9. Nash
NASH
AGE TWENTY-NINE
The crowd presses in around us, voices blending into white noise as Rodriguez and I maneuver the gurney through the chaos. My hands work on autopilot—checking straps, adjusting the oxygen mask, monitoring vitals—but my mind reels like I've been sucker-punched.
Eve.
Seven years. Seven goddamn years since I've seen her face, and now she's unconscious on my gurney with blood matting her dark curls.
"Nash, you good?" Rodriguez shoots me a look over the gurney. "Never seen you this rattled, man."
I nod, throat tight. "I'm fine."
But nothing about this is fine. Nothing about seeing Eve Turner bleeding in the middle of some forgotten side street at dawn is anywhere close to fine.
"Move back, everyone. Give us room." My voice cuts through the crowd, sharper than usual. A few onlookers shuffle backward, phones still recording. Modern vultures.
Rodriguez raises an eyebrow at my tone but says nothing as we lift the gurney into the ambulance. He's worked with me long enough to know when to ask questions and when to just drive.
"I'll take the back," I tell him, already climbing in beside her.
The doors slam shut, sealing us in the sterile cocoon of medical equipment and antiseptic smell. Rodriguez starts the engine, and we lurch forward through the morning traffic.
Alone with her now.
Eve's skin looks far too wane against the white sheets, a stark contrast to the rich mahogany skin I remember.
There's a gash along her temple, angry and swollen, blood seeping through the gauze I'd pressed against it on scene.
Her breathing is shallow, labored. The oxygen mask fogs with each exhale.
I reach for the trauma kit, my hands steadier than they have any right to be. Training kicks in—check airways, assess breathing, circulation. The holy trinity of emergency medicine. But underneath the professional calm, something primal claws at my chest.
"BP ninety over sixty," I mutter, wrapping the cuff around her arm. Too low. Everything about her vitals screams danger. "Pulse thready at one-ten."
Her ribs are definitely broken—I can see the unnatural rise and fall of her chest, the way she favors her left side even unconscious.
When we found her, she was just lying there in the middle of Bleecker Street like someone had dropped her from the sky.
It has been called in as a hit pedestrian, but there was no car in sight.
No skid marks. Just Eve, broken and bleeding on cold asphalt.
What the hell happened to you?
I adjust the IV line, checking the flow rate. Saline to keep her blood pressure stable, but she needs a hospital. Fast.
"Rodriguez, how long?" I call toward the front.
"Five minutes. Traffic's moving."
Five minutes. I can keep her stable for five minutes.
Eve's lips are slightly parted beneath the oxygen mask, and for a moment I'm transported back to Christmas break when she was eighteen.
The way she'd looked at me at that bonfire, bitter and lost and so goddamn beautiful it hurt.
The way she'd tasted when I finally got her alone, like salvation and damnation wrapped in one perfect package.
The way she'd run afterward, telling me it meant nothing.
In the seven years since she left my apartment, I've tried to give her space. To let her be and move on. I even heard through the hometown grapevine that she'd gotten engaged to some business associate of her father's. Stable. Safe. Everything I could never be for her.
Better for her, I'd told myself. Better than getting tangled up with someone like me.
But knowing she's hurt and alone, that no one has been protecting her, makes something dark and possessive rear its head in my chest. I would've never let that happen.
Christ, what's wrong with me? She's unconscious. Injured. And here I am, jealous. Jealous when she did exactly what I wanted.
I force myself to focus on her pupils—checking for signs of brain trauma. Unequal dilation could mean intracranial pressure. Could mean?—
No. Don't go there.
Her left pupil is slightly sluggish, but not dangerously so. Concussion, definitely. Possibly mild traumatic brain injury. The head wound needs stitches, but it's not deep enough to be life-threatening.
"Come on, sweetheart," I whisper, the old endearment slipping out before I can stop it. "Stay with me."
Her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks, dark crescents that I remember tracing with my fingertips that night she let me love her. Before she decided I wasn't worth keeping.
The ambulance hits a pothole, jostling the gurney. Eve's heart monitor spikes for a moment before settling back into its erratic rhythm. I steady the IV bag, checking the line again.
"Rodriguez, easy on the turns."
"Doing my best, Callahan."
I am too. Doing my best not to fall apart while the woman who's haunted my dreams for seven years lies—for twenty really—broken in front of me.
Doing my best to be the professional EMT and not the lovesick kid who never got over his first real heartbreak.
His only heartbreak. One he's felt every single day for so many years.
Eve's breathing hitches, and I lean closer, watching for signs of consciousness. Her skin is warm under my fingers as I check her pulse at her wrist—steady now, stronger than before. Good sign.
"That's it," I murmur. "Fight, Eve. Just like you always did."
She always was a fighter, even when she pretended to be the sweet, compliant good girl everyone expected. She never was, and that was why I teased her for it. I saw the steel spine beneath all that gentleness. The quiet defiance that only showed itself when she was pushed too far.
Like that night at Winter Formal when she walked away from me on the dance floor. Or Christmas break when she had no problem giving me a piece of her mind at the bonfire.
The monitor beeps steadily, her vitals stabilizing. Whatever happened to her—accident, assault, something worse—she's a survivor. Always has been.
The ambulance slows, and I hear Rodriguez calling in our arrival to the hospital. Almost there. Almost time to hand her over to someone else, someone who can actually help her instead of just keeping her breathing while drowning in memories.
But I'm not ready to let go. Not when I just found her again.
Eve's fingers twitch against the white sheet, and my heart jumps. Consciousness trying to surface. I lean over her, close enough to smell her shampoo beneath the antiseptic and blood.
"Eve? Can you hear me?"
Nothing. Just the steady rhythm of the machines keeping track of her broken body.
The ambulance shudders to a stop. Doors will open any second. Rodriguez will help me unload the gurney, and then Eve will disappear into the maze of the emergency room. Back out of my life as suddenly as she entered it.
Seven years ago, I convinced myself letting her go was the right thing to do. The noble thing. She deserved better than a med school dropout with a taste for moral compromise. She deserved the kind of man who could give her the life she'd always wanted—stable, respectable, safe.
But seeing her like this, vulnerable and hurt right here in the same city as me, that old conviction crumbles.
Maybe she deserves better than me. But maybe I don't give a damn about what she deserves anymore.
Maybe it's time I fought for what I want.
The doors swing open, harsh hospital light flooding the back of the ambulance. Rodriguez appears, ready to help transfer the gurney.
"What've we got?" A trauma nurse approaches, all business.
I rattle off Eve's vitals, her injuries, the timeline since we found her. Professional. Detached. Everything I'm not feeling.
But as we wheel her toward the automatic doors, I catch her wrist, my thumb brushing against the skin there.
She's back in my city. Back in my life.
And this time, I'm not letting her run.
The trauma bay erupts into controlled chaos the moment we wheel Eve through the doors. Nurses swarm the gurney, hands already reaching for equipment, voices calling out medical jargon that becomes background noise to the thundering in my chest.
"Twenty-eight-year-old female, possible vehicular trauma," I start, but my voice sounds hollow even to my own ears. "Head laceration, suspected rib fractures, vitals stabilized en route."
The nurse next to me nods. "We'll take it from here."
But I don't move. Don't head back to the ambulance. I stay clinging to Eve's side.
"Nash?"
I look up to find Sarah Chen, one of the senior trauma nurses I've worked with dozens of times.
Her dark eyes narrow as she takes in my expression, then shift to the patient on the gurney.
Something passes across her face—recognition, maybe, or just the professional awareness that this isn't routine for me.
"You okay?" she asks quietly while the other nurses transfer Eve to the hospital bed.
"I know her." The words come out rougher than intended. "We grew up together. Small town."
Sarah's eyebrows lift slightly. In the three years we've worked together, I've never mentioned knowing a patient personally.
Hell, I've never mentioned much about my past at all.
Most people at the hospital know Nash Callahan as the calm, competent EMT who shows up, does his job, and disappears without much small talk.
"Shit," Sarah mutters, understanding immediately. "You want to stay?"
"I need to." I run a hand through my hair, probably making it stick up at odd angles. "She doesn't have anyone here. Parents are back in Vermont. I should probably call them, but I need to know what we're dealing with first."
It's a reasonable explanation. Logical. The kind of thing any decent person would do for someone from their hometown who ended up hurt and alone in the big city.
It's also complete bullshit, and from the way Sarah studies my face, she knows it.
"Dr. Martinez is on tonight," she says finally. "He's good. And he knows you—won't give you any trouble about staying."