CHAPTER ONE
Nash
I used to love this place.
Eight years ago, I would’ve sprinted through those doors, starry-eyed, heart pounding with purpose. Back then, this job was everything. A calling. Now it just feels like… what? Like gravity. It clings to my shoulders, constantly pulling me under. It owns me now, instead of the other way around.
I’m not even sure what I’m holding onto anymore. Momentum, maybe.
Habit.
Routine.
Whatever I thought it would be, it isn’t.
A breeze brushes against my neck. The sky’s dull gray, pressing low, like even the weather is reluctant to face the day.
“Good morning, Doctor Kincaid!”
Talia, a tireless ER nurse, stops beside me. She’s got her ever-present jug of water in one hand, the other shoved into her hoodie pocket. Her braid game is next level—dozens of thin ones falling in a curtain down her back. Most nurses are at least a little wary of me. Not Talia. She’s five-foot-one of no-nonsense confidence and refuses to flinch when I bark. I’ve got over a foot on her, plus the authority vested in me by the state medical board, the hospital brass, and a caffeine addiction strong enough to floor a horse courtesy of my uncle, Simon—but she still looks at me like I’m the one who should sit down and take a breath. If anyone else spoke to me like she does, I’d put them right in their place. But Talia is the most qualified nurse on staff. If she’s with a patient, they’re in good hands. She’s more than earned my respect.
I manage a smile and lift my coffee in greeting. “Morning.”
She pauses, cocks her head. “You good?”
“What? Yeah. Sure.” I force a swallow of lukewarm coffee, push everything down, and summon my game face. This isn’t the time or place for worrying about meaning and purpose. I can have my existential crisis at home like other respectable, almost middle-aged men. “I’m good.”
“You sure?” Talia rests a hand on my forearm. “You look like you’re wrestling with something.”
For half a second, I consider telling her. Just onesentence. One crack in the shell.I don’t know who I am or what I want anymore.
But then her lips quirk and, “Breakfast not sitting right?”
What the hell was I thinking? I don’t even spew my inner workings with family. There’s no way I’m whining in the parking lot with a coworker.
Redefining my mental boundaries, I cross my arms and shrug. “You’d think I’d know not to start the day with tequila by now.”
Talia throws her head back in laughter, surely ready to zing me with some smart-ass comeback, but then?—
An ambulance screams into the bay, red lights strobing across the pavement. Doors slam open, paramedics jump out as quickly as the rig stops.
“I think that’s our cue,” Talia calls over her shoulder, already jogging toward the ER entrance.
My feet move on instinct. I shove the coffee into someone’s hands—no idea who—as I approach the stretcher.
“What’s the situation?” I call, my eyes scanning the patient.
Teenaged male. His face is swollen, lips grotesquely puffed. His chest moves in short, panicked heaves. Eyes locked wide open, terrified. Fingers already tinged blue.
“Step aside!” snaps a paramedic I don’t recognize. She tries to shove past me, all urgency and inexperience.
“I’m a doctor,” I reply, already checking the kid’s hands and pulse.
This isn’t good.
“Talia, check his blood pressure and vitals. Let me know if he declines.
“He’s desatting!” Brayden Johnson—a medic qualified enough to give Talia a run for her money—shouts. “O2’s dropped to sixty. He needs an airway, now!”
