Jacked (Trent Brothers #1)(28)
He took a few steps until he was close enough to gently stroke my shoulder, sending all sorts of mixed messages into my befuddled brain. “Listen, I know things have been rough between us but I’m serious. If there’s anything you need, don’t be afraid to ask, okay? I can cover a few shifts for you, whatever. Whatever you need.”
What? He chose this moment to be nice? After I spent all that time wishing, crying, hoping he’d just show an ounce of care for me when we were dating, he decides now to play the thoughtful card? Yeah, you know what I need? How about you spontaneously combust or get run over by a beer truck for breaking my heart? Or how about you break up with your evil troll girlfriend, plead at my feet, telling me what a stupid * you’ve been, and then beg me to take you back? Or simply be the kind of man I could wake up next to who would just hold me and let me cry it out instead of being a spineless, chickenshit bastard?
Instead, I just nodded, trying not to break down in tears and/or throat punch him. I didn’t go to medical school and endure four years of grueling residency to cry over death or heartbreaking co-workers with nice asses. I had more important reasons.
“Thanks,” I muttered, taking a step backwards, my silent statement that his hands were no longer free to roam over any part of my body.
His concern seemed awfully touchy-feely. “If you need to take a few days, do it. Your family needs you. Forget about this place and go relax, okay?”
I felt my words stick like a wad of gum in my throat, knowing Randy was not only my tormenting heartache, he was also my competition. “You and I both know that’s impossible.”
Randy scowled at me. “That’s your problem. You always make things more difficult than they need to be, Erin.”
I knew my mouth was agape when I watched him walk backwards while giving me the “that’s the way it is” look.
You son of a…
Of course it was me that was the difficult, confused one in this equation. Silly me for thinking that months and months of sex and sleepovers and leaving his stuff all over my apartment constituted a relationship when the entire time I was nothing more than a casual f*ck buddy to him.
God, he was so aggravating. The urge to clock him with an IV pole was powerful. I balled my hands into fists instead, holding back my daily desire to scream and throw a mini tantrum every time our paths crossed. It would do me no good to lose it. I’d spent enough time sobbing in my pillow, being angry, feeling inadequate, and overanalyzing every moment we had spent together trying to figure out where I went wrong. Where we went wrong. He wasn’t worth it.
Familiar tones chimed through the air, pulling me from my inner turmoil to focus back on an incoming ambulance.
“We’ve got an injured police officer en route,” Todd, one of our male nurses, announced after fielding the emergency call.
“Male, age thirty-two, single laceration to the left palm, BP one thirty over eighty, ETA seven minutes,” he continued, feeding the information to Sarah to input into our computer system.
My heart sank hearing that we had another injured cop coming in. That would be four total in the last five weeks and one of them we lost on the table from a gunshot wound.
Damn, not another one of the good guys.
Somewhere over the years of my residency in the trauma unit I unconsciously started placing patients into two mental categories: those who deserved a trip to the ER and those who most certainly did not.
Junkies, drunk drivers, gang-bangers—when they passed through those double doors, a victim of their own stupidity, I had a hard time feeling sorry for them, even though it was my job to save their lives. Car accidents, injured cops, and most everyone else got placed in the victim of circumstance box.
And now another one of Philly’s finest was joining the good-guy box. Apparently our incoming police officer got the shitty end of something tonight.
“Erin, take the trauma consult,” Doctor Miriam Vonore droned at me, her maroon-framed reading glasses hanging off the edge of her narrow nose as always. I knew she didn’t like me; that much was obvious ever since I started my residency and Randy and I started flirting. She was always too busy wantonly smiling at her little pet Randy and scowling at me to be a decent mentor. I was a cheap little trollop in her eyes—something she made sure to punctuate whenever she could.
She was shorter than I was, with thinning dirty-blonde hair cut in a bob. As if a slightly rounded fifty-two-year-old divorcee had a chance with a young hottie like Randy.
The second Miriam was out of earshot, Sarah was up to no good. “Erin, take the trauma consult,” she parroted, mimicking Miriam’s nasally tones flawlessly.
I couldn’t help but snicker, feeling internally grateful for a moment of humor. “One of these days she’s going to catch you doing that,” I chastised her quietly, making sure not to be overheard.
Sarah grinned madly at me and swiped a loose lock of her dark brown hair over her ear. “Ah, who cares? Your incoming goes in exam room six.”
Todd handed over a file as he hurried by. “Your incoming?”
I nodded, putting all the bullshit behind me once again.
“Patient is alert and stable. Bleeding is controlled with pressure dressing and ice,” Todd continued.
I took my pen out, stifled another yawn, and noted the time in the file: 11:47 p.m.
Sarah peered up from her computer. “Lab results on your patient in nine are up.”