Two security guards arrived, ordered him to calm down even as he pulled his belt from his pants and began swinging it around his head like a lasso. “Come on,” he yelled at them, his eyes including Vic in the fun. “I dare ya!”
“Time to go outside, mister,” one of the security guards said, his right hand resting on his baton, the other on the canister of pepper spray attached to his belt.
Great, Vic thought, exactly what we don’t need on a Friday afternoon around here is a cloud of pepper spray making everybody sick. She wrote a note on the chart in her hands: “Intoxicated but alert. No apparent injury.” She nodded at the security guards, her signal that the man wasn’t injured and needed to be escorted out. Come back when you’re sober, buddy.
Room Five was her next stop. A woman with a bloody eardrum, purple and swollen, the man who’d done it pacing out in the hall.
“Let me call the police,” Vic said to the woman. “Or at least a women’s shelter.”
“No.”
“He’ll say he loves you, but he doesn’t. He’ll do it again. And next time it could be worse. It’s not safe for you. Let me call our security guards to take him—”
“No. Will I hear in it again, Doctor?”
Vic sighed and retrieved the silver otoscope from a pocket of her lab coat. “I don’t know.” Every month she saw at least one woman in this situation. In Chicago, it was every day.
Next was a lumber mill worker whose saw had slipped, penetrating his thigh with a gash that required forty stitches. After that it was a migraine, then a case of probable pneumonia.
Vic loved the fact that with emergency medicine, you never knew what was arriving in the next ambulance or waiting in the next treatment room. There was the adrenaline of saving a life, the satisfaction of making a quick but accurate diagnosis under less than ideal circumstances. Emergency medicine offered little puzzles to be solved every hour, sometimes every minute. But this window into humanity also came with tears, screaming, piss and shit and vomit and blood. The need for peace, for escape, was why she sailed and played tennis in her spare time. It was also why she used to enjoy having a companion to come home to, to share a quiet drink with, to watch a comedy together on the television or quietly read together. She missed that.
When her shift ended, forty-five minutes later than it should have, Karen was waiting for her in the staff parking lot.
“Dinner?” Karen asked, and it took a moment for the surprise at seeing her to register with Vic.
“All right.” She led the way across the street to the little diner with the vinyl and Formica booths and the ubiquitous smell of cooking oil. Vintage Lionel Richie made up the background music. The place, she guessed, hadn’t changed in forty or fifty years, which felt exactly right. She didn’t want Karen thinking dinner with her was special or took a special effort.
“Tell me something,” she said to Karen once they’d ordered their dinner (meat loaf for Vic, battered fish for Karen). “When did you decide you weren’t happy with me? Was it after we moved here?”
“Before, I think. Moving here would change things, I thought. Hoped.”
“And it didn’t?”
“No. It didn’t.”
It kept eating at Vic that if Karen hadn’t been happy with her before, what made her think she could be again? She cleared her throat against her nervousness. It was never easy listening to what someone didn’t like or love about you. “And so what made you not love me anymore? What was it about me that—”
“Oh, Vic. It was never you.”
“Pardon?”
There was the glisten of unshed tears in her eyes when Karen blinked. “It was me. I wasn’t happy with me. And when you no longer filled that space I needed, I looked elsewhere. I’m getting counseling now. I’m working on myself. Finally.”
Vic used the time it took the server to deliver their food to think. It wasn’t unusual that people looked to others to fill the void of unhappiness in their lives. Karen had fooled her, though. Karen had always seemed to have that cheerful gear she could slip into when she needed to. Distracted sometimes, yes, but she never yelled or acted particularly miserable in all the years they were together. She was a woman in control, always in control. Until she wasn’t, Vic supposed.
“The thing is, Karen,” she said while picking with her fork at the meat loaf. “I was happy with you. With us. Back when we were together. The last few months have been…difficult.”
“And what about now?” Karen leaned closer, hope cresting in her smile.
Oh, she knew what Karen wanted her to say. But she couldn’t, because she could not lie. “No. I’m not happy. With you. And I don’t know if I ever can be again.”
Karen’s face dropped. “All right. I deserve that. But I’m talking about down the road. After some time has passed.”
“I can’t know how I’m going to feel two weeks or a month or six months from now. I can only know how I feel right now.”
“Fair enough.” Karen speared a piece of fish, chewed it thoughtfully. “What is it that you think you want?”
God! Everyone wanted to know what she wanted. Big picture, wanted. Not what she wanted to read next or eat next, but what she wanted for her life. Who she wanted in her life and in what capacity and for how long. And they wanted the answer right this damned minute.
“You know what I want?” Vic finally said. “I want to not be asked what I want. I want to not be pressured, you know?”
Why couldn’t she just be left alone in the here and now, wanting nothing? Was that not allowed?
“You’re right. And I’m not trying to pressure you into anything.”
“Actually you are.”
“I don’t mean to. Is Angie pressuring you too? To choose?”
Vic set her fork down. She’d barely eaten half her meal. “I’m not here to talk about Angie. In fact, I’m not hungry anymore.” She signaled to the server. “I need to go home.”
“Wait. Are you angry with me?”
No, Vic thought. I’m angry with me for letting myself get pulled into all these directions.
* * *
The call came over the radio as a three-car MVA, no serious injuries. When Angie and her partner arrived at the scene, all but two people, an elderly couple in the middle car, were out standing by their wrecked fenders and bumpers.
Angie opened the driver’s door, Jackson the passenger door. “You all right, sir?” she said to the man, who looked to be in his late seventies or early eighties. His eyes were alert, his skin color looked fine.
“I’m fine. But I’m worried about my wife. Ethel darling? Are you okay?”
“Yes, it’s just, my chest hurts a bit.”
Probably from the seat belt, Angie guessed, but it was far too early to rule things out. “All right, let’s get you both out of here so we can examine you better.”
In the back of the rig, she put each of them on an oxygen cannula, because of their age, and placed cervical collars around their necks as a precaution.
“It was my fault,” the old man said over and over. “I ran into the back of the car ahead of me and then the car behind me ran into us. I’m so sorry, Ethel. God, did I hurt you?”
“I’m not hurt, Tom, just bruised, I think. Dear,” she said to Angie. “His heart isn’t great, I’m worried this might have given him a jolt.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll check him out.” She and Jackson put them both on heart monitors. They both showed a normal sinus rhythm, though Tom’s blood pressure was high.
“It always runs high,” he said. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Sir, if you can lie down on the stretcher please. We’re going to take you both to the hospital to get checked out.”
Ethel sat on the bench beside her husband. They held hands the entire ride to Munson.
At the hospital, Julie and another resident caught the case. Angie conferred with them, assured the couple they were in good hands. Back in the ambulance, she wrote her run report on the port
able computer, then went back in to check on Tom and Ethel.
“I’m worried about Tom,” Ethel said to her in the treatment room. “We’re supposed to go to an anniversary party for a friend tomorrow, but now I’m worried he won’t be able to drive, since the crash was his fault.”
“Can you catch a ride with someone else?”
“I don’t know. Our kids all live out of state and most of our friends don’t drive anymore.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am. If you give me your address and the time you need to leave, I’ll make sure you get a ride.” Between herself and Jackson they could swing it, especially since tomorrow was their day off. As long as it didn’t interfere with her counseling session with Melanie Scott.
In the adjacent treatment room, Tom continued to blame himself for the crash. “Are you sure Ethel’s going to be okay?”
“Yes, I’m quite sure, Mr. Compton.”
“Are they gonna give her one of them x-rays?”
“I’m quite sure they will. She’s in good hands. Try not to worry, okay?”
Angie retreated to the corridor, where a sudden flood of tears welled up in her throat. Would she ever have someone in her life so devoted to her? To share not only a long and intertwined life together, but a deep and devoted love, the way Tom and Ethel did? Who was she going to grow old with?
“You okay, Angie?” It was Julie, giving her a quizzical smile.
“Yes, fine.” She straightened. “How’s our elderly couple?”
“Oh, they’re fine. Rattled but fine. I’ll be releasing them shortly.”
“Good. Thanks.”
“Sure you’re okay?”
By now, she figured the grapevine, once burbling with the news of her and Vic dating, had reversed itself with the news that they were no longer dating. Was that why Julie was looking at her like she didn’t quite believe her?
“Absolutely,” she said and pushed off the wall.
The next day, she told Melanie all about Tom and Ethel and how it made her feel seeing them together. “I’m picking them up in an hour to take them to a fiftieth anniversary come-and-go tea.”
Melanie was silent for a long time, tapping her pencil against her notepad. Angie was used to these long, thoughtful silences, which usually preceded some kind of wise observation. Which then, more often than not, sent Angie down the road of further self-discovery. She’d been such a skeptic when she started all this. Now she looked forward to her sessions, although she wouldn’t call them pleasant. They were damned rough sometimes. Like the ones where’d they’d spent discussing if Angie’s joining the army was her way of rebelling against her always nurturing and sometimes smothering family and the predictable life she’d have with them, working and living on the farm. Well, half of that equation had certainly materialized.
“Angie, you’ve always been a fighter. You’ve spent a good chunk of your life fighting for others. In the military. On the streets as an EMT. But let me ask you this.” Melanie leaned forward, her notepad closed on her lap. “When are you going to fight for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. You’ve been moping and crestfallen because a woman you’ve been interested in has pulled back from you and may be considering going back to her ex.”
Angie had never divulged Vic’s name to Melanie and had purposely kept the details vague. “What are you saying? That I shouldn’t be upset about that? I think I’m falling in love with this woman. Christ, I can’t stop thinking about her. About being with her.”
“Then fight.”
“No. I refuse to fight with her ex over her like she’s the prize at the end of the battle. I won’t do that.”
“No, no.” Melanie shook her head like a scolding schoolteacher. “Not fight for her, fight for you. If this is what you want, if she’s the one, then don’t give up. But do it for you. You owe it to your heart to try, and it might be the toughest thing you’ve ever had to do, but that’s no reason to give up.”
Why had she given up on Vic so quickly? She wasn’t afraid of difficult journeys, so that wasn’t it.
“What are you afraid of?” Melanie persisted.
“I don’t know. Getting hurt, I guess.” Losing. She was afraid of losing.
“So you get hurt. So what. And here I thought you were this tough soldier girl, a hardened EMT.”
“All right, Melanie. You’re trying to goad me. Just say what you want to say.”
“Two words. Fear and pride. Those are the two things that are making you run away from this person with your tail between your legs. And I think you’re better than that. I think you’re more of a woman than that.” A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth. “You going to prove me right or what?”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Guess who’s in the waiting room?” Liv could hardly contain herself.
“Please tell me it’s Wonder Woman. Or Batwoman. Or some sexy superhero who can throw me under her cape and whisk me away,” Vic replied, not entirely joking. She was working a hybrid noon to midnight shift, and with only an hour to go, she’d begun counting the minutes until she could flop on her couch with a glass of wine and the new Lisa McInerney novel. Man, that woman could write about the gritty, noir side of Ireland like nobody’s business. Reading the noir and grit of a country other than her own was exactly the distraction Vic could use right now.
“Actually, she’s pretty close to a superhero. But then, so are you.”
On the computer, Vic called up the chart belonging to a teenager with appendicitis. “What are you rattling on about?”
Liv rolled her eyes playfully. “It’s Angie.”
“In the waiting room? Is she hurt? Or sick?”
She’d only encountered Angie at the hospital once in the past week and that was at a distance. She was transporting a construction worker who’d fallen from the third floor to the second floor in the new home he was helping build, while Vic was treating a pregnant woman down the hall. They pretended they hadn’t seen one another. Vic knew she should sit Angie down and make her listen, but she was full up to her neck with trying to make other people understand things, with trying to placate and explain and coax and mediate and explain herself. She needed a break from drama. From women. But now her heart gave a little squeeze, because as much as she told herself she needed this respite from the entanglement of a relationship, she missed Angie. Terribly. Three times she’d nearly texted her about the McInerney novel. And just this morning she was awakened by a dream where they were kissing in the deep end of a warm swimming pool surrounded by palm trees and blue skies. It was exactly the kind of dream she wanted to sink back into, and did, until her snooze button went off for a second time. Thread by thread, Angie had woven her way into Vic’s heart, whether she wanted to admit it or not. There was no possible way to expunge from her heart what had already set down roots there. Angie wasn’t going anywhere from her heart, at least not anytime soon. I was so stupid to think otherwise.
“She’s fine,” Liv said. “She told me she’s waiting until your shift is done, that she wants to talk to you. So there. I think she has come to whisk you away under her cape.”
Vic had confessed to Liv that Angie didn’t want to see her anymore, on account of Karen’s reemergence into her life. She couldn’t entirely blame Angie for losing patience. But still. It hurt that she had taken such a hard line with her, that she refused to give her the time she needed to sort out her thoughts, her heart, as she had requested. Angie was so damned black and white. Infuriatingly so. But Vic wouldn’t be pushed into something she wasn’t ready for. I can be stubborn too, dammit.
“I’m not sure I’ll even be done on time. Maybe I should go tell her not to wait.”
“She knows. And she says it’s important.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Liv.”
“What? Why?”
“You seem to be losing your powers of persuasion. You didn’t extract from her what she wants to talk to me about?”
“Well, I did try my best, of course. But she’s a tough nut to crack when she wants to be.”
“Tell me about it.”
Vic heard the commotion before the code crackled urgently over the intercom. Something was happening in the waiting room. The code meant security and an ER doctor should attend.
“Come on,” Vic said to Liv and rushed through the double doors leading to the waiting room. Julie followed a few steps behind them.
Chairs were scattered like matchsticks. A handful of patients clustered together in the far corner, their faces as blanched as the walls. In the nearest corner stood a giant of a man, at least six-foot-six and well over two hundred and fifty pounds, brandishing a knife in a hand that was the size of a dinner plate. His camo pants and white T-shirt hung baggy and were dingy with dirt and sweat. His face looked like a mask of rage and delirium. Vic’s gaze swung to the gentling voice that told the man it was okay.
“Oh God, Angie, no,” Vic muttered below her breath. Calm, erect, hands at her sides, her voice low and steady, Angie emerged from the cluster of frightened people.
“Let’s talk about this,” Angie said to the man. “I’m an EMT and I’m here to help.”
“No. I want a doctor.” His chest, Vic noticed, rose and fell rapidly. Pulse must be sky high. “I need some pills. For my…my heart and stuff.”
“The doctors can’t help you when you’re in this state. I want you to calm down, all right? Then we can figure out what you need.”
His head, the size of a cinder block, shook back and forth. “There’s Taliban fighters over there. Behind that desk, see them?”
Oh shit, Vic thought. A former soldier going all PTSD in front of them. “Liv,” she whispered quietly. “Back up real slow and go call the police, okay? Make sure you tell them he’s got a weapon and there are potential hostages in here. And make sure they know he’s a former soldier.”
Most law enforcement had training for dealing with PTSD cases, thanks to all the returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade and a half. But Angie wasn’t a cop, and though she had been a soldier, she wasn’t armed, wasn’t equipped for this kind of volatile situation. Angie, she pleaded in her mind, you need to get the hell away from this guy. Please!
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