Second Chances: The Seahaven Series - Book One (5 page)

“Want company?” asks Maria.

“Yes, please, take her!” yells Danny.

“I'm good,” I say, not knowing if I am. I don't know if anything's good right now.

I weave my way through the crowd, offering excuse-mes for the occasional elbow bump as I shimmy through the locals out having fun on a Friday night.

What do I say to him when I find him? Will he even want to see me? Maybe he just wants to be with his buddies on his night off. Maybe he wants to be out picking up other women. I don't need to see that. But if he wanted to do that he would have left when he saw me here. Right?

I turn the corner to the bathroom and Matt is leaning against the wall rubbing the back of his neck. I stop and my knees turn to jello. I can't stand it that all I have to do is see him and I feel this way. Stop being so weak, Ellie.

He sees me, walks to me and takes my hand. Then he pulls me into the women's bathroom. There are three stalls. He takes me into the last one.

He takes a deep breath, trying to calm down. Calm down from what?

“Hi,” I say.

He runs a hand through that hair and looks at me. He looks stressed out, like he's been thinking worried things. “You and that guy,” he says. “That same guy who was holding your hand the first time I saw you in the ER.”

How does he remember that? “Danny.” I offer.

“Danny. Right. Danny. I need to know what you've got going on with him.” His eyes are a little bit wild.

He's still thinking that I'm fraternizing with co-workers, that I'm jeopardizing the workplace. What I do in my off-time is my business, but if he thinks I would sacrifice my career, or compromise the health of the people I care for by breaking the rules, then he doesn't know me at all.

I cross my arms, defensive. I narrow my eyes at him. “I was serious when I told you that I take my job very seriously. I understand that co-workers aren't allowed to—”

“I know you take your job seriously,” he says. “You're the best at what you do. I've seen it. What I'm asking is if you have feelings for him, if you're with him.”

I look at him, really look at him, and it dawns on me. He's jealous. He's worried that I'm involved with Danny, not that I'm violating work rules.

I feel an excited chill as I shake my head. “No, it's not like that. We're friends, old friends. Maybe he wants something more, I don't know, but he's like a brother to me.”

Almost before I've finished, right after I say the word 'brother,' Matt comes at me hungrily. And now that I know he's jealous, I'm hungry back. He grabs my ass and pulls me to him and kisses me with fire.

Two women come into the bathroom, banging the door behind them, talking loudly and laughing. I pull away and put a finger to my lips to keep him quiet. If it's Maria I'll never hear the end of it, or anyone else from the hospital or from the beat who we know.

He responds by slowly unzipping my pants. My head is telling me to stop him, but I can't. There's no way I could begin to even try. He takes a step towards me and slides his hand inside my underwear. I gasp and he covers my mouth with his mouth. He slips his fingers into me and my knees go weak.

The women are in their stalls, peeing, talking about the night they're having. Then they start in about the good looking group of doctors by the door, especially the tall Australian blonde. I stifle a snort, and Matt covers my mouth, smiling. His fingers never stop moving, and then I can't even remember where I am or what my name is, nevermind that random bathroom women are jonesing for the man I'm with in the stall next to them. If they only knew what his hands could do they'd want him even more.

They finish what they're doing and leave the bathroom. The second the door closes Matt pops the buttons on his fly and is fully hard. He lifts me up so I'm straddling him and pushes into me, deep. I cry out, I can't help it. Luckily it's loud outside and nobody's in the bathroom anymore. I grab both sides of the top of the stall as he moves in me, his strong hands around my ass.

He pushes me against the stall door, smashing me against it, and it doesn't even cross my mind to care if anybody else comes in. Then I feel waves of warmth and a thick surge, and everything clenches and releases and I yell, and he grunts and thrusts harder and comes, and then we're both breathing hard, my legs wrapped around him.

I wipe the sweat from his forehead with my hand, and he puts his finger in the pool of sweat reservoired in my neck. I climb off of him and fall back against the door.

I smile. He leans into me and kisses me slowly, our pants down, everything raw and bare.

He says, “Couldn't imagine a better start to the weekend.” I move the hair out of his eyes and stare into them.

* * *

When I walk back across the bar, I try not to smile too much. I try to look like I've been to the bathroom to go to the bathroom, not to fuck the brains out of a hot Australian doctor. How long have I been gone? Five minutes? Ten? Fifteen?

When I get back to the darts game I try to gauge how they're reacting to me, but everything's normal. Nobody bats an eye. Maria and Danny and the Frenchmen are deep in a game of darts, laughing and carrying on, and I sit down and pick up my beer. My gaze wanders across the room, and I catch Matt's eye. He very casually brings his fingers to his lips and smiles, and I smile, and then we both get on with laughing with our friends.

Chapter Eight

In my senior year of college when I was 21, I met Paul. I'd been doing really well in school, getting straight A's, I was on track for med school, I was motivated, and was totally sure of my path. But then everything changed.

Paul was 25, and had dropped out of a mechanical engineering post-grad degree to be a race car driver. Right. Yes. A race car driver. But he was good, so it didn't seem far-fetched. We met at the Long Beach Grand Prix. I was in the med tent, volunteering to get some experience, hovering in the background and watching the nurses take care of the people from the crowd who'd come in with heat stroke, anxiety, dehydration.

Paul was driving in the race and was doing well, almost winning the whole thing. Until another car smashed into him and sent him spinning into the wall at 100 miles an hour, and then it was mayhem. Doctors, nurses, media—everyone converging on the medical tent all at once. Suddenly I wasn't observing, I was in the middle of it.

They brought him in on a stretcher, immobilized, his neck strapped and braced, doing everything possible to ward off paralysis. I was in charge of keeping him calm.

The nurse next to me started an IV. The doctor shined a light in his eyes, then scratched his foot for feeling. I held his hand, this stranger, telling him over and over that he would be okay.

He was handsome, really attractive even while cut and bruised, I could see that clearly. He looked into my eyes and I was gone. He was terrified and I reassured him. This was to be the basis of our relationship for the next fifteen years of my life.

He came away from the accident with a broken shoulder, a broken kneecap, and two cracked ribs, and I was there to see him through his whole recovery. We got close during his rehab, and pretty soon everything I'd wanted in life took a back burner to just being with Paul.

If I had an exam coming up and he had a race, going to the race with him won out. If I had a lecture but he needed me to go to lunch with his racing sponsor, I went to lunch. So my straight As quickly became Bs and Cs, and getting into a top med school wasn't my priority anymore. I just wanted to be with him.

Then I graduated and I had to figure out what to do. My grades weren't fantastic, but med school was still on the table. But did I even want to be a doctor?

I'd been training in the theory of medicine in my classes for years: studying diseases, cell structure, chambers of the heart, blood oxygen transport—an encyclopedia's-worth of details on how to save a life. All book smarts with an occasional frog dissection.

I still had a passion for helping people and for medicine, but the idea of six more years of classwork, sleepless nights and hospital rotations was making me drag my feet.

Then one night I was out at a nice restaurant having dinner with Paul. It was our one-year anniversary, and I was in love. Blindly in love. So much so that I was already losing part of myself because all I wanted was to be close to him. Then suddenly, mid-bite of Kobe cutlets in Bearnaise, it was like we were in a movie. A scared woman yelled out from across the room, “Help him! Is there a doctor here?”

I looked over at the voice and saw a man scratching at his own throat, his face beet red, his tongue swollen and sticking out of his mouth.

I jumped up. Paul grabbed my hand and told me to stay. Don't go, he said. It's not your problem. But even though I was totally consumed by him, that part of my instincts and my need to help overrode his command.

I made my way across the room through the crowd, and when I got there the man's wife was sobbing about him going into anaphylactic shock from a food allergy.

An older man and a younger woman from different tables were next to him, attempting to help, while the whole time the allergic man kept scratching at his throat and turning more blue.

Listening to them talk I figured out the older man helping was a doctor. But no one had an Epi pen to give the blue-tinged man a shot of epinephrine to reduce the swelling, and he was getting worse. Then suddenly it happened—the man passed out from lack of air. It looked like he was going to die from a swollen tongue.

Quickly the young woman grabbed a straw off a neighboring table, then a sharp steak knife, a candle, and a cocktail. The doctor asked her what she was doing. She was laser-focused, intent on her plan, and didn't answer. As the doctor continued to demand to know what she was doing, she poured the cocktail on the knife, then held the knife over the flame to sterilize it.

Then as the dying man's wife screamed in her ear and the doctor hollered at her to stop immediately, she very calmly cut a hole in the man's throat, just big enough to fit in the straw. She inserted the straw and waited as the people around her screamed.

As I watched I heard her say softly to the dying man, “Come on, you can do it.”

The whole time, the wife and the doctor stood next to her yelling that they were calling the police and that she was killing him.

And then the man came back to life.

His eyes fluttered, his cheeks pinked up, and he was alive only because she'd MacGuyvered a straw into his throat to bypass the swollen tongue blocking his airway so he could breathe again.

A minute later the paramedics showed up and made everyone move back, all the while shaking their heads in awe at the straw.

I watched the woman walk back over to her table, sit down, and take a drink.

I stood there, stunned. What had I just seen? A woman saving a man's life while a doctor told her not to. If she'd listened to the doctor the man would be dead, I was sure of it.

I couldn't help myself, I walked past the bellowing doctor and the indignant wife, and I went up to the woman's table and stared down at her. Her husband was holding her hand across the table, and she looked a little rattled. But only a little. She was maybe 35, close to my age now. I could barely speak.

“What... are you?” I stammered.

She looked up at me and smiled. “Screwed,” she said. “They're probably going to sue me for all I'm worth.”

“No,” I said. “You saved his life. I don't understand why that doctor told you to stop. Are you a doctor, too?” I was trembling a little bit, maybe in shock.

“No, God no,” she said. “I'm a paramedic. I'm one of those guys.” She pointed over to the EMTs loading the man with the straw onto the stretcher.

“How did you know how to do that?” I asked, practically breathless.

“I've done it before,” she said. “It's a worst-case kind of thing. But you're right, he was going to die. I don't know what that doctor had planned for him. Maybe a prescription for a pill to get rid of his blue lips for his funeral.” She shrugged. “All in a day's work.”

Then one of the paramedics came over, smiling, a young stocky guy with a mustache.

“That doctor's pissed!” he said, chuckling. “Good thing you were here. No doubt about it, guy would be dead if you weren't. Good save.”

She thanked him and he went back to help roll out the man to the ambulance.

I felt myself drifting, staring, my future coalescing in front of me.

“You thinking of becoming a paramedic?” the woman asked.

“No,” I managed. “Med school. A doctor.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you go through with it, just make sure you're one of the good ones. Stay on your toes. Don't be like him.”

The doctor across the room was still stewing, throwing angry glances at this life-saving EMT woman next to me.

“Use your powers for good,” she smiled.

I nodded. It was all I could manage. I backed away from the table and returned to Paul, stealing one glance backward. The woman and her husband were eating, smiling at each other, flush with life. She had just saved that man by thinking fast and staying calm and using a motherfucking straw.

It was suddenly clear. I was revitalized. I was sure. I knew what I wanted to do.

I sat down in front of Paul and said, “I'm going to be a paramedic.”

Chapter Nine

Late the next afternoon I take Buster for a walk on the beach, hoping to catch a little vitamin D before sunset. At certain times of the year I barely get to see the sun, so I try to soak it up when I can. I also find it helps to eradicate the effects of a few too many beers the night before.

I'm thinking about my brother, and about Paul, and my father, and about Matt—basically all the men in my life—while I chuck the ball for Buster. He can run fast for a little guy, and he loves chasing the ball and bringing it back.

“No rusty nails today, Buster!” I yell as he runs hard down the beach.

I watch him get distracted by a group of seagulls, which he chases into a flurry of squawking wings. I walk down a little bit further and watch a kayaker come out of the water holding a cage teeming with live crabs inside.