That is honestly the last thing I want to think about right now – and Nyla is the second-to-last, yet she’s in my thoughts again anyway, because it hits me: she would never ignore this damn thing. She wouldn’t just endure the pain, she would welcome it with delight, examine it from every angle, let it rule her.
Out in the parking lot today she claimed I was crazy, but it’s exactly the opposite. She, with her willingness to let herself be consumed by fear and pain, is the crazy one.
In the distance, my phone starts ringing. I walk back to the sofa, see a buddy’s name on the display, and breathe a sigh of relief.
‘Where do you want to meet up?’ I ask after answering the call.
It takes less than a minute for us to settle on a time and place, and by the time I hang up, my heartbeat has calmed down again.
I’m myself again. Ready to turn heaviness into lightness and darkness into light.
Chapter Thirteen
NYLA
When I came back to the ER yesterday, freshly showered and in dry clothes, I had a thousand theories about how Jaden would behave. None of them were right.
He behaved like he always does, wanted to know every possible and impossible thing, cracked jokes, and gave me a scientific explanation of why the brain can’t tell the difference between real and imagined danger. It was as if he’d forgotten that a few minutes earlier he had almost kissed me. Ormaybealmost kissed me.
Or maybe not.
God, I really should stop thinking about it all the time. Especially since it doesn’t matter at all what happened, or almost happened, or would never have happened anyway. Not for the first time, I try to shake the thoughts out of my head while the ambulance drives along the country road toward Peggy’s Cove, where our next call is waiting. A young woman has fallen down the stairs.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Jaden. His gaze fixed on the road, he radios in our estimated time of arrival to dispatch.He stifles a yawn, and his five-day stubble doesn’t look quite as neatly trimmed as it has over the past few days.
‘Copy that, 4-2-6, a first responder on scene has stabilized the patient in the meantime,’ dispatch replies.
I exhale in relief. Alex, who’s our driver today, puts on the blinker. Her long blond hair is gorgeous. Together with the freckles, the impressively toned body, and the friendly smile, you can only describe her as stunningly beautiful.
‘All right. We’ll check in when we get there.’ Jaden puts the radio back in its place and reaches for one of those disgusting energy drinks—his third today.
He really ought to cut that out. Too much caffeine can lead to heart palpitations, high blood pressure, and sleep problems. The huge amounts of sugar promote obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. On top of that there’s the smoking, his risk-taking behavior, and God knows what else he’s doing to his body.
How can he live like that?
I scrutinize him. ‘Tell me, are you actually aiming for an early death?’
Alex smirks. She seems to know Jaden well.
‘I’m just a selfless person.’ Jaden takes an conspicuously large gulp of his energy drink and turns to me. ‘Without this stuff I wouldn’t be able to tell an ECG from a shopping list anymore. That’s not how you should be treating patients, right?’
You definitely shouldn’t. Still, he can’t neglect himself like this. ‘And why exactly do you even have this ECG–shopping-list problem today?’
He leans toward me with a probing look. ‘Tell me, Miss Worst Case, is your smile on vacation today, or is it still on its way?’
‘Nyla,’ I correct him. He wants to distract, nothing more, but it’s not going to work. ‘What kept you up so badly last night that you already need your third energy drink?’
For a while he studies me thoughtfully, then the corners of his mouth twitch in amusement. ‘There was this music in my head, together with the sound of rain on asphalt.’
I can’t help swallowing; all at once I feel my heart pounding harder in my chest. So he thought about it too, more than once, maybe even the whole night.
‘And I didn’t want to sleep, I wanted to dance,’ he adds with a pointedly dreamy expression. ‘No idea why.’
He’s joking. He wants to distract from the fact that he’s running his body into the ground. Right? Of course that’s what it is, I know that, and yet he confuses me.
Abruptly, he leans back again. ‘And that’s exactly what I did.’
How? He partied all night? Before a workday? I don’t know what to say to that, and I don’t have to, because Alex raises her hand at that moment. Instinctively, my gaze follows.
