I was about to confess my deepest regret, and all I could think about was knowing how much closer we’d be when I told him. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Chase would be by my side as I told him about the night I’d passed out trying to save that couple, but still, my doubts lingered, making the words stick in my throat.
Needing to look him in the eyes, once again, I pulled myself backup to an upright position. He sat next to me, taking my cue that this wasn’t something to be said while lying down. “This isn’t something I’m proud of.” Somehow, the words gathered in my brain and tumbled from my mouth without too much thought. “One night,” I began, hoping the rest would just come out without my shame getting in the way. “This couple came into the emergency room. It was bad. A caraccident,” I admitted, as if the story had literally weighed me down for the last eight months.
As I searched for the next words, the ones that would somehow make the story come together, the ones that would somehow make sense of it all, Chase cut me off saying, “And they didn’t make it. Traumatic head injuries for both of them. They weren’t wearing their seat belts. The woman went right throughthe windshield. Died instantly. The man—” Chase paused, seeming to gather his strength to carry on from somewhere deep inside. “He survived the initial impact, the front airbag somehow impeding his movement through the same windshield that killed his wife.”
Stunned to my core, I pulled back from him as if he’d just repeated my deepest, darkest secrets aloud. “How do you… who told you? Where didyou hear that from?” I rambled, unsure how the words moved from my head to his mouth to the air between us as effortless as the oxygen moved from my lips to my lungs.
“Noah,” he choked on my name. “I think I need to tell you something, too,” he admitted, pulling our hands together in his lap.
“How did you find out?” I asked. Just short of yelling, my voice forced Chase backward, flinching awayfrom me as if I’d struck him with the back of my hand. “Who the fuck told…? It was Wes.” I answered my own unasked question. Beyond angry and embarrassed, I shot up from the bed. Immediately pulling my sweatpants from the top of the nightstand, I stepped into them, certain to keep my eyes away from the judgment I knew Chase would be casting my way.
“It was,” he admitted, standing from the bedhimself. He reached for a pair of shorts I’d left on his nightstand for him. But well before he could even step into them, I was reaching for my cell phone, ready to tear Wes a new asshole for telling Chase all this shit. Like it was his place at all. Fucking asshole.
And just as the phone rang for the first time, Chase wrapped his hand around mine, pulling the phone from my ear. “Noah,” he saidsoftly, peeling it from my too tightly wrapped fingers. In some kind of weird slow-motion effect, I watched as Chase hit the red End button, hanging up with Wes before they’d even exchanged a word. “They were my parents. Julie and Steven Hansen. They were our parents.”
“What? How? I… I just… how…? What do you mean? Your parents? No, that can’t be. You’re lying. You’re fucking lying,” I screamed.
“Noah,” he spoke, trying to calm me, but it was pointless. I pushed away his hands as they moved to my arms. “Noah,” he said again. “Hear me out. Please,” he begged, but I couldn’t stand for it a minute longer.
“No,” I yelled as I pulled a shirt from my drawer. Stepping into some sneakers was easy enough, but it was walking away from Chase that took more willpower than I thought I possessed.
But knowing that I’d played a part in the death of his parents, I was the reason his life was in shambles, it was just all too much for me to bear.
On my way out the door, I spun around, only to be met with the look of sheer dejection and pain on Chase’s gorgeous face. “Take care of Katie for me, please.”
Without waiting for his answer, I walked away, not sure how I would ever find the strengthto face him again.
“Vodka on the rocks with a lime, please,” I ordered, sliding into the barstool. The low, thumping sound of some dance music came to life in the background, but all I felt was death. In my heart and floating all around me, all I could do was relive those moments from months ago. They were the ones that still haunted me at night. The ones that ultimatelydrove Rob and me apart, even though we’d been on that path sometime before that.
It had become the single, most horrific moment of my young career, and I hadn’t been conscious for a single moment of it.
Maybe it was because I hadn’t been conscious. Looking back on it all, I knew it haunted me because I couldn’t have done a damn thing to save them, even if I’d wanted to.
“I figured you’d behere,” Wes spoke from my side. As he slid into the stool next to me, he signaled the bartender to send him one of whatever I was having. “Pretty late, though. Isn’t it?”
Shrugging, all I could manage was a lame, “Just made last call. You’re just in time.”
After paying the bartender, he sipped his drink. Scanning the bar, he saw that we were mostly alone, save for a few stragglers who shouldhave cleared out a few hours ago. As I finished the last of my drink, I slid the glass back and forth in front of me like a hockey puck “Why?” I asked, staring down at the empty glass that reflected how I felt on the inside. Hollow. Broken. “Why didn’t you come to me first? I thought you weremyfriend.”
“I had to. It was the right thing to do,” Wes explained. “I know how much you hate yourselffor that night and I didn’t want you to push Chase away because of it. And they were his parents. He needed to know, too.” Even though I hated him for telling Chase, I knew he was right. He had to tell them. They deserved to know. “So when you told me about Chase and Benny, that their parents were dead, I looked back in the hospital files and just knew it was them. I spoke with them that night.Well, Benny. Chase had run off, but I was there with him right after his parents died. How could I not tell them I knew and that you were there, too?”
The glass stopped between my hands at the same time I felt my heart stop in my chest. “I hate myself for not being able to save them,” I admitted on a long deep, exhale of guilt. “Cosentina gave me Doctor of the Year.” It was another admissionof guilt. An award I didn’t deserve. “I’m going to turn it down.”
“Like hell you are,” Wes bellowed. “You earned that, and you deserve it just as much as the next guy, even more.”
“Why? Tell me why exactly?” I spat my words, letting my hatred rise up from my chest and fall from my mouth. “Chase’s parents are dead because of me. Me!” I yelled. “I was too chicken shit to stay upright long enoughto save them. What kind of doctor does that? Huh?” I challenged as I shot the bar stool out from under my body.
“The kind of doctor who had just worked thirty-six hours straight and who hadn’t eaten in the last twelve, probably hadn’t slept more than five minutes in the last half of the shift either. Noah, you were exhausted. And you didnotkill them.”
“Whatever,” I said, turning away fromhim.
“No,” he seethed, his voice firm but falling just short of actually yelling. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me back to face him. “Listen to me. I’ve had enough of you harboring this around like some secret sin. You didn’t do a damn thing wrong. They died because they weren’t wearing seat belts. They died because that other car came out of nowhere and crashed into them without warning. Noah,there were a lot of reasons they died, but you are not one of them.”
With my fists clenched at my sides, anger fired in my veins, but I knew Wes shouldn’t be my target. Neither was Chase. And the longer I stood there, hoping that some intelligible thought would form in my brain, the more I realized it wasn’t anybody’s fault.
In this great big giant shit show of a world, sometimes horrible thingshappened. And most of the time, they happened to good people.
“I just need some space,” I told Wes as I walked away.
