"You're a liar." But there was no anger in his voice, just a tired certainty. "And you're an idiot if you think shutting down is going to save you from the pain."
I felt something crack open in my chest, a fissure in the wall I'd built around my grief. "You don't understand."
"Oh I don't, do I?" Kellen's eyes met mine across the table, and for the first time since I'd known him, I saw something human there, a flicker of amusement. "Tell me, then, Jimmy. What don’t I understand?"
The way he said my first name — gentle, almost paternal — broke something in me. The bourbon and the exhaustion and the weight of carrying it all alone for weeks finally overwhelmed my resistance.
"I failed someone," I whispered. "Someone who trusted me to keep them safe, and I failed them."
"Tell me about it."
So I did. The words poured out of me like blood from a wound. Lisa Harris, the domestic violence case, the promises I'd made that I couldn't keep. The way she'd looked at me with desperate hope when I'd given her those useless resources. The phone call from legal affairs telling me she was dead.
"I tried to save her," I said, my voice breaking. "I gave her everything we're supposed to give them … safety planning, resources, phone numbers. And three weeks later she was dead because I wasn't enough."
But I wasn't done, and in short order, it all came tumbling out.
"And then there's Izzy," I continued, the words coming faster now. "The firefighter. I was in love with her, and I thought... God, I thought I could help her, too. She was being passed over for promotion because of politics, because she's a woman in a good ‘ole boys' club, and I wrote this letter to her battalion chief. Three pages about how amazing she was, how unfair they were being."
I laughed bitterly, the sound harsh in the dim bar. "Ithought I was being supportive. I thought I was fighting for her. Instead, I handed them proof that she was 'too emotional' to handle command, that she needed her boyfriend to fight her battles."
Kellen listened without interruption, his expression never changing.
"She lost the promotion," I whispered. "They gave it to some political asshole who plays golf with the brass. And when she found out about the letter... she looked at me like I'd betrayed her. Like I'd destroyed everything she'd worked for." My voice cracked completely. "Because I had."
Kellen kept listening, pouring me another drink when my glass emptied, his expression implacable. When I finally finished, he was quiet for a long moment.
"You think you're the first nurse to lose a patient to something you couldn't control?" he asked finally. "Or the first man to destroy something he loved by trying to protect it?"
"It feels like it."
"It always does." He took a small sip from his glass. "The patient, that's the job. Sometimes we lose them no matter what we do. But the woman..." He paused, studying me with those flat eyes. "That's harder. That's the kind of mistake that comes from caring too much and understanding too little."
I felt fresh tears start, but he wasn't done.
"You want to hear about failure, Jimmy? Real failure?"
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
"You remember when those basketball players got shot?" he said. "You'd have been in, oh … high school, maybe middle school. It was national news."
I nodded vaguely, my memory conjuring fragments of news reports, images of a campus in lockdown.
"I was the charge nurse that night," Kellen continued, his voice maintaining that same flat monotone that somehow made the words more chilling. "When they came in. Kids, all of them just barely old enough to vote. The EMS captain, itwas her first night after her promotion, andthat'swhat she got thrown into."
He took another small sip of bourbon, his eyes focused on something beyond the stained walls of the bar.
"It was bad. I'm sure I don't have to go into the details with you. But one of them... one of the kids was effectively black-tag when he came in. We tried anyway, of course. We always try. But sometimes..." He shrugged, the gesture carrying the weight of a thousand failed attempts at salvation.
I found myself leaning forward, drawn into the story despite my growing intoxication.
"I'm at the charge desk," Kellen went on, "and the secretary goes white. Tells me there's a call I have to take. It's one of the kids' fathers. Says he's been trying to call his son, text his son. Says his son always answers his calls, always answers his texts, and now he's not. Says he heard something about a shooting at a pick-up court near campus."
Kellen's hand, I noticed, was trembling slightly as he lifted his glass. It was the first crack I'd ever seen in his emotional armor.
"Now, I have no reason to disbelieve this guy is who he says he is. And, of course, I found out later heisthe kid's dad. But I can't take that for granted. I have no way to verify it, and the kid doesn't have any next of kin listed in our system because he's never been a patient before. Gunshot trauma, first time through our doors."
He paused, and for a moment I thought I saw something that might have been moisture in his eyes.
