The Feel Good Factor(59)

I squint, cycling back more than a decade. If memory serves, my strategy failed. I didn’t raise my score at all on the second sitting of the test.

“But that’s not what I’m doing now,” I protest. “I’m simply trying to . . .”

I don’t finish the thought because a messy stew of emotion wells up in my chest. Regret tinged with disappointment, mixed with a deep longing for that man—feelings that brew and simmer and threaten to boil over.

I can’t contain them much longer. I point to the studio, like I’m going to head back in. “I’m just going to . . .”

But the words come out choked, as if there are pebbles in my mouth.

“Perri,” Arden says softly, grabbing my wrist. “Are we really doing this? I hate morning exercise, but I love you more. I will stay if that’s what you want. But we can also go somewhere and talk. You know, talk.” Her eyes hook with mine, and hers are soft, full of compassion. “Talk is that thing you do with your best friends.”

She looks at me with such love, such unconditional loyalty, that I can’t keep it together anymore. I burst into tears in the studio.

All I want is to talk to them.

All I want is to share my feelings.

And because they’re the best friends I’ve ever known—the best friends anyone has had in the entire history of the world—they usher me out of there before I make a complete fool of myself in front of the ladies in the class.





33





Derek





It just motherfucking figures that after the last twenty-four hours I’d draw another shitty hand for the overnight shift First, we’re dispatched shortly after midnight to a rural area after a house fire. The fire department is already on scene.

We arrive too late, and I feel so goddamn helpless. A candle left burning caused the fire, and the man is dead. Next, a motor vehicle collision twenty miles away steals our attention. Hunter and I turn on the sirens, and when we arrive, the cars are tangled together in a metal mess. We hightail it to the hospital and arrive in the nick of time, rushing the most critical patient into the ER.

Please let us help this one.

“I hope we got him there fast enough,” I mutter as we head to the van after handing off to the docs and nurses. “I’d like to do some good rather than keep coming up short.”

“I hear you, bro. I couldn’t drive much faster. I’ll say a prayer that it was fast enough.”

But will it be?

That’s the question that hangs over me today. Is anything enough? Is there anything I could have done differently with Perri? Anything I could have said the other night to change the course of that wretched conversation? Our talk was like a plane running out of fuel, sputtering from the sky and crash-landing in a charred heap.

I’ve no clue if there was a different button I could have pressed, a different route I could have taken.

As we continue through the night, I hit replay for the fiftieth time on our talk. But still I have no answer.





*



With darkness still blanketing the sky, we respond to a call from a well-to-do home. A woman’s boyfriend rings 911, saying he fears she’s having a heart attack. She’s young and healthy. Thirty-six. Jodie’s age. “Most likely a panic attack,” I say as we drive, hoping desperately that’s all it is.

“Definitely. That’s what it usually is,” Hunter says, staying chipper. God knows I need it.

We arrive with the fire department not far behind.

But we don’t stay long.

Because she’s not suffering from anxiety. This is the real deal.

We rush her to the ER, and I hope and I pray and I plead for someone, anyone to look out for this woman who could be my sister.

She’s too young to go. Too healthy—on the surface—to be heading to meet her maker.

Anxiety claws at me for the next few hours, and I do my best to keep it at bay as we tend to other calls. I need blinders something fierce today.

“You okay?” Hunter asks at one point.

“Just thinking about my sister. She’s the same age.”

He sighs sympathetically then claps my shoulder. “She’s in the best hands possible, that woman.”

I nod, trying to believe she’ll come through. “She is.”

“Let’s just keep doing what we can, okay?”

“Definitely.”

But an hour later, when we’re back at the hospital, dropping off a skinny dude who had a bad fall at work, one of the nurses tells me the thirty-six-year-old didn’t make it.

My throat squeezes. “For real?”

“Yes.”

I wince, wishing fervently she was delivering some other sentence. This cruel news winds its way through me, tightening every muscle, squeezing every organ.

I tell myself she’s just a patient, just a call, just another day.

But this one hits closer to home. Maybe I’m raw already from last night with Perri. Or maybe it’s the pile-on. Whatever it is, my heart is leaden. My feet are heavy, and all I have left to hope for is that the car accident patients from earlier are okay.

The nurse says they’re stable, and that gives me some glimmer that I’m not a grim reaper, spending a day collecting souls.