lost not one, but two patients in a matter of minutes.
Sophie checked the clock. It had only been twenty-five minutes since all three victims had been brought in. She’d been assigned to Jack Carter first. She’d spent fifteen of those minutes with him. Then five minutes with Aleah before the John Doe flatlined. In the final five minutes, they’d lost both of them.
Time. Sophie had never taken time for granted. She trained hard and worked hard. She spent time with her family and helped them out whenever she could. But this absurd, needless loss of two lives shocked her to her core. Aleah had only been twenty-one. The man was in his late thirties. They both had a lot of life in front of them. They could do anything they wanted to with their time. Laugh. Love. Try to find happiness and joy...
Odd that Sophie would think of happiness at a time like this, but she did. She felt tears fill her eyes as she covered Aleah’s body, but not her face, with the sheet. Her parents would want to come in to see her. Sophie would meet with them and try to comfort them. She hoped she would find the right words to say. Good words. Or maybe no words. Maybe they would just ask her to go away.
Sophie wiped the tears off her cheeks with her fingertips. She wasn’t just crying for this young woman. She was crying for herself. She believed she’d done all she could as part of the team tonight. These were tears of self-pity. They came from a deep and lonely place inside of her. A place she seldom visited and barely acknowledged. She guessed these tears had been trying to form for a long time, but she’d told herself that crying was for weaklings. She was strong. She was able to handle just about anything, including injury, illness and death.
But happiness? That was really tough.
Sophie’s twenties were nearly behind her and she’d done little to grab happiness for herself.
She couldn’t afford to wait any longer. Tonight had shown her how lives could be snatched away in an instant. Oh, she’d begun her self-evaluations and internal makeover, but she’d only stuck the spade into the first few inches of her psyche. She had a lot of digging to do before she’d find treasure.
For the first time, though, she thought she knew what she was looking for.
Happiness.
She just hoped she recognized it when she uncovered it.
JACK WAITED ON teetering legs for some definitive word about Aleah. He’d heard the commotion. He’d heard the second round of instructions for a defibrillator. He’d heard the second heart monitor announce the dreaded flatline bleep, but he couldn’t see around the heads of the doctors and nurses. He watched people going in and racing out. Then suddenly, they all stopped moving and became still.
Aleah was dead.
Jack’s mouth had gone dry and his blood had turned cold. It had been a long time since he’d experienced death that was close to him. Not since his father died. He’d mourned him deeply, but his father had battled cancer for over two years. The family had expected him to die. He’d been prepared.
Jack battled the biting tears and thunder in his chest. He’d liked being a mentor to Aleah. She and Owen were only a decade or so younger than he, but right now, he felt ancient.
All his concerns from earlier in the day came back to him suddenly: his banter with his sister and brother-in-law, his anxiety over the White Sox’s loss to the Yankees. Even the ambitions he’d been mulling over after the seminar seemed trivial compared to what he was facing now. He would give everything he had to save his sweet, unsuspecting assistant from death.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. This shouldn’t have happened. It was a mistake. Some cruel trick of the universe. And it was hitting Jack hard.
He wished he felt stronger because he wanted to do something. He was so confused, and Jack was seldom confused. He prided himself on his ability to stay focused. Responsible. That’s what everyone in his family had called him. He was their rock. He was the leader.
If only he could remember the accident. Maybe he could have prevented it, but the pieces of his memory were as vague as the fog he’d been driving through.
Jack watched as Nate Barzonni shuffled down the hall with a somber face, his hands shoved into the pockets of his surgical scrubs. He moved like a man carrying a cross. Jack knew Nate and Maddie Barzonni both. He was almost a daily customer at Cupcakes and Coffee. Maddie’s brew was legendary and her made-to-order cupcakes and icings were his must-have indulgence.
Jack hobbled to the entry of his bay. A sharp pain made a jagged path up his calf.
His ankle hurt more than he’d anticipated. “Nate, please. What happened?” He had so many questions.
Nate barely glanced at him, giving him a dismissive nod. Then Jack saw the raw pain in Nate’s eyes. He understood.
“Jack, I’m sorry about your assistant. Real sorry. But I have to see her parents. Is that okay?” Nate choked out the words and shook his head sorrowfully. “I can’t...not right now.”
“It’s okay,” Jack replied empathetically.
Nate gave Jack a slight wave and then practically jogged to the ER exit doors.
Jack had never seen Nate like this. How often did a doctor lose a patient? Once a year? Once a month? And Nate had lost two in a matter of minutes. How did a doctor, with years of training and the most up-to-date studies and research, handle something like this? Did they take it personally? Even if there was nothing more they could do, this had to feel like a failure. Did it affect them emotionally?
As far as Jack could tell the rest of the staff went about their work as if nothing had happened. Except for Nate, Jack hadn’t seen one iota of remorse from the other doctor or the nurses. He told himself they had work to do. Serious work. But it still stung.
Jack felt hollow. He glanced at the bed and wondered how he’d make it back under his own steam.
“Mr. Carter,” Sophie addressed him professionally as she rushed toward him. “What are you doing? You’re not supposed to be walking around yet. It’s dangerous. You have to stay in bed.”
She put her hands on his shoulders, and with more strength and force than he’d thought possible, she led him to the bed and pressed him into it. He sat on the edge, refusing to lie down.
“What happened to Aleah?” he asked.
“Cardiac arrest.”
Jack felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Aleah’s heart was young, but that wasn’t enough to keep her alive. He lifted his eyes to Sophie.
She was composed and self-assured. Yeah, she was good. He had to give her that.
He felt hollow, yet his insides burned with the unfairness of it all.
He balled his fist. Flexed it. Balled it again.
She bent over and grabbed his ankles, favoring his sprain, and spun his legs up and onto the cot. “We have to get that CT scan. Dr. Hill is concerned...”
Jack pounded the gurney with his fist.
“Concerned?
