"But for now, I'm going to let you go," I tell him with a helpless smile, "because they need you more."
And then I turn him around and give him a little nudge, and my heart actually skips a beat at the way he walks away without looking back.
Classic Kazeyuki Collington.
Riiiing.
I answer without thinking.
"Kitty?"
And immediately regret it the moment I hear the familiar voice from the other end.
Oh no.
I forgot all about Matt.
Chapter Seven
IT HAD BEEN A WHILEsince Kazeyuki last worked in the ER, but it was still as unforgiving as he remembered.
Blood on the floor and the screams of a woman calling for her daughter. The crash cart wheeling past at a run while a man with half his face burned asked if his wife was alive. Paramedics shouting vitals as they brought in another stretcher.
Many were saved. But not all. And that was something every physician had to learn to accept if they were not to lose their sanity.
Not everyone could be saved.
No matter how hard you tried.
Even though he knew he had done what he could, the thought still consumed Kazeyuki as he walked away.
Kazeyuki knew his skills had limits, and so did the human body. As a doctor, he had been trained to assess the nature and severity of damage and to accept the cases in which the mortality risk was high. It was one of the hardest parts of the job, but he wouldn’t still be working now if he hadn’t learned to live with that.
But even so.
It still took time to pry himself from the memories, the remembered chaos making him blind to the stares he attracted.
Even in the midst of disaster, with his scrubs streaked and his hair damp from hours in the OR, his looks still...beckoned, and the eyes of many responded.
There was the nurse from another hospital who had come in to assist stopped mid-step when he passed. And then there was the patient’s family member in the waiting room tracked him across the corridor with wide eyes.
No matter where he went, he was beautiful and different, but it was a beautiful kind of different, and people who saw him for the first time always had the same look on their faces, as if they were trying to place him, wondering if they had a celebrity or foreign prince in their midst.
There was many a not-so-silent sigh as Kazeyuki entered the elevator, and the doors closed behind his back. But he noticed none of this. Because as the memories of all those hecouldn’tsave faded, what he did remember was the one he couldstillsave, and that was her.
Katherine.
As the elevator that carried Kazeyuki opened its doors on the sixth floor, Nurse Prasida glanced up from the station and watched in thoughtful silence as their department’s most eligible doctor stepped out (Dr. Manolis, bless his Greek married heart, no longer counted).
“Good evening, Dr. Collington. How are things faring downstairs?”
Kazeyuki forced himself to put aside all thoughts of Katherine to refocus on work. “Everyone has been attended to. Five deaths. Three in the ICU.”
Nurse Prasida nodded. Deaths in numbers for now. They would all grieve in private later, once they had clocked out, once they were home and the doors were closed, and it was safe to feel what they couldn’t afford to feel on shift. But for now, life continued.
“I also heard the news,” Nurse Prasida remarked. “Congratulations on your engagement, Doctor.”
“Thank you.”
