It’s loud and the sharp stink of antiseptic in the air is nearly overridden by the tang of copper from all the blood.
I stand there, frozen for a few long seconds, until someone bumps into me and catches my shoulder.
“Snow? Oh, thank God. I wondered where you were.” June, a seasoned nurse, flashes me a distressed smile. “You’re on Xander’s team. He’s over there. He needs all the help you can give him!”
The crowd in front of me melts away and for a few sharp seconds, Xander is the only person I can see.
He’s on his haunches in front of a child with the sleeves of his white coat rolled up to his elbows.
The child nods along to whatever Xander is saying and the softness on Xander’s face makes my heart lift.
The last time I saw him properly, I was in his kitchen while he was making me breakfast and I had to run.
Unable to face him, I’ve been subconsciously avoiding him since every time I think about him, all I see is the warm, protective scowl on his face as he rushed into my room naked, ready to tackle whatever had scared me.
Those few slow seconds give me a chance to distract myself with the softness of his features and the muscular tone of his forearms, then I rush forward through the crowd.
Once I’m in earshot, Xander pats the child and scoops him up then hands him off to a passing nurse.
He turns and our eyes lock.
Despite the cold, impassive expression that settles over his face now that he’s no longer soothing a child, there’s a flicker of warmth in his eyes that I cling to.
“Snow?”
“Xander. Sorry I’m late. Where do you want me?”
8
XANDER
“A log truck hit a patch of black ice and took out three lanes on the highway before it crashed. I’ve got countless victims that need identification—names, phone numbers, medical information if you can get it. The more we have, the faster we can move. Can you sort that?”
Snow looks at me with wide eyes, sort of like a deer on the side of the road simply observing the world moving on around her.
I tried to call after she left my apartment, but she never answered and work took over before I could pursue other avenues to look for her.
The glimpses I got in the hallway were enough to assure me that she was around, but something is different.
It’s like the light inside her is battling against a gale threatening to snuff her out.
Even the smile she gives me now doesn’t reach her eyes.
“I can do that. Leave it to me.”
Then she’s gone, another head in the swarming crowd of medical personnel and victims of the carnage, but I can pick her out exactly as she hurries toward the front desk.
Short-staffing in a disaster is never ideal, but for those few seconds I stand there watching her, something twists like a knife in my chest.
As if she’s just as wounded as the people around me and no one can see it except me.
Yells of pain draw me from my distraction and I return to work, keeping Snow in the back of my mind.
One child is sent straight to surgery due to internal bleeding and it takes me five long minutes to pry his panicked mother from his side.
One driver is about to lose a leg and whimpers through tears as she waits for the orthopedic surgeon to arrive and work out what can be saved.
Another driver has more glass shards embedded in his chest than I’ve ever seen before.
