That raspy voice of hers irritated the hell out of me when I first met her, but she’s such an insanely good person with an incredibly huge heart, so I hardly care that she sounds like some meek kindergarten teacher.
Except when it gives lying assholes an excuse to treat her like crap.
Then I care. A lot.
So much I’m ready to throw down in her defense.
First rule of the ER: do not mess with the nurses. We will do every damn thing in our power to help you if you’re hurting, move heaven and earth to ease the suffering that has no end and never gets any easier to deal with.
But if you treat us like shit, we can make you wish you just stayed home and put a damn Band-Aid on your swollen, infected dog bite.
“Look, girlie, don’t you tell me you’re gonna ‘get me right in.’ I’m sick of lying nurses like you not taking my situation seriously.” He leans close to the glass and sneers, doing a shitty imitation of Charlotte’s sweet voice. “I been here a thousand times, and no one gets ‘right in’ even if they’re bleeding out. It’s a bunch of bullshit you’re trying to sell me and—”
I jump in front of her and scowl my nastiest bitchy nurse scowl. I keep it in reserve for exactly these kinds of situations.
It’s not the only expression I make use of.
I also have a hell of a bright, sunny smile, and I take that out constantly for the patients who need it. For nervous moms who are watching their kids burn with fever. For little ones who broke arms falling off the monkey bars. For teenage guys who are too big, tough, and scruffy to ever admit they’re scared stiff and just want their mamas to hold their hands.
For them, I smile like sunshine. Or like a patient who finally got hooked to a sweet morphine drip.
For this asshole, I flip out my scowl, hard and sharp as a glinting pocket knife.
“Mr. Monroe,” I bite out. He looks up at me and his jaw goes a little slack because I was the one who took care of him when the ambulance crew brought him in after he got torn up at a dogfight a few months ago. The look on his face tells me he recognizes me, and that makes him nervous. Good. “It would be a real shame if I had to call the police down because you’re harassing my nurses. It would be even worse if I had to tip them off to that dogfighting ring I hear has been attracting some attention right around where your farm is. Because I also hear people have been doing serious time for hosting those fights.”
Mr. Monroe is so full of shit, his eyes should be brown.
Worrying about kids getting bit my goddamn ass.
And I should call the cops on him this instant, because what he does to those animals is absolutely sickening. But the police won’t rush to the hospital over that, and he’ll be spooked enough to get someone to move the dogs before the cops can look around if he overhears me make a call.
I decide I’ll tell Charlie at dinner on Sunday night. He’s always looking for a way to impress his captain and prove his worth to the force. This will be a sweet tip. I also plan on talking to him about Lawson. I had a call from the Bazanacs. They haven’t heard from him in three weeks, and when they drove by his apartment, it was locked tight. It could be nothing. Lawson is an adult after all. But I’d feel better if Charlie does some poking around and just lets us all know Lawson is still okay. Or as okay as he ever is.
Charlotte is backing up, her face pinched and pale. “Dog fighting?” She lets the words drop off her tongue like they’re too vile to utter out loud.
I grab the clipboard from her, press it and the gauze pad at Monroe, and point him to one of the hard plastic chairs in the waiting room. “There’s a baby with bronchitis and a woman who might be in preterm labor ahead of you. I suggest you sit your ass down and thank Jesus those dogs didn’t get your jugular this time.”
Monroe’s lip curls back, but he goes. Not before throwing hissing a low, “You look like a dyke with your hair like that. Bitch.”
Charlotte drags me away from the window with a panicked tug on my arm. I don’t mean to put my hand up to brush the dark hair that barely covers my neck, but I do. And it feels like that dick Monroe wins something.
“Ignore him. What a piece of crap. I can’t believe he talked to you like that. Do you want me to call security?” Charlotte asks, her dark eyes wide and worried. It’s the way most people have been looking at me for days.
Further back than that even. Since the day Mike died. And now, since I haven’t heard from Caleb in weeks and have been wearing my bitch face again, they all sense something is up.
Three damn weeks.
The first week, I was able to avoid my phone and focus on work. Plus there was a ton to do getting Gran settled in. I spent hours listening to her old records in her room and looking through photo albums, trying my best not to think about Caleb every single second.
The second week was a little itchier. That was the week of the drive-bys to his house and multiple calls and texts. I took Zoe up on her group date and tried to smile through some truly awful bowling and beer and went out with just the girls for margaritas and Mexican food later on in the week. I also jogged. I jogged until my knees buckled.
But this is week three, and I have a twisting feeling in my gut. Like maybe trusting Caleb with zero facts wasn’t the best way to go. I need answers, and I’m determined to get them soon. This is ridiculous.
“No. Don’t bother security over that ass.” I plaster on a smile and chug some coffee. “I need to get back and check on the Robeson baby in three. Don’t let those dirt bags treat you like that when I leave, okay, babe?” I squeeze her shoulder through her silly teddy bear scrubs.
It’s almost like she’s asking to be someone’s emotional piñata.
“Elise, are you sure you’re okay? I’m glad you told that jerk off, but...it’s not like you to be so on edge.”
I look at the scrunchy that holds her silky black hair back. It’s got dancing teddy bears on it, too. Where the hell did she find a scrunchy with dancing teddy bears on it? Does she make these hideous things?
“I’m fine, Charlotte. Seriously.”
I’d be even better if I could get my pseudo-boyfriend to return any of my calls. I tried asking Dean when I saw him yesterday with a different partner, but he claims he knows nothing. That he showed up for work and was told Caleb moved on.
I even tried driving out to his place. Twice. But his truck wasn’t there either time. I’m one visit away from stalker territory, and have been picking up extra shifts specifically to avoid that.
I’d say it was the talk of moving in together that spooked him, made him come up with that vague set of excuses why he needed space and distance, except it was his idea. I worry that he’s hurt and sick, in over his head and in need of help. Then I worry that I’m a huge pushover who was duped by a good-looking guy and some sweet words in the moonlight.
I just wish I knew something—anything—for sure. But I haven’t heard a single word in weeks. And I know I’ve been wearing my bitch face more often than not, which is setting my co-workers on edge. I need to know that Lawson is okay and why the hell Caleb went MIA and hasn’t bothered to make a single call in weeks.
“Okay.” She bites her lip, but has to drop it because a weary-looking dad carrying a limp little guy, eyes bright with fever, walks up to the desk.
I go to check on the baby with bronchitis. Scary as it is to watch her wheeze and gasp, she’s actually improved since she came in, and I know she’s going to be fine. So is the pregnant woman, so young and scared, but under the care of our best resident. Even Monroe with his nasty dog-fighting habits and the little boy burning up in his father’s arms will be okay.
Everyone will be okay tonight. It won’t always be this way. I have to accept that. One day, someone will come in here alive—maybe barely alive, but they’ll have a pulse—and they’ll leave zipped into a long black bag.
I paste on my sunshine smile as I enter room three, and the baby’s parents smile back weakly, the dark circles under their eyes a testament to the
ir fierce love for this precious little life.
I know about those circles that deepen with the hours of lost sleep and gut-wrenching worry. I carefully applied foundation, powder, and cover-up to mine this very morning, before I came back to the hospital to help people live.
I try to remind myself of what Caleb said to me. How I have my free pass to go on living.
Because the truth is, hospitals smell like life. They smell like every one of us fighting against germs and disease and hacked off limbs and crushed bones to make things as right as we can again. To buy back some time against death.
The only thing that smells like death is death.
It’s not sharp like ammonia or chemical like plastics or dull like medicines or slightly stale like circulated air.
Death is an open, metallic, rotten, horror of a smell, and only people who’ve lived to walk away from a hospital with their hearts still pumping would be naive enough to say death smells anything like these halls.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and check once more for a missed call from Caleb, before dropping it back in.
I’m disappointed, but determined to go on living, with or without him.
There’s a certain zen calmness about working on the flight crew that just doesn’t come with working on a truck.
Sure the patients that we transport are critical, so there’s that extra stress, but it’s expected. You know exactly who you’re picking up, exactly where you’re going.
Up in the air, there’s no hysterical mother beating you on the back to save her twenty-year-old son who should have known better than to shoot up. There’s no elderly woman you have to tell you’re so sorry, there’s nothing you can do to help her husband of sixty years who died in his sleep.
It’s you and the pilot, who knows nothing except how to fly the helicopter, and a nurse for the patient. Someday's it’s just us going out to an oil rig in the gulf to pick up a guy who’s feeling a little green and bringing him back to land. Somedays we fly across the country to bring a kid to a specialized facility.
My only job is to help keep the patient comfortable and eat a comp meal on the other end of wherever the hell I wind up.
It sounds like the perfect fucking job.
I fucking hate it.
I hate the down time when I have to sit and think about how I’ve fucked everything up. How I got played by some Uptown asshole with his shiny badge and shaky morals. I hate knowing that the only plan I’ve been able to come up with centers on a junkie I’m only half sure wants to live another day on the best days. I hate thinking about Elise, I hate picking up the phone dozens of times a day, but throwing it back on the counter before I can call, because what the hell will I say to her? She’s going to want answers I don’t have and assurances I can’t give her.
She’s going to want me to be the stand-up guy she thinks I am, and I’m trying like hell not to disappoint her.
Too bad my options are looking grimmer every day that goes by. At first I was busy getting settled in and dealing with Lawson. Then there were a ton of flights, and I was willing to volunteer for pretty much every one. But it’s been a few weeks, and I keep wishing I had some news, some reason to call and talk to her. Every time I pick up my phone, I put it back down. If I call her too soon, I risk everything we might have together. I have to wait and hope things work themselves out, at least enough that I feel confident I can crawl out from under this.
“What do we have today?” I ask Steven, the pilot with an imposing handlebar mustache.
“Headed to Miami,” he says, looking up for a split second from his paperwork. He doesn’t bother getting really friendly with me, which suits me just fine. “Looks like you’ve got a patient going to the burn unit there.”
“Ouch,” I cringe.
He tosses me the paperwork and I start flipping through it, glad to see the patient, who was injured in a house fire, will be heavily sedated for the trip. The only thing worse than getting a bad burn is being moved around while you’re dealing with the agony of the burn pain.
“Where’s the pick-up?” I ask, flipping back through the sheets of paper to make sure I didn’t miss something.
Steven looks back through his own papers. “Oh, here’s your face-sheet. Picking up at Crescent, headed to Jackson Memorial.”
I’ve been waiting for the call that would put me back at Elise’s hospital since I started this job. It hasn’t happened yet, but I obviously knew it was coming. It was the one flaw in Charlie’s evil-genius plan.
Or maybe not, since I walked out on her like a total fucking coward. Maybe he knew I wouldn’t have the stones to talk to her even if I ran into her.
“Let’s go then,” I say, fighting back the sense of dread that overtakes me every time I try to imagine what the hell I’ll say when I see her face again. And how I’ll keep myself from pulling her into my arms and begging her to take my sorry ass back.
There’s a security guard waiting on the helipad of the hospital when we land.
“Patient is in the ER,” he shouts over the whine of the engine. “I’ll walk you down.”
I freeze. Like Dean on that night of the overdose I fucking freeze.
Normally we transport patients who are already on the floor. In ICU. In a cardiac wing and in need of care elsewhere. I didn’t plan on waltzing into the ER here at Crescent.
“Let’s go.” Steven’s voice is clipped and impatient. There’s no room for hesitation in cases like this, which is why I’m usually a preferred choice for the flights.
I stay ten paces behind him the entire walk and secretly wish the elevators would jam on the way down, which is more cowardly shit I should be ashamed to think. But I’m desperate for any delay that will get me out of having to look Elise in the eye and see the flash of disappointment that will come over her face in the flesh. Even if she’s not here, I’ll still feel the wrath of her pack of scary-loyal nurses, who could give the interrogators I knew in the desert a run for their money.
I suck in a breath as the elevator doors open and release it when I don’t see her on the ER floor.
“Trauma two,” the security guard says, waving me down the hall.
“Thanks, bro,” I say and head toward the doors, feeling relief wash over me.
That’s quickly quashed when I push through the double doors and see her.
It takes her a second to process that I just walked in. After weeks of ignoring her calls. Of sitting in my house hunkered down like a gutless asshole when she came by and knocked on my door, even after I parked my truck in the shop behind my property. After asking her to trust me, while not trusting her enough to give her even a piece of the truth that could ruin my life and our future together.
Right now I’m not sure if what I did was right or wrong. I am sure that I want her so badly, my mind blanks and my body goes hot with a need to feel her in my arms.
Her gorgeous face goes tight and her shoulders stiffen. She’s definitely taking a second to process how, after all of that, I have the gall to walk into her ER.
But she seems to find her footing quickly enough, and her features suddenly go cool as a cucumber. “Fifty-two-year-old female. Second degree burns, full thickness about thirty percent of her body. Headed to Jackson Memorial in Miami, I’ve got her meds here. I’m the flight nurse traveling with the patient.”
Her words are clipped and, even though I wished before walking in that I wouldn’t have to see the disdain in her eyes, now, I’d sort of do anything to have her look up at me instead of down at her clipboard like it holds the secrets to the universe.
“You’re riding with us, Elise? Good deal,” Steven says, smiling for the first goddamn time since I met him.
“Steven! So good to see you!” she cries, perking up.
She walks to him with her arms extended, and fuck me if she doesn’t finally glance up at and look right into my eyes, her gaze winter chilled. Elise pulls Steven in for a warm hug, and right now, I feel certain that that little prick Charlie r
eally covered all of his damn bases.
“Let’s get this over with,” I grit out between clenched teeth.
I can count on one hand the amount of words Steven has said to me on all the flights we’ve flown together, yet miraculously, with Elise on board, he can’t stop chattering.
They finally stop yammering about the final quarter in the LSU game this past weekend, the difference between his and her mother’s jambalaya recipes, and the new fishing boat her father’s thinking about buying because Steven’s attention is caught by a radio call.
“Hand me that saline.” Elise’s words are low and even, and she nods her chin to the bag next to me.
I grab a bottle and hold it just out of her reach. She tries once to grab it, then rolls her eyes and leans over the patient to get one for herself.
“You look good,” I say, my voice tight, like it’s been years since we’ve seen each other, not just agonizing days.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
She barely smiles. It’s not wide enough to bring out her dimple and doesn’t last long enough to give me much hope, but it’s enough. I’m a desperate man, and I’m seriously considering doing anything—anything at all—to let her know how much I love her. How much agony I’ve been in without her. Even if it costs me my peace and my future.
But the words stick hard in my throat. I wish she would glance up and see what I have no words to say.
Look at me, Elise. Fucking look at me and you’ll be able to see how goddamn sorry I am.
The copter has landed, our patient has been whisked to the burn center, and I am halfway free of Caleb Warren. I hoped, the second I saw him in the hallway at Crescent, that he’d put my fears to rest. Convince me that what we had was real and not the ramblings of a bad boy who had zero intentions of reforming. I get space. I get time. I don’t get shutting the person you claim to love out entirely.
If this is the way Caleb is going to deal with every bump we encounter, our relationship was doomed from the get-go. And I’ll accept it. It will hurt, I’ll feel betrayed and let down, but I’ll accept it. The problem is, he isn’t saying a word either way. He’s just staring at me with eyes so blue and sexy, I want to sink into them.
Golden Hour (Crescent City) Page 20