Doc saw me coming and didn’t miss a beat. He was lined up behind the taps, one hand on a pint glass, the other steadying a bar rag. “Well, look who remembered she has a shift. Thought you’d run off back to your high-rise before you broke a nail.”
“Ha-ha.” I dodged around a guy with a basket of fries to duck back behind the bar. “I was on a work call. Some of us have to do two jobs tonight.”
“Uh-huh.” He filled a glass, slid it down to a regular, and leveled me with that dry, sideways grin that had terrified half the county back when he was still wearing a white coat. “What’s the pay like on that city job, anyway?”
“Not as good as this.” I grabbed the empty tray he nudged my way. “Where else am I gonna get free burgers and life advice that I didn’t ask for?”
“Careful, girlie. My advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.”
“Good to know.” I winked as I said it.
For a second, I just stood there beside him, drinking it all in—the way the whole place hummed with a dozen different conversations layering over each other, the sharp crack of darts hitting the board from the back corner where the regulars held court. The way Doc looked completely at home here, like he’d grown roots behind that bar, like this was exactly where he was meant to be.
I’d missed this. Not just the work—though there was something satisfying about the rhythm of it, the constant motion that kept your hands busy and your mind clear. It was more than that. It was the sense of belonging somewhere, of being part of something bigger than quarterly reports and billable hours. The way people here knew your name, knew your story, knew exactlyhow you liked your coffee and whether you were having a good day or a bad one just by looking at you.
I’d forgotten the comfort of being home.
“Order up!” the cook shouted from the kitchen window, loud enough to rattle the glasses.
Doc tipped his chin toward the trays stacked beside him. “Go earn your supper, counselor.”
“Yes, sir.” I grabbed the loaded tray from the pass.
I swung out from behind the bar and into the tide of people, hips twisting to miss a chair that got pushed back too far, and for just a moment it felt like muscle memory more than anything else. Like I’d never left.
The night was running on rails—laughter rolling through the bar, glasses clinking, the jukebox halfway through a George Strait song I could hum in my sleep. I balanced a tray on one hand, weaving through the crowd with ease, already thinking about the stack of work waiting for me when this was over.
And then I heard a crash behind me. Not the clatter of a dropped glass—heavier. Wrong.
I turned, and everything in me stopped.
Doc was on the floor just outside the pass-thru, his body crumpled in a way that made my stomach lurch.
For a second, my brain refused to make sense of it. This was Doc—steady, unshakeable Doc who’d never missed a day behind that bar in all the years I’d known him. He was just—there. Flat on his back against the scarred wooden planks, his weathered face slack and pale. His eyes were half-shut, unseeing, staring up at the tin ceiling with its old advertisements for tobacco and whiskey.
The tray hit the floor with a resounding bang that cut through the music and chatter like a gunshot. Plates shattered, sending fragments skittering across the floor. Beer glasses exploded in sprays of amber liquid and foam. Food scattered everywhere—nachos, wings, fries—creating a minefield of debris that I barely registered as I lunged forward.
I was already moving before my mind caught up, adrenaline flooding my system as I shoved through the maze of chairs and tables. Someone’s elbow caught my ribs. A chair leg scraped against my shin, but I barely felt it. I dropped to my knees hard on the unforgiving floor beside him.
“Doc? Doc!” My hands were shaking as I touched him. His skin was clammy, his face gray in a way I had never seen, not even when I was a kid, and he worked double shifts at the clinic. His chest was rising, but shallow, uneven, like he was fighting for every breath.
Ice sluiced through my veins.
“Someone call 911!” The words ripped out of me, loud and raw. “Now!”
The whole bar seemed to explode into motion—chairs scraping, someone yelling for a phone, a table tipping over—but all I saw was him.
I grabbed his hand and held on like I could anchor him with it. “Doc. Stay with me, please.” My voice cracked. “Don’t you dare leave me.”
Somewhere in the distance, as if it came from underwater, I heard the faint wail of sirens.
I didn’t glance up. Couldn’t. Everything I’d been juggling—all the plans, the work, the pretending I could hold it all together—narrowed to this moment. Just me and him, and the terrifying possibility that the one steady thing in my life was slipping away right in front of me.
CHAPTER 4
DIEGO
The night after the Fourth had its own kind of hangover—that peculiar stillness that settles over a town once the last firework has fizzled out and the cleanup crews have swept away the remnants of celebration. The streets stretched empty and dark beyond the station windows, broken only by the occasional flicker of a porch light or the distant hum of a late-night delivery truck making its rounds. Inside our firehouse, the quiet felt even more pronounced, like the building itself was catching its breath after yesterday’s chaos.
