Falling for Sunshine (Stillwater Bay #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Nash

I used to love this place.

Eight years ago, I would’ve sprinted through those doors, starry-eyed, heart pounding with purpose. Back then, this job was everything. A calling. Now it just feels like… what? Like gravity. It clings to my shoulders, constantly pulling me under. It owns me now, instead of the other way around.

I’m not even sure what I’m holding onto anymore. Momentum, maybe.

Habit.

Routine.

Whatever I thought it would be, it isn’t.

A breeze brushes against my neck. The sky’s dull gray, pressing low, like even the weather is reluctant to face the day.

“Good morning, Doctor Kincaid!”

Talia, a tireless ER nurse, stops beside me.

She’s got her ever-present jug of water in one hand, the other shoved into her hoodie pocket.

Her braid game is next level—dozens of thin ones falling in a curtain down her back.

Most nurses are at least a little wary of me.

Not Talia. She’s five-foot-one of no-nonsense confidence and refuses to flinch when I bark.

I’ve got over a foot on her, plus the authority vested in me by the state medical board, the hospital brass, and a caffeine addiction strong enough to floor a horse courtesy of my uncle, Simon—but she still looks at me like I’m the one who should sit down and take a breath.

If anyone else spoke to me like she does, I’d put them right in their place.

But Talia is the most qualified nurse on staff.

If she’s with a patient, they’re in good hands. She’s more than earned my respect.

I manage a smile and lift my coffee in greeting. “Morning.”

She pauses, cocks her head. “You good?”

“What? Yeah. Sure.” I force a swallow of lukewarm coffee, push everything down, and summon my game face. This isn’t the time or place for worrying about meaning and purpose. I can have my existential crisis at home like other respectable, almost middle-aged men. “I’m good.”

“You sure?” Talia rests a hand on my forearm. “You look like you’re wrestling with something.”

For half a second, I consider telling her. Just one sentence. One crack in the shell. I don’t know who I am or what I want anymore.

But then her lips quirk and, “Breakfast not sitting right?”

What the hell was I thinking? I don’t even spew my inner workings with family. There’s no way I’m whining in the parking lot with a coworker.

Redefining my mental boundaries, I cross my arms and shrug. “You’d think I’d know not to start the day with tequila by now.”

Talia throws her head back in laughter, surely ready to zing me with some smart-ass comeback, but then—

An ambulance screams into the bay, red lights strobing across the pavement. Doors slam open, paramedics jump out as quickly as the rig stops.

“I think that’s our cue,” Talia calls over her shoulder, already jogging toward the ER entrance.

My feet move on instinct. I shove the coffee into someone’s hands—no idea who—as I approach the stretcher.

“What’s the situation?” I call, my eyes scanning the patient.

Teenaged male. His face is swollen, lips grotesquely puffed. His chest moves in short, panicked heaves. Eyes locked wide open, terrified. Fingers already tinged blue.

“Step aside!” snaps a paramedic I don’t recognize. She tries to shove past me, all urgency and inexperience.

“I’m a doctor,” I reply, already checking the kid’s hands and pulse.

This isn’t good.

“Talia, check his blood pressure and vitals. Let me know if he declines.

“He’s desatting!” Brayden Johnson—a medic qualified enough to give Talia a run for her money—shouts. “O2’s dropped to sixty. He needs an airway, now!”

“Epinephrine?”

He nods. “Point three, IM. No response.”

“Hit him with another dose,” I say and the newbie EMT disappears into the rig.

“Why isn’t he intubated?” I frown up at Brayden and he gives a quick shake of his head.

“Couldn’t pass the tube. We’re gonna lose this kid if we don’t get him an airway.”

Enough said.

“Then let’s get him an airway.”

We start to wheel him through the entrance when the monitor screams, then flatlines.

“No pulse,” Talia confirms.

I move to the boy’s chest, my hands over his heart. “Starting compressions.”

Everything else falls away—the wide-eyed newbie paramedic, Brayden’s focused movements, the hiss of hospital doors, the crunch of gravel under hurrying feet. It’s just this kid. His face. His life.

He got out of bed this morning thinking it was a regular day. Maybe he had plans with friends. Maybe he kissed his mom on the cheek or flipped his dad the bird on his way out the door. He was alive.

And he’s gonna stay that way.

I count out compressions. Focus on rhythm. Focus on hope.

A blip.

A beep.

“We have a pulse now!” Talia shouts.

“That’s right, son” I whisper. “Stay with me. Let’s get him into the—"

“Sat’s still dropping!” The look in Talia’s eyes says everything I already know.

“Shit. We’re out of time.” I reach out my hand. “Scalpel.”

“Not in the OR?” the new paramedic gasps.

“Not if we wanna keep that pulse,” I murmur as Talia drops a scalpel into my hand. “Admin can kiss my ass later.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything different,” she replies with a knowing smirk.

“Get a tube ready,” I tell Brayden, not taking my eyes off the kid’s throat. “Cricothyrotomy’s our only shot.”

The incision is small, precise. My fingers are steady. I insert the tube; watch it fog as air finally reaches his lungs.

A hiss.

Then Talia calls, “We’ve got breath sounds!”

A woman screams from the far side of the lot. She pushes through the chaos. Her hair’s half up, frizzed, strands flying like static. “Oh no! Oh God! Oliver!”

One hand covers her mouth. The other trembles at her side. Brayden’s already moving again, guiding the stretcher toward the doors. The woman follows in a daze, and I step back, breath coming fast, pulse still high. Hands on my hips, I close my eyes and thank God I was here early today.

That. That right there. That’s why I do this.

Not the endless charts. Not the red tape or the board meetings or the bed shortage battles. It’s this. Cutting through all of it—literally, today—to keep someone’s world from ending.

“That boy’s gonna live because of you,” Talia says beside me, gaze fixed on the doors that just swallowed them whole.

I shrug, pride and gratitude thrumming under my skin. “I’m just glad I was here.”

“You know Admin’s gonna chew you out. Procedure violation. Risk assessment. Liability this, liability that.”

“They can add it to my list,” I mutter, a half-smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

She snorts. “Better make it a spreadsheet at this point.”

We stand in silence a moment, watching the bay settle, the emergency swallowed again by routine.

As the moment fades, so does the pride and the purpose. The high never lasts.

All that’s left is this… weight.

This… lack.

A longing for… what?

This isn’t the kind of tired a night’s sleep could fix. Not something I could help with a tweak to my routine, because God knows I’ve tried. This is deeper, quieter. Like something gnawed through the wiring inside me while I was too busy running to notice.

And now I’m standing here with a hollowed-out chest, clutching moments like this one, praying they’re enough to fill the empty spaces.

I wonder if they ever were.

“Come on,” Talia says, nudging my arm. “Let’s go piss off some administrators.”

I crack a smile and follow her in.