Toronto was more important to her than him.
Oh, well. He hadn’t been too crushed when it had ended. It had been his last girlfriend who had crushed him. The woman he’d planned to marry. The woman who’d torn his heart in half, leaving his soul as battered and bruised as the outside of him was.
He wouldn’t think of Cheryl. He wouldn’t think of the one woman he ever thought of settling down with. The woman who was set to become his air paramedic partner once Ambrose moved away.
Thinking about Cheryl just reminded him why he didn’t fly any longer and why he’d sworn off women and relationships completely. And he especially didn’t want a relationship with another paramedic. The last time he’d done that, it hadn’t worked out well at all.
“Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Iqaluit Centre. This is Medic Air 1254. We have engine failure. I repeat, engine failure. We are making a forced landing twenty kilometers north. Four thousand feet descending, heading one-eighty.”
Beads of sweat broke across his brow.
“Atavik, seriously, you look like you’re going to be sick.” Samantha was shaking her head.
George gave her a half-smile. “Sorry.” He stacked his papers and stood up, placing them in Samantha’s outstretched hand.
“You okay there?”
“Fine.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you throwing up in here.”
“I’m fine. Really,” he snapped. He didn’t need her concern and he didn’t want it. He was here to do a job.
Samantha cocked a finely arched brow. He knew she didn’t believe him. “Okay. Then let’s hit the road. Are you ready for that?”
Only he wasn’t. He glanced covetously at the other trainees who had two mentors. Mentors who were male and were no temptation for him whatsoever. If there was someone else in the ambulance with them, then that person would be a buffer.
He didn’t want to be tempted. He had to get a hold on this.
“So, are you ready?” Samantha asked again.
“Totally.”
“Great!”
She looked a little gleeful about the prospect of taking him out. Oh, God. What did she have planned?
“Well, let me just file this away and we’ll head out.” She disappeared into an office and returned a minute later. “We’re going to be riding in ambulance seven.”
“Is it a good ambulance?” he asked, following her out to the garage.
George seriously doubted it, just by her eagerness.
She grinned. “You’ll see.”
“You’re out to torture me, aren’t you?” he mumbled under his breath, but she heard it because she was opening her mouth to say something when the ambulance beside the one they were heading for lit up, sirens blaring.
“Yo, shake a leg. There’s a pile-up on Highway 401,” someone shouted over the din.
“Come on, newbie.” Samantha jogged toward the ambulance. “Time to see what you’re made of.”
George swallowed the anxious lump in his throat and followed Samantha into the front of the ambulance. When the doors were shut she started the engine and they headed out of the garage at breakneck speed.
“Flip that switch for me,” she said, pointing to a red switch on the dash.
George flipped it up and the lights and sirens came on.
It was pretty awesome. His plane didn’t have a siren or lights.
“You okay, Atavik?” Samantha asked again, shouting over the sirens.
“Fine.”
Which was a lie.
He’d totally zoned out. He wasn’t sure if it was the rocking motion of the ambulance as they raced along the road to the crash scene or if it was the fact he was a bit nervous about what a pile-up would bring.
He’d never been in the thick of it. There weren’t large traffic accidents in Nunavut.
When he’d first come south the four hundred series of highways had been intimidating to him. In fact, London on the whole was a bit scary, though Charlotte’s husband Quinn had got him situated and settled when he’d arrived.
George knew how to drive. He just preferred back roads. Although Quinn had eased him into city life and driving regularly, highways were still sketchy.
The blare of the siren made his ears hurt. He wasn’t used to the sound. He didn’t know if he’d ever get used to the sounds of the city. Especially riding in the front of an ambulance racing through city streets.
His plane had been silent.
Until it hadn’t been.
Don’t think about it.
George gave his best grin to Samantha and swiped the back of his arm across his forehead to mop up the sweat.
“Are you really okay?” she asked. “I don’t want you to get sick on your first day.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Hopefully not my driving?”
Yes, you’re a menace, he wanted to say. To tease her. But he restrained himself.
“I’m fine,” he snapped, and then immediately regretted sniping at her.
“Arrival on scene in five minutes. Pretty big pile-up on the 401.”
George took a calming breath.
You’ve done this before. Countless times. Even if not on a grand scale like this.
Still, the idea of being a paramedic in a big city made him nervous. But he couldn’t go back to Cape Recluse. After the crash the army had opened a base there, thus setting up a permanent air ambulance flight through Health Air.
His job was redundant.
Was he stupid to come down to southern Ontario and try something as alien to him as being a paramedic in heavy city traffic? Could he really still cling to his dream of saving lives if he couldn’t fly?
He was older than the other students.
He was thirty-three.
What am I doing?
He was hoping that receiving this training would help him find the passion for saving lives again. That rush he used to feel before his accident.
Now he just went through the motions. It was an act that he did well,
