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I went back to my side of the ER, running the whole awkward encounter through my head over and over, obsessing about what I should have said or should have done.

So stupid.

I shouldn’t have broached it when she was with a patient. That was the first thing. Maybe I should have led with the fact that she actually broke my phone, so she knew I wasn’t just there to give her a hard time about the running.

Maybe I should have just let it go.

Letting it go would have been better. Because then there would have been no encounter at all. I should have just said “Wrong room” and left.

God, I was a jerk. I was effortlessly succeeding in making myself the most hated person at Royaume Northwestern.

I knew from years of therapy that I was ruminating. That the encounter had probably been nothing to her, but to me it felt like the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened. A decade from now I’d be lying in bed and my eyes would fly open and I’d remember the incredulous way she’d looked at me—me, the guy who had the audacity to walk into her ER room and talk to her about running toward a critical patient, one she obviously knew and cared about.

I cringed through the second half of the day. My anxiety felt like electricity. A low, humming current under my skin, a survival instinct triggered and gnawing at me, telling me to flee. I couldn’t escape it, and I couldn’t calm it down.

Usually my anxiety meds leveled me out. But there was only so much meds could do. I had to manage stress, use the coping skills I’d learned in therapy. Most importantly, I had to live a lifestyle conducive to wellness. That’s what I thought I was doing coming here, getting myself out of the unhealthy situation at Memorial West with Amy and Jeremiah, making a choice that was best for my mental health.

But now this.

I knew I was being quiet and taciturn and this wasn’t helping to endear me to the already-cold nurses on my shift, but I was so in my head I couldn’t stop myself. I’d managed to trade seeing Amy and Jeremiah every single day for a whole team of people who hated my guts instead.

I’d always had a hard time making new friends. I got nervous in unfamiliar social settings, so I would say the wrong thing or become withdrawn, so it took time for people to warm up to me. Maybe I just needed time here too. But something told me this place was different. They were too cliqued up. It felt like high school all over again. I was the outsider and I’d keep being the outsider, especially if I kept messing things up the way I’d been doing. And I didn’t even know how to stop.

I had another hour of my shift, but I needed a break. My mental battery was empty again. I didn’t want to run into that woman in the doctors’ lounge, so I headed back to the supply closet.

Only when I got there, it wasn’t empty…

Chapter 3

Briana

I got Benny situated and managed not to cry the whole time. Then, once he was comfortable, I made a beeline for my sob closet.

I liked to cry in the supply closet by Gibson’s office. Quiet, low traffic. I had a toilet-paper box I liked to sit on, and the stuff on the shelves acted as sound insulation so nobody could hear me completely losing my mind.

I’d cried in this closet more times than I could count. I cried in here after losing patients. I cried here when they told me Benny was in end-stage renal failure. Cried here for Nick. I’d even cried in here a little bit for that backstabbing traitor, Kelly, the “friend” who spent two years sleeping with my husband in between meeting me for brunch. But never in all those times had anyone ever walked in on me. And today someone did.

The door opened and a man slipped inside. He shut the door behind him and turned around to see me sitting there, all snot bubbles in my nose and hair sticking to my cheeks.

Dr. Death.

We stared at each other in surprise for a split second—and then he fled.

I let out the breath I’d been holding and put my face back into my hands.

Of course this guy would violate the sanctity of this space. What an asshole.

He yelled at me earlier. I mean, I ran into him, so yeah, I got it. But then he followed me into Benny’s room to give me some mansplaining dressing-down about running in the hallways. First he got the red carpet rolled out for him to try his best at taking my job, then this. I couldn’t believe—

The door opened again. He came back in, shut the door behind him, crouched in front of me, and handed me a wet washcloth.

“For your face,” he said gently. “It’s warm.”

There was something so kind and disarming in his light brown eyes that I almost forgot how much I disliked him. Almost.

I paused for a moment, then took it. “Thank you.” I sniffed.

He smiled a little and nodded. But he didn’t go. He sat down against the door.