No caution.
The engine screams beneath me. Wind tears at my cut and I welcome it. Because the only thing louder than the bike is the fear in my head. Danae is out there.
Somewhere.
And for the first time in my life, the open road doesn’t feel like freedom.
It feels like a weapon.
And I’ve never had more reason to ride like hell.
Fourteen
Danae
The last patient on my list is a man who keeps apologizing for needing anything at all.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers when I adjust his oxygen tubing. “I know you’ve got a lot going on.”
“You don’t have to be sorry for being sick,” I tell him, gentle but firm, like I’m setting a blanket over both of us. “That’s literally why I’m here.”
His eyes shine in the low light. The monitors throw green and blue shadows across his cheeks. The hospital at night is its own kind of world—dimmed hallways, softened voices, the constant hush of air systems and distant alarms. Everything feels slowed down but never still.
I take his vitals, check his chart, straighten his blanket. I do the things that make him feel cared for and the things that keep his body from slipping further away. When I leave his room, I pull the door almost closed, leaving it cracked the way some people like—like a promise that if they call, someone will hear.
At the nurses’ station, the overhead fluorescents buzz like an insect trapped in glass. My shoulders ache. My feet ache. My brain aches. I’ve been running for twelve hours and it feels like the last four have been spent sprinting.
Medication seeking risk in one room. Confused elderly patient trying to climb out of bed in another. A family crying quietly in the waiting area because no one wants to say the word hospice out loud. Flu tests waiting on results, a potential UTI waiting on lab confirmation, and an accident in bed ten needing stitches to the head. Two admissions stacked on top of each other, one for heart attack, another for potential stroke, patient is stable, but waiting on the scan results to confirm diagnosis. A call light that won’t stop blinking because the person is coming down off something and the paranoia is consuming them as the high wears off. The kind of shift that swallows time and spits you out at the end like you’re lucky to still be upright.
I chart until my eyes blur. I sip cold coffee that tastes like mud. I smile at coworkers with the kind of tired grin that says, We survived. Someone makes a joke about the moon being full. Someone else laughs too loudly. It’s how we keep from unraveling.
Around four in the morning, I finally get a moment to breathe. I lean my hip against the counter and roll my neck, chasing away the tension. My phone is in my locker, like always. I don’t like having it out on the floor. Too easy to get distracted. Too easy to bring the outside in when I’m trying to hold the inside together.
But the outside has been pressing in on me for weeks anyway.
Miles.
Texts and calls that make my chest feel warm and unsafe in the best way. A man who lives like he belongs to the highway, who somehow found his way into the parts of me I keep guarded.
And Dr. Reeves.
The way his eyes linger too long. The way his voice shifts when he thinks no one’s listening. The way he tries to make me feel like I owe him politeness, like my “no” is a suggestion instead of a boundary.
I shake the thought off and go back to work. Because work doesn’t care about my feelings or distractions. Work cares about blood pressure and oxygen saturation and whether the bed alarm is turned on.
By the time the sun threatens the horizon, my body is moving on muscle memory alone. I give report. I sign off on paperwork. I answer one last call light because I can’t not. Then I finally clock out.
The locker room is cool and quiet. I change out of my scrubs, tug on my sweater, run a brush through my hair with a sigh. I look at my reflection and barely recognize the woman staring back—pale, tired, eyes shadowed.
I open my locker and grab my phone. The screen lights up.
One text from Miles. Morning, darlin’. Call me when you wake up. Missing you already.
My throat tightens, a tiny ache of wanting. I start to type back—Just got off. I’m tired. I miss you too—but my fingers pause. I’m too tired to talk. Too tired to explain. Too tired to be anything other than what I am right now: a woman held together by duty and caffeine.
I decide I’ll reply once I’m home. Once I’ve checked on Grandpa. Once I’ve washed the hospital off my skin. The time in the day where I always get a second wind being home.
I slip the phone into my purse and head for the parking lot.
