“We’re just talking, Cade. Sometimes I worry.”
He huffs a little, his breath warm on my skin, and shakes his head against me.
“That’s the point, Silas. You shouldn’t have to worry about this stuff. I have everything taken care of. Everything’s fine. All you need to do is focus on yourself.”
Irritation prickles through me, but I don’t move. If I sit up and try to look at him, I have a suspicion this conversation will pretty much immediately turn into a fight.
“It’s not all on you though, Cade, that’s what I’m saying. I’m okay, I don’t need you to spend all your time tiptoeing around me and protecting me from thinking about anything. I care about Maddi, I’m allowed to worry about her. I can handle like… experiencing emotions other than numbness. I’m fine.”
Cade snorts, muttering his words into my skin so I can barely make them out.
“Yeah, like you were fine yesterday?”
I know he doesn’t want me to respond, otherwise he would have said it louder, But I can’t stop myself from tensing before letting out a long, frustrated sigh.
“I’m fine now. I get weird sometimes but it passes. I’m still a fucking person.”
Cade doesn’t say anything, instead tipping his head up to look at me, the edges of his cheekbones shining nearly blue in the moonlight. He looks ethereally beautiful, as always. Like a Rembrandt or something.
“You’remyperson, robot boy. Don’t forget it.”
My heart quivers, and all that quiet anger that was building in me dissipates. I lean down to press my lips against his, and his expression quickly smoothes out into something relaxed.
No one says anything after that. We continue to hold each other, content to be close in the dark until we drift off.
It isn’t until sleep is pulling me under that I realize he never really answered any of my questions, and we still had a conversation without anything real being said.
Chapter Six
Silas was right, I should have called out. This shift is a dumpster fire.
I would hate to have left Tristan alone, though. I mean, they would have replaced me, but it’s not the same as someone you work with all the time. You need to be able to work without speaking sometimes, and predict each other’s moves.
I could be at home right now. I could be sulking in the darkness of my own miserable bedroom, contemplating its history of attempted infanticide and possibly day drinking until these things mattered less. Instead, here I am, less than six hours into a twenty-four hour goddamn shift—because mandatory overtime is a thing, and I have foolishly said before that I like the long shifts and the pay bonuses they include—and I’m already fucking exhausted.
At least it’s a Friday, and Jaz agreed to take the girls for the weekend so they’re not stuck at the house while me and Silas are working. I’ll be here until noon tomorrow at least, and he does astupid early and stupid long shift at the garage on Saturdays, so they’d be unattended and bored for most of the day.
We’ve had four—FOUR—overdoses already, which means there’s probably a bad batch of fentanyl doing the rounds. We’ve also been called to a bar fight at 11 a.m., and seen multiple frequent flyers. They’ve all been short runs so far, but that just means the mountain of paperwork for the shift is getting higher and higher and I’m already losing track of how many patients we’ve seen.
Just when we were thinking about eating, we got another call, so I’m going into it cranky and hungry. Which isn’t ideal.
I’m aware of it, though, so that’s better than nothing. Although once we pull up at the address, I realize it’s not even close to enough. My irritation is already bristling right beneath the surface, begging to be unleashed in the most unprofessional way possible, and I haven’t even seen what’s happening yet.
“You alright there, killer?” Tristan says as we’re getting out of the ambulance and unloading our shit.
His tone is half-mocking, half-real concern, so I must be giving off some terrible fucking vibes already. I pause for a second, taking a breath and attempting to let my muscles unclench.
“Yeah,” I say with a shake of my head. “Just… Y’know. This.”
Tossing my head in the direction of the house as I say it, Tristan nods back. He gets it. This is an incredibly frustrating family that we’ve been called out to again and again. Their son Jaden is eleven years old and has a history of mysterious neurological symptoms, including seizures. Probably childhood epilepsy that will resolve on its own, but possibly not. The worst part of cases like this is that there are different kinds of seizures, and that throws people sometimes when it doesn’t look like what they’ve always been told what a “seizure” looks like.
Which means he could be having seizures a lot more frequently than his parents—and therefore his doctors—are aware of.
His parents are trying. Kind of. Mom cares; Dad seems unconvinced because he’s not having full-on grand mals all the time. They do take him to the doctor, but money is tight. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We all know the story. Hell, I’ve lived the story.
Which should probably make me more empathetic, but instead it just makes me fucking pissed. Every time his dad shrugs at me like I’m making too big a deal over something becausehecan’t see what’s going on, or every time we have a conversation about follow up that I know they can’t afford to do, or just won’t, it chips away at another little piece of my patience.
Apparently I’m not doing a good enough job of relaxing, because Tristan walks past me, taking over as lead into the house, and manages to smack me unnecessarily hard with his jump bag in the process.
