Ready To Go

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

Copyright © 2013 by Stephanie Mann

READY TO GO by Stephanie Mann

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Swoon Romance. Swoon Romance and its related logo are registered trademarks of Georgia McBride Books, LLC.

No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Edited by Georgia McBride and Erica Rose

Published by Swoon Romance

Cover designed by Paper and Sage

To everyone who has supported me, influenced me, and helped me get this far.

“Who’s ready to go on a
science adventure
?”

The kids cheered, and as Daniel started leading his tour group through the museum, he relaxed for the first time that day. He’d started the day by oversleeping—not a thing you want to do in medical school, and as he walked through the halls of the Pittsburgh Children’s Discovery Museum, he was already planning on how to tell his professor that a grandmother died or something. At least he’d only missed his first class.

Daniel was enrolled in the medical school at a so-called prestigious Pennsylvania college, where the reputation was more important than the education. Not that the degree was completely useless. He was going to be using that degree as a doctor in just three or four more years. Sometimes those years seemed long, sometimes they seemed short. Today, they seemed short. Classes flew by when he didn’t go.

He had to skip brushing his teeth that morning, and he hoped no one noticed. He’d just a few orange Tic-Tacs into his mouth to hide his morning breath. He’d have some coffee on the way. It would stink up his breath a little bit, but
everyone
smelled like coffee in the morning. It was the only way they survived. They spent their classes learning about caffeine overdose, how it would fuck up their bodies, and they still needed it. Other students turned to anti-depressants, pills to keep them awake. Wasn’t hard to get them. Most of them worked with doctors on internships, fellowships, could swipe a prescription pad. Daniel didn’t want to touch the stuff. Too tempting to get addicted.

His tie had been crooked all day, and his perpetually messy black hair had remained uncombed. The kids didn’t notice, and lucky for him, neither had his boss. Daniel didn’t care about looking good for class, but he did care about the museum. He had the job so he wouldn’t have to rely on his parents’ money all the way through school. They paid the tuition, he paid everything else, and it worked out for him.

“So, kids, the first thing we’re going to do is visit the moon!” Daniel said as he led his tour group on. “How does that sound?”

“Awesome!” one of the kids, a boy, shouted a bit too loudly.

“Follow me!” Daniel continued, his voice still holding too much fake cheer. He held his flag high so that the group could see him, and headed towards the space travel exhibit.

Daniel surveyed the group as they walked, trying to size them up. Who would be the troublemaker this time? There were babies in their parents’ arms, too young to understand a word he was saying. He’d have to make them wait outside for the lightning display. The noise would scare them. There were a couple of cute little girls who looked like they’d eagerly hang on every word he said. The parents, on the other hand, didn’t look like too much trouble. One of the mothers looked like the type who might disagree with everything that wasn’t in the Bible, based on the way she fingered the cross around her neck, and he’d probably lose her around the dinosaur exhibit. He knew that thought was incredibly judgmental, but he’d actually met parents who were like that. He could tell the type.

His eyes settled on a girl in the back, carrying a suitcase, her eyes shifting around uneasily. Probably the older sister of one of these kids, forced by her parents to take the younger sibling to the museum for ‘quality time’. He’d had to do it himself when he and his brother were young. She might be a smartass, the older kids usually were, but that wasn’t a problem.

He wondered if he should say something about the suitcase. But he figured that it probably had the kid’s diapers, extra snacks, a toy to entertain them, stuff like that. A few of the mothers had backpacks. A suitcase wasn’t much different, even if it did have the same print on it as his grandmother’s sofa. Besides, he didn’t want to embarrass her. She looked uncomfortable being there.

She was in fact uncomfortable, but not for a reason Daniel could have guessed. Nicole was in a strange place with strange people, and she was just itching to get back to the road. She’d hitchhiked her way to the museum, and while she was grateful to be out of the sun, she was far from her destination.

Then again, her destination was just ‘not Philly’, so she was there if she wanted to be. She didn’t feel far enough from home for it to count quite just yet. She’d made up her mind that she was going to go a long ways away—and not leaving the state was simply not good enough. But she was on this tour now, and she was just going to deal with it and listen to the guy talk. He was kind of hot, anyways. While they walked, he was talking to one of the parents. He had the forced smile of a person who didn’t want to deal with this shit. Nicole herself had worn that smile many times, working fast food.

She would never have to go back to her restaurant. That was a huge relief, one that made her relax and listen as the guide talked about the first moon landing. She sat down on a plastic moon rock and rubbed at a wasp sting on the back of her hand. She’d never been stung before that morning.

She’d stood at the side of the road for hours, her thumb out even though she had no idea if people actually did that. Car after car passed by. Nicole was standing right under a sign that pointed the way to I-79. People
had
to see her if they were looking for the sign. She imagined that the drivers just inside those sun-glared windows took a brief look at her before moving on, pretending not to see her as they would pretend not to see a homeless man on the sidewalk.

There was tall grass all around her, with bugs crawling and flying through it. The air was hot and sticky, and more than once she had to reach down to swat gnats away from her legs. She wished she wore pants instead of shorts, but it was too late to go back and change.

After maybe an hour, maybe four hours of waiting, she realized that she desperately had to pee. There was a gas station down the road that she’d walked by that morning. That would do. She grabbed the suitcase at her side and headed through the tall, itchy grass. Sure, she could have gone and squatted in the field, but she had
some
dignity left.

There was a wasp’s nest right above the entrance to the bathroom. Nicole ducked under it quickly and slammed the door, breathing hard until the fear passed. “Why did it have to be wasps?” she mumbled to herself in a reference no one was around to get.

She learned when she exited again that slamming the door was a bad idea. The wasps were buzzing angrily now, and a few circled right in front of her face. So Nicole did what she thought would attract the least attention from the bugs: flailed her arms and ran. In her flailing, her hand slammed against one of the buzzing wasps, earning her a painful sting right where her first finger met her thumb.

She was rubbing that sting so much while listening to the museum guide talking that she was rubbing the area raw. Once she realized this, she stopped. The guide had finished speaking and was trying to get the kids jumping in the fake craters to pay attention. He looked a bit exasperated with them.

And really, Daniel was. His speech here required him to ask questions to the kids, so needed them to
listen
to him--a hard thing to get young kids to do. He promised them a reward if they paid attention—he had little plastic buttons to give out at the end of the tour. So he asked his questions, and praised them for answering, even though most of them got the questions wrong. He noticed one father calling his son stupid for saying a wrong answer. He wanted to say something, tell the guy not do to that to his kid. But he knew better than to get involved. He wouldn’t do anything more than grit his teeth and reward the kid anyway.

He paused the tour for a few minutes here so the parents could read the information on the signs around the exhibit, and so the kids could run around. He stood near a replica of a satellite and let his mind wander for a bit. Unfortunately, his thoughts were returning to the class he’d actually gone to that morning. It was a very graphic presentation of how to do a tracheotomy—something that would have probably been pretty easy if Daniel didn’t feel sick at the sight of blood.

Yeah, he knew a doctor was maybe not the best choice of profession for him if he felt queasy on seeing someone even get a paper cut. He’d been sticking to it for so long, though, he didn’t see any reason to stop. And he was getting better about blood. He managed to stop fainting every time he saw it. Still some times, but not
every
time.

In class, the professor had told the students to forget everything they thought they knew. Television always got it wrong whenever they showed one. It wasn’t as simple as sticking a tube in a throat. People
died
from slit throats—and Daniel just couldn’t get over that fact.

Daniel knew his eyes would be glued to his computer instead of whatever bloody pictures would be shown to the class. He promised himself he’d look at a few—how was he supposed to get desensitized to blood without looking at it? But he wasn’t going to throw up in class. Again.