Mount Mercy

I shoved her aside. And felt it slash into the side of my neck. Fuck!

For a few seconds, everyone just stood there, shell-shocked. Then I started giving orders. We gave the patient something for the pain. Then we held him down while Maggie carefully cut the wire away from his leg. Wearing heavy gloves, she finally managed to get the whole bloody coil of it off him and well away from where we were working.

Taylor rushed over to me and started examining my neck. I tried to wave her away, but she shook her head. I glanced down at my scrubs: I was dripping blood. Oh. I held still.

“It’s deep and messy,” she said, her voice tight. “But it missed your jugular.”

“How much by?”

“You don’t want to know.”” She paused and stared up at me. “Thank you,” she said at last. She was still breathing a little fast, still imagining how the wire would have slashed across her eyes, her cheeks. “It should have been—”

I put my hands gently on her shoulders. “A scar looks better on a guy,” I told her firmly.

Our eyes met and she calmed a little. We nodded to each other. We had each other’s backs.

“It’s going to need stitches,” she told me, taping a pad of gauze over it.

“Him first,” I said, nodding towards the guy we were working on.

With the wire out of the way, we managed to stem the bleeding and his pressure slowly recovered. We sutured the wounds and dressed them, then swaddled his leg in bandages. He’d be off his feet for a while, but he should make a full recovery.

I went over to check on Beckett. She’d got the head injury guy breathing on his own, but he was still unconscious. Just as I arrived, she finished giving orders for his medication and the nurses wheeled him off to the intensive care area. I watched Beckett slowly surface from the headlong adrenaline rush she’d been in. She blinked at the ER as if she’d forgotten where she was.

And then she just ran. She bolted across the room, dodged around a startled Taylor and disappeared into the locker room.

And I ran right after her.

21

Amy

I RAN OVER to the sinks and stood there gripping the porcelain. I was physically shaking, skin clammy with cold sweat. I ducked low, unsure if I was going to throw up, and sucked in air in shuddering gulps.

When I glanced up at the mirror again, Corrigan was standing behind me.

I shook my head at him in the mirror. “I can’t do this.” My voice was a pleading rasp.

He moved closer, but I didn’t turn around. “What are you talking about? You did great.”

“I froze! That guy nearly died!”

“But he didn’t. You saved him.”

Didn’t he get it? I wasn’t like him! “I was terrified!”

He moved even closer. Now I could feel the presence of him behind me, his heat against my back. “You were scared but you did it anyway. Definition of bravery.”

I started shaking my head. Strong hands on my shoulders twisted me around and then he was there, not just in the mirror, but real, looming and warm and solid right in front of me, seeing me at my most vulnerable. “I just wanted to stay up there!” I blurted. “Where it’s quiet and safe and not….”

“Chaos?” he murmured.

I nodded.

He placed his hand on my damp cheek and I marvelled at how big those palms were. He looked so rooted, so right, here, a colossus carved from granite to especially fit the ER, with his strength and his confidence and his big, booming voice. And I was just a dormouse, trying to scurry back upstairs.

I knew he was going to try to convince me. My mind was racing non-stop, a billion reasons and arguments I could throw at him. But he sidestepped it all because he didn’t use words. He just gazed steadily down at me and what I saw in his eyes short-circuited my panic.

He believed I did belong down here. He believed enough for the both of us.

My chest filled, buoying me up above the fear. And as I calmed, I realized how quiet it was. We were alone in the locker room... again. I swallowed. I saw his chest fill as he too remembered the nearly-kiss. It was happening again, that thrumming, breathless whirl that pushed all other thoughts from my head. His eyes fell to my lips. His hand gripped my cheek….

He leaned into me and I tilted my head way back so that I could meet his eyes.

“I can’t resist you,” he said. Four little shockwaves of silver-edged air that reverberated into my brain and set off a nuclear explosion as their meaning sunk in. Frenzied disbelief and arguments and what if?s all swept away by an expanding blast wave of hot emotion. I had to say something, but I couldn’t form words. So I just put my hand on top of the hand that gripped my cheek... and pressed it there.