This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2018
Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
Dedication
To Jim, Nik, Alec, and Gabby. You are my reasons for everything.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sneak Peek: One Hundred Heartbeats
Acknowledgments
Other Books by Kelly Collins
About the Author
Chapter One
There were three things Sage Nichols knew with absolute certainty:
Death couldn’t be escaped.
Mr. Right Now was never Mr. Right.
Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone; it was a cold April day in Denver.
In the dark, dank basement of her sister’s house, Sage held up two sets of scrubs and looked at her dog, Otis, who was sprawled across the bed. This was the time of night his poor body gave out. Missing a hind leg took a lot out of the golden retriever.
He lifted his head, and his amber eyes looked between the two uniforms. He touched the blue one with his wet snout.
“Blue it is.”
She ruffled the fur around his neck, and Otis rolled to his back while she gave him his final belly rub of the night. He pulled back his lips to show his teeth in what she could only describe as a smile.
If Sage didn’t hurry, she’d be late to work. She yanked at her unruly curls and forced them into hair tie submission. Dressed, she took the stairs two at a time up to the main level. The exertion got her blood pumping so she’d be ready to take on the triple-shot latte her sister Lydia would pass off at the front door. After two years of working the night shift at the hospital, Sage should be used to the schedule, but she needed that surge of adrenaline that came from three hundred milligrams of caffeine.
Keys jingled in the front door lock, and Sage greeted her sister with a “Hey, Doc. How was your day?”
Lydia handed over the coffee. “Too long. One gunshot wound. One car accident. Can you believe a little boy broke his arm and leg playing Superman? He tied a tablecloth around his neck like it was a cape and jumped off the roof.” Lydia shook her head and wrapped Sage in a bear hug and squeezed. “Have a good night. Don’t kill anyone.”
“That’s always the goal.” Sage laughed at their conversation. Anyone unaware that Lydia was an ER doctor at Denver General and Sage was a nurse in the geriatric ward of the same hospital might find the comment shocking. Sadly, despite the gang fights, shootings, and car accidents average for the city, Sage saw more death than her sister.
The door closed behind Sage, and she walked into the thick layer of fog, normal for the spring when winter battled for its final breath. It was as if the cold had wrapped its fingers around the city and refused to let go.
She hopped into her RAV4, started the engine, and pulled out of the driveway to cut through the arctic chill one mile at a time. Normally, the trip to work took twenty minutes, but with poor visibility, she’d be lucky to make it in thirty. She sipped her latte. At least she’d have enough time to wake up before she had to make her rounds and fill out patient charts.
On the seat beside her was a stack of pink paper and envelopes for her favorite patient, Bea Bennett, the third such delivery in as many weeks. It was a good trade. She supplied paper, and Bea brought sunshine into Sage’s otherwise gloomy life. Hospitalized for pericarditis, Bea spent her days writing letters that seemed to disappear as quickly as Sage brought supplies.
Fluorescent lighting blinded her as she pulled into the parking spot reserved for the night-shift employees. There was no name on a placard for her. That benefit was reserved for important people like Lydia’s boyfriend, Dr. Adam McKay, the hottie who ran the ER.
“Everyone make it through the day?” Sage asked her colleague Tina as she arrived on the ninth-floor ward. She tucked her purse into the desk drawer and set the stationery down on the desk for a later delivery. Tina handed over the clipboard so she could leave. The halls of the ward were quiet except for the beeping of heart monitors and the whir of oxygen tanks. All seemed in order.
Tina tucked the hair that had fallen from her ponytail behind her ears. “It’s been a busy day.”
That wasn’t the answer Sage wanted, but it was typical because talking about patients would keep Tina there a few more minutes, and she gave no one extra time. Five minutes later, Sage started her rounds, checking vitals and stats as she moved down the hallway of the nearly full ward. She pulled a chart from a once-empty room to find it was now occupied with a new patient. “Clive Russell.” Saying the name out loud helped reinforce the fact that these were real, living, breathing people, not just medical notes and numbers on a page.
Sage skimmed through his records and understood that Clive’s life clock wouldn’t be ticking much longer. He had stage four pancreatic cancer. A shiver raced down her spine. Of all the cancers she’d seen eat up her patients, pancreatic cancer seemed to be the one with the sharpest teeth and biggest appetite. It weighed on her that she couldn’t save these people. She cared for them and did her best to bring them joy in their final days, but it wasn’t enough.
She pasted on a brilliant smile and walked into his room.
Monitors beeped, and the air was filled with a scent that seemed to be synonymous with the elderly. Sage tried to figure the smell out, but the closest thing she could ever come up with was Bengay for arthritis mixed with contraband candy.
At ten o’clock at night, her patients were often fast asleep, but not this one. He was sitting up in bed with his thick gray mane of hair shooting in every direction, a roadmap of lines etched deep into his smiling face. At eighty years old, he still had all his teeth, which surprised her. His hand gripped the remote control. The glow of the television lit up his jaundiced skin.
“Hello, Mr. Russell,” Sage said in a quick, caffeine-induced rush.
“I told them not to send in my date until after the news.” His eyes shifted between her and the television.
While he watched his show, Sage moved through her checklist, which started with vitals and ended with fluids.
She wrapped his arm with the blood pressure cuff and pumped the inflation bulb. The bladder filled and released a
s she counted the ebb and flow to his arteries. “I couldn’t wait to see you,” Sage said as she swiped the thermometer across his forehead and recorded his numbers. “They told me there was a handsome new man in town, but they didn’t do you justice.” She checked his IV fluid levels and the output from the bag collecting his urine.
The old man grinned. “Call me Clive. I mean, since we’re on our first date and all.” His blue eyes shone behind the veil of ill health.
“You’re a charmer, I see. Just the way I like my men—with a bit of mischief and a lot of sweet.” The fact that Clive Russell, a man fifty years her senior, was as close to being her boyfriend as any living, breathing person with a Y chromosome spoke to the sad state of her love life.
“A beauty like you must have a boyfriend.” He adjusted his pillow and flopped back.
“Oh, I do. His name is Otis, and he has a thing for kibble and Milk-Bones.”
Clive laughed, then winced.
She filled his water and pulled a spare blanket from the cupboard in case he got chilled during the night. “Well, Clive, everything looks great.” Great being a relative term, its scale ran the gamut from “great for almost dead” to “great, you’ll make it out of here alive.” Clive ranked closer to the former. Even though the pallor of impending death dulled his skin, she was buoyed because Clive clutched on to every moment of life he had left. Or at least he gripped the remote control as if it contained magic elixir, and to Clive, it might because he was not watching the news like he said. No, Clive was watching Game of Thrones, which included a weekly naked dose of a blonde beauty called Khaleesi.
“Let me know when you get to the weather report.” Sage patted the old man’s hand.
She left him to his “news” with a promise to check in on him later, then continued her patient rounds. Mr. Dumont needed pain meds. Mrs. Young, who had celebrated her ninety-first birthday yesterday, needed a new IV bag. Nora Croxley needed a hug. Mr. Nolan needed to be slapped upside the head for flashing his old man parts for the second time this week.
In her second-favorite patient’s room, Sage found him sneaking a Snickers bar. “No junk food for you.” She confiscated the candy and reminded David Lark that a man with diabetes shouldn’t feed his disease.
“Come on! I gave up women. I gave up alcohol. I gave up swearing. I’m dying.” He watched her tuck the candy bar into her pocket.
“Not on my shift.” There was no dying allowed on Sage’s shift. That was one of her silly rules. One she could never enforce. She understood dying was a part of life. The minute a human was born, they started to die, but somewhere deep inside, she believed if she cared enough, worked hard enough, and brought joy to those around her, it would be enough to keep them tethered to this world.
As Sage passed the nurses’ station, she picked up the packet of pink stationery from the desk. She shouldn’t have favorites, but she did. Bea was hers. Just walking into the older woman’s room lifted Sage’s spirits. Despite Bea’s failing health, she was full of life. It didn’t hurt that she also reminded Sage of Grandma Nichols—“Grandma Dotty”—with her head of white hair and a voice sweeter than honey.
Her mind skated around distant memories of her grandma who had stepped up to love and care for her and Lydia when their parents died. Had they really been gone for fifteen years? Grandma Dotty for two? She couldn’t believe how quickly time evaporated.
Sage stopped at the lounge to get two cups of coffee—sweet and creamy for Bea, black and bitter for herself. She tucked the writing paper under her arm and hurried toward Bea’s room, ready for a hug and another story.
Bea entertained her with tales about her hometown of Aspen Cove. A town straight out of a television series. A place where everyone had enough. No one went without. All residents, though not related, were considered kin. Sage knew the stories were told from the perspective of a woman looking back on her life, where the memory was sweeter than the reality, but Bea told it all in a way that made it sound possible.
Coffee in hand, Sage turned her back on the closed door, pressed the handle down with her elbow, and shoved her tail end into the room. It was alarmingly silent and almost black, except for the outline of an empty bed. Bea was gone. The pink stationary fell from her arm and hit the floor, spreading out like a carpet to soak up the coffee that fell next. Sage stumbled back to the wall and slid down to the cold industrial floor—the lifeless white tile that filled the hallways of so many institutions. As the pink stationery soaked up the spilled coffee, Sage came to terms with the reality that Bea was gone.
There was no way she’d been released. Just yesterday she’d had a cardiac MRI, and no changes were noted in her condition. Nothing was better, but nothing was worse. Pericarditis didn’t cure itself overnight. No, her Bea had passed, and with her went one of the final sparks of light that shone in Sage’s eyes.
Sage pulled herself into a tight little ball and buried her face against her knees. She released a wail that sounded foreign but vibrated deep within her soul. She knew she needed to get on her feet and resume her shift, but her arms wouldn’t move from the hug in which she wrapped herself. Her eyes remained shut, trying to stanch the coming flood of tears. Her heart beat with a sluggish rhythm that negated the effects of her latte.
Why did Bea’s life mean so much more than the others? Why did her death create a cavernous hole inside her? It was one more loss in a life full of them. One more soul she’d tried to hold on to without success. Another person who abandoned her before she could say goodbye.
Chapter Two
The heavy door opened, and she stopped crying. A sliver of light cut through the darkness of the room, but not the darkness that invaded Sage’s soul. She looked up to see the outline of a man, but the bright light behind him made it impossible to see his face.
“Sage?” She recognized the baritone voice as her supervisor, Mr. Michael Cross. He slipped into the quiet room and loomed over her. “I need to see you in my office.” He didn’t wait for a reply. The door opened, the light seeped back in for a brief second, and he walked out leaving Sage cloaked in blackness once more.
Hands fisted, she wiped at her tearstained cheeks and struggled to stand on legs too numb to feel. She pulled herself from the floor and straightened her uniform. Blood rushed from her head to her cold feet. The room spun, forcing her to lean against the gray walls for support.
After a quick splash of water to her face, she returned to the nurses’ station to find a nurse she didn’t recognize looking through the charts.
“Who are you filling in for?” Sage asked. With two nurses on the night shift, it was a reasonable question when the nurse in front of her wasn’t a regular.
The woman whose nametag read “Terri” said, “You. I came up from pediatrics. We were overstaffed.”
Sage’s stomach twisted and turned. “Oh . . . okay.” Mr. Cross had called for a replacement, so this couldn’t be good. “He’s expecting me.” It was time to face her fears.
When a boss summoned, there wasn’t a choice between staying or going, and so she went. She wound down the corridor and approached Mr. Cross’s office door. Sage stood at her supervisor’s closed door filled with apprehension. She’d never abandoned her post before, but since he had to come and find her, it meant he noticed her absence. She looked down at her watch and groaned. She’d missed thirty minutes of her shift while sitting on the floor, mourning the woman she’d come to love like family.
It was bad enough Sage was filled with sorrow. Now she had to deal with the regret of her poor choices.
It took her two more minutes to build up the courage to knock. Her knuckles thunked on the solid wood door.
A muted voice told her to enter.
Her scrubs felt tight. She felt the stethoscope around her neck choking her like a noose. After a deep breath, she opened the door. The last time she was in this office was after her grandmother passed. Surely, having two meltdowns in as many years wasn’t that bad. Well, two that were public knowled
ge. Internally, she suffered each time a patient left, but she’d always done her job—until tonight. No matter how much Sage tried to convince herself she was allowed to mourn, she knew emotions weren’t revered in her field. Grief can get in the way of good decision-making.
Mr. Cross didn’t stand. He settled back in his big leather throne. “Have a seat.” He pointed to the chair in front of his desk, its sleek design more about looks than comfort. When she sat, the fabric’s rough texture poked through the thin cotton of her scrubs while the wooden arms offered no sense of softness or warmth.
“Mr. Cross,” she began. “I’m so sorry.”
He leaned forward and placed his elbows on the dark wood surface of his desk, his steepled fingers pressed to his lips. After what felt like a lifetime, he broke the silence. “I’m sorry about Bea. I know how much you cared for her.”
A lump stuck in her throat, forcing her to swallow hard. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she refused to allow them to drop. She looked at the ceiling in hopes they’d go back to where they came from, but her attempt was futile, and she felt one escape and run down her cheek.
Mr. Cross slid a box of tissues across his desk.
Sage fought the urge to break down. Instead, she pulled a few tissues from the box and patted her eyes dry. “When did she pass?”
He picked up a clipboard and scanned for the information. “She was pronounced dead just after noon.” His voice had a sincere empathetic quality to it, surprising to Sage because Mr. Cross was always factual, not emotional. “We need to talk about your future here, Sage.” His monotone snapped back into place.
“I understand how this must look, but I’m only affected because I care.” Most people would believe a sensitive person makes the best nurse, but that’s not the case. Feelings are frowned upon when dealing with a population of suffering people. It’s too hard to remain neutral when your heart is involved. Too hard to jab that needle into flesh when it hurts. Too hard to be honest when the truth is so brutal.
“Why did you transfer to this ward?” He pulled a manila folder from his drawer. The tab across the top read “Sage Nichols” in bold black letters. He flipped it open. “You used to work in labor and delivery, where life outnumbers death. What happened?”
One Hundred Reasons Page 1