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Brianna Gold
All I wanted wassome fucking sleep.
After an eighteen-hour shift at Las Vegas General Hospital, I wanted to crash on my bed and sleep for just as long. As I grabbed my things from my locker, I checked my phone. Over a dozen “Happy Birthday” messages.
They were filled with exclamation marks, emojis, and even a few GIFs. In a previous time, I would have responded with my own GIFs, maybe even made plans to meet the well-wisher. In a previous time, I would have done what any well-functioning, free adult would have done.
Socialized. Felt happy. Enjoyed life.
And yet, I felt anything other than happy.
I’d worked an eighteen-hour shift on my 32ndbirthday. And it wasn’t even the biggest reason for my dour mood.
This is why I’m single, I thought as I tossed my phone back in my purse. Tomorrow would be the day for thank you notes and messages. But right now, I wanted some shut-eye.
I walked to my car in a work-induced haze. Being an ER doctor in Vegas, I saw some pretty fucked-up shit. Mostly, it was the standard assault cases from gambling gone wrong. I had to treat three overdose victims high off of coke tonight, which was becoming more frequent. A stripper came in with a late-stage STD, and one of my frequent flyers was back again tonight with a demand to get more opioids.
In some respects, it might have been crazy for a doctor in, say, Iowa, but for me, it was just another day on the job.
But that didn’t compare to my second “job.”More like my other debt.
Even the thought of it had chills down my back. The fucked-up shit the local MC gave me; I’d take overdoses rather than bullet wound surgeries with less than stellar equipment any day. And, of course, these were the guys supplying the drugs to many of the patients I saw tonight.
I didn’t want to know what else they were involved in. I suppose it was a gift to say that they didn’t really tell me.
That, and I had been doing my best to stay away from anything to do with the club. Their warehouse in Chinatown was raided recently by a rival club. It was bad enough for them, but the consequences for me were, well, literally life-altering.
If I was caught getting involved in King’s little gang—they refused to call themselves anything but a club, though I called bullshit on that—I could lose my medical license. Unfortunately, getting out wasn’t as easy as it appeared. And I even had my doubts about how easy it would be once I fulfilled everything.
I drove home, listening to the radio, when an ad for some random dating app came on. I turned down the obnoxious talking, but there was a little pain in my chest. I had tried the dating apps, but with no success. The men were patronizing or just plain stupid, and there appeared no middle ground that could be considered normal. After the complete buzzkill of swiping, I had tried to meet people in real life. But that didn’t pan out either.
I sighed—I hadn’t been in a serious relationship since high school. I had a few flings and smaller relationships here and there throughout college. I was always focused on my career, which made it hard to be an attractive option for men who wanted to settle down and start a family. I usually made a point to at least go out on dates, at least to try and narrow down the options. But that was before…
Before Mom and Dad died in the accident.
The lack of dating was fine in med school, it was fine when my parents died, and it was fine in the aftermath of me trying to get my shit together. I had my passion for medicine to get me through all of that—and I threw myself in deep with it. But now, I needed something more than just helping prostitutes with STDs and tourists with accidental overdoses to keep me sane.
And with the other job blurring some hard ethical lines, Ireallyneeded a break from the chaos. Burnout was prevalent in the field, and if I didn’t get a break or some enjoyment soon, I was going to be one of those young doctors that went postal from the stress.Just a nice afternoon walk in the park with a normal man would be nice. Something to keep me from going insane, to keep me feeling like a human being still.
I guess I’d have to settle for, at most, me and my hand tonight, most likely me and my dreams tonight.
I pulled up to my apartment complex. Las Vegas Grand. It had all new siding, and each unit had a white poster balcony. It was lit up with bright ground-level lights, and it looked like a new building. But I knew better.
Like much of Vegas, despite the name and the façade, it was a shithole.A building just like me, I smirked.Pretty on the outside, but a shitshow on the inside.
I walked past a homeless man asleep by the door and into the perpetually cigarette-smoke-filled hallway of my apartment building. I never stopped feeling bad about the homeless population and the drug problems of this city, but at a certain point, I got probably too good at compartmentalizing that empathy.Probably when I joined them.
I climbed the stairs to my third-level apartment, my feet aching. The elevator was broken, just as it had been for a painfully long time. And in Vegas, there was no way I was going to live on the first floor—especially not when I was involved in a gang of sorts.
Opening the repainted white door, I stepped into my small apartment. I shut the door behind me, throwing the bolt for added effect. I was home, and no one else was going to bother me for the next twelve hours, and I was going to embrace it.
Yawning, I discarded my purse and keys and scrub top as I went to the couch. I turned on the TV, seeing some ad for some product that makes your skin clear. And yet, I was too exhausted to even change the channel, and I put my arm over my eyes to block out the glare.
Finally. Sleep.
My phone rang.
