Within These Walls (Within These Walls #1)(5)

Megan had never visited cardiology. Glimpses of Megan’s parents pleading with me as they’d mentioned her heart flashed before my eyes, but I pushed back the painful memory. After the ER, she’d spent a few short days in the ICU following several unsuccessful surgeries to repair the damage to her brain, but like a speeding bullet to the heart, the wounds had been irreversible and fatal. Just like everything else.

As I approached the nurses’ station, my slight hesitation dissipated at the sight of Dr. Marcus Hale. Dr. Marcus, as he liked to be called, was a cardiologist I’d known since my janitorial days. He wasn’t like most of the other doctors. He was laid-back without the slightest hint of snobbery. He always arrived for his shifts in sandy board shorts, and his hair would still be wet from surfing. He’d been trying for years now to get me on a board.

The first time I’d met him was late at night when I was called up to clean a restroom. A patient he had been treating had gotten ill. When I’d arrived, I had immediately gotten to work, cleaning up something that should not be described, while they had been busy talking in the room. I’d finished up around the same time as Dr. Marcus, and we’d exited the room together.

He’d let out an exasperated sigh and turned to me. “You want to get a cup of coffee? I’m beat.”

I’d thought he was joking. I had been a damn janitor, and he was a cardiologist, who probably made more sneezing than I had in an entire year.

He hadn’t been kidding though. Together, we’d walked to the cafeteria and talked over coffee and crappy pastries. It had become a tradition of ours ever since then.

“Hey, Dr. Marcus,” I greeted, pulling his attention away from the computer screen.

“Hey, Jude. What brings you over to these parts?”

“My new digs. I was relocated,” I answered.

His eyebrow rose in curiosity. “Really? Well, that’s the best news I’ve had all night. Good to have you on board.”

I looked around and immediately noticed an old man shuffling down the hall. I inwardly groaned. Then, I felt a hard pat on my back.

“Maybe you’ll like it here better.”

His encouragement wasn’t helping the situation.

I gave him a dubious look.

His rich laughter filled the air. “Okay, maybe not, but you never know. This could be exactly where you are meant to be.”

After meeting the night-shift head nurse, who reminded me a bit of Nurse Ratched, I made my first round on my new floor. I assisted nurses, changed sheets, answered call buttons from patients, and completed all the other duties I’d performed a million times. The job wasn’t different just because I had been placed somewhere else. Things were just a bit slower. The nurses moved at a leisurely pace here. The rushed lifestyle of the ER was gone and had been replaced with something much more low-key.

This kind of blows.

The slow pace did offer me a chance to meet some interesting characters throughout the evening. That was one thing that differed from the ER. There hadn’t been much of an opportunity for social interaction with ER patients when they were all temporary. They would either be shipped out or moved to somewhere else in the hospital. In the cardiology department, however, the patients usually stayed for a while.

The guy in room 305 was recovering from a triple bypass, and as soon as I entered his room, I knew he had a story or two to tell. Books filled the small space. Leather-bound novels, art books, and books about nearly anything else I could imagine were piled high on almost every hard surface.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Like a naked woman covered in silk, you just want to reach out and touch it, devour it and own it,” the man said with a rich deep voice that hinted at his Latin heritage.

Um…okay…

I wasn’t exactly sure how to react to that, so I did my usual noncommittal head nod and carried on. I checked his vitals while trying not to make direct eye contact that could encourage him to talk more.

He smirked slightly at my obvious avoidance, and his chest rose in silent laughter. “I’m Nash,” he said.

“Jude,” I replied quickly.

His eyes assessed me, taking note of my sandy-blond hair that was in desperate need of a haircut and the tattoos that scrolled across my arms and biceps under the sleeves of my shirt. I was used to this routine. I’d been stared at and brazenly gawked over ever since I started inking my skin. I’d ditched the perfect upper-class appearance I’d been sporting since birth for something a bit rougher.

I was no longer the man I had been before. When Megan had died, I’d left my family and the life I was supposed to have. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t want to see the old Jude, so I’d changed everything about myself. I’d bought a home gym, and when I wasn’t at the hospital, I would lift weights, run in the early morning, and work on making sure I never saw what I once had been when I arrived here so long ago.

“You’re not much of a talker, are you?” Nash said, cutting through all the garbage clogging my brain.

“Not really,” I answered honestly.

“That’s all right. I talk enough for two people.”

And he did. Within twenty minutes, I knew more about Nash than I did my own mother. A retired hippie, Nash had spent his early years living in communes up and down the West Coast.

As he said, “I was loving life and breathing it all in.”