Off Limits (Secrets Kept 1)

Being with Ryder felt like the most natural thing in the world, and I couldn’t wrap my brain around it—how I’d never seen it before, how I’d never felt anything for him before. Maybe because I’d never been that close to him specifically, or maybe because my brain and heart didn’t even consider it because he was with my sister, but he was like someone I’d known all my life yet a completely new person too.

And I wanted him. Christ, did I want him, now more than ever. But we’d been good at staying only friends. We didn’t talk about our attraction anymore. We hadn’t touched intimately outside of that press of my lips to his forehead. We were being good, but damn, did I want to be bad with him.

Today at the hospital, we were on call for trauma, so it’d been a crazy shift all the way around, but now there was only an hour left before I clocked out for the day. Later tonight, I’d have to go to my parents’ house for a small get-together for my dad’s birthday, and as shitty of a son as that made me, I didn’t want to go.

“Doc Hutch,” one of the techs called out. I was pretty lax with everyone, so most staff called me Doc Hutch. “Trauma five minutes out. MVA, four patients, none critical from EMTs’ assessments.” She listed some of the injuries they’d told her so we could prepare.

“Got it.” I immediately went into trauma mode. It was hard to explain the way my body went both calm and hyped up. My focus sharpened, the seriousness of the situation making my pulse skyrocket.

Announcements were made overhead as the trauma team entered the ED, some already dressed in their PPE while I tugged mine on. As the ED physician, I would be the assessment doctor, so I preordered trauma panels for tests, just before the first EMS arrived.

“Fifty-eight-year-old female, head injury with loss of consciousness…” The EMTs rattled off stats and facts as the team followed them to the room and I began my assessment. Each part of her I examined, I called out my findings while trauma nurses got in IVs and took vitals.

“Hi. Can you hear me?” I asked when her eyes fluttered. She tried to speak but couldn’t, then nodded as best as she could in the stabilizing collar.

“I’m Dr. Hutchinson. We’re going to take real good care of you.” The words sounded so empty, but they were true. In some ways, I hated that there were certain things I said to all of them, as if that meant they weren’t personal, as if I saw them as a stat instead of a human being. When I’d gone into medicine, I’d sworn to myself I’d never lose my heart. If I did, it was time I found something else to be doing. Every patient I saw was someone’s friend, parent, or spouse. Their sibling or cousin or their favorite person in the world. They were more than a random patient. They were loved and deserved to live, and it was my job to help make sure that happened. “I need X-ray,” I called out after deciding she was stable. “Get neuro in here too and—”

“Dr. Hutch!” someone called from the other room. “We have a code!”

I ran toward bed three, where there were other members of the trauma team with the patient, our singular focus on obtaining an airway.

Working with me, there was one nurse on either side of the man, gaining IV access, blood samples, and administering medication. Suddenly, the vitals monitor alarmed, making my eyes snap toward it.

“V-fib. Defibrillator.”

“Right here!” a nurse called out, pushing the crash cart in.

I grabbed hold of it, and as the main triangle of providers, the two nurses and I began alternating between chest compressions, defibrillating, and breathing for the patient.

“Again!” I called out when there was still no heart rhythm detected after the first two shocks. “Clear!”

It was my job to make the calls, to make the right decisions, to provide the right feedback, and oversee everyone’s actions.

It was on me if things didn’t go right.

I tried so damn hard, over and over and over again.

But I wasn’t good enough, and we lost him.

I sat naked on the side of my bed, my leg bouncing up and down. The shower ran in my en suite. It had been going for so long, the water was likely cold, and I hadn’t gotten in yet, wasn’t able to make myself move.

Breathe.

I took a couple of deep breaths.

What could I have done differently?

What had I done wrong?

His family…his friends… I’d let them down. I’d lost him.

I gave myself five more minutes before I found a way to do what had to be done. Buried it, pretended it wasn’t there. Then I stood and went for the shower.