Chapter Two The Drugs Don’t Work
Chapter two
The Drugs Don’t Work
The ambulance humming beneath Trent was a low, constant vibration keeping him steady as they sped towards Worthbridge Hospital under blue lights.
The elderly woman, in the back, Edith Jacobs according to her care bracelet, lay strapped to the stretcher, breathing shallow but stable now the oxygen mask was in place.
Her hands were a mess of reddened skin and blistering burns where she’d tried to fight through the flames. Stubborn, brave old thing.
Trent drove on autopilot while his mind…well, that was already somewhere it had no business being.
Reece.
That reckless, infuriating man with wildfire in his eyes and heartbreak stitched into every cocky grin.
Reece Morgan was a bad idea wrapped in turnout gear and temptation.
A disaster Trent saw coming every damn time and still couldn’t look away from.
Even streaked with soot and heavy with sweat, Reece made ruin look good.
Too good. Because with that T-shirt clinging to him, darkened and damp, outlining every hard, unforgiving line of his body, he looked as though he’d been forged from fire.
And his mouth— Christ , that mouth —still looked soft despite the grit and grime, like it had no business surviving the wreckage and yet somehow did.
And that was exactly why Trent would never, ever kiss him.
Fucking him? Fine. He could justify that. A release. A mistake he could walk away from. But a kiss? That would mean he felt something.
And Trent wasn’t ready to bleed for this man.
He’d seen enough blood.
“We’re five minutes out,” he called to Liv from the cab.
Liv leant in closer to Edith, stroking a reassuring hand along her arm. “Nearly there, love. Keep breathing for me, yeah? Big slow breaths. That’s it.”
The hospital came into view, the golden glow of Worthbridge General a lighthouse in the dark.
Funny. Everything seemed to come back to lighthouses these days.
Standing tall. Shining bright. Pretending they weren’t cracked to hell and battered by every storm.
And disguised as a safe haven when it merely dragged him closer and closer to ruin.
They handed Edith off to the specialist burns unit, tucked away in one of the hospital’s older wings where the cracked tiles caught every second trolley wheel and the walls were held together by peeling paint and a battalion of faded posters screaming Stay Hydrated and Know the Signs of Sepsis .
The staff were battle-hardened here, seasoned by fire in every sense of the word. They cracked jokes while elbow-deep in the worst humanity offered, could care for blistered skin without flinching, and still keep a running bet on which exhausted consultant would finally snap and quit first.
But Trent understood why they were like that now.
Without the dark jokes, the gallows humour, the constant deflection, it would all become too much.
This job wasn’t a front-row seat to suffering; it was a slow, suffocating crawl through every worst-case scenario imaginable.
And if they couldn’t laugh at it… they’d never survive it.
Never patch themselves, or anyone else, back together.
Trent realised that the hard way.
He hadn’t been on the job long. Barely a year since he’d graduated, later than most due to…
reasons, he’d joined the ambulance crew at Worthbridge at twenty-six.
Now, at twenty-seven, he’d already seen more catastrophe than some people would witness in a lifetime.
Things most people couldn’t function after seeing.
And that… well, that hardened a man.
Sometimes he wondered if it had hardened him too fast. And whether, in the process of surviving it, he’d lost parts of himself he might never get back. That he’d become numb to it all. Too numb. And, along the way, lost the ability to feel, to trust and… fall in love.
But love hurt anyway.
He should’ve stopped, maybe grabbed a word with Nadia or checked if Ellie needed help settling the new admission. But the day pressed down too heavily on his shoulders, and he couldn’t shake the lingering heat of Reece’s voice in his ears.
His shift was done .
So the second he hit the break room, he peeled off his sweat-drenched greens, then slumped against his locker and pulled his phone free. He hovered for a moment before he fired off the text.
Group Chat: Usual Suspects
Trent : Anyone out tonight? I need a fucking drink.
Replies came fast.
Dev: You alright, babes? Bad shift?
Rory: Rough day? Or rough thoughts?
Niko: Translation: “I need to drown myself in tequila and bad decisions.”
Trent: Door number three, Niko. Lighthouse in an hour?
Rory: On it. Already halfway through my pre-game playlist.
Niko : I’m already here, dickheads.
Dev: You know you could talk to him, yeah?
Trent: And I could also shove my hand in a fire. Less painful.
He pocketed his phone before he could start overthinking the last message, then bundled out of the break room, out the hospital, and caught the number seventeen bus before it took off and he’d have to wait another half an hour for one.
Living in a small coastal town was great, if you had a car.
If you had to rely on the unreliable public transport, not so much.
He could handle a high-speed run behind the wheel of an ambulance, blue lights flashing, adrenaline pumping, but owning his own car?
That was a luxury well out of reach. Between paying the bills and covering what Jamie needed, there wasn’t much left over for car insurance and petrol.
So, the bus it was.
He was lucky his flatmate Dev had a hand-me-down banger he got to use in emergencies. But as Dev needed it for his job at the hotel and golf spa out of town in the lanes, Trent was the one left to suffer public transport. But as he got a special NHS discount, it worked in his favour to use it.
Worthbridge rushed past the rain-specked window as they rattled across the old iron bridge. Trent fished out his phone, thumbing through his call log, landing on the one person who always settled his head.
He pressed call.
“Hey, Jamie.”
There was a pause, a soft static crackle before his brother answered, voice precise and flat. “I’m watching the freight trains.”
A quiet smile found its way onto Trent’s face despite the knot of exhaustion sitting low in his gut. “Yeah? You at the station?”
Perfectly positioned near the freight sidings where the long industrial trains rolled through on their way to and from the docks, Worthbridge Rail Station was his brother’s favourite spotting location.
Jamie kept a meticulous spotting journal, logging train classes, liveries, and running schedules, all keeping his days occupied.
“Platform Three,” Jamie confirmed. “I’ve logged six tonight. Two DB Cargos, one EWS livery. That’s rare. And the Class 66s are running out of schedule again.”
Trent leant his head on the cool window, closing his eyes for a moment. Jamie’s words were like a litany. Familiar. Ordered. Safe.
“You still looking out for that Class 37?”
There was a brief pause before Jamie answered, his voice lighter, almost hopeful. “It’s a living relic, you know. British Rail days. The engine’s got a proper growl, and the retro blue and grey livery… It’s rare to see it this far down the coast. But I’ll log it. One day.”
“It’ll show up for you, mate. You’ll see.”
“You’re right,” Jamie said simply, as if that settled it .
“You not cold out there?”
“I have my thermos. Hot chocolate. I’m fine.”
Of course he was. Jamie always prepared for these nights as if they were his own personal mission.
“Don’t stay out too late, yeah?”
Jamie didn’t answer, but Trent already knew how this would go.
He’d stay until the last freight train rumbled through, log every detail in his notebook with that quiet, precise focus of his, and only call if the cold crept in too deep or the night stretched too long.
Not that Trent had a car to pick him up. But he’d get there. One way or another.
He always did.
He might be the younger by three years, but he’d long since fallen into the role of Jamie’s appropriate adult.
Had to, really. With Jamie on the autism spectrum, living in supported community housing, the responsibility had landed squarely on Trent’s shoulders years earlier than anyone expected.
Least of all himself . It was the main reason he’d gone to university late.
Why he’d cut his travelling short when… everything fell apart.
Why he’d had to find something steady. A career.
It wasn’t a burden. Not really.
But some nights, it sat heavier than others.
Trent ended the call with a sigh, shoving his phone back into his pocket as the bus lurched to his stop.
Humid air clung to his skin the moment he stepped off, thick with damp coastal heat seeping through his clothes.
Home wasn’t far. A short walk up the hill past the old church, its crooked spire lost in the clouds looking as though a thunderstorm might be on the horizon, and along the row of battered Victorian semis.
His building leant to one side as if it had finally given in to the years of salt air and neglect.
Fitting, really. He and the house had that much in common .
The top floor belonged to him and Dev. A flat with scuffed wooden floors, a perpetually leaky kitchen tap, and radiators wheezing like asthmatic pensioners. But it was home. A strange, chaotic, lived-in kind of home.
He shoved open the door to find Dev already halfway through a bottle of cheap rum, standing shirtless in the living room with music blaring from the Bluetooth speaker.
“About bloody time!” Dev called over the music, flashing a grin that was all trouble and teeth. His skin gleamed under the warm light, dark and smooth with a sharp outline of the abs he worked hard to achieve. “I was about to head out without you.”