Page 8 of Asystole

I’m looking over the draft beer menu when a voice pulls me from my perusal.

“This looks an awful lot like a date, Matthews,” Logan says, sliding into the booth across from me, making me laugh.

“You’re not really my type, Kirkland,” I fire back, offering my fist for him to bump.

“Tatted, bad-ass pilots are everyone’s type,” he corrects with a half-hearted joke as he shrugs out of his thick winter jacket, revealing a Ricochet Ridge Ski Patrol hoodie.

“Mmm, not everyone’s,” I muse with a smile, thinking about Hanlon and Stone at the sight of the white cross on his red sweatshirt. I just spoke to Hanlon a couple hours ago, and my mood is better for it. Hearing him so happy always makes me feel lighter.

Logan’s brows furrow, but before I can ask what’s wrong, our waiter approaches.

“Hi. Welcome to Derringer’s. Can I start you off with something to drink?”

“Sam Adams Cold Snap, please,” I tell him.

“And for you?” he asks, turning to Logan.

“Just make it two,” he says, closing the drink menu.

“Great. Would you like to start with any appetizers?”

We place an order for the fried pickles and loaded potato wedges, and then he’s gone.

“I was going to start by asking how you like flying for the hospital, but since you’re currently sporting a Ricochet Ski Patrol hoodie instead of a Boston Memorial one, I think I have my answer.”

Logan huffs a laugh.

“It was just what was on top of the laundry basket,” he answers.

“I heard about the highway landing today. Sounded crazy,” I say, rusty at making small talk that has nothing to do with medicine.

“Everyone’s talking about it like it was some huge feat, but it was literally just putting the bird down on flat asphalt. Nothing particularly crazy about that. It’s not like setting her down on an icy ledge, afraid your rotor blades are going to freeze. Life Flight standards usually require a hundred-foot-by-hundred-foot square to land in, but I never had that back in Ricochet. It was like, ‘Here’s a ledge just wide enough for your landing skid…oh, and you’re on a thirty-degree slope. Good luck.’”

“You miss it out there, don’t you?” I ask, watching as Logan pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, chewing on it as he nods.

“Yeah,” he confirms. “I like high-stakes flying, and the views were hard to beat. I thought I’d have the opportunity to do runs that felt just as important out here, but the truth is that for every one true emergency I run, I have like nine or ten patient transfers between hospitals. I’m basically a helicopter rideshare.”

Logan drains his beer and orders another.

“I mean, it’s important to the patients and their families,” I argue.

“Yeah, I know, but a twisted part of me misses having to use the skills that really make me a pilot. With a decent YouTube video, anyone can get a bird off the ground.”

“Have you ever considered flying with the Coast Guard?” I ask.

Logan laughs and takes his second beer from the waiter as he cocks a brow in my direction, silently asking me if I’m ready for another.

Sure, why not? I don’t do this often.

I nod, and he disappears.

“I mean, I appreciate our military and the skills of those pilots, but I think that ship has sort of sailed for me. I know I look young, but I’m thirty-four,” Logan says, shocking the hell out of me. I’m not sure why I just assumed he was closer to my age, but I did.

“Damn, dude. I mean, thirty-four isn’t old or anything, but I thought you were in your twenties.”

I swear he blushes just a little—or I could be seeing things from the beer I consumed in under ten minutes.

“Thanks,” he says with a hint of shyness.