Getting Real (Getting Some #3)(50)

“I know.”

She shakes her head.

“He was going to the store. He’s on a new weightlifting diet and I forgot to pick up chop meat this afternoon.”

“I understand,” I tell her. “I’m so sorry.”

“Wait. Are you—”

She tries to stand, but her knees give out. I catch her before she goes down, holding her up.

“Easy . . .”

Her fingers twist in my coat and she wheezes for breath, like I’ve kicked all the air out of her lungs. She lowers her head and tries to scream but she can’t—only a strangled, suffocating gasp comes out.

When you do this long enough and the years go by, you forget the names. But you never forget their faces. The sounds they make when you tell them. Jagged, incomprehensible sounds filled with horror and grief.

If hell exists . . . I think this is what it sounds like.

I guide her back into the chair but she holds onto me, her eyes desperate and darting.

“Are you sure it’s my Brandon? Are you sure he’s really . . . that he died?”

I don’t look away; I meet her gaze directly—because she needs this.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s Brandon. He died. I’m deeply sorry.”

Her hands fall away and the life goes out of her. She stares, unseeing, at the floor and she won’t hear anything I say now, but I tell her anyway.

“This is Chaplain Bill. He’s going to stay with you, and help you with the next steps.”

She doesn’t answer; she doesn’t blink. Not anymore.

I turn and walk out the door. I don’t stop walking until I’m around the corner at the end of the hallway—reminding myself to breathe.

At my elbow, the resident is on the verge of losing it—her cheeks red, her eyes full.

“Do not fucking cry,” I order, sharp and mean. To snap her back—make her refocus. “Not here, not now.”

She sucks in a shuddering breath, trying.

“I’ve never . . . that was the first time I—”

“Okay.” I nod, guiding her to lean over slightly. “Bend your knees and breathe. Three deep, long breaths. Come on.”

She inhales, slow and shuddering, eyes closed. Then she does it again, shaking her head.

“That poor woman.”

“Don’t think about it.”

“How do I not?” she rasps.

“Picture . . . a safe in your mind. Thick, steel walls and one of those huge locks like the vault at a bank. And you take Ms. Allen and everything you’re feeling and you put it in there—and you shut the door, lock it up. Because we have three other patients waiting. Maybe three other Brandons that you can still help, three more chances to not have that horrific conversation. But you can’t treat them if you fall apart. If you’re distracted and upset and your vision is blurred.”

She nods, inhaling slowly again.

“When you’re home, later,” I tell her. “When you’re in the shower or in bed—that’s when you open the safe. Let yourself feel it—you won’t want to but you need to. Because this job isn’t about saving everyone—if you go in with that as your expectation, your career in emergency medicine is going to be epically short. The job is to keep going . . . knowing you can’t save everyone.”

She stands straighter now, head lifted, breathing steady and eyes clear.

“Okay.”

“You good?” I ask, just to be sure.

“I’m good.”

I take the chart from the wall outside the exam room door.

“Then let’s go.”


*

I stay at the hospital an hour past my shift to catch up on notes and charts. By the time I walk through my front door at 10:30 a.m., a heavy exhaustion has settled deep into my bones. It’s more than just physical. I can barely muster a smile for Rosie when she greets me, her nails tapping the wood floor as she trots over to drop a mangy stuffed turtle at my feet.

But then I take a breath . . . and I’m infused with a deluge of delicious, sugary-scented goodness. The whole house smells fantastic, like a bakery—but in heaven.

I wander toward the kitchen like a damned soul in search of the light.

Violet stands at the stove dipping a wooden spoon into a large heated pot. She’s wearing my gray T-shirt, tied at her stomach, and a pair of my black sweatpants that are huge on her—the waist knotted with a rubber band at her hip to keep them up. Her hair’s in a messy chestnut pile on her head, and though her shape is lost in the mammoth clothes, she still manages to look sexy and adorable.

Standing next to her, Spencer sees me first.

“Dad! We’re making homemade doughnuts!”

Brayden holds one in his hand at the counter, his cheeks puffed out with pastry like a chipmunk.

“They’re soooo good.”

Violet flashes me a smile before setting the spoon down and turning off the stove. “Give those a minute to cool and then you can dip them in the glaze,” she tells Spence.

But as she approaches me, her eyes roaming my face, her smile sinks.

“Bad night?” she asks softly.

It was never Stacey’s fault that she didn’t work in an emergency department. That she couldn’t understand what a bad night meant, no matter how hard she tried sometimes.