“The boot,” I agreed. That was our shorthand forI dumped the asshole.
“Well, too bad,” she said. “I thought maybe he’d stick around. He lasted, what, four weeks?” She paused. “Wait. He proposed after onlyfourweeks?”
“Yup. Sorry, but that spinal implant you gave me when we were kids took hold quite nicely, thank you very much.”
Lilah grinned and leaned in for one last hug. “Good on ya. I’ll text you. Love you, sis.”
“Love you, too.”
We never parted ways without saying it. I knew a few people suspected there was something romantic between us but there wasn’t. We were sisters in every way, the only family we had besides the Franceses, and they were both, unfortunately, in their graves now.
By the time I locked the front door and made it to my SUV, Lilah’s marked SUV had already disappeared down the road, and I cranked the music for my drive to the hospital.
How sad was it that I wasn’t even upset to tell Joe to go fuck himself?
Lilah sometimes dated, as did I, but nothing ever… took.
Except for Joe they’d all been nice guys—and Joe had put up a good front about being a nice guy—but none of them were…
Yeah.
They weren’t what either of us wanted, that magical unicorn mix of a sensitive, strong, patient man who lovingly dominated.
Notdomineered.
Sure it was daddy issues. I’d own that. It wasn’t difficult to admit, on my part anyway. We grew up without safety until we’d stumbled into the Franceses’ garage and finally had a safe landing and launching pad to regroup on.
Neither of us had a great start in life, unable to trust anyone else until nearly the end of our childhoods.
Frankly, I was too busy working to hold the hand of a fragile man-child who wanted a mommy—in the non-kinky way, I mean—and who wanted a woman to cater to his every whim.
Again, I don’t mean in the kinky kind of way. I mean a guy whose masculinity was so fragile that it’d shatter in a stiff breeze.
So far, I hadn’t found a guy like that. Life was too short to settle.
Also, I didn’t want kids. As in, I planned to get my tubes tied once I could find a couple of open weeks in my schedule to make time to do it and have a mini vacay on the other side. I know that’s ironic considering I love kids and love working with them.
I just don’t want any of my own.
Full stop.
Lilah felt ambivalent about kids. She also didn’t hate them, and loved doing presentations at schools, but her biological clock wasn’t ticking.
At all.
After arriving at work, my day proceeded with nearly uncanny ease until about an hour before my shift was due to end at 7:00pm, when an all-hands page for a code white went out and I raced down to Emergency.
The on-call in charge of the ED called for attention. “School bus was run off the road by a semi that blew a front tire and cut in front of them. Approximately thirty kids, ranging in age from ten to thirteen or so.” He spotted me. “Em, I don’t know what injuries we’ll have, but stay in close contact with triage. We’ll have all the ORs ready.”
My pulse raced as I nodded. I’d seen some shit already but nothing like this, and especially not involving children.
Some were being air-lifted here, some driven over land. Both drivers died but the range of injuries in the children ranged from critical to minor, none of them dead.
Yet.
The majority of my cases were pediatric but there were times I was the only neurosurgeon in the building when an emergency arrived and I dealt with it.
I was helping with triage when a familiar SUV with Montana Fire, Wildlife and Parks markings rolled into the ambulance bay. I grabbed a gurney and raced out as Lilah lifted a little girl out of the backseat. The girl was sobbing, and her right leg had been bleeding before someone wrapped it, but I didn’t see horrible injuries on her and set her in a wheelchair a nurse had raced out with.
