This is pure torture.
‘Hey, buddy, we’re almost there,’ I suddenly hear Jaden’s voice.
I tear my gaze away from the monitor and see him take the patient’s hand.
‘You can have someone tell you later how fast we were tearing through Halifax,’ he says, winking at the man as if he were already on the mend.
What is he doing? ‘He’s unconscious.’
Jaden shrugs, looking so confident it’s as if the man in front of us weren’t in mortal danger. ‘Maybe he can hear us. Maybe not. But if he can, at least now he can smile in his thoughts.’
Something in his words brings tears to my eyes, which I quickly blink away. ‘That’s lovely,’ I say, my voice thick.
He turns back to the patient and tells him a joke. How can he keep talking to him as if they were at the pub together, having a great time? How can he be so positive while one horror scenario after another races through my mind, risks and probabilities battle it out, and worry and fear reign?
Isn’t he afraid? Is that even possible?
At first, I don’t understand, but then it dawns on me what exactly he’s doing in this moment. He hasn’t stopped being a hero just because the medical treatment is, for now, complete.
He still is.
Seeing him like this is almost surreal. Between the frantic wail of the siren and the beeping of the monitor in the sober coldof the ambulance, he opens his heart to this stranger, gives him safety, confidence, and hope.
He doesn’t have the slightest doubt that our patient will survive. No, it’s more than that. He is convinced that the man has a future, even though his risk of dying is so high.
I watch him in disbelief.
It’s as if, for Jaden, the only thing that matters is that the man is alive right now. As if this single moment, right now, were enough to celebrate him.
It’s grotesque.
Even if he has never experienced a stroke of fate himself, he has seen many in his job. He knows how brittle bones are and how vulnerable muscles are. He knows that hearts can stop beating forever within seconds, experiences every day how fragile life is.
And yet he is not afraid.
Not of hurting himself, and not of losing this patient.
Maybe I was wrong. This attractive man with the tattooed forearms, the five-day stubble, and the moss-green eyes is not a typical one-percenter. Jaden is something else—something completely different—but I have not the slightest idea what.
Chapter Eight
JADEN
Adrenaline is like a guest you invite over again and again, even though you know that every time they walk out the door, they take something with them you can’t live without.
Even now, after we’ve handed the heart attack patient over to the team at Halifax Harbor Hospital, I feel the gaping hole in my chest where just moments ago there was so much life. In the middle of the chaos of the emergency department, between ringing phones and hurried orders, I’m standing at the emergency coordinator’s desk, supposed to be doing the paperwork, but I just can’t.
‘Can you two take care of the rest?’ I ask Ray and Nyla as soon as I’ve noted the most important information and signed the transfer form.
‘No problem.’ Nyla studies me with a mix of curiosity and—what is that? Fascination?
Whatever, I need to get out of here, fast. So I head outside to the ambulance. I open the door to grab my phone and headphones. The display shows a missed call from Mom. I delete it and glance around, searching.
On the sidewalk in front of the grounds, I spot a nurse I’ve dealt with a few times in the ER. She’s smoking a cigarette.
I walk over to her. ‘Can I bum one?’ I ask after a brief greeting.
She pulls the pack of cigarettes out of her handbag. ‘Since when do you smoke?’
