5. Miles
CHAPTER 5
MILES
I wrapped up my shift at ten a.m. and went straight for the gym, and the first thing I did was hit the leg press machine. I loaded it up with loud, clanging plates, and launched into my workout fueled up with spite.
I hadn’t been wrong today.
Clang.
Sophie was slow. Unsure.
Clang.
She didn’t trust herself. Kept looking to me.
I got up and added two more heavy plates. She needed to figure things out for herself. But she’d never do that if I kept stepping in. We weren’t finding our rhythm and that was half on me. Right from our first call, I’d pushed her to one side. Taken over the second my patience wore thin.
Because if I didn’t, she’d flounder all day. She doesn’t have the instinct ? —
I grunted and strained. Clenched my jaw tight. Sophie was too earnest. Too peppy. Too… sweet. One bad outcome and she’d shatter like glass.
I wiped down the leg press and stretched. Jogged in place. I still felt twitchy, worked up from my shift. Worked up from the week I’d had, babysitting the rookie. Maybe I was hurting her, shielding her from the job. The sooner she realized it wasn’t all heroics, the sooner it dawned on her that we couldn’t help everyone or save every life, the sooner she’d wash out. Then I’d get a real partner and she would move on, back to whatever charmed life she’d blown in from.
A rowing machine opened up, and I hopped on. I liked the rowing machine for the focus it took. I couldn’t obsess on the rowing machine, or relive my own failures, or dread what came next. All I could do was push, pull. Work those muscles. Stretch and release. Inhale, exhale.
I rowed till my abs burned, and my back, and my thighs, and even my feet and the palms of my hands. When I stood, my head swam and my sweat turned clammy, and I closed my eyes and let myself drift. I felt good, my head empty, my pulse pounding hard, every muscle in my body stretched out and loose. If I could just hold this feeling, keep it going all day?—
My phone blipped, annoying, from my gym bag. I groaned and ignored it, but it blipped again. Then it buzzed loudly, an incoming call. I crouched down and grabbed it.
“Fletcher. What’s up?”
“Hey, Miles,” said Brian. “You at the gym?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“All the banging of weights.” A siren went off on his end and I knew he was at work. In his office, I guessed, by the creak of his chair. “So, listen, I can’t make drinks tonight. I’ve got back-to-back surgeries, then the chief’s called some meeting, so… you’ll be okay, right?”
I laughed, still half-winded. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. You seem stressed. How’re you holding up?”
I grabbed a towel and sat down on the bench, wiping my face and chest. “All right, I guess. You know, long day. But nothing I can’t handle.”
“And how’s your cute partner?”
I groaned. “I wish you’d quit calling her that.”
“Well, how is she? You best friends yet?”
I tried to laugh and it came out half a wheeze. Maybe I’d overdone it on the rowing machine. I’d lost track of time, and the gym clock read noon. Could it really be that late?
“What time do you have?”
Brian snorted. “Around noon. Deflecting much?”
“I’m not deflecting, just tired of her crap. We had a whole fight in the ambulance bay.”
“A fight?” Brian whistled. “Like, fists? The whole bit?”
“Yeah, Brian. I punched her right in the face. Then she stabbed me with a lancet, and yeah. We’re in jail. You got fifty bucks to come bail us out?”
“Hilarious. But, seriously, you sure you’re okay? A fight in the bay doesn’t sound much like you.”
“You haven’t met her. You don’t know what she’s like.” I dug out a water and chugged half the bottle. It churned in my stomach, and I swallowed hard. “She’s a week on the job and she thinks she knows better. Thinks because I’m efficient, I don’t have compassion. She has no idea … what? What’s so funny?”
“I’m not laughing,” said Brian, though he had been. Still was. “You know who she sounds like?”
“No, who?”
“Like you.”
I bellowed, indignant, but Brian cut me off.
“No, hear me out. I don’t mean you now. I mean us ten years ago, when we were starting out. You hated your partner. Thought he was so slow. And I was the same, with Dr. Baby. We thought we knew everything and our teachers knew nothing. What do you call that, the Dunning-Kruger effect. We grew out of it, didn’t we? She’ll learn, too.”
My stomach lurched again. I closed my eyes, feeling sick. “But we learned the hard way. By screwing up.”
Brian’s chair creaked, and I heard a door shut. “You’re worried, aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah, that she’ll kill someone.”
“No, not about that. I meant, about her. You and I both know you won’t let her kill anyone, but I think you’re worried she’ll see how she could . You’ll catch her about to push the wrong meds through IV, or blow up someone’s stomach with a misplaced breathing tube, and you’re scared it’ll hit her and she’ll fall apart.”
I tried to respond, but my mouth had gone dry. I gulped some more water.
“It’s how we learn,” said Brian. “From our mistakes. And if she can’t handle hers, it’s best she finds out.”
He was right, but the finding out, and the guilt that came with it — the long nights awake, reliving those screwups…
“Wouldn’t it be better if I scared her off first? If she never had to go through all those sleepless nights?”
“That depends,” Brian said. I could hear him pacing. “If she’s really that terrible, just wrong for the job, then yeah. The sooner she goes, the better. But what if she could be good? Could she? Be honest.”
I tried to think, could she, but I felt too sick to focus. Even if she could learn, what would it cost her? That sunny smile of hers? That bright, cheery laugh? The way she hummed to herself as she wrote up her scene reports, and waggled her pen around when she got stuck? I tried to remember if I’d ever laughed like she did, like I didn’t have a care in the world.
“She’s good with the patients,” I said at last. “She knows how to talk to them, even the assholes.”
“Well, that’s a start. And I think— Hold on.” I heard the door open, then a hushed conversation. Then Brian was back. “Look, I’ve got to run. But, you sure you’re okay? Is this about?—”
“No.” I cut him off before he could bring up my brother. My screwup, which cost him his life. This wasn’t about that. I was fine. I was fine .
“She just drives me nuts, is all. Don’t worry. I’m good.”
“All right,” said Brian. “See you at bowling Sunday.”
He hung up and I sat with my head in my hands, breathing through my nausea. My whole body hurt now my rush had worn off, my knees throbbing to tell me I’d pushed it too hard. That was my problem, not anything else. I’d been doing just fine, just fine. I had my routine now, work, friends, the gym. The past, well, I’d dealt with it and I’d moved on.
I stood up, still shaky, but fine. I was fine. And Brian had a point, maybe, about me and Sophie. I had been just like her when I started out, and my partner had been patient, at least most of the time. I could do that for Sophie, let her find her way. It might be a shock for her when it all sank in, the weight of our job. Of the lives in our hands. But no way would it hit her the way it did me.
No way, on this job, would she kill her own brother.