She sipped her tea and checked her watch right as the door opened letting the evening sun into the room.
John was easy on the eyes. Light brown hair cut military short. Not quite six feet tall, he strode into the room and spotted her.
Monica nodded and attempted to smile.
Her earlier headache started to pound again.
“Hey.” He slid into the seat opposite her. “Must have been a bad day if you’re drinking Long Islands.”
“We were busy.” She didn’t correct his assumption.
He slid his hand over the table and covered hers. “I’m glad you messaged me. I know I don’t like going home alone after a bad day.”
Monica flinched.
John’s eyes narrowed. “Is everything OK?”
As slowly as she could, Monica removed her hand from under his. “I had a hard day, but that isn’t why I wanted to meet with you.”
Someone at the bar yelled at the TV, drawing her attention away for a moment. She hated this part. Not that she was an expert at it or anything, but hooking up was always easier than splitting off.
“What’s up?” John tucked his hands in his lap, his gaze pinned to her face.
She glanced around the dark bar. It was quiet… early. She kept her voice low. She got right to the reason she’d asked him there. “The other night, when you were talking about moving in… I realized that maybe we weren’t looking for the same thing.”
He fidgeted and sat taller. “You’re not ready to move in with me. I get it. We’ll slow down.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think slowing down is going to help. I’m… I’m not ready for commitment.”
He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. The defensive move wasn’t lost on her. The smile on his lips fell. “What are you saying, Monica?”
She rubbed her hands on her cotton scrubs. “We’ve had a good time.”
His mouth opened, then closed. “A good time?” He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger. “I was a good time? I thought we were getting along.”
“We were. Are. This is hard, John. We work together. I don’t want to mess up my job… your job.”
“Then don’t.”
If only it were that easy. “I think you’re into us more than I am. I wish I felt more, but I don’t.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re breaking up with me.”
Monica sat on her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m not ready for a committed relationship. I don’t even have a pet.”
“Is there someone else?”
“No. Of course not. I don’t want to lead you on. Make you think I want something deeper when I don’t.” He had to understand that… right?
“I really thought we had something special.” Through the veil of anger was a lining of hurt behind his eyes. For that she was very sorry.
“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t look at him.
“Commitment is part of growing up.”
Instead of saying anything, she skirted her gaze across the room.
“You have to grow up sometime.” His words were harsh. Considering the shitty day she had… very harsh. She was trying to spare his feelings. Trying to let him down easy.
The noise from the bar hushed and someone turned up the volume on the news.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, John. We were friends before. I’d like us to stay that way now.” She did. Though she wasn’t stupid enough to believe being only friends would work.
“That’s it? I don’t have a say?”
“You can say what you want. It isn’t going to change my feelings.” She met his eyes.
John stretched his neck and pushed away from the table. “Maybe in a few days I can say something nice. But right now I want a drink… alone.”
“I’m sorry,” she said to his back as he walked out the door.
That went well.
She pushed a long-suffering breath through her lips and pushed out of her chair. One dirty martini wouldn’t hurt.
Monica made her way to the bar and flagged down the bartender. She ordered her drink and looked over her shoulder.
John wasn’t coming back.
Monica pulled a ten dollar bill from her wallet and set it on the counter. When the bartender placed her drink in front of her he asked if she needed change.
“We’re good,” she told him as she lifted her drink.
“Can you believe this?” he said as he slid the ten in his palm and motioned toward the television.
“Believe what?”
“The earthquake in Jamaica.”
Breaking news had interrupted the local broadcast to show amateur footage of devastation.
Waves broke on the shore… only it wasn’t a shore. It was the inside of a small town. People were screaming, cars and entire houses were floating out to sea.
Monica’s insides chilled. She set her drink down before one sip.
“Can you turn that up?”
The bartender picked up a remote and upped the volume.
“… three hundred years past due, this earthquake has been predicted for decades. Preliminary reports placed the quake at 7.5 on the magnitude scale. Much larger than the 1692 quake that killed over five thousand people in Port Royal.”
Monica’s back teeth ground together. A man stood on a porch of what looked like a beach town boardwalk holding on to a child. He grasped onto a wooden beam as a wave of water retreated from the camera, taking everything with it.
“Oh, God.”
“Makes me damn happy I don’t live on the beach.”
Inside her purse, her cell phone buzzed.
She fished it out, staring at the broadcast.
“Yeah?” she asked without looking at the name on her phone.
“You watching the news?”
It was Walt.
“I am.”
“I put in a call to BD. You in?” BD stood for Borderless Doctors. Monica helped with Borderless Nurses. The relief organization put in time and skill from trained professionals to help with aid after nature shook, flooded, or blew up an area. With Borderless Nurses, she’d go straight into the devastation, live out of a backpack for a couple of weeks… help.
Getting away from John and the ER for a while wouldn’t suck, even though she knew she’d be walking into the soggy depths of hell.
“I’m in.”
Chapter Two
“You ready for this, Mo? I know you think you’re tough… but you lost it when you learned that Santa wasn’t real.” Jessie was talking to her on the cell phone before the team was about to pile into the second airplane of the day.
Monica laughed. “I survived. I’m ready. Besides… why did I become a nurse if not to help people?
“You can do that at home.”
“But these people really need me. If no one went where would they be?”
There was a long pause. “Be safe, Mo. Watch out for you.” Right about then someone was giving Monica a vaccine of some sort. She didn’t even bother asking what it was for. She didn’t want to know the risk. She was going… she had to.
“I love you, Jessie. Kiss Danny for me. I’ll try and call.”
“Once every couple of days.”
“I’ll try.” She’d do more than try. Unless the lines were completely down, she’d call.
The flight from Florida to Jamaica was on a cargo plane. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since the tsunami hit the northern coast of the island, and the death toll was estimated in the thousands. There hadn’t been a tsunami of this nature on the shores of the island in recorded history. Even earthquakes were rare. There had been an earthquake in the ocean hours before the shaker hit the island, causing the tsunami to hit close behind the quake. It really didn’t matter how or why the devastation happened, it needed to be cleaned up and the suffering people needed help.
According to their team briefing, bodies were washing up on shore and those who survived filled the hospitals and clinics all over the island.
>
Earlier, Monica had attempted to sleep on the flight from LA to Miami but only managed about an hour. Even with the ear protection, the noise in the cargo plane was too difficult to think past to allow her brain to turn off and rest.
The conversation with John hummed in the back of her mind… but the conversation with her boss, Pat, was what really weighed on her mind.
“You’re due in on Saturday.” Pat never had liked Monica. Her voice and words echoed the sentiment Monica knew was there.
“It’s a humanitarian effort. The hospital can release a press statement about allowing your nurses and doctors leave.” This was a practiced line Walt had said to use. On top of that, Walt had spoken with the head of the doctors’ group expressing his need to be there. “The hospital can always use good PR.”
There had been a long pause. “Get your shifts covered, Monica. And use the part-time staff to do it. I’m not authorizing any overtime.”
Monica’s vacation time would keep a paycheck in her absence. Five to eight days was usually the limit to these efforts. What kind of vacation it would be… that was left to be seen.
Instead of giving Pat the snarky reply that sat on Monica’s tongue, she smiled. “I’ll get it covered.”
Monica’s ears popped as the plane began its descent. Unlike a commercial flight where a smiling attendant reminded you to stay seated and keep your seat belts on, this one was met with the head of their team attempting to yell over the noise of the plane. “Stay seated,” he said before gesturing with his hands to keep the seat belts on. Not that Monica had taken hers off.
Other than the training she’d been a part of a year and a half before in Florida, this was Monica’s first real test. A foreign country with multiple issues that would bring untold patients. Flood victims, earthquake survivors, patients cut off from their families. When she’d stepped on the plane, she locked away the part of her that bled for those who truly suffered.
Early in her ER career one of her mentors had told her something that stuck with her from that day forward. “You’re here to help. Either get in there and get your ass to work, or step away. You won’t do anyone any good crying. You can cry later.”
Best advice ever. It made her a better nurse. Monica knew that. Patients didn’t always understand, but her colleagues… they got it.
As much as Monica braced her spine for what was coming, there was no way to brace for the reality of the scale of this mass casualty incident.
The airplane met the tarmac with a jolt, the landing anything but smooth. American Airlines has nothing to fear.
The nurses and doctors were shuffled off the plane while search and rescue workers were helping unload the cargo. They brought with them everything they thought they’d need. Boxes of first aid supplies along with emergency medicine, antibiotics, and their own food supplies were crated out.
Dawn was just starting to spread on the horizon. The humid heat of the Caribbean felt mildly uncomfortable on Monica’s back. Other than Walt, she didn’t know any of the other nurses or doctors on their team. They’d met in LA before taking off. Most had their heads in their iPods or on movies on the first flight. Tina, the only newbie aside from Monica, stood beside her outside the plane as they met the Jamaican officials by the cargo doors.
“You ready for this?” Tina asked.
“Doubt it. You?”
“Until we’ve both said we’ve done this… exactly this… I doubt either of us are ready.”
Tina pointed to a pallet of boxes that were painfully familiar to an ER nurse. “What are those?”
Monica’s back teeth ground together. “Body bags.”
Tina’s face went pale. “Oh.”
The medical staff was shuffled off to another part of the runway. They’d landed in Kingston. They would be helicoptered into the Ocho Rios area and spread out from there in various means of transportation that would manage to traverse the damage.
Monica had never been on a helicopter. In truth, heights and she had an understanding… on second thought, they didn’t. She managed airplanes because there was a strange safety inside the metal tube with wings. Out in the open… on a ledge? No. She didn’t even have a desire to see the Grand Canyon. That massive ditch did nothing for her hormones.
“This is Reynard Kiffen. Second in charge of the off-island relief effort.” Their team leader, Dr. Donald Klein, introduced the Jamaican native.
Reynard offered a smile, his white teeth in direct contrast to his dark skin. The smile was brief. “Thank you. My country, my people, thank you.” He spoke slowly and enunciated his words clearly through his obvious accent. “We have a temporary hospital set up in Saint Mary’s province. You will set up there. Accommodations are the best we can manage under the extreme circumstances.”
“We aren’t expecting five-star hotels, Reynard,” Dr. Klein told him.
The smile on Reynard’s face fell. “Some of the resorts are operational. Not many. They are taking in those they can. Moving tourists out as quickly as possible.”
Monica hadn’t thought about the tourists, those visiting for the ultimate vacation only to find themselves in a war zone.
“Everyone in the north is affected. No one I’ve met is free of the death.”
Dr. Klein patted Reynard’s back when the man’s eyes lost focus, the effect on him obvious.
Dr. Klein carried on with their instructions. “The choppers in use hold only four people at a time. That includes the pilot. Only the essentials are going with you onboard, the rest of our supplies will arrive after us by ground.”
The mere mention of the helicopter made Monica’s skin crawl. The sooner she got this part of the trip out of the way, the better.
As the group disassembled, Monica made her way to Donald’s side. “Excuse me, Dr. Klein.” Monica pushed into his personal space with a half smile.
“Donald, please. It’s Monica, right?”
“That’s right.” She’d met Dr. Klein briefly in Florida but didn’t have a chance to talk to him. Something told her that the next week would change all that.
“You’re ER with Walt?”
Monica nodded. “I am.”
“He talks highly of you. This is your first time on something like this.”
Monica was impressed. She wasn’t the only newbie on deck, but it seemed Donald had used the flight time to study his team.
“I think it’s the first time for most of us on ‘something like this.’ ”
Donald’s smile sobered slightly. “It’s something new every time. An earthquake alone can be devastating.”
“I grew up in Southern California. Most earthquakes aren’t bothersome enough to get out of bed in the night.” And they always tended to strike before the sun rose.
Donald nodded and reached to his feet to grab his backpack when the sound of a helicopter filled her ears.
Ignoring her heightened pulse, she reached past her fears and blurted out her needs.
“Listen, Donald. I’m not ashamed to admit that heights aren’t a friend to me. Can I volunteer to go first? I’d just as soon get this part over with.”
He lifted an eyebrow and scratched his bald head. He appeared as if he wanted to say something, but decided against it. “No problem.”
“Thanks.” Monica shuffled her pack from one shoulder to the other and drew in a deep breath.
Donald looked over Monica’s head and shouted. “Walt?”
Walt turned around.
“You, Monica, and Tina are up first. Everyone else group in threes. I hope everyone managed some rest on the flight over. I will be making rounds when I can to force you to rest. If the opportunity presents itself, do it! We’re here to help, not make stupid mistakes because we’re tired. If you have questions, ask. Weaknesses, tell me.” He glanced Monica’s way. “We’re a team. Remember that!”
The chopper flew in behind them, cutting off the conversation. Monica turned toward the wind and gripped the strap to her backpack.
The s
un had crested the horizon and the thick heat of the Caribbean started to make itself known. She stared at the “bird” as the skids planted down on the pavement. Unlike when she’d wait for a chopper on the helipad at the hospital, this time the anxiety coursing through her veins was personal.
A hand on her shoulder brought her attention to Tina, who noticed her hesitation when they boarded the plane in Florida. Instead of giving her shit about her phobias, Tina spouted off a few facts about flying being safer than driving in LA and then proceeded to tell her about the many flings she carried on in college. Soon the sexual antics of a horny twentysomething diverted Monica’s attention. “It’s just a smaller plane,” she said close to Monica’s ear.
A plane. Right. Without wings and without a jet engine. If this chopper was just a smaller plane then a smart car was a chip off a semitruck.
Her fingers tingled, reminding her to force slow, deep breaths into her lungs.
“C’mon, help me gather a couple of duffel bags. Don’t look at it until you have to.”
Monica turned away from the chopper as the giant propeller slowed to a stop. Those around her mobilized, moving in a common direction to shift their bags into some sort of order as the sound of another chopper met Monica’s ears. Not able to help herself, she glanced toward the tarmac. Another chopper, about the same size as the last, hovered over the first until the tail lined up and the skids moved in a slow descent to the ground. Out of the first, someone jumped to the ground.
Monica narrowed her eyes and noticed the man spilling from the pilot’s seat and running a hand through his hair. He rounded the tail of the aircraft and shoved his palm into Reynard’s in greeting.
That’s my ride.
Monica glanced at the sky coming to life above her and reminded herself that those who needed her help were subject to an earthquake and a tsunami. None of which happened in the sky.
Still, her fingers tingled.
A hand clasped onto her shoulder. “Ready?”
Monica’s fingernails dug into her palms. Her head swiveled toward Donald. A slight lift to his lips was the only emotion on his face.
“Ready,” she said with more conviction than she felt.
Not Quite Enough (Not Quite series) Page 2