Chase narrowed his eyes. “Don’t tell me you banged the old lady? Now I know you have a wild side and like to get around, and I know I shouldn’t yuck your yum but—”
“What? No. Not the old lady. The woman next to her when we arrived. Her name’s Karla. We went to high school together.”
Chase wiped invisible sweat from his brow. “Whew. Good. I’m sure you’re an easy lay, but I was hoping you weren’tthateasy.”
I didn’t have a rebuttal for his comment, because it was ridiculous.
“Did you two have a thing?” Chase questioned, bringing me back to reality.
A thing.
That seemed a bit cold for what Karla and I shared with each other.
“I loved her.”
He arched an eyebrow. “No shit? I didn’t know you knew how to love people aside from me.”
“Are you getting a little jealous?” I joked as I pulled out my laptop to update my records for the day. There were many positive sides to being an EMT, but the paperwork was my least favorite part.
“Maybe a little, sweet cheeks.” He winked my way before focusing back on the road. “She break your heart?” he asked.
“Nah.”
“You broke hers?”
I stayed quiet.
Chase shook his head. “You motherfucker.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Love always is. And you haven’t seen her in...?”
“Since my father passed. At the funeral.” I felt guilt for the way I’d pushed Karla away all those years before, but I wasn’t in a good place. I knew I wouldn’t be any good for her and her own healing while I was so deeply stuck in my own darkness.
Chase’s eyes widened. “Wait. Was that the girl who you told me about from high school...?”
I nodded.
“Holy shit,” Chase murmured.
Yeah...
Holy shit.
“I knew I saw something different when I walked up on the two of you,” he said. “I’ve never seen you look at someone the way you looked at her.” Before I could reply, the dispatch radio went off with our next stop. A person with chest pains calling in for assistance.
Luckily for me, Chase dropped the conversation before I had to think about Karla some more.
37Karla
“You can’t scare me like that,” I scolded Grandma Claire after I was allowed into her hospital room about two hours after she was admitted. She looked exhausted as she lay in bed, but there was a small smile on her lips. Leave it to Grandma Claire to still find smiles in the hardest of times.
“What’s life without a little suspense?” she joked.
“Calm.Life is calm without a little suspense.”
Grandma Claire waved me off. “It was nothing serious.”
