This might be a stroke or heart attack.
The paramedic spoke some coded gibberish into the radio he had on his shoulder. A moment later, his partner was at their side.
Sommer stepped back, thankful for her rubberized shoes, which she’d hose off before caring for any patients.
But as she stepped out of the responders’ way, the red sedan was back in her awareness. With the engine still running and the door yawning wide, Sommer walked over. A woman’s purse and a phone rested in the front passenger seat. There was bound to be a meter in that bag that would give the doctors important information. Possibly even a means to control the guy’s insulin pump.
Sommer grabbed them up and put them on Barney’s lap as the responders got him settled on his gurney.
Rounding back to the driver’s side of the car, Sommer climbed in to drive over to emergency room guest parking whereshe’d lock it up and get the parking space number to deliver back to that woman’s nurse.
Then hose off her shoes.
And back on the floor.
She still had nine hours until she went home.
Chapter Two
Gabriel
With his fingers gripping the doorknob, Gabriel Atworth paused to brush his free hand back and forth over his head, dispersing some of the raindrops that dampened his hair as he ran across the parking lot.
Honestly, he just needed a moment before he pushed through the door.
Gabriel paused as he dropped into a mental “ready stance,” a mind space he’d developed back in Afghanistan when he was walking into the unknown. As he made the switch, Gabriel wondered why he thought that was necessary.
Sure, today could only happen at the tail end of a worst-case scenario.
But that had already happened.
His baby brother Daniel—three years his junior—was dead and buried.
This was the aftermath. The cleanup. The paperwork. The necessary shit that Gabriel would rather not deal with because, just like the funeral, it forced Gabriel to face his brother’s mortality.
Another nail in Daniel’s coffin.
With a final assessing sweep of the area, a habit he didn’t think he’d ever let go of, Gabriel pushed the door wide and stepped into the lawyer's office.
The smooth sole of his dress shoe sank into the plush carpeting.
The room held the same quiet reverence as the funeral home.
At the front desk, the receptionist shifted her gaze away from the file on her laptop and focused on him with an expression Gabriel assumed was meant to read as “dignified melancholy.” Still, it felt artificial, like a mask she’d put on under such circumstances. To Gabriel, she ended up looking like she was suffering from some stomach distress.
Her blue suit with a brightly colored blouse was the only spot of color in a monochrome room—the kind of room designed to exude understated decorum and seriousness—but her expression doused any respite from the gloom that the blouse’s bright pinks and yellows might have given him.
Of course, Gabriel was seeing this woman through the lens of his own pain.
Her expression could well be an upset stomach, or a fight with her spouse, or her own terrible news.
This next hour was going to be tough.
Not as tough as joining the other pallbearers hefting the weight of Daniel’s coffin and carrying it into place at the front of the church, then out to the graveyard and over to the family plot, escorted by a military honor guard.
Gabriel had stood at attention, trying to hide his trembling as each crack of the three-volley salute fractured the air. “This isn’t war, this is consequence. You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe,” he’d chanted in his head.
With his parents dead and buried in the same corner of the graveyard where Daniel’s remains would rest, it was his sister Cathy who received the flag that had draped their brother’s coffin. She turned to her husband for solace. Their kids pressed in, hugging her tight.
