Still holding Roger’s wrist, Noah sat back on his heels, watching the older man closely, looking concerned but calm. “Try to relax, Roger. Your heart’s working overtime, but the aspirin should help.”
I stood by Helen, watching everything unfold, my hand resting lightly on her shoulder. She hadn’t let go of Roger’s hand, and when he squeezed hers back, she let out a shaky breath.
“I told you to slow down,” she muttered. “You old fool.”
Roger cracked an exhausted smile. “But we’re on vacation. I didn’t want to get left behind; we’d miss out on all the fun.”
Helen huffed a watery laugh. “You’re an idiot.”
The sirens grew louder, and soon, an ambulance pulled into the parking lot. The EMTs spilled out, hauling gear.
Noah stepped back, giving them space, but providing vital details in clipped, precise terms. “Irregular pulse. History of high blood pressure. Took aspirin five minutes ago. Complaining of chest pressure, radiating down the left arm. Late sixties?”
“Sixty-eight,” Helen provided. Noah nodded and continued.
The way he spoke—so sure, so steady—reminded me of our conversation earlier. The nightmares from things he’d gone through at work. An important meeting when he got home.
But watching him now—calm, focused, steady as he tended to Roger—I knew it.
Being a doctor wasn’t just a job for him.
It was who he was.
The way he moved, the way he kept his voice low and reassuring, the way everyone around him instinctively listened—he wasn’t performing. He wasn’t even thinking about it.
He was just being.
He looked after people.
He took care of people.
Noah Grady was one of those precious few in the world.
A helper.
The kind of person who runs toward the crisis instead of away.
I stood there as Noah climbed into the back of the ambulance at Helen’s request, never hesitating.
The doors shut.
The sirens blared.
The dust left in the ambulance’s wake fell slowly in the still, hot air. Everything else—the red rock formations, the dirt wedged between my toes, and the broken strap hanging off my poor sandal—felt horribly insignificant.
I took a deep breath and let it out, trying to process what had just happened.
Beside me, Tay stood motionless, hands on her hips, her eyes locked on the spot where the ambulance had disappeared down the winding road.
Then, with a small shake of her head, she rolled her shoulders, visibly resetting. “I hate it when this happens.” Her voice was even, but I caught the flicker of something in it—heartache? It wasn’t like her at all.
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
Tay let out a humorless chuckle. “Happens almost every trip.”
Joe, standing a few feet away, looked at her askance. “You serious?”
She turned toward us and sighed. “For some of these people, this is the trip of a lifetime. But that also means… sometimes, they’re not as up for it as they think they are.” She tugged on the end of her ponytail. “Fortunately for my passengers, I usually have at least one retired nurse on the trip. Roger was lucky we have a doc on this one.”
