by Ruby Scott
chance to get started before you’re taking me home.”
“And you couldn’t have said anything? Oh. That’s right. You don’t
like saying things. You’re somehow too scared to speak your own mind at
any given time. You can’t tell me you think it’s too soon to meet my
parents, you can’t tell your parents that you like fucking girls. You’re too
scared of everything, so you just self-sabotage it all. You know, I thought I
was getting out of the toxic bullshit when I broke up with Ali, but I jumped
right back into it with you.”
Izzy was left speechless. What was she supposed to say? The woman
she loved just told her how awful, how toxic she was. Maybe Cara wasn’t
wrong, maybe Izzy was too scared of confrontation to make any difference
in her life, but she never intended to hurt anybody. She never, ever wanted
to hurt anybody. Especially somebody that she loved.
“I’m…” She didn’t know what to say. She looked back over at Cara,
tears blurring her vision. “I’m sorry.” Izzy felt lost. She knew she had
messed up, but she had no idea how to sort it. She couldn’t take back what
had been, and the tears flooded her eyes.
Cara looked at her, and for a minute, Izzy thought she saw her face go
to soften. Instead, it seemed to harden even more. It was like she doubled
down on her anger towards Izzy. She scoffed, shook her head. “I don’t
know why I’m wasting my time with this.” She said. “It’s clearly not worth
it. Have fun being the teacher’s ‘pet’, Izzy. You’ll really get ahead that
way.”
She didn’t give Izzy a chance to say anything; Izzy didn’t know what
she would say if she could. She watched as Cara got into her car, slammed
the door shut and sped away. Izzy just stood there. She watched until the car
became nothing but a blur in the distance.
Her heart felt like it was shattering in her chest. How had everything
gone so wrong in the space of an hour? How had she messed this all up? All
she wanted to do was to be happy… all she wanted to do was make the
right choices. It was clear now that all she had done was mess up everything
around her. She stared after the car for just a few seconds longer before
turning and walking back towards the hospital; she was going to have to get
an Uber home to her empty apartment.
As Cara drove away, she knew that she should not be driving. Her
vision was blurred from the hot tears stinging her eyes. Maybe she
shouldn’t have said everything that she did to Izzy, maybe she should have
heard her out. But… what excuse could Izzy give that would make this all
make sense? She all but admitted to kissing the chief and who knew what
else they had done. The very thought made Cara feel sick.
She was angry, hurt. She felt like a damned fool for letting someone
in so quickly after Ali, after she had sworn off relationships for a bit. Izzy
came into her life like a tornado and left a mess of everything in her wake.
She had made Cara a mess; a mess to a level that she never imagined
reaching again.
She didn’t remember the drive home or how she got there. All she
remembered was pulling her car into the parking garage. She grabbed her
stuff out of the car, tears still streaking down her face, and walked up to her
apartment.
When she slammed the door, Cara allowed herself to fall apart. She
allowed herself to fall to pieces alone, in the middle of her living room.
Why had she been so blinded by love?
EIGHTEEN
It had been almost a month since her split with Izzy. She refused to think
about Izzy. She had avoided going into ER as much as possible and Terri
wasn’t happy with her at all. She’d gone back to Parade a few times but she
couldn’t bring herself to hook up with anyone because everyone reminded
her of Izzy. When she was surrounded by people, keeping busy she could
wash all the pain out of her head.
But as soon as she was alone again, it all came flooding back to her.
Each time the pain hit her with a fresh wave, taking over her completely.
She had lost count of how many times she had almost been late to work
because she had a breakdown in her shower. This wasn’t her first breakup,
but it was hitting her differently. Cara had had such high hopes for the two
of them.
Cara and Terri were stationed in a grocery store parking lot, waiting for
their next call. Cara looked over towards the store, her feet kicked up on the
dash of the ambulance. “Should I run in and grab lunch for us?” She asked,
leaning forward just a bit to check the clock. “It may be the only chance we
have to eat all day.”
Terri looked up from her phone with a sigh, “We just had breakfast.
Do we really need more food?”
“Hey, suit yourself. I’ll get me lunch and you can be hungry later.”
Cara sat up straight in her seat, her boots slamming from the dash onto the
floor. She reached over for the door handle when their radio interrupted.
“Unit 256?”
Terri reached down and grabbed the radio, “This is Unit 256. Go
ahead, dispatch.”
“Unit 256, we need you to respond to a cardiac arrest call. Patient is
male, early sixties. He’s unconscious and his son is performing
compressions. Sending you the address.”
“You got it.” Terri responded before clicking off the radio. She
looked over at Cara, “Guess that means no lunch for you, huh?” She teased,
causing Cara to laugh.
Since Terri had handled the radio call, Cara reached over to the
computer on their dash. She flicked it on, and it loaded their call
information. Just like the dispatcher had said, cardiac arrest, male, early
sixties. She reached out to click the address so the navigator would lead
them to the address – and she paused.
“Oh fuck,” She whispered under her breath. Panic began to flood
Cara, a feeling she wasn’t quite used to. Everything went hazy for a
moment as she fought to control her breathing. She was pretty sure Terri
had spoken to her numerous times, but Cara hadn’t quite heard her, and she
couldn’t speak.
Finally, Terri’s hand was on her arm, giving her a shove. “Cara? What
is it? We gotta go, dude.”
Cara swallowed, hard. “Terri… that’s my parents’ house. Our patient
is my dad.” Tears were threatening to spill over, but she did her best to keep
them inside. She knew she needed to act rationally and with a straight
head… but… but her dad.
Before Terri could respond to say they should hand the call off to
another unit, Cara had slammed the truck into gear and was heading out.
“Okay. Okay. It’s fine. It’ll be my call. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
Terri voiced had gone up a couple of octaves and Cara wasn’t sure if she
was trying to comfort her or herself. With the sirens blaring, they didn’t
exchange any more words as they sped through the streets.
As they arrived at her parents' address Terri jumped out of the
ambulance, leaving Cara to go around the ambulance and grab their bag
from the back. She watched
as Terri raced through the doors of the house;
Cara flew behind her. As often as she’d been told to become emotionless in
the field, to not let things get to you, there was nothing that could have
prepared her for this. Not when it’s family.
Cara knew that she should have let dispatch know as soon as she
realized that it was her family’s home, but she wanted to get to her father as
quickly as possible. She’d apologize to Terri later.
As soon as Cara stepped through the front door, the scene before her
was one from a nightmare. Her father was lying on the living room floor,
Terri was on her knees next to him, performing compressions. Pat was on
the floor next to their mother, whose face was wet with tears. She looked up
as soon as she saw Cara; the tears starting to flow even more. “Cara… I
don’t know what happened. Your father just collapsed. He wasn’t breathing
or moving. I called 911… they told me to do CPR, and I had Pat do it…
but—” She started crying even more and Pat wrapped his arms around her,
allowing Terri to attend to his father.
Cara couldn’t do this right now. She couldn’t listen to her mother sob
about her father while she was trying to save him. “Pat, take mom outside.
Please.” Her voice was borderline desperate as she reached into her kit,
getting the equipment out so she could bag her own father.
She got on her knees, using the bag to breathe for her father as Terri
continued compressions. After a moment, she paused. Terri placed her
index and middle fingers to Russ’s neck and shook her head. “No pulse.
Continue CPR.” Terri was just as calm as ever, completely focused on the
job in hand.
What was she supposed to do? Cara continued bagging, silently
willing her father to pull through. If she had to pronounce it… life would
never be the same. Another round of CPR and Terri stopped to check his
pulse again. “I—I got a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there. We need to get him
and go.” She said. “Continue bagging while I go get the stretcher.”
Cara nodded at her partner’s instructions, looking down at her father.
As soon as Terri left, Cara quietly said, “Please dad… please.”
Terri returned quickly with the stretcher and working together, they
got her father out. Since it was Terri’s call, all Cara had to worry about was
driving. They got him in the back, told her mother and Pat that they were
going to City General and headed in that direction, lights on and sirens
blaring.
Cara didn’t remember anything about the drive to the hospital; she
just remembered arriving. They came to a stop in the ambulance bay and
Cara hopped out, running around to the back to help Terri with the
stretcher.
“I lost his pulse again in the back.” Terri told her. “But I got it back
again before we arrived. He still hasn’t regained consciousness.”
Every one of those words stabbed Cara right in the heart, but she did
her best to try to keep it together. She was struggling. She wanted to
breakdown, but that wasn’t an opportunity that was afforded to her. She had
a job to do. They wheeled her father into the Emergency Room and straight
into rhesus. Fully gowned ER staff flooded around the gurney and she was
hustled out of the way as they lifted him on their count of three across to the
bed. Her job as an EMT was done, now she was just a daughter.
She jumped, pulled from her thoughts when Terri reached out and put
a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll call one of our supervisors and let them know
what’s going on. You go to the waiting room and find your family. Okay?”
“Okay.” Cara said with a quiet nod. She took one last look back at the
room that her father had been wheeled to before going to the waiting room,
where she found her mother and Pat. She sat next to Pat; silence washed
over the entire family. Everyone sat stunned.
NINETEEN
It was Sara’s day off and Izzy had been placed with Dr. Trevor Hoffman. He
was closer to her age, with dark, floppy hair, a stunning bone structure and
hazel eyes. If Izzy liked men…. Dr. Hoffman would have been her type. Dr.
Hoffman was kind of an asshole, though. He was extremely strict about
how he ran things. Luckily for her, Izzy had worked with him a few times
now and was able to live up to his standards.
She was following behind him in the hallway; they had just checked
up on Mrs. Diaz, who had just had a pacemaker put in and was doing
perfectly fine. His pager buzzed, and he stopped; Izzy followed suit. He
checked it and turned to Izzy, “We’re going to the ER.” He said. “Got a
patient in with assumed cardiac arrest,”
“Got it.” Izzy said, following him to the ER.
Since her breakup with Cara, Izzy had thrown herself into work. She
still didn’t know what her choice was going to be, and she had a few weeks
before she had to make a final decision. She missed Cara every day, deeply
regretting what had happened between the two of them in the end. She still
wanted to fix it… but Cara had never returned one of her calls.
Thankfully, she had managed to straighten things out with Sara and
they’d put it down to a misreading of signals. Roughly translated, that
meant Izzy would say nothing and her career would go on, unhindered. Sara
did seem genuinely sorry, and she had assured her she had no idea what had
come over her and that nothing like that had ever happened before. Since
then, she was solely focused on keeping her mind off Cara.
Izzy had seen Cara a few times at the other end of the department
since but respecting Cara’s obvious wishes she had stayed away. Izzy
hadn’t even asked for the clothes that she had left at Cara’s place.
Jack had told her that Cara was doing okay though, she was trying to
go back to her normal self. Izzy was happy for her. She was happy that Cara
was trying to be happy. Despite everything, she still wanted the best for
her.
Dr. Hoffman led the way down to the ER. As they pushed their way
through the swing doors, they saw a sea of nurses and ER doctor huddled
over the bed.
“What do we have?” Dr. Hoffman asked as he stepped into the room,
Izzy following close behind him.
“Sixty-four-year-old male with cardiac arrest. Paramedics said he
didn’t have a pulse when they found him. After performing multiple rounds
of CPR, it came back. On the ride to the hospital, he lost it again.” The ER
doctor said. “We’ve been thinking –”
They didn’t get to find out what the ER doctor was thinking. The
surrounding machines began to beep incessantly. One look at the heart
monitor showed that the man was in atrial fibrillation. Dr. Hoffman jumped
into action. “Get the paddles.” He instructed one of the nurses who pulled
the defibrillator from the cabinet. It was set up quickly, the paddles handed
to Dr. Hoffman. “Clear!” He called and everybody stepped back.
When everybody stepped back, Izzy got a good look at the patient. It
took her a split second to piece it together, struggling to recognize the
familiar face. It hit
her. That was Russ. It was Cara’s father.
Dr. Hoffman shocked him once, but Russ was still in A-fib. “Clear!”
He called, shocking him again. They all watched as his heart jumped back
into a somewhat normal rhythm. He stepped back with the paddles, handing
them off to a nurse to put back into place. “I need an ECG and blood work.”
He ordered to whoever was listening. “It’s urgent, so get on it.” With that
simple order, everybody scattered.
Cara lost track of time as to how long they’d been in the waiting
room. It was enough time for the rest of her family to arrive. Nearly half of
City General’s emergency room waiting room was filled with O’Leary’s.
Her mother had been uncharacteristically silent since the moment they
entered. Pat had said she had been like that the entire ride over.
When Terri had called their supervisor, he had lectured them for
running a call on a person they knew, but ultimately understood it. He told
them both to take the rest of the day off and to keep them updated on what
was happening. So Terri was waiting with the family. She said it didn’t feel
right to leave Cara alone after all of it.
Her nieces and nephews were getting anxious, running around the
waiting room, and getting a whispered lecture from their mothers. Her
brothers spoke in a hushed tone to one another, mostly about the family
business and what they were going to do with it now. She wished she could
tell them to shut up, that the business didn’t matter right now. But she
understood it, Russ hadn’t been willing to give it up to anybody, hadn’t
trained any of the boys how to take over yet.
The waiting room doors swung open and the ER doctor stepped out.
It was an older gentleman with a receding hairline and thick black glasses.
He walked right over to the O’Leary’s and Cara’s heart was pounding in her
chest. They normally always sent a nurse out, never a doctor. Something
was wrong. Had her father died? Just the thought was enough to push her to
tears.
“O’Leary?” He asked as he approached the family. They all nodded.
“Our cardio team has determined that Russell has had a heart attack, a
myocardial infarction according to the ECG, but he isn’t responding to any
of our treatments thus far. Nothing we’ve done is pulling him out of his
