Chapter 10Shattered Silence
Shattered Silence
Isabella
The clinic sits on the edge of the countryside, a squat brick building with flickering fluorescent lights above the entrance.
The sign is weathered, the white letters spelling out; Westbridge Community Health , faded and cracked.
From the outside, it looks like nothing, just another underfunded, overlooked corner of the world where the desperate come looking for something they aren’t sure they’ll find.
The parking lot is mostly empty when I arrive, just a few scattered cars glinting under the streetlights. My breath clouds in the cold as I step out of the car, pulling my coat tighter around me. The wind carries the faint scent of damp asphalt, and somewhere in the distance, a dog barks.
The lobby is small, the walls painted in muted colors, meant to soothe, but the overhead lights are too harsh, making everything feel sterile, washed-out. The air smells like antiseptic and cheap coffee, the kind that sits too long in the pot and turns bitter.
The night shift is always the quietest, at least, until it isn’t. Until the doors burst open and the night spills in, carrying the wounded, the broken, the ones who’ve been battered by things no one wants to name.
I pass the front desk, nodding at Theresa, the receptionist, a woman in her fifties with tired eyes and an endless supply of peppermint candies. She gives me a knowing look. “You actually took a night off,” she says, voice tinged with amusement.
“I wouldn’t call it that.”
She snorts. “Didn’t think so.”
As I make my way down the hall, I spot David leaning against the nurses’ station, flipping through a patient chart. He’s an ER nurse who picks up shifts here every now and then—tall, wiry, with sharp features and an even sharper sense of humor.
“You’re back already?” he muses without looking up. “Thought you were finally taking a break.”
I smirk. “Apparently, so did Theresa.”
David chuckles, shaking his head. “We both know you don’t do time off.”
Beyond him, a couple of volunteers move between rooms, restocking supplies and checking in on patients.
They rotate in and out, never the same faces for too long, students looking for experience, retirees who refuse to sit still, a few good souls just trying to help.
They come and go, but the chaos of the night shift never changes.
The hallways stretch in dull, linoleum paths, lined with exam rooms and supply closets, the occasional outdated poster reminding staff to wash their hands. I hear the low murmur of voices behind closed doors, the quiet beeping of a monitor, the faint scrape of a chair against tile.
And then there’s him.
Leaning against the doorframe of one of the exam rooms, arms crossed, watching me with the sharp, assessing gaze of someone who never really stops being a soldier.
Ethan ‘Sawyer’ Beckett.
Ex-Army medic, served two tours in Afghanistan, got out with scars both visible and not. Ended up here, in this nowhere town, patching up drunks and overdose cases instead of bleeding soldiers.
“Didn’t think you were coming in tonight,” he says, voice rough from too many years of yelling over gunfire.
“Ada made me take the night off. I didn’t argue.”
He raises a brow. “You? Not arguing? Shocking.”
I roll my eyes, stepping past him into the small supply room. The shelves are lined with bandages, antiseptics, syringes, and things that never seem to be fully stocked no matter how many orders we put in.
“How’s it looking tonight?” I ask, grabbing a fresh pair of gloves.
He exhales, rubbing a hand over his stubbled jaw. “Couple of minor injuries. Domestic dispute gone bad, some idiot tried to break his own fall with his face. And a guy in room three, overdosed. We got him stable, but he’s still out.”
Same shit, different night.
I nod, tying my hair back. “Anything you need me on?”
Sawyer studies me for a second, his eyes dark, unreadable. Then he jerks his chin toward the back. “You can check on the overdose. If he wakes up, he’ll either be grateful or pissed off. Either way, he’s not going be happy.”
Sawyer doesn’t move as I step past him, but I can feel his eyes on me. Sharp, assessing. Like he’s measuring something—not just whether I can handle what’s waiting in that room, but maybe whether I should. We both carry a past that haunts us.
He’s always like this. Watching, weighing.
Ethan Sawyer Beckett isn’t just an ex-Army medic, he’s the kind of man who carries war with him, even when he’s standing in a too-brightly lit hallway, wearing a scrub top that’s seen better days. The military never really left him, even after it spat him out.
He served two tours in Afghanistan. First as a field medic, then as part of a special combat search-and-rescue unit. He doesn’t talk much about it, but I’ve seen the faded ink on his forearm, coordinates, dates, initials. Things he doesn’t explain.
Sawyer’s the kind of guy who never raises his voice unless he has to.
Doesn’t need to. He has a presence that does the work for him.
Tall, broad-shouldered, built like he could still carry a full pack across the desert if he had to.
But there’s a tiredness in him, the kind that settles into a person’s bones when they’ve seen too much, done too much, and still keep moving.
He drives an old truck, keeps a metal flask in his glove compartment, and has a habit of rolling a coin between his fingers when he’s thinking, some kind of old superstition or just something to keep his hands busy.
His left knee aches when it rains, but he won’t admit it.
And when the nights get bad, when the clinic is empty and there’s nothing left to distract him, he sometimes lingers by the supply room, fingers absently brushing the dog tags he still wears under his shirt.
But there’s one thing Sawyer holds onto tightly, one thing that still makes him soft: his daughter.
Olivia is nine years old, a little firecracker with curly brown hair and big, expressive eyes.
He loves her more than anything. They co-parent every now and then, sharing custody when life allows.
He tries his best, even though the separation from his wife, Jenna, still stings.
When he turned forty, Jenna left him for another man.
It hit him harder than he let anyone know.
She said it was because he was too broken, and he couldn’t argue with that.
The marriage fell apart slowly, too many nights spent apart, too many times when he couldn’t be there when she needed him.
I guess we all have our family issues in here, maybe that’s why we all get along.
It’s not that he talks about the past. He doesn’t. But it leaks through the cracks anyway. I also spotted most of his information in his file when I got here and scanned through my colleagues.
He used to work in a real hospital after the military. Didn’t last. Too many rules, too much red tape, too many nights spent trying to save people who didn’t want to be saved. So he ended up here, in a place where the world only expects him to patch up wounds and send people back out into the dark.
“You good?” he asks now, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I glance at him. His face is unreadable, but there’s something behind his eyes. A kind of quiet knowing.
“I’m fine.”
He doesn’t argue. Just nods and steps aside, letting me pass. But I know Sawyer. And Sawyer doesn’t believe in ‘fine.’
Neither do I.