BENT AT THE ALTAR

by Claire St. Rose

  “He is hot; you were right. Who’s this woman?”

  I shrugged, scooping more yogurt onto the spoon. “I don’t know. I’m assuming they work together. The name gives it away.”

  “She’s a stunner. Is her hair really that coppery red, or do you think it’s a printing mistake?”

  I chuckled. “I don’t know. I don’t really care either, honestly. It’s a business card. He didn’t ask for my number or anything, so ball’s in my court.”

  Sarah shrugged.

  “Are you going to call him?”

  “For what?”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “So that you can fuck his brains out. He wanted it, didn’t he? And you need a hobby.”

  “Sarah!” I put more yogurt in my mouth because I didn’t know what to say.

  She laughed. “What? You can’t tell me you didn’t think it.”

  And she was right. I had thought about it. But he was a patient’s brother. And I was a doctor.

  “Besides,” she added. “He can always call the hospital.”

  “He’ll need my name for that. I doubt he caught it between my slap and being escorted out by security.”

  Sarah shook her head and chuckled. “Like your life isn’t dramatic enough.”

  “This guy is literally the last thing on my priority list,” I said, throwing the empty yogurt container in the trash. I considered eating another one and decided against it. I was starting to feel sick; food did that to me after a rough night. It was as if my body had to internalize whatever had happened before.

  “But he is on your priority list,” Sarah pointed out. I rolled my eyes.

  “Come on, you can bring him to my opening as a date.”

  I chuckled. “Maybe.”

  I walked into the room to get dressed.

  “That’s not a no,” she called after me.

  I closed the bedroom door to shut Sarah out. It didn’t shut out the train my mind was on, and Daniel was all over it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see him again. It was that he was trouble. I steered away from trouble as a rule. I’d gotten in trouble before, and it hadn’t been good.

  I got dressed in comfortable clothes, the kind that I could wear around the ER and that worked under my doctor’s coat. I was on-call today.

  Not my favorite thing after a hell of a long shift, especially when it was as busy as last night, but there were always lives to save, and I preferred it when they called me in for that. I didn’t want to be the one who was at home doing nothing when someone needed to be saved. I didn’t want to have it on my conscience that they could have made it if I had been there.

  I knew what it felt like. All of this had started because I hadn’t been on top of things. I’d been out of it, and someone had died. It hadn’t been my fault, but it felt like it had. I still blamed myself, even though it was years and years later.

  When I was at home, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t have any hobbies because I spent most of my time saving lives or sleeping off the shock. When I was home at all, it was just to do the necessities like showering and eating. I sat down in front of my desk that had stacks of papers on it I hadn’t touched in ages. The desk was a little dusty, so I wiped it down with my hand. When the dust stuck to my skin, I was annoyed and wiped it on my jeans, leaving a brown smear.

  Great. So grown-up.

  There was a photo of Chrissy on my desk. Her hair had been the same color as mine, but she’d had green eyes. Everyone had thought we were sisters. She was the one that had introduce me to the wild life: partying until dawn, drinking more than we should have, flirting with guys that were really just a lot of trouble.

  I’d thrown myself at the opportunity to lose myself in those nights. My parents had put so much pressure on me to be perfect that I’d needed everything that was the opposite. I’d needed to be able to drink without thinking about the calories. I’d needed to be able to dress in skimpy outfits without worrying about being called a slut. I’d needed a way out.

  I took a deep breath and held it in for three counts, trying to suffocate the feeling of something lodged in my chest. I traced her outline on the glass with my fingers.

  My pager went off, and I was relieved for the escape. I let myself get tangled memories too often. Every time I looked at that photo, it dragged me back to that night. I should have thrown it away years ago, but it felt wrong. I was the only one still remembering her. I was the only one who had cared.

  It was the hospital. They needed me. Thank God. I didn’t have to sit around in my room not knowing what to do with myself.

  I threw on comfortable ballet flats and hurried to the kitchen where I grabbed my bag. Sarah was on the counter, eating toast and jam. She watched me scrape my things together, grab leftovers from the fridge for when I had a chance to eat on the run, and pulled up her eyebrows.

  “Emergency?” she asked.

  “Don’t wait up,” I said. I ran out the door without looking back.

  The drive to the hospital always felt longer when I was headed there in a time of emergency. These were the times when it felt like the universe was set against me. I caught traffic lights when they were red, needed to slow down for an old lady who couldn’t see, much less drive, and all the while lives might have been lost.

  When I parked in the parking lot, I looked around and kicked myself for thinking that he might be there at all. It was a hospital parking lot for God’s sake, and he was a biker with better things to do with his time than stalk me.

  If I’d seen him there I probably would have thought he was creepy, too. And I was being an idiot.

  I ran in through the doors, dumped my bag in the locker room, and reported for duty.

  “It’s another one,” Hamilton said, one of the nurses on my team when Gomez and her team were off rotation. I looked at the guy on the gurney. He looked a lot worse than Taylor had been. His eyes were open, but his pupils were different sizes and growing and shrinking as I stared into them with my penlight.

  “Breathing seems to be okay,” I said, watching the rise and fall of his chest. “Do we know what it is yet?”

  “I only heard about it this morning. I don’t know who’s seen the report,” Hamilton said.

  I reach up to the patient’s throat to check his pulse when suddenly he started convulsing. His body jerked in a series of spasms.

  “He’s seizing,” I said and pulled the shoulder closest to me up so that he wouldn’t choke on his own spit. His eyes rolled back, and his breath left his body in shudders. It killed me when something like this happened. There was nothing I could do. I had to wait for the seizure to pass, and then we could evaluate the damage. Foam poured out of his mouth, more than Taylor’s had been, and he made gurgling sounds. If he wasn’t on his side, he would have drowned in it. I noticed the scars on his arms. His veins were a deep blue, spreading over his left arm and up to his shoulder. He had a bad infection—unsterile needles did that.

  This guy was a user.

  Hamilton injected him with something, and the seizure calmed down so that I could roll him back onto his back. I hoped that whatever cocktail of drugs was in his system would cope with the medication. The moment I laid him down he started flailing.

  “He can’t breathe,” I said. I didn’t waste time looking down his throat this time. I cut his throat straight away, and we had the tube down his lungs in no time.

  He started seizing again. Before I could tip him on his side he flat lined.

  “We lost him,” I said. The crash cart was there and ready. The squeal was deafening. The body jerked as I shocked him. I looked up at the monitor. Nothing. I recharged the machine and tried to kick start him again. Still nothing

  I tried one more time. Sweat poured off my forehead and my body was overheating. I was losing him. We weren’t going to be able to save this one. Dammit, I needed to pull him through. We’d saved Taylor. Why not this one, too?

  One more time, and it was enough.

  “Call time of death,�
� I said. My voice was almost inaudible. I couldn’t stand losing patients. He lay lifeless on the gurney, skin like powder, the foam still in a thick line from his mouth in both corners. “And take some blood. I want to know what did this.”

  I turned my back and walked out of the cubicle, unwilling to spend time in the same room as the man I hadn’t been able to save. Hamilton could do the dirty work, getting someone to process the body and taking down the necessary information. One of the other nurses came out.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I nodded, even though I felt like crying. My chest was constricted, and there was a lump in my throat that made it hard to breathe.

  “Did anyone come in for him?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “The ambulance dropped him off, a nightclub called it in when they found him in the alley.”

  I nodded, putting my hand flat against my forehead. I couldn’t deal with this. It was Chrissy all over again. I couldn’t save her, no matter how hard I tried. Every patient saved was someone else’s life, but every damn patient I lost was her. When was this going to end?

  I made my way to the locker room where I took the time to put my bag into my cubby. I took deep breaths, trying to steady myself, but it felt like my pulse was as erratic as Taylor’s had been when he’d come in, and I couldn’t seem to get a grip.

  “Emily,” Hamilton said, not calling me doctor, but using my first name to jar me back to reality. “It’s okay. You did everything you could. There was nothing else we could have done. This guy had a history of drug abuse. His heart couldn’t take it anymore. He had scars all over his arms from shooting up so many times. It wasn’t your fault.”

  She stepped closer, unsure, but I let her in and she hugged me. I hugged her back stiffly.

  “Thanks,” I said hoarsely. “I’ll be fine in a second.”

  “You always bounce back,” Hamilton said, smiled, and left me to it.

  I’d known he was a druggy. I’d seen it when he’d seized. This wasn’t my fault; Hamilton was right. I just didn’t know if the drugs had reacted with the medication we’d given him. Whatever was in his system, along with the new mixture of unknown drug we were dealing with, could have been what had killed him after he’d been injected. For all I knew, we could have been the reason he hadn’t made it after all.

  I closed my eyes and focused on taking deep breaths. I let go of the tension and tried to let release the tightness in my muscles. This wasn’t my fault. I’d saved Taylor. It was the same drug. I’d lost this one. You couldn’t save everyone.

  I tried to tell myself that over and over again. I took a deep breath and let it out again, and then another time. When it didn’t work, I gave myself five seconds to panic completely, and then I forced myself to calm down and get back in there with a composed face. Around my team I had to look like I had it under control, for their sakes. They were all there; they’d all lost a patient today.

  Besides, there were other patients who needed to be taken care of. The emergencies didn’t stop, and saving the lives I could, would have to make up for the lives I’d lost.

  By the time there was a moment to catch my breath, it was sunset already and I hadn’t even had a chance to eat. All I’d had was that cup of yogurt in the morning. I found the business card in my pocket that Daniel had given me and called his number. The emergency room was busy all around me, with nurses rushing past and battered patients coming in looking sorry for themselves, but at least there was nothing pressing. It looked like there would at least be a bit of a breather.

  Daniel’s phone rang for so long I thought it was going to roll over to voicemail. I was preparing myself to leave a message, stringing the words together to leave a tight message on the machine, when he answered.

  “Daniel Roosa?” I asked.

  “Who is this?” He sounded hostile on the phone. It was a bit of a shock compared to how amorous he’d been the last time I’d seen him.

  “This is Doctor Emily Faye. I’m calling from St. Joseph’s Hospital where your bother was admitted.”

  Only after I gave him that information did he seem to figure out where I fit in the picture.

  “Well, doctor, to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked, and his voice had changed. The hostility was gone, and his voice was rich and velvety. It was surprising how quickly he could turn on the charm.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not a matter of pleasure calling you,” I said, hoping to burst his bubble. Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. We’d lost a life, but hearing his voice over the phone was definitely good. “We had another case today that was very similar to Taylor’s. Again a drug overdose. We’re still waiting for the toxicity report, but I’m willing to bet that it was the same drug.”

  “Same symptoms?” he asked, and then swore under his breath.

  “The same,” I said. “But unfortunately we couldn’t save this one.”

  There was a beat of silence on the other end of the line. When he spoke again he sounded sincere. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, we did all we could. We believe there were a lot more drugs in his system, which was what tipped him over. I hope that it’s no one you know. We’re still waiting for someone to claim the body as a relative or a friend.” I swallowed hard, trying to shake off the sorrow that settled around me like a cape. I was going to struggle with this loss for a while. Some of them just hit me harder than others. “The reason I’m calling you with this is because I need to know if we’re going to be looking at more victims coming in. I need the staff prepared. Quite frankly, I don’t think any of them can go through another loss like that because we weren’t prepared.” Including me.

  “I understand,” he said. “I don’t have anything that I can give you right now, but I’m sure it will happen again. There will be more if it’s a special concoction. No one does that by accident.”

  “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.” And why wouldn’t he? He looked like he saw the rough side of town on a regular basis. “Do you know anything about the source of the drugs or what might be going into them? Any lead on this would help immensely.”

  He took a deep breath that sounded more like a sigh.

  “I wish I did,” he said. “My men are on it. I’ve got eyes and ears on the street, but it’s going to take a while. We’re doing what we can.”

  It sounded like some kind of personal vendetta. Maybe it was, because of Taylor.

  “I’ll keep you updated,” he said again. “If you’ll do the same for me?”

  I agreed. What else could I have said? That it was none of his business? Because really, it was his business. His brother had been the first victim, and he’d said there would be more. I had to get the staff on high alert and send word to other hospitals, too. For all we knew there were dozens in other places that already been lost and we’d only gotten two so far.

  I found the book with all the numbers and started dialing around, reaching doctors all over the city.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Daniel

  I tucked my phone back in my pocket after hanging up with Doctor Emily Faye. Emily. The name suited her. Until now I hadn’t known her name, and it had been driving me crazy. It wasn’t that I couldn’t find out what it was—I was sure the hospital would have signs on their doctors’ parking or on the duty list or something, but that seemed like a stalker thing to do.

  Besides, it had been a lot more rewarding coming from her own lips. The elation of the phone call I’d gotten from her drained away quickly, though. The reason she’d called wasn’t because she was interested, even though that was what I’d hoped for. She’d called about Taylor, about the fact that there had been more. We were so lucky that Taylor had made it through.

  She’d said that the other guy, the one that hadn’t made it, might have been using drugs already. It was the fact that Taylor wasn’t using that had saved him, then. Thank God that boy had a good head on his shoulders.

  I frowned and sat down on one of the ba
rstools at the club. Ben was around here somewhere, probably in the crammed little office, but I was alone in the bar area. I didn’t know how he could work in there; it made me feel claustrophobic every time.

  There were more of them. Someone was shooting these guys up, and it was working. If it was with intent to kill, they had a fifty percent success rate. And this wasn’t going to end here. We had to find out who was doing it and what was going on before anyone else bit it. How long before it would be one of us?

  “Ben,” I called. The biker came out of the office with glasses perched on his nose that looked completely out of place with his leathers and the tattoo on his neck. “There’s been another one. Dead, this time. We need to move on this.”

  Ben swore out loud. “When?”