Chapter Nineteen
The world felt like it was on pause, a slow-motion replay of the chaos unfolding in front of her.
Cyclist. Car. Collision.
Three words that looped in Morgan’s mind like an endless echo.
It was like riding a bicycle.
Except her bicycle was broken and Morgan was glued to her seat. Her limbs felt like they were encased in cement.
The last time she was in an OR, scrubs on, gloved up, her patient had ended up dead on her table. This was no different. The rules were still the same. Save the patient to the best of your ability and whatever you do, don’t let them die.
Simple. Easy.
Or severely complicated.
Morgan glanced down at her fingers, long and slender, shaking like a leaf in a winter’s storm. Even if she wanted to help, how could she possibly do it in the state she was in? She wasn’t a surgeon; she was a liability.
“Morgan!” Sydney shouted, her voice crackling like glass under pressure.
She quickly declared herself a trained EMT for Fire Station 5 in Carmel-by-the-Sea and knelt beside the cyclist. Her hands moved urgently as she checked her airway, her pulse, her pupil size.
Sydney whipped her head back, eyes on the Jeep parked a few feet away, and on Morgan still stuck in the passenger seat.
“What are you doing?” she called. Her face was scrunched in either confusion, shock, or in complete and utter disbelief. “Get out of the car and help me!”
Morgan swallowed hard and could only give a mere nod in response.
She couldn’t speak. Whatever she wanted to say felt too large for her throat and so the words just sat there, stuck, while she choked on the words I can’t help you, Sydney.
The last time I tried to help someone, she died.
And it felt like the world exploded, it felt like I exploded, like every part of me stretched so tight, and then crushed in on itself, until something inside me burned up, getting hotter and hotter until…
and it reminded me of someone else, someone I knew a long time ago…
someone I cared about. Morgan hadn’t thought about her in a long time, and when she… well… my world exploded then too…
Morgan opened the car door and nearly closed it again. Instead, she forced herself forward, her legs so heavy she nearly had to grip them with her hands just to lift them up.
Cars stopped. Curious people climbed out to check on the scene.
All were muttering under their breaths, pointing and fishing their phones out of their pockets, out of their handbags.
Some took videos. If Morgan could move faster than a tortoise stuck in glue, she’d smack those phones out of their greedy, voyeuristic hands.
Others clapped their palms to their mouths and watched with wide, concerned eyes.
When Morgan reached Sydney, she opened her mouth to speak, to ask about the condition of the patient, but the words fled from Morgan’s brain like they were running from a tsunami.
She was trembling like a glass about to shatter.
Her heart hammered so loudly in her ears that she could barely decipher the sound of her heartbeat from the sounds of the crowd.
Sydney snapped her head back over her shoulder. “I could really use a hand here.” Her tone was sharp and sardonic, so unlike Sydney.
But then again, the woman had the right to be mad, to be questioning Morgan.
All Sydney knew—all Morgan had offered her—was that she was on a sabbatical from work, a kind of a break. She had no idea of the panic attack, of the brief stint in the psych ward. But how could she when Morgan refused to share any of her deepest self?
“It would be really amazing if you could snap out of whatever you’re dealing with and help,” Sydney muttered, her hands moving to the cyclist’s head. “She’s probably got a head injury and the last I remember, you’re a neurosurgeon.”
Morgan was only half listening to Sydney. She was too busy studying the cyclist’s face.
The woman was young, barely older than twenty-five. She was fit and tanned with blonde hair the color of straw in a long plait. The same blonde as…
Emily.
Sweet twelve-year-old Emily, who should’ve been out at the movies with Jerry Hunting, deciding whether she liked him more than ice cream, who should’ve been perfecting her grand jeté or sampling every cookie at the bakery—
“Morgan,” Sydney’s voice sliced through her thoughts like a butcher’s knife. “She’s got a GCS of ten, confused speech, withdraws from pain, and her eyes keep fluttering open when I talk to her.”
It felt like a rubber band that had stretched too tight finally snapping. Morgan blinked hard, her paralysis finally breaking. She rushed to Sydney’s side, kneeling next to the cyclist.
A score of ten on the Glasgow Coma Scale wasn’t great.
It definitely suggested a possible head injury.
Morgan scanned the woman’s body and judging by the distorted shape of the woman’s ankle, it was likely fractured, though there were no visible bone protrusions.
She had abrasions on her right arm and the palm of her hand, but no cut severe enough to require a tourniquet.
Her helmet was severely scraped. Sydney had the good common sense to leave it on her head.
“What are her vital signs?” Morgan asked.
“Pulse is forty beats per minute and respiration rate is ten.” Sydney tilted her head in the direction of the boat loafer guy who had hit the cyclist. His face was red and scrunched, and he looked to be pulling out his hair while simultaneously muttering into his phone still pressed against his ear.
He was obviously traumatized—as expected when you accidentally hit someone with your car.
“He’s called the ambulance. They’re less than ten minutes out. ”
“Okay. Keep her head and neck stabilized,” Morgan said, her voice miraculously steady despite her heart beating a million times faster than it should.
“I’m busy doing that,” Sydney shot back, her hands on both sides of the helmet, keeping her head in line with the spine. “Now what the hell was that, Morgan? Why did you just freeze like that? What’s going on?”
“Just concentrate on what you’re doing,” Morgan shot back.
This wasn’t the right time to open up, to divulge her past. Although, it never seemed like the right time.
“We should probably get someone to push back all these idiots with their phones.” She flicked her chin toward the crowd pressing in.
“This poor girl doesn’t deserve this kind of attention. ”
Sirens suddenly blared in the distance, growing ever louder.
When the red flashing lights sparkled and two paramedics jumped out of the back with a stretcher, Morgan pushed her far-too-heavy body up and backed away while Sydney briefed the medics. The woman was alive. She’d make it… unless of course the ambulance had to crash along the way and they’d all—
She flicked the thought away like it was an annoying mosquito.
The last thing she needed right now was to get lost in her mind, which had somehow spiraled into a dark, doom-and-gloom outlook.
Sydney walked over; her face faintly lined with concern. “Morgan,” she said, softly as her hand stretched across the gap between them.
“I want to go back,” Morgan said coldly, stepping out of reach.
It felt like a tug-of-war inside her. Her body and brain were acting against her heart, determined to create as much distance as possible.
But if her heart had legs, it would’ve sprinted right into Sydney’s arms, leaving her conflicted mind trailing far behind.
Sydney hesitated, her hand pausing midair. “What about Cambria and the Airbnb I booked?”
“And what?” Morgan snapped. “We drink wine and enjoy our time and pretend everything’s fine? Pretend none of this happened? That you hadn’t just witnessed me freak out over something…” Morgan breathed in deep. Her chest felt sore. Her mind tired. “I just want to go home, alright.”
Sydney opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it. “We can go back to Carmel,” she said instead, the hurt in her eyes striking Morgan like a physical blow. A swell of pain rose in her gut.
Morgan could set things right just by explaining her actions, and by sharing what was really going on inside of her head.
But at that moment, it felt pointless.
Good things always have a way of coming to an end.