Second Chances: The Seahaven Series - Book One (3 page)

I call out his vitals, which aren't good. “BP 80 over 50, pulse 40.” I hear Danny get on the radio to tell the hospital what to expect.

I look the guy over as our ambulance screams down the road. Maybe a broken tibia, looks like a dislocated shoulder, but no bones sticking through. I feel around his abdomen, prodding him, until I find a puffy, slushy spot. “He's bleeding!” I call out. “Abdominal, anterior, internal!”

Danny relays it to the hospital.

I talk to the guy. Every medical textbook tells you that hearing is one of the last senses to go, that even when a patient is unconscious they can still hear you and are soothed by it. So I always talk.

“Stay with me,” I say to this kid. “You'll be fine. We're almost there.” I've said these words many times to a lot of transports in thirteen years. And a lot of the time it turns out to be a lie.

We pull up to the ER bay and by the time I fling the doors open Danny's right there, helping me unload the bicyclist. We're fast and careful. We haven't been working together very long, but we compliment each other. We don't get in each other's way.

“How old's this kid?” says Danny, as we push him.

“Twenty-three,” I say.

“Shit,” he says. Then, “Wake up, man. Stay with us.”

The doors open and a trauma team of nurses meets us. They take over pushing the stretcher and we walk next to them, answering their questions about vitals, about what drugs and interventions I've administered, any details we have from the accident.

When we go around the corner of the corridor, Matt joins us as the attending ER doctor. My heart skips. I will it not to but I can't help it. It's out of my control. I look at him but he doesn't look at me.

“Bacerra!” says the nurse sharply. I turn to her. “Last vitals!”

Had she asked me a question? “80 over 50, pulse 40,” I say. “About three minutes out.”

“OR 2!” shouts the nurse as she directs us towards an empty operating room. More attendings run into the room. Danny and I take a step back.

Matt reads the notes quickly, still not looking at me. “Suspected abdominal bleed?” he asks, prodding the patient's abdomen.

“Sudden BP drop, loss of consciousness, no visible contusions, mushy belly,” I say.

Matt feels the patient's abdomen and nods at the nurse. “Do a quick ultrasound and prep him.”

He walks briskly to the sink and starts scrubbing in. A nurse ties a surgical mask around his mouth and nose. I imagine myself tying a blindfold around him. Stop it, Ellie! What has gotten into me?

Matt comes back into the OR theater and says, “All non-essential personnel please wait outside.” Danny looks at me and raises an eyebrow, then walks to the door. Non-essential? Is that how he talks to his team, when everyone's here for the same reason—to save lives?

Matt still hasn't made eye contact with me this whole time, not once. I shake my head and follow Danny out. A nurse pushes the door closed behind us.

I follow Danny to the coffee station. He pours us both a cup.

“Can you believe that guy?” he says. “I've been here a long time and I've seen a lot of jerks, but that guy takes the cake. 'Non-essential personnel.' Seriously?”

I nod and put milk in my coffee. I taste it and wince. I'm trying not to eat sugar but right now all bets are off. I pour it in.

Danny takes a gulp and winces too. “You'd think he'd give it some time before he starts talking to people like that. He's barely been here a month. You gotta earn arrogance like that.”

I'm trying to not be interested in what he knows about Matt, but it isn't working. “So he got here right around the same time I did,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Danny. “Give or take a week. He came a little farther, though. Australia, I think.” He puts down his coffee and looks at me.

Uh-oh. I can't do this now. I'm wiped from all of tonight's action. I play defense.

“How're the bites? Any infection?” I ask.

“The what?” he says. “Oh. No, they're fine.” He pauses for a moment, then says, “Why'd you come back here, anyway?”

I shrug. I know why I came back, but it's too much to get into with Danny right now. How do you encapsulate all the escapist feelings that make up almost fifteen years of a bad marriage, plus wanting to live near your troubled little brother so you can look out for him, plus needing to feel at home somewhere again into a simple explanation? I shrug again.

“I mean, don't get me wrong. I love it that you're back,” he says. “It's just that once people get out of here they don't usually move here again unless they're coming to something.”

He looks hopeful. I don't want him to be hopeful, and I don't want to encourage him, but I can't exactly turn him down when he hasn't asked me for anything yet.

I decide to tell him the Cesar part since he knows and likes Cesar. “Cesar's here, and I shouldn't have been away from him as long as I was. He needs someone who loves him to look after him. Plus it's a beautiful place,” I say. And it is. “It feels different now. Like I escaped it and now it's okay for me to come back.”

He shakes his head and laughs and says, “Stockholm Syndrome.” I laugh too.

He takes a step forward, encouraged by the good time we're having. “Ellie,” he says. He looks into my eyes. I look down at my coffee cup and take a big drink. Even the added sugar can't help me now.

A light on the wall turns on. We both look up. A voice comes over the loudspeaker. “Code Blue. OR 2. All hands.”

Our shoulders drop, both mine and Danny's. Our bicyclist is coding. I think briefly of the hit and run driver, wondering how he could leave the scene and live with himself after such an act of violence against another human being. But doing what I do, I see all kinds of human nature, and frequently it's the ugly side. And there's not a lot to do about it except hope the people who do bad things find the inspiration to change and learn to be decent somehow.

Danny's mood is broken. He tosses his cup into the trash. “I'm going to go park the bus,” he says. “You on tomorrow?”

I nod. “I'm going home to sleep now,” I say, yawning.

“Maybe tomorrow will be boring,” he says. “Everybody's healthy. Nobody dies.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe someday there'll be a day like that.”

“See you tomorrow,” he says.

“See you today,” I say back.

He smiles at me sadly and leaves through the automatic doors.

I pitch my cup into the trash. I look up at the wall. The code blue light is blinking slowly. I walk down the corridor and around the bend, and stop in front of OR 2.

Inside the operating room, they're all working hard on the bicyclist. A big team, five more people in the room now than were there when I got kicked out by Matt.

I watch him work. He's taller than everyone in the room. Commanding. There's controlled chaos in the OR, but he's calm. He doesn't hesitate when he asks for instruments. He's laser-focused, and he knows what to do. He knows how to run a team by the looks of it; he's their center, their touchstone. The other doctors are deferring to him. Maybe it's a holdover from his rugby days. His misshapen pinkie doesn't seem to be slowing him down with the scalpel.

Watching him, I feel like I know him. And I feel like I want to know him more, in a different way. In all ways.

Even in Matt's capable hands it looks like the bicyclist isn't doing well. The monitors tell me that his vitals are low and critical. I move my hand instinctively to my forehead to start the sign of the cross. It's ingrained, my instinct to bless, to pray for. In emergency medicine it's always unclear who or what is in charge of our fate: God? The doctors? The patient's will to live? Luck? Chance?

I watch Matt working for another few moments, wondering how he feels about having another man's life in his hands, and then I realize that we won't be close in that way and I'll never know.

Chapter Four

At 5:45am, I wake up to Buster barking. Someone's knocking softly on the door. It's almost dawn, but not quite. I wrap my sweater around me, pick up my baseball bat, and creep forward. I glance at my desk for the phone, and it's right there in case I need to use it. I look through the peephole expecting to see a burglar, or a murderer.

But there's Matt through the fisheye lens, standing at my door, looking uncomfortable.

I take a step back. What in the world? I shake my head, confused, and then I open the door.

“Hi,” he says. Ruffled and rumpled. And gorgeous.

“It's six in the morning,” I say, squinting.

“I took a chance, the wrong chance, apparently, that you'd still be awake. Because we seem to be on the same shift, and because you were on the beach at this time yesterday.”

I stare at him, wondering why he's here. Then I remember and gasp. “The bicyclist. Did he make it?”

Matt smiles. “He was a mess. Almost lost him—twice—but he made it. Your 'mushy belly' call saved us critical time. If we hadn't known that off the bat it would've ended differently. You definitely helped save him.”

I wrap my arms around myself and move to the closest chair to sit down. I exhale. I didn't know I'd been holding my breath. Matt closes the door.

I nod. “Good,” I say. “Good. I'm glad he's okay. He's young. That would've been a terrible way to die. Now he can tell his family himself.”

Matt looks at me, not understanding.

I look up at him to explain. “He wanted me to tell his family that he loved them. It happens a lot in the ambulance. I'm always happy when they can do it themselves.”

Buster sniffs Matt's pantleg and wags his tail. “How's a boy, Buster?” Matt scratches Buster's ear and shakes his paw.

I watch their interaction, confused again about how someone can be so kind and caring in the real world, but turn cold and careless so quickly at work. This Matt is so friendly and so comfortable, and it feels like he belongs in my living room, so much so that I'm having a hard time staying mad at the 'nonessential personnel' rudeness earlier. It's beginning to feel like a theme with us.

“I need some coffee,” I say, standing up to make it.

I feel fingers on my wrist stopping me. I turn around and look down at his hand on me. A chill goes up my arm and over my head and down my spine, right through me, rooting me to the earth. I look right into his eyes and they're locked on mine. I feel flushed with heat and I try to look away but I can't.

He moves closer to me slowly. “I wanted to apologize,” he says. And then he leans in close, and with those lips, he kisses me.

* * *

I wake up in the late afternoon to find him shaving at my bathroom sink, a towel around his waist. I sit up in bed and watch him. He sees me awake and puts down the razor, wipes the shaving cream off his face, takes off his towel and walks straight toward me. When he pushes me down all I can think is yes. Yes.

Chapter Five

The night shift witching hour happens around 2am. It's when everybody starts to go a little crazy. They say stupid things, they make mistakes, they tell you things they'd never tell you if it was two in the afternoon on a normal workday. But the night shift isn't a normal workday. It messes with everything; body rhythms, sleep patterns, and relationships go haywire. When you go to work at dinnertime and get off work as the sun's rising it can turn your life upside-down.

This 2am it's Maria who's going crazy. She's telling stories about her family that she shouldn't be telling, especially in this small town.

“Maria...” I shake my head at her, raising an eyebrow, warning her to consider the consequences. “I remember what happened the last time your brother heard you were telling stories.”

She smirks at me. “Girl, this one is about my cousin. It's even better.” The other nurses at the station egg her on.

“So this one time,” Maria continues, “my cousin—I won't say his name, okay? Was in his car, parked behind 7-Eleven, and my dad happens to be rolling by, with both his partner and a guy in the backseat cage, and they go, 'That's Billy's car! Let's show him this methy perp in the back that we're taking in so he'll know not to mess with drugs.'”

I'm shaking my head and smiling. “But you won't say his name, right?” I've heard this story. It happened when we were in high school. The other doctors and nurses are laughing, all high on coffee and candy, giddy at 2am.

Then behind the group I see Matt come down the corridor, his eyes buried in a chart. I watch as he gets closer, and I can see where he's missed a patch of stubble on his cheek. Then I remember where that cheek has been, and my own cheeks get hot and red.

Maria hits me on the arm. “Mija, tell it! Tell the good part!”

I come back to reality and look at all the doctors and nurses waiting for the 7-Eleven parking lot punchline.

“No way,” I laugh. “It's your crazy family, not mine.”

Maria gets more dynamic in her storytelling, waving her arms and doing voices, and everybody laughs. Matt stops at the desk and puts the chart in a wire basket. I smile at him. I notice several of the other nurses smiling at him, too. He acknowledges no one. Not them, and not me. He picks up another chart and he walks away. I watch him go, confused. No look, no smile. No anything to acknowledge anything. What's going on?

I check my pager. Nothing. I take one of the nurses aside and say, “I'm going to research something in the library. Will you page me for transport?” She nods.

I walk away down the hall as Maria finishes her story to lots of hearty 2am laughter.

I turn into another corridor and see Matt go into the break room. I stop and think about my options. I could follow him in and ask him what the hell's going on, ask him how could he not acknowledge me after spending a night and a day like that with him, you jerk. Or I could turn around and leave.

It would be less complicated, that's for sure, to have a night like that every once in awhile with no strings attached. Who cares that he didn't look at me or single me out in the group. Does it matter? Do I need everyone else to know what I know?

There's only one problem, and that's that I don't know how he feels about it.

I walk into the break room and the door closes behind me. He's alone, his back to the counter, deep into reading a chart. After a moment he looks up. And smiles. And that's all it takes for me. I turn the lock on the door behind me.