Mount Mercy

My mouth opened and closed silently. I could feel the tears in my eyes: the pain radiating off him was so immense it soaked through me, stealing my words. I’d done enough damage, I wasn’t going to ask how. But he must have seen the question on my face.

“They were murdered,” he said.

Dealing with death is part of my job. But no matter how hard it is, that sort of death can be broken down with logic. It’s lifestyle and disease and age, surgical complications, even mistakes. Murder?! That was something that happened in books and movies. Losing someone I could conceive of. Having them taken from you? Not just his wife, but his daughter, too?

I threw my arms around him and clutched him as tight as I could. The emotion was a hot swell of pressure inside me. I couldn’t form it into words so I kept my jaw clamped shut and it leaked out as tears. How could they, kept going through my head. How could anyone do that to this man?

He rubbed my back, gently trying to soothe me. But that was the wrong way around, I needed to be soothing him! I clung to him as if I could draw the poison from him if I only pressed myself close enough. I’m here, I kept thinking. I’m here now. I didn’t care that it was ridiculous, that he was the strong one who’d traveled the world and took everything in his stride and I was the one who usually hid away in the OR. I needed to help my man.

When I finally pushed back and looked up into his face, I shook my head in disbelief. “How do you cope?” I asked.

He stared right back at me. “I don’t.”

That didn’t make any sense to me because obviously he was coping, he’d filled the years since with women and travel. I just hugged him close again and, wrapped together, we eventually dozed.

I woke about an hour later. It was still dark, but something was different: I couldn’t figure out what, at first. Then I got it: the wind wasn’t howling. When I looked outside, the snow had stopped.

I realized he was awake, too. “We should try the engine again,” he said. I nodded dumbly as he pulled on his scrubs. I was still shell-shocked by what he’d told me, but I was taking my cues from him: we’d talk about it when and if he wanted to. Part of me was glad of the change of subject. I needed some time just to process.

He climbed into the front and tried the engine. It grumbled twice, then caught. He threw a grin at me over his shoulder. “I think we thawed it out.”

I blushed, remembering, and struggled into my own scrubs. Climbing into the passenger seat beside him, my mind was racing. Even without what he’d told me about his family, this would be an awkward moment. What now? Were we... together? What if that had just been a one-night stand for him after all? What if—

He grabbed me under the arms and pulled me into his lap. Before I knew what was happening, his lips were coming down on mine. I opened under him and it became a deep, slow kiss, full of reassurance and love. When he broke it, he looked down into my eyes. “Okay?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm,” I nodded breathlessly.

He pushed a lock of hair back from my face. His eyes were solemn... and determined. Acknowledging that making this work would be hard. Telling me he was damn well going to try.

We set off down the hill, crunching through thick snow. It took us a full hour to make it back to the hospital, but, when we did, Taylor and Krista met us at the door.

“Sophie’s going to be fine,” Krista told us, her eyes on Corrigan. “No other traumas came in. It’s been quiet. I even grabbed a nap.”

I let out a long sigh of relief and hugged her. “Thank you for holding the fort.”

Krista and Taylor high-fived, good friends already. “Meh,” said Krista. “This doctorin’ ain’t so hard.”

I’d always thought of the ER as cold and drafty but after the long walk through the snow, going inside was like climbing into a warm bath. Maggie was balanced precariously at the very top of a stepladder, reaching up into the ceiling space to fix a light, and Earl was watching her from across the room, twisting his hat in his hands. I gave him a look: tell her! He shook his head.

Taylor took Corrigan off to check on the critical patients. Krista pulled me aside the second they were out of earshot. “You two were out there a suspiciously long time.”

I started to tell her she was wrong... and then remembered that I couldn’t, for once, and turned scarlet. Krista’s jaw dropped. We joke about my non-existent sex life so often, something actually happening hadn’t occurred to her. “You didn’t!”