DADDY AT THE ALTAR

by Claire St. Rose

  Daniel had to leave town shortly after I’d seen him. I’d been relieved when I’d gotten his message that he’d left town. Sure, I wanted to see him again, but I was nervous about how it would be with him now that we’d slept together. The kind of sex we’d had wasn’t the kind of sex I usually had. I needed to be in control. It was a character trait that had driven too many boyfriends away. But with him? I’d given him the control that night, and it had been fucking fantastic. Pun intended.

  Over the next couple of days, he kept dropping me messages. It was often just one-liners, telling me where he was or what he was doing, but it made me feel like he was thinking about me. It was nice to know that someone was thinking of me now and then.

  I always answered. Sometimes I even sent texts of my own. I had no idea where we stood, and I really didn’t think it was going to get serious with him—I didn’t do serious—but it was a great feeling to know there was someone on the receiving end of this little crush.

  I started panicking on day three. It wasn’t that he’d changed something, fallen quiet, stopped talking to me, or anything like that. It was the fact that he carried on at a steady pace, as if this was something that seemed a little more permanent.

  Okay, so three days wasn’t something to go by. I couldn’t judge the seriousness of any kind of relationship after only three days.

  What I could do, was judge it after wild sex. I had been the one to give in to him, after all. And I’d allowed him to do whatever he wanted to me in my car. In a parking lot. At the hospital where I worked. What had I been thinking? I was lucky no one—like my boss—had caught us.

  It wasn’t like it was normal daylight hours, or like it was inside the hospital…but it had been on the premises.

  What on earth did he think of me? I’d acted like a tramp, ready to be picked up when he was ready for me, and I’d let him do it when he wanted it.

  Yes, it had been amazing, but what was the aftermath? Was he texting me now so that the channel stayed open and we could do it again? If there was anything I knew, it was that I wasn’t going to be a booty call. There was no way he was going to be able to come to me for a piece of ass whenever he felt like it.

  I knew what I’d wanted when he’d looked at me like that. I’d felt wanted. I’d felt like I needed to lose control. I’d felt like I was someone who could make his day. But I’d also been attracted to him and felt like this was something I wanted for me.

  I wasn’t going to make a habit of being there for him when he felt like having a go at it.

  The last time I’d lost control like that was before everything happened with Chrissy. Since then, I’d been in perfect control of my life. I didn’t just go with guys, and when I did, they were usually disappointed about the fact that I didn’t “put out.”

  I’d put out with Daniel for sure. I just hoped he wouldn’t make it awkward and expect it to happen again.

  The doors slammed open, and they unloaded a gurney from the ambulance. It snapped me out of the spiral of thoughts I’d been stuck in, and then nothing else mattered. I was in work mode, ready to do whatever needed to be done to save this life.

  It was another drug overdose. I knew what to expect now and so did my staff. I’d briefed them on the symptoms and what we knew so far about the reactions to other drugs like heroine. We made deductions on basic medication which was trial and error, but it was better than nothing.

  This one was a woman. Her airways had swollen shut in the ambulance already, so they’d done an emergency tracheotomy. It was a messy job, and there was a lot of blood. She would walk around with a scar in the neck for the rest of her life if she lived, but they’d managed to pull her through.

  We chased the gurney down to an emergency bay and started hooking her up to the right monitors so we could check her vitals. By now we were so ready for a heart failure so that when her heart stopped, the paddles were already charging.

  It took three times, but we managed to pull her back. We had to hook her up to an IV and give her sedatives twice as strong as normal to subdue her thrashing, but finally it was sorted.

  Since Daniel had left, there had been two other cases. This was the third, and I was sure there would be more. We’d already lost one. This would be the second one to make it. It was a bad percentage in my books, but we’d saved more than we’d lost, so as far as it went, this was good. It wasn’t an epidemic, but I treated it as one.

  “Keep an eye on her,” I said after we’d gotten past the worst. Gomez nodded, and I left the cubicle to wash up. I had blood all the way up to my elbows, and I felt like I was becoming undone at the seams. Some cases just got me more than others did.

  By the time I’d washed up, there was shouting in the hallway and an alarm went off which meant that I was being buzzed back to an emergency bay. Gomez had pressed the button, and she was trying to bring back the patient with her hands linked over her heart.

  She pumped five times and then skipped five beats. When she looked up at me, I saw in her eyes what I was already scared of.

  “Call it,” I said.

  Tears welled up in Gomez’s eyes, and she walked out of the bay looking shocked.

  I held both hands up to my head. We’d never lost one when we’d thought we’d reached stability before. This was a first. And this meant that we’d lost another one. Fifty-fifty was never a good number when it came to life or death.

  I went into the locker room after my shift and sat down on the benches in the middle. It had been only a ten-hour shift this time—I was trying to take it slower after doing fifteen-hour nights for the past week—but I was drained. Losing so many patients took its toll on everyone, but as the attending physician, it was the worst on me.

  Their lives were my responsibility from the moment they came in through those doors until they were handed off to someone else.

  Sometimes they didn’t make it to another doctor because it was something like migraines or stitches. Sometimes they didn’t make it to other doctors because they didn’t make it period.

  Those were the worst times.

  My phone rang when I sat in the locker room, and I pulled it out. Daniel’s name flashed on the screen. I didn’t answer it.

  Usually I would have. He’d phoned once or twice before, and it had always been good to hear from him. He talked as if he wanted to share his life. He asked questions as if he was interested in mine.

  I just couldn’t give what it took to put on a face right now. I felt so low. We’d lost two people in the last three days because of this mystery drug that was on the streets. Daniel said he’d put his men on it—whatever that meant, really—and he said that they were keeping an eye out where police and paramedics couldn’t see. But what did that mean?

  What did it mean for Daniel to have his men out there? Who were these men? I had a feeling that this was much bigger than just a nasty job Daniel was interested in. I knew that it had hit him hard when Taylor, his younger brother, had landed in hospital, but if he was on this personally, there had to be more to it.

  I had a feeling there was something Daniel wasn’t telling me. I had a feeling that he was involved a lot more than I’d thought at first.

  I stared at the screen, watching it ring in my hands, until it rolled over to voicemail. The screen dimmed a couple of seconds later, and then I tucked it back in my pocket. I couldn’t do this. Not tonight.

  And with how I felt right now, I wasn’t sure if I could do it, period.

  Daniel was great—he really was—but I’d dedicated my life to saving the lives of others, and if I couldn’t do that, what good did I do the world?

  I got my stuff together and walked to my car. I unlocked the door and climbed in, glancing over my shoulder to the backseat. Daniel was all over it. There was no evidence of what had happened, but every time I looked back like that I saw him again, naked, muscles bunching, his body covering mine.

  My body tightened when I thought about it, but it wasn’t the same as before. It had been an emot
ional thing, looking back. Now I just felt deflated.

  I drove home, locked my car, and walked up the apartment. Sarah was fast asleep. The opening of her bar was going to be soon and she needed all the sleep she could get until then. She was going to work hard hours once it launched.

  I got undressed and crawled into bed before showering. I was beat. I would shower and get all the disinfectants and hospital smells off me in the morning. Now I just wanted to escape.

  I switched off the light. Chrissy’s photo on the desk stared at me through the darkness, as if it was the only thing illuminated in the room. I turned my back to her.

  All of this was because of her and, dammit, I was getting tired.

  By the time I woke up, there were three voice messages from Daniel, ranging from tired but content to mildly worried to very unsure. I didn’t blame him. He’d tried to call me, and where I usually left him messages about what time I was headed home and what my night had been like, I’d failed to do it this time.

  Sometimes there were just no words. And I’d also felt like he was part of the problem.

  With a good night’s rest behind me, I felt better, and I realized I was being ridiculous. I typed out a text to him—I still wasn’t ready to talk over the phone—and sent it.

  Worst night last night. Didn’t take any calls. Two more deaths, four victims. Thought you should know.

  It wasn’t the most romantic message, but it did the job. I was sure it would set him at ease, at least. Death meant that I was going to shut down from the world for a short while; he knew that. If he didn’t get that by now, he had no business being in my life in the first place.

  Besides, if he wanted in on this business of finding the problem, then the stats were something he might need.

  I got up, grabbed some clothes, and got in the shower.

  It felt like heaven washing off the smells and the memories and the lingering emotions of the night before. Even if I had the mildest night, I still smelled like disinfectants and iodine, so I never felt like I was really away from the hospital.

  When I walked out of the bathroom, I rubbed my hair dry with a towel and let it hang half-damp down my back. I walked to the kitchen where Sarah was packing her handbag with food for the afternoon.

  “Morning,” I said.

  “You mean afternoon,” she corrected me, and I glanced at the clock against the wall.

  “Right.”

  I’d slept a long time. I wasn’t on call today, and the feeling of just having one day off was amazing.

  “Are you headed out already?”

  Sarah smiled at me. “If I had to wait for you to come home, honey, I wouldn’t have a life.”

  I chuckled. My hours were rough, I would give her that.

  “I’ll see you later. Maybe,” she said before she left through the front door. I waved at her, and when the door shut behind her, I walked to the fridge and opened it. There was a takeaway box with my name and a flower on a piece of paper on top. I smiled.

  With a roommate like Sarah, who needed a man?

  I took out the takeaway box and opened the cover. Sweet and sour pork with dumplings and crispy fried noodle. Exactly what the doctor ordered.

  I reheated it in the microwave and sat down in front of the television, flipping through the channels until I finally found a Rom-Com that had nothing to do with the hospital or any kind of emergency at all. There were some doctors that tried to remove themselves as far as possible from the hospital on their days off, but I didn’t have the energy to go on a road trip on top of everything. I needed a real break.

  Chinese and television was that real break.

  The doorbell rang halfway through my movie, and I paused it. When I answered, it was Taylor Roosa, Daniel ’s brother and my first patient who had been on this drug.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  He stood in front of me with his hands in his pockets. He wore designer jeans that suited him, a pair of Air Nikes, and a leather jacket that looked expensive. His hair was stylishly messy. Even though he’d made an effort to look good, I could see that he was still not completely back to strength. He still looked pale with sallow eyes, and his lips were dry and cracked.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” he said.

  “This is a private address,” I said. “How did you find me?”

  He shrugged. “I have contacts.”

  Right, the men Daniel had mentioned. I was willing to bet they had all sorts of information on people. I sighed and stepped aside so that he could come in. I wasn’t thrilled about having him in my house—he was a work-related case after all—but I didn’t want him fainting in the hallway, and he looked like he was about to pass out. I was wearing a simple long sleeve shirt and slack. Not the kind of clothes I was willing to talk to a patient in, but I had no choice.

  Taylor walked into the apartment, looking around before he sat down. I sat down on the couch opposite him and tucked my feet under me. Taylor looked at the takeaway box on the coffee table and smiled.

  “This is a nice place,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  I wasn’t going to be buddies with him. He was a past patient, and I hadn’t invited him to my home.

  He took a deep breath and blew it out again. It wasn’t a sigh; it was more like he was struggling to breathe.

  “Are you doing alright?” I asked, my doctor’s instincts kicking in.

  Taylor nodded. “I just get a little short of breath now and then,” he said. I took a mental note of that.

  “What I’m really here about is Daniel.”

  The moment he said his brother’s name, my walls went up.

  “What about him?”

  Taylor fiddled with his hands, looking down at them.

  “He mentions you a lot. I know what Daniel is like with women, and I’m willing to take that as a sign that he likes you.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Did he say anything?”

  “He didn’t need to.” Taylor shook his head. “I don’t know what you and him have going on, but I think you need to be careful.”

  “Of what?”

  He took another strained breath. “Daniel feels indebted to you because of what happened with me in the ER. It’s a big deal to him because I’m family and because we’re all very tight and everything, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to get involved with our family. We’re not exactly your cut-and-paste kind of guys, Daniel least of all.”

  My back was up. No one came into my house and told me what they thought I should or shouldn’t do. It was rude.

  “Look, with all due respect, Taylor, I’m a grown-up and I know what I’m getting myself into.”

  Taylor shook his head. “Not with this. Daniel … well, he doesn’t really hold onto girls. We know what it’s like to be abandoned, and he leaves girls before they can leave him. It’s a fact. He’s done it with every single one of them, even if it took a while longer. Like with Ruby.”

  Ruby. The name on the business card.

  “Is this what you’re here to tell me?” I asked. “To warn me not to get involved with your brother?”

  Taylor shrugged with one shoulder and looked me in the eye. He had the same kind of eyes as Daniel, deep and blue, even if his hair was darker.

  “Thanks,” I said, standing up to let him out. He was leaving now if he wanted to or not. “I’m sure I can find my own way through life.”

  Taylor stood up, getting the hint.

  “I don’t mean to impose, but Daniel won’t be straight with you about it. He’s going to go after what his heart says, and then his head will get involved, and it just ends up a mess after that. You’re great. We owe you a lot. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Thanks,” I said and tried my very best not to sound sarcastic. The truth was that it was offensive. I’d been fighting with inner conflict about Daniel all week. I hadn’t needed his brother dropping by and warning me off.

  CHAPTER TWELVE Daniel


  Five days of chasing down two men was not worth my time. I’d spent five days out of town just to catch two thugs who had absolutely nothing to do with me, and I blamed Ruby for wasting my time.

  I dropped them off at the police station where Officer Ramirez took care of them. He was the kind of guy who knew what was happening on the streets, but if it didn’t affect him directly he didn’t talk about it.

  Men like him were the reason people like me—gangsters who owned bike that moved illegal product from time to time—didn’t have to look over our shoulders for police all the time. It was good to have contacts in the right places. This life was like chess; you put your people down on the right blocks, and you won the game.