Backup Plan - Emily Goodwin Page 0,14
And why can’t I get her off my mind? I’ve made it a point not to think about Chloe. I haven’t let the vision of her dark auburn hair flash through my mind. I haven’t missed the feel of her fingers sweeping against mine, wanting to grab my hand but too shy to link our fingers together.
I haven’t let myself think about the pale orange and red freckles that dot Chloe’s cheeks when she’s in the sun too long, how her hair curls around her face at the base of her neck when it’s hot outside, or how good she looked in a bikini the summer of her senior year. She visited her grandparents the first half of the summer and came back a cup size bigger, but I wasn’t distracted with her breasts or her hourglass figure. Nope. Not at all.
Just like how she hasn’t haunted me over the years, despite me refusing to believe in ghosts. Chloe is always there, in the back of my mind. Taunting. Teasing. Reminding me how much I fucked up.
“Sam?” Mom asks, in a tone that lets me know she’s called my name before. We’re all seated in the formal dining room, the large table and chairs rarely used unless we’re all here together. We were never allowed in here as kids, with Mom saying she wanted at least one nice, clean room in the house when people came over. The dining room is one of the first rooms you see when you walk in the house, opposite a small sitting room. The day Mom ordered ivory-colored couches and a pale pink area rug was the day Jacob, Mason, and I were banned from going in it.
“Yeah?” I ask, realizing my fork is hovering in the air, a bite of grilled chicken halfway between the plate and my mouth. I can feel everyone exchange glances, aware I wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to whatever was being said.
“Are you all right, honey?” Mom goes on.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I shove the chicken into my mouth, buying some time before I have to speak again.
“Mason said he put potato flakes in his bloody cut,” Rory says slowly, brows pinched together. “Like the ones from the box.”
“Why?” I ask, still chewing my chicken.
“I looked it up online and it said it would stop the bleeding.” Mason holds out his arm, showing off a nasty-looking scar on the inside of his left arm. I know enough from working in trauma to recognize a knife wound when I see one.
“Please tell me you’re joking.” I set my fork down and reach for my glass of water.
“It worked.” Mason runs a finger over the dark line on his arm.
“And it didn’t get infected?” I ask incredulously.
“I didn’t say that.” Mason raises his eyebrows and we laugh.
“You know you could have—”
“Called, yes, I know,” Mason huffs.
“Even I can get you antibiotics,” Jacob goes on. “My patients are animals, so you’d fit right in.”
“Hilarious,” Mason spits, and Rory looks at me, silently laughing. It’s a bit of a running joke between the four of us. Rory is a nurse, I’m an anesthesiologist, and Jacob is a vet. Mason is the only one of us who didn’t go into medicine, and we love to give him hell over it.
“Got any good OR stories?” I ask Rory, winking. With us being the only two in human medicine, and both working primarily in operating room settings, it’s easy for us to dominate the conversation with our most recent war story, dealing with difficult patients or going into the very real topic of losing patients, which is something you’re never quite ready for, no matter how much they prep you for it in school.
When I was working general surgery, we had more success stories than not, but now that I’m in trauma, our “success stories” might mean someone pulling through but with life-changing injuries that require months if not years of therapy to get back to just a slice of normalcy.
“Oh, I do!” Rory cuts into her chicken, laughing at the thought of whatever she’s about to tell us. “It was our first scheduled surgery of the day, so we had the guy come in at five AM. He showed up half an hour late and smelled like alcohol so strong I felt drunk just standing next to him. He had dried vomit on his chin and shirt, and when we asked if he’d been drinking, he flat-out denied it. Then his wife