I is for Ian

“Thank you so much again,” I said. “You have no idea how much I appreciate this. We all do.”

“No problem at all,” she said. “I’m just glad I can do something. This is a really scary situation.”

I nodded my acknowledgment, and we went to meet up with the next patient being moved down to the waiting ambulance. When we got outside, I saw Ian sitting on a bench. He looked like he was lost in his own thoughts, maybe not even recognizing I was there.

Amanda caught me looking, and I gave a single, subtle nod toward Ian. Amanda looked over and glanced around like she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. She glanced back at me, and I nodded again, this time putting a bit more emphasis on it. Finally, she looked right at him, then went back to her glancing around as if she were trying to cover up the maneuver.

“Is that the guy you were talking about?” she asked.

“Yes, it is,” I said, looking over at him again for what seemed like the hundredth time.

Amanda’s eyebrows lifted, and she checked him out one more time before we turned to head back inside. “Seriously?”

“What about it?”

“He’s hotter than you even let on,” she said.

I didn’t know how to respond to that. So, I didn’t.

12

IAN

The weather outside was getting colder, but the atmosphere inside was so hectic that even up on the fourth floor, things were tense and full of chaos and frustration.

A tiny courtyard overlooked the mountains and a gorgeous scenic view. It wasn’t the city of Ashford, but rather the mountains. Being halfway up a mountain as we were, it was a little obstructed where I was, but the courtyard had a fine view, and I had decided to go down there and see it for myself.

Getting my peanut butter and bread from the truck, I headed back around to the courtyard and plopped down on the bench, angled to take full advantage of the view and also see people milling around in front of the hospital.

Several ambulances were lined up in front of the ER entrance, and a couple of busses had shown up to gather family members and those not confined to a bed. One bus was filling up as I made my sandwiches and cut them in half. Patients of various states of health seemed to be boarding, usually with one or two people near them that looked like guests of theirs. Each bus had a couple of nurses and a doctor on them as well.

I stuffed some of the sandwich into my mouth and tried to take in the scenery despite the chill in the air. It wasn’t too bad, and the coffee I brought with me from inside was still warm in the thermos. I took a deep sip and relished in the warmth as it traveled down my throat. If I didn’t let myself think about how absolutely awful for my career all of this was, it was quite nice.

A familiar-sounding voice got me to turn my head and I groaned when I saw the owner. She was walking with another woman, heading in my direction. They were talking to each other, but certainly had both looked directly at me and were crossing the grassy courtyard toward the bench I was sitting at.

Great. They were both going to come over and bitch at me now. Add them to the list, I supposed.

Just before they reached me, the other woman peeled off, leaving Mina by herself. I didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

“Ian?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said. “What can I do for you, Dr. Davis?”

I didn’t make eye contact, focusing instead on the vision of the mountains behind her as I stuffed the sandwich into my mouth. If I looked disinterested enough, maybe she would get bored and leave me alone. Getting fussed at was not how I wanted to spend the little bit of break I had today.

“What happened with the electrician?” she asked.

“Huh?”

“The electrician,” she said. “I know he’s the reason for the outage and the generator blowing up. Did he not ground it properly?”

“Sort of,” I said. “He made a couple of key mistakes. For one, he didn’t properly switch the generator off of auto power mode when he cut the power to the floor, so it was running when he shut it off abruptly. That caused—”

“A negative surge,” she said.

“Yeah. How did you know that?”

“My dad,” she said, a smile curling up the corner of one of her shockingly full lips. “He was an electrician. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about what dumb electricians have done that my father had to go fix.”

“Really,” I said.

“Yeah. My dad was the best. People used to drive him out to all kinds of places to do specialty jobs. I used to think I wanted to do it too. Like a family business,” she said.