Page 4 of The Golden Hour

He’s barely taken a breath before Nurse Ellen is calling his name.

“Carpenter!” she barks, the phone pressed to her ear. “We’ve got a possible amputation coming in⁠⁠—”

“On it.”

Mason grabs a gown and gloves, already rushing toward the ambulance bay. The late-afternoon air hits his face when he steps outside, the setting sun casting everything in a beautiful golden glow.

Once, that color would have made him think of his wife. Honey’s golden-blonde hair and her sunshine smile. The way she made every single room she entered just feel warmer.

But not now.

In emergency medicine, the golden hour is the crucial sixty-minute window after a traumatic injury when the right treatment can mean the difference between life and death.

Mason lives and breathes for that hour.

His skin buzzes with anticipation, every guilty thought drowned out as the sirens draw closer. Someone is hurt, someone needs him. It is a terrible thing, maybe, how alive he feels when someone else is close to dying. But the rush is too great to ignore.

There is no place he would rather be than in this hospital.

CHAPTER TWO

HONEY

Honey covers her nose as she stirs the pasta sauce, clenching her teeth against the churning in her gut and the dizziness blooming behind her eyes.

She has heard so much about safe foods during pregnancy, about sticking to whatever her body can tolerate because nourishment is the most important thing—but she hasn’t found any safe foods. Even toast makes her stomach roll.

Her mom joked that babies are like little parasites, tapping into your resources and taking whatever they need to grow.

Honey places the spoon down and presses a hand to her belly. She just passed twenty-four weeks. Only sixteen more to go. The near-constant sickness, the swelling, the insomnia, the aches and pains, the dull headache that seems to live behind her eyes now—it is all worth it, though. Every single second.

She feels fluttering and chuckles.

“My little parasite,” she smiles, feeling a strong kick against her hand. “I love you so, so much, Daisy.”

Like her baby already knows her name. Honestly, she probably does because once they—she—decided on the name, she couldn’t shut up about it. She threw a bunch of names at Mason, wanting his input, wanting him to laugh with her at ridiculous ones, wanting to see his eyes soften as he pictured their baby with that name. She wanted him to want it with her.

When she asked him what he thought of Daisy, he only kissed the top of her head, mid-yawn after a long shift, and said, “Whatever you love, I’ll love, baby.”

They were such sweet words; they almost disguised the "I don’t really care," tone behind them.

So, because she loved the name, she decided for them.

Daisy Carpenter.

Her mother loved it. Melissa Hayes was a big believer in giving children names with meaning, that it was the first gift you give your child on the most important day of their life. The name Melissa means honeybee, and she gave her daughter the name Honey because it’s sweet, it never spoils, and because all the work it takes to make honey is always worth it.

Honey loves her parents so much, but she and her mother share a special bond. And when she found out she was having a girl two weeks ago—alone—she wanted to have that with her own little girl.

Seems that she already does, the way Daisy tumbles around in her belly, taking her mind off her sickness for just a little while. She’s giving her daughter the gift of her name, while her daughter is giving her the gift of peace. It’s a nice distraction from her loneliness.

When she catches a whiff of garlic and her stomach twists, she plugs her nose once more and turns off the burner, using one hand to pour the sauce over the waiting pasta. Her eyes glance toward the clock, trying to squash down her disappointment that it’s an hour past the end of Mason’s shift and he’s still not home.

It’s not unusual, and it’s to be expected as the wife of an emergency room doctor.

Telling herself that over and over again has not worked for the last four years, and she doubts it ever will.

He did a couple of rotations in different specialties during med school. Dermatology wasn’t challenging enough, surgery was full of pretentious pricks, and while pediatrics was close to what he wanted, it didn’t give him the rush he was looking for. It wasn’t until he came home from the first day of his Emergency Medicine rotation, still vibrating from the multi-car pile-up he stayed to help out with, that he declared he had found it. What he had been searching for all along.