I looked back at him and sighed. “You’re going to have some gnarly scars, buddy.” They’d started the skin grafts for the road rash on his arm. “But you’ll get to do everything you planned to do with your life. One of us is going to get the girl. I’ll help you any way I can. Even if I have to wheel your ass to the altar.”
I could picture his smile. With any luck I’d see it in a few hours.
A knock on the door frame turned me around in my chair.
“Hey, cutie.” Valerie came into the room for her vitals check. She turned the lights up, and I stood and stretched.
As if sleeping in a chair wasn’t hard enough, the activity every two hours was the final kicker. I wouldn’t call anything I did on these overnight shifts sleeping. Maybe napping, but not sleeping. Every two hours Brandon was moved. They checked his airways, changed out bags, looked at his vitals. I don’t know how Sloan was handling doing this almost nightly for the last three weeks.
Sloan was a good woman. I’d always liked her, but now she’d earned my respect, and I was grateful Brandon and Kristen had her.
“Did you decide what day you want to bring the kids to the station?” I asked Valerie, yawning.
She cycled the blood pressure cuff on Brandon’s arm and smiled. “I’m thinking Tuesday. You on shift Tuesday?”
“Yup.”
She wrote down some notes on Brandon’s chart and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “Any updates with your lady friend?”
I laughed a little. “No.”
The whole nursing staff knew about my depressing love life. I’d gotten hit on a few too many times by some of the younger nurses. I couldn’t claim to have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t married, so it was either “I’m gay” or “I’m in love with that girl over there.”
I’d gone with the latter, and now I wished I’d said I was gay.
They didn’t know why Kristen wouldn’t date me, just that she wouldn’t. It had turned into the favorite topic of the ICU. A real-life episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I rarely got through a Brandon visit without it coming up.
The drama escalated when Kristen had been hit on by the nurses’ favorite single orthopedic surgeon. According to the nurses’ gossip circuit, Kristen told him to go fuck himself.
And apparently she’d actually said, “Go fuck yourself.”
After that everyone was sure she was holding out for me.
Only I knew better.
Valerie checked Brandon’s temperature. “You know, I told that girl myself she’s nuts. You know what she said to me?”
I arched an eyebrow. “What?”
“She said, ‘Just because a man gives you the best sex of your life doesn’t mean you need to date his ass.’ Lawd, I just about died,” she snickered.
I snorted. Yup, that sounded like Kristen.
Well, at least I’d done something right.
Valerie chuckled to herself while she checked Brandon’s pulse. “He’s coming out tomorrow. I bet you’re all getting pretty excited.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “This has been a really tough few weeks.”
“He’s gonna do great.”
She changed out the bag on his IV drip. Then she pulled out a small light from her breast pocket, clicked it on, and opened his right eye. “You know, a lot of the nurses are gonna miss the steady stream of cute firemen coming through he—”
She paused.
She opened his other eye and shone the light into his pupil. She cleared her throat as she clicked the light off and slipped it back in her pocket. “We sure are going to miss you guys.” She picked up his chart.
She didn’t look at me. Her tone changed. Her body changed. I’d done that change myself on the scene of a call.
Something is wrong.
“What is it?”
She didn’t answer me.
I pulled out my cell phone and turned on the flashlight. I leaned over Brandon and opened his eye while Valerie watched me wordlessly.
My breath caught in my throat. “No. No! ”
I looked at the other eye, and my hands started to shake. I stumbled back from the bed and knocked into my chair, dropping my cell phone to the floor with a clatter.
Valerie looked at me, and we exchanged a moment of understanding.
His pupils were blown.
They were large black marbles in his eyes.
THIRTY-SIX
Kristen
When the phone rang, I groped for it on the nightstand. It was the hospital. And it was also 3:57 in the morning. I brushed the hair off my forehead and sat up. “Hello?”