Needed By The Highlander - Rebecca Preston Page 0,159

ravages of a car crash, but Donald Nightingale, of sunny northern California, flatlined at eleven-thirty, after half a day’s worth of surgeries, blood transfusions and plasma bags. Audrina didn’t cry much anymore after working in the trauma center. But there were a few patients who tugged at her heartstrings. Donald would be one of them.

“Look at the pictures. Look at the pictures,” Audrina chanted to herself. She used them as a platform to spring her mind into more pleasant thoughts before she drifted off to sleep. Audrina had been fascinated with the stories and lore of her ancestry when her grandfather used to sit her on his knee and recount tales of his youth, roaming the Highlands of Scotland. That was before a potato famine reached his homeland and forced his family to immigrate to the United States. Audrina would spend hours, daydreaming as she roamed the redwoods behind the house, pretending the tall trees were the ancient forests of Scotland. She knew now that Scotland was much greener, and the forests were made of tall oaks, and rowan trees, beech and pine and ash. But she had promised herself she would visit and discover it for herself someday.

That was all a couple of decades ago, when Audrina had been just seven. After high school, she had gone on to nursing school, and now was faced with the ever-increasing violence of the San Francisco Community Hospital that came through the doors. The timing had just never felt right. There was always one more case to oversee, or one more patient to look after and successfully care for until they walked out the door of their own volition, and not in a body bag or stretcher.

Audrina certainly had the money saved for the trip, but she always felt there was something holding her back. Some small fear she had that there was something Grandfather neglected to tell her about the ancient folklore. Audrina never quite made the jump to buy the plane ticket or book the hotels. She’d never really been sure why, but as she laid there, thinking about all of the never did’s that young Donald was never going to experience, she thought, “Why am I holding back? I have no solid reason, no proof that there is anything in Scotland I should be afraid of.”

“I’m going to request the time off tomorrow and start booking tickets after my trip to the museum,” she vowed out loud.

There was no one to hear her proclamation, she realized. There wasn’t anyone in her life that she could tell really. “I guess that makes it kind of sad, maybe even a little pathetic. Sure, I have my co-workers, but they would all say, “Finally, you are taking a vacation,” when I tell them,” Audrina thought.

Audrina had become a trauma nurse after Mom had suffered the same fate as little Donald. She winced as the memories of that day entered her mind. It had been much like Donald’s parents rushing into the hospital. The only difference between her grandfather being informed, and Mrs. Nightingale’s heart-wrenching screams, had been significantly different, but as equally as devastating. That’s when Grandfather had taken her in. She didn’t know who her dad was, and it never occurred to her to go looking for him. She knew that she was loved when Grandfather took her, a scared little girl, home that night. He had cared for her and she didn’t need anyone else. Anyone, that was, except her mom, but she wasn’t coming back. When Grandfather had passed away she was twenty-one, she was left with no one. She hadn’t even bothered getting a pet. Audrina was never home because she worked so much. She’d always felt like it was her duty to save people because, well, she couldn’t save her mom back then.

Audrina tried to roll over onto her side. She was disgusted with herself that she was caught up in her own head and wallowing in self-pity. Her vow was just that and she was sticking to it. She realized, as she flipped back onto her back, that she had never been able to fall asleep unless she was looking up at her pictures. Grandfather had printed them for her the week that Mom had passed. He wanted her to have something to think about, other than the sadness of losing her mom.

As Audrina’s eyes began to flutter closed, and she emptied her mind save for thoughts of faraway lands and lost familial ties, something, perhaps