“When did you become such a bitch?”
“I’ve always been a bitch,” I said. “You always seemed to like it before.”
I flashed him a huge smile before he moved away from me. “You’ve changed.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I haven’t. And neither have you. Now excuse me, please. I gotta go find a different seat, one away from a creep, ideally.”
He winced. I could tell I’d hurt his feelings, but I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t care about him at all, and it didn’t care that he was clearly hurt.
He hadn’t cared about me, so I wasn’t going to care about him and his feelings. No matter how much it felt like it was wrong not to care.
CHAPTER NINE
2019
I threw myself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, pressing my phone against my face. It was early in the morning and I was beat, but being tired didn’t mean I didn’t want to speak to my best friend.
Cam’s voice was helping calm me down slightly, and as she told me about what was going on in her life, I managed to slow down my breathing. It wasn’t until a few seconds after she was done speaking that I realized I wasn’t actually saying anything.
That neither one of us was.
“Okay,” she said. “So what are you keeping from me?”
I sighed. “I’m not keeping anything from you.”
“And I’m the queen of England,” she replied. “And I order you to tell me the fuckin’ truth.”
“It’s just—I don’t even know where to start,” I replied. “Do you really want to hear about it?”
“No, I asked you about it to be polite,” she said. I could hear the eyeroll in her voice. “Seriously. Will you tell me what’s happening?”
“I—okay, do you remember that patient who came in with the knife sticking out of his arm?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Hard to forget knife-in-your-arm guy.”
“Okay, well, knife hottie was my high school boyfriend,” I said after a bit.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait, wait. He’s the high school boyfriend? The one who was a giant dick?”
I swallowed. “Yes. And then he went to the clinic a few days later.”
“Oh,” she said. “So how are you doing with it? Considering you’re, you know, never attracted to your patients.”
I groaned, turning over on the bed. “I don’t know, dude,” I said. “It’s like, I’m still angry, but he actually apologized.”
“He did?” she asked. She sounded surprised.
“I know,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Did you accept his apology?”
I thought for a few seconds. “No,” I said. “All I did was walk away.”
“Did you say anything at all?”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t know,” I said. “I was like, okay, and then I walked back into the clinic.”
“And you didn’t say anything at all?”
“I just didn’t know what to say,” I replied. “Like, I didn’t think that he was going to be upset or anything.”
“Did you care?”
I thought for a few seconds. “Yeah,” I said. “I shouldn’t have. But I know that I did a little.”
“So maybe you do forgive him. Deep down.”
I groaned. “I don’t know if I want to forgive him. He was such a dick.”
“He was. But he was also a kid. Maybe he’s changed.”
I nodded and sat up. “I realize now that maybe he has, but like, it might not be a good thing. He showed up with a stab wound on his arm and then checked himself out of the hospital without even taking medical advice,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t change in a good way.”
“Right,” she replied. “Or maybe now he’s a cool badass who is ready to put his pride and life on the line to win you over.”
I laughed. “He shouldn’t do that,” I said. “That’s irresponsible.”
“It is. And also, kinda sexy, right?”
“You’re the worst, Cam,” I said. “I should get some sleep. I’ll see you tonight?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight.”
I hung up and stared at the fan above me, on the ceiling, going around and around over and over again. I felt it put me to sleep, and finally, I drifted off and didn’t think about Jody Banks again.
At least not until I woke up again, and before I went to the hospital again, where I immediately thought of him again.
This whole thing was getting really annoying, I thought as I was getting ready to go to work.
I expected the night to be quiet, but there was no way to tell. There was no way to know how a night was going to go just from the people who were in the emergency room when I first got in. They were rarely a good indication of how the night was going to go.
It had been a quiet night, for the most part, until about two in the morning. That was when things usually started to get difficult in the ER on Friday night. Everyone who was out partying and didn’t have a designated driver or had just gone over their limit came into the ER around that time.
It was also the time when I started to feel tired. It wasn’t convenient, but I didn’t mind. I was there to help save people so my comfort didn’t seem
