Trapp #2
He poured the troll a cup from his own thermos once they were back in the ambulance.
“I’m going to tell you what no one bothered telling me a decade ago.
” They’d been driving in silence for several minutes, but Trapp knew it was only a matter of time before the radio crackled to life.
“If there’s something else you’re good at, you should do it.
If you have another job opportunity, take it.
Because this will bleed you dry. Mental health emergencies that will break your faith in the system.
Domestics that’ll make you sick. You’re going to be first on the scene to accidents you won’t ever be able to stop seeing in your head, families and kids—” Trapp broke off, swallowing hard.
“There’s a reason Vinlop and I both took the fire exam.
Because I’d rather deal with a burning building every day of the week than the shit you’ll see every day in the box before lunch.
If you think you won’t wind up with PTSD from this job, I’m here to be the bearer of bad news. ”
Oleg laughed weakly. “Yeah, I’m starting to see that. Thanks, I guess. That doctor at the clinic . . . thanks for trying to defend me. I wanted to say something to the captain—”
“No, don’t,” Trapp cut in. “That was on me. Rosh wasn’t wrong; I shouldn’t have argued with her.
She and I have a personal history and I let that get in the way, but you don’t ever do that.
That’s the other thing you need to get used to.
The doctors are going to treat you like shit.
Make friends with the nurses and learn to hold your tongue. ”
“Why did you leave? I mean, that’s what you were in school for, right? To be a doctor? Why did you drop out?”
Trapp blew out an aggrieved breath. “I didn’t drop out!
I was at the top of my class! The next bit of very important information you need to internalize before this fucking light changes is that you can only believe an eighth of whatever story you hear at the bar or at the coffee shop.
The rest of it is bullshit that changes depending on who’s telling it. ”
Oleg laughed as Trapp considered how he wanted to proceed.
“I finished medical school,” he went on after a moment.
“I did two years of my residency. Then I dropped out. I hated it. That was it; there’s no big secret reason.
I didn’t punch my attending. I didn’t start crying because I screwed something up, or whatever the fuck Xenna and her crew are spreading around.
I hated the hospital I matched into, that was a big part of it.
I hated all of the politicking and bureaucracy.
Half the attendings I worked under spent more time trying to backstab each other and influence their way up the ladder than they did actually helping patients. ”
Trapp trailed off, the memory of his residency closer to the surface these days, stirred up from the bottom of the pot by Adriana’s arrival in town.
What he didn’t disclose to Oleg was how easy it would have been for him to ascend in the hospital ecosystem.
How much weight the Hemming name carried in certain circles; how a well-timed round of golf with the right hospital board member could change his fate, having nothing to do with his skills or lack thereof on the hospital floor, and perhaps worse — how good he was in particular at exploiting that advantage.
His easy smile, his always on-script delivery .
. . politicians by birth, if not by profession, the whole lot of them.
Trapp hated it. He knew it was a system that he’d benefitted from starting the moment he was born, but he’d had a front row seat to the uglier, internal side of that easy privilege as well.
He didn’t want to play the same games Jackson and Gray plotted their lives around.
He didn’t want to be like his father. He hated the thought of ever being anything like his grandfather, and that on its own had nearly been enough for him to quit the system that was all too eager to hoist him up. Hating the hospital had been a bonus.
“When you come from a family like mine, you know firsthand how all of that shreds folks from the inside out,” he finished half-heartedly, not clarifying his words for Oleg.
Luckily, the troll didn’t ask. “I hated being in a human-centric city, that was like 90 percent of our patients and no one gave a shit about the other 10 percent. That’s not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
I just figured it out a few years too late. ”
“But you wanted to do this?” Oleg’s voice was laced with disbelief, making Trapp laugh again.
“Believe it or not, yes. I wanted to help people. I mean, not this specifically, because I’m not joking. You will wind up with serious psychological damage doing this job for more than a few years.”
The radio crackled at last, an orc with lower abdominal pain, too strong for him to drive himself to the hospital. “All bays at Healers are currently full. Proceed to the urgent care facility,” the dispatch instructed.
Perfect. He’d not seen her since his first day back, the day they’d picked up the ogre from the same engineering campus where Owen worked.
His cock jumped against his leg, thickening at the mere thought of seeing her long, dark hair, remembering the way it had tickled his chest as he’d fucked her from behind, thinking of the way she’d moaned beneath him, making his wolf howl . . .
He’d already given her the first taste of the new status quo.
Those four days of his suspension had given him plenty of time to revisit the procedural manual, for if having Jackson and Grayson as siblings had taught him nothing else in life, it was that compliance could be malicious.
He just needed to get through the handoff without coming in his pants.
“I don’t think I like that face you’re making,” Oleg laughed nervously.
“Don’t worry, Oleg,” Trapp told the troll with a sharp-edged grin. “This will be completely by the book . . . Copy that, dispatch. We’re en route.”