted. Our hospital had no more O negative blood on tap. Given that my dad and I had a blood type that made us universal donors but only receivers of other O negative blood, it was always in short supply. After yesterday’s shooting, we were fresh out. I was the only donor available today.

  I shook my head. “I have to do this, Aimee,” I told her. “You know I’ve got to be the one. This is my specialty and we’ve got no one else.”

  “I can do it,” she insisted, fiddling with the needle and then letting my blood start to flow into the prepared plastic bag. I tried not to think about the symbolism. “It’s too much of a conflict for you and you definitely can’t do it while low on blood,” Aimee said. Her beautiful blue eyes begged me to listen.

  I swallowed, unwilling to let indecision compromise me any worse than I was already compromised. “Aimee, this is why I’m here,” I told her, standing up. I felt okay so far. I hoped it would stay that way. “I’m here because of my experience with bullet wounds. I’m here because I know how to do this. I know you’re brilliant, but you’re an oncologist.”

  “If not me then we’ll get someone else,” she told me. “But it can’t be you. I know you care about your dad but—"

  “There’s no one else,” I said. “Come on, we’re wasting time.” I tried to head to where my dad was already being prepped, but Aimee stopped me.

  “What if he dies?”

  “Then I’ll deal with the guilt,” I told her. “But if I don’t do this and he dies, I’ll never be able to live with that.”

  “Do you even care how many rules this is breaking?”

  “Not really. Besides, this isn’t exactly a normal day at the office. We’re in an emergency situation.”

  She nodded grimly. “I know we are,” she agreed. We’d literally been told to stay away from the windows because some of the SWAT teams were still canvassing. “But we have to find a better solution than you performing this surgery while giving blood.”

  “I’m open to new ideas,” I told her. “But I need them fast.”

  “What about Rivera?” she said. Now we were just going in circles.

  “Aimee. He’s two hours away. We’ve already been through the list,” I reminded her. “We have two oncologists, two psychiatrists, three pediatricians, one podiatrist, an anesthesiologist, and me.” Only I had any experience with this sort of wound or surgery. “It has to be me.”

  Aimee swallowed. “I’m going to assist you.” She was still shaken but at least she wasn’t crying anymore. “I’m going to monitor you and if your blood pressure drops, you’re out.”

  “Fine,” I told her. “But we need to get going because the more time I have the better.”

  This was going to be a horrible surgery. It would probably take hours. He had a point-blank gunshot wound. If he hadn’t been right here in the hospital, he’d have zero chance of survival. It was probably not much higher than zero as it was.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do this,” Aimee told me. “But I can see your mind is made up.”

  After that, the world became a dizzy blur of preparation. I scrubbed in for surgery in a horrible flurry of activity and with a tube in my arm, knowing that because we were short staffed there was no one else but me to do it. Even if there had been, I would have fought to be the one to do this. I was the most experienced at these types of surgeries by far. Even with the conflict of interest, my dad’s best chance of survival was in my hands, and everyone on the surgical team knew it. They helped me prepare with grim efficiency and perfect professionalism. I could tell they were very afraid. I knew the feeling. I was scared shitless.

  The last thing I was sure my dad had heard me say to him was that I wanted him to fuck off forever. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if he died thinking that I hated him. So. He’d just have to survive whether he liked it or not.

  61

  Aimee

  Martin went into cardiac arrest about ten minutes into the surgery. Brandon brought him back and got his rhythm stabilized. It happened again twelve minutes later. He came back again. Each time, I watched in helpless, hopeless horror. I couldn’t even cry. It would compromise the sterile field.

  I should have been praying. It’s what Martin would have wanted. He was a devout Catholic. I don’t usually pray, hadn’t done so in years, but I couldn’t stop myself from thinking it as I helped with clamps and monitored Brandon’s pulse and blood pressure.

  Brandon worked like a dog to save his dad. I watched him work, grimly determined and totally focused on what he needed to do. Fixing the damage was a matter of balancing the danger of exploring further and not exploring far enough. He carefully and methodically did what needed to be done. He saw far more of his father’s inner working than any son ever should.

  I didn’t want to admit it, but Brandon was the only choice. He was fully qualified for what he was doing, and while there were other doctors with more experience that would have done this if we weren’t so dangerously understaffed today, today he was here, and they weren’t. There was no doctor anywhere in the world that was more determined than Brandon. He accomplished what he needed to do, closed the wounds, and then sank down to the ground as Martin was wheeled out to recovery. I knew from the look on his face that he wasn’t happy with the outcome of the surgery.

  I left Brandon to his solitude. I wanted to comfort him, but I didn’t know how. So instead, I went out to the waiting room to where Rosary, Faith, and Eric were assembled.

  “What happened?” Rosary asked me. She was sobbing. “Is he alive? He has to be alive.”

  I nodded. “We need Brandon to tell us exactly how it went,” I said. “But he survived the surgery.”

  I sank down into a chair, feeling depleted and empty. Rosary took one look at my face and started bawling again. Usually I was better at managing family member reactions, but this was different. This was my family member. I felt like I was going to throw up.

  Faith and Eric held hands while they waite
d, their new baby sleeping peacefully on his father’s shoulder. They were a sweet little family. I envied them immensely in that moment. I felt incredibly alone.

  When Brandon finally emerged to the waiting room, he looked exhausted.

  “I did the best I could,” he told Rosary. “I don’t know if I got everything, but I tried.”

  “What do you mean, got everything?” she asked. “You mean the bullet is still inside him?”

  Brandon shook his head. “He was shot with a low caliber pistol. The bullet went straight through and didn’t damage the spine or any bones. But gunshot wounds to the abdomen can cause a lot of bleeding, and they can also puncture organs and compromise the bowels.”

  “What does that mean?” Rosary asked Faith. “I don’t understand.”

  Faith looked from her mother to Brandon and swallowed hard. “If the bowels are damaged,” she explained, “the contents of the intestines can leak into the abdomen and cause infection and sepsis.”

  “Sepsis?”

  “A runaway infection that causes organ failure,” Faith clarified.

  “You mean death.”

  “Yes,” Faith said seriously. “I mean death.”

  Watching Rosary realize the stakes was almost as bad as knowing them myself. Her face turned pale and she sat down abruptly. “He can’t die,” she stuttered. “He just can’t.” She shook her head back and forth in horror. “I can’t lose him like this… not after…” she trailed off.

  I knew from talking to Rosary during the run up to the wedding that her first husband, Faith’s dad, had been a policeman who died in the line of duty. I couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling. To lose two husbands to violence was unthinkable.

  “I wasn’t able to pursue a thorough laparotomy because he was bleeding a lot and I had to get him closed quickly,” Brandon explained sadly, “but I did the best I could.”