Dylan Degan had come back into my life bleeding.
And somehow, impossibly, the wound was mine.
CHAPTER 9
DESTINY
I should have gone home.
That was the responsible thing.
The sane thing.
The thing Nurse Rourke would have told any other person to do after surviving a shift like that.
Go home. Shower. Eat something with protein. Sleep for three hours if sleep would come. Let the ICU team do their job. Let the fiancée sit in the chair. Let the family wait. Let the doctors handle the next terrifying stretch of numbers, tubes, monitors, and prayers dressed up as medical decisions.
I knew all of that.
I even said it to myself while I stood in the staff locker room staring at my reflection.
Go home, Destiny.
My face looked wrong beneath the fluorescent lights. Too pale. Too sharp. Eyes too dark. Hair pulled back badly after being shoved under a surgical cap for three hours. Mandy’s diamond studs still in my ears, catching tiny sparks of light every time I moved. They looked almost obscene against the exhaustion on my face.
Like my mother had dressed me for heartbreak.
I had scrubbed Dylan’s blood off my skin.
I had changed my scrubs.
I had clocked out.
Punched out, officially, like that meant the hospital could stop owning my body for the night. Like grief respected time cards.
My badge still hung around my neck.
My hands still shook.
Dylan was upstairs in ICU.
Critical.
Fifty-fifty for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
Alive.
Engaged.
Those two words kept taking turns stabbing me.
Alive.
Engaged.
Alive.
Engaged.
