Coat? Check.
Purse? Check
Car keys? Check.
Twenty hours after the shift from hell began and it finally looks like it’s ending. I always feel like a fraud when I put my civilian clothes back on. Like I’m only pretending to be a functional member of society, someone who shops at The Gap and remembers to color co-ordinate their jacket to their handbag. I’m most at home in my scrubs, but people tend to look at you funny if you do your grocery shopping in a pair of blues.
“Night, Sloane. You working tomorrow?” Jerry, one of the orderlies, is here almost as much as I am. He’s a young guy, twenty-two perhaps, with a growing family to feed. Works every hour God sends.
“Sure am, Jer. Catch you for some coffee?”
He grins. “Count on it. I’ll need it after tonight.”
I’m within sight of the exit when I start to get nervous. This is where it always happens. The fourteen-foot stretch of floor space between the reception and the entrance is like some kind of magical hot spot. Nine times out of ten, something or someone will charge through that door while I’m occupying that space and I’ll end up turning right back around.
Ten feet.
Five feet.
I hold my breath.
I’m at the door. Seattle’s autumn wind buffets me, whipping my hair up as the doors slide back to reveal a clear night sky beyond, a bruised shade of royal blue. I breathe a sigh of relief. I did it. I’m free and clear for a whole seven hours. I’m going to spend every single one of those seven hours in bed and it’s going to be amazing.
I’m in my car, pulling out of the parking lot, when a souped-up black Camaro screeches around the corner, nearly crashing straight into me. We both manage to brake in time, but barely. The driver of the Camaro leans on their horn, shattering the peace of the nearly empty parking lot.
I can’t see whoever’s at the wheel but I know they want me to get the hell out of the way. There’s only one reason a car would come tearing at breakneck speeds into a hospital lot and that’s because of an emergency. I reverse so hard my tires spin.
The Camaro roars up the sliding doors that I just left behind and a wave of regret washes over me. I might as well kiss those seven hours goodbye—I’m a glutton for punishment.
It takes me thirty seconds to park up and run back inside. A nurse is already calling for assistance over the tannoy, and a guy in black is hunched over a child on the floor. There’s a blood-soaked duvet abandoned by his side, and he’s slapping the child, the little girl, in the face. I skid to halt beside him, not thinking. I grasp hold of his wrists and shove him back hard enough that he topples sideways and lands on his ass.
“Move away from her. Let me see.”
A guttural, choking sound comes out of him as I make a quick observation of the little girl. She’s not as young as I first thought, but she’s tiny. Her pale blonde hair is died pink with blood. The insides of her wrists are torn to shreds, and it takes me a full second to compose myself. She really meant it when she did this to herself.
“How much blood did she lose?” I check her pulse, bend down to place my ear over her mouth. Any breathing sounds? Faint but there. Pulse is thready but present, too. I look up, still waiting on my answer, and the guy who brought the girl in is propping himself up by his elbows, staring at me with his mouth open. His eyes are huge, the color so dark it’s almost black. Looks like he’s in shock.
“Listen, I really need to know how much blood she’s lost,” I tell him.
“I—I don’t know. She was in the bath.” He whispers the words so quietly I can barely hear him. The front of his T-shirt clings to him, hugging his chest—he found her in the tub, went in and fished her out. Suresh Patel, one of the on-call doctors, arrives on scene a second later and we get the girl onto a gurney. Her body temp is low, her stats uneven. She’s a coin toss at best.
I’m sucked back into the hospital as I work over the small woman. Hours pass. We replace liters of blood and end up having to wrap the girl in four blankets before she finally picks up enough for us to attempt surgery to fix the mess she’s made of her wrists.
It’s five in the morning by the time I go looking for the guy who brought her in. I find him sitting in a corridor, elbows resting on his knees, head resting in his hands. He looks up and sees me, and then does the damnedest thing: he gets up and starts to walk away. Fast.
“Excuse me. Hey!” He stops but doesn’t turn around straight away. He waits a beat, like he’s building up to it. “I need some details from you about your girlfriend. You can’t just leave her here to wake up alone.”
Finally, he turns. His jaw is clenched so tight the veins in his temples throb with the flow of his pulse. He just stares at me. His shirt has dried out now but it’s still clinging to him in the most distracting fashion, the arms of the material rolled up one turn to reveal strong, tattoo-covered biceps. Ink in black and blue and red surges down his arms in waves. His almost black hair is spiked every which way, tousled, still wet; delectable. I kick my own ass when I realize I’m checking him out.
You’re mad at him, Sloane, remember? He was just leaving. Going to walk right out of the door.
“You think you can at least give us some history before you vanish into the sunset. Or sunrise,” I say. He blinks at me, and then folds his arms across his chest. He opens his mouth to say something and stops himself. Scowls. He turns toward the door and it looks like he’s considering bolting anyway. Bastard.