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Tonight was a doozy. No matter what I did, nothing would stop the bleeding of six year old Brendan Matthews. He’d been asleep in the backseat of the car when his father took it on a drunken joyride as payback on his ex-wife. The older Matthews had lost control of the vehicle and Brendan had been thrown through the windshield.
Trauma surgeries weren’t my normal work, but Mr. Matthews had caused quite a nasty pileup and the ER was full. I’d been asked to step in and I had, willing, able and eager and all that nonsense that I now regretted.
“You did everything you could, Zola.” Cal laid a sympathetic hand on my shoulder but I didn’t want to be soothed, not when I lost a kid.
“He was six years old,” I sighed, as if that made his death more tragic somehow. It didn’t, but I couldn’t help thinking about all the birthday candles he wouldn’t get to blow out. The cars he wouldn’t learn to hotwire. The mountains he would never get to climb. “He was bleeding everywhere.”
“You tried, and that’s all you can do.”
I nodded, knowing Cal was right, but I just couldn’t hear those words. Not now. “Thank you, Cal.”
“Thanks for sticking around to help, Zola. Sorry it ruined your night.”
I shrugged and walked away. I was in a daze as I showered and changed back into my sweats and t-shirt, and got into my car. It was time to go home and cry myself to sleep. That was the plan and it was a good plan, exactly what I did on the rare occasions I lost a patient.
But despite my plans and my efforts, I found myself outside Drew’s house. Without thinking I was on his doorstep and ringing the doorbell. It was past one in the morning and he had to be at work in a few hours, but still here I was, with tears in my eyes and an ache in my heart. Who went to their booty call for comfort?
“Zola?” He blinked, looking hot in nothing but a pair of low slung boxers. “Is everything all right?”
I nodded and then shook my head. And shrugged. “I had a bad night.”
If he wondered why I’d shown up on his doorstep, Drew didn’t ask. He simply nodded and stepped back, inviting me inside with a nod. “Sadie?”
I shook my head. “Her surgery was this morning and it went perfectly. This was an MVA, came in just as I was getting ready to leave for the day. He had little chance of survival just from the impact wounds, never mind the organ damage.” Saying the words out loud did nothing to ease the pain or the guilt.
“I’m sorry you had a bad night, Zola.” Drew wrapped his arms around me and the comfort I felt was so immense, and so immediate that my legs wobbled. “So damn sorry.”
Thank you. I couldn’t get the words out around the tears streaming down my face, the sobs that shook me, so I nodded. He was being kind and sweet right now and that only intensified my emotions. My feelings of loss, for reasons I couldn’t get into at the moment.
“It’s hard when you lose a patient, and I’m sorry to say, it never gets any easier.”
The sympathy in his voice was overwhelming and even more sobs rocked my body when his hand rubbed soothing circles on my back. “Thank you, Drew.”
“Um, no problem.”
I looked up at Drew, so uncomfortable that he looked like he wanted to jump out of his own skin. Oh god, I’m such an idiot. I came here in a daze, not really thinking of anything other than I didn’t want to be alone. So I’d come to the man who made me feel good and beautiful. And interesting. And sexy. “I’m sorry, Drew.” I shook my head at the grave mistake, the horrible error I’d made in my weakened emotional state.
“For what?”
I pulled back and inched my way to the door. “I shouldn’t have come here. This isn’t what we do.” Things had been going fine, better than fine, for weeks now. Neither of us had slipped up at the office or around town, but here I was showing up in the middle of the night like he was my boyfriend and it was his job to soothe me when it wasn’t. “Sorry. I’m gonna go. I’ll see you around, Drew.”
“Wait.” He reached out to me, tugging me backwards and turning me so we were chest to chest. “You don’t have to go.”
I laughed. “Right. You’re uncomfortable as hell and wondering why I’m here.”
He shrugged. “I’m not good with tears, but I’m not upset you came to me.”
“No?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m amazed that you even know how to cry.”
His words pulled a laugh from me. “Even robots get the blues, Drew.”
