AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She looked good, healed. Not pale and in pain. Not black circles surrounding more black circles beneath her lashes. Not fatigue etched into her forehead and the delicate skin surrounding her eyes.
Good.
Just not…okay.
Nine
Raven
Her pulse was racing in a way she knew was dangerously fast.
Medically, her heart wouldn’t be able to keep up with it. Not for long, anyway. In sustained circumstances, it could stop altogether, could send her into cardiac arrest.
But already, her pulse was slowing—aided by slow and steady breaths…and an increased distance from Connor.
“There you go, Raven,” she whispered, taking slow and careful breaths as she navigated away from the curb and down the street. “There you go. There you—”
Her cell rang.
Thinking it was the hospital—tonight was her first shift back (at least for desk duty)—she jabbed at the screen and answered the call.
“How are you doing, honey?” Auntie Pat asked, her voice almost deafening through the speakers.
Raven grinned. She had learned a lot of things about Pat over the last few months—but the most lasting knowledge about her former next-door neighbor was that she laughed and talked andlivedloud. A total firecracker, through and through.
“I’m fine,” she said, reaching forward to crank down the volume. “How’s your new neighbor?”
A scoff. “Same old nonsense. Partying until the middle of the night, leaving their trash out. Playing loud music and blocking the road with their ugly electric cars.”
Raven stifled her laugh as she turned onto the highway that would take her to the county hospital.
Thank God she was starting back on light duty tonight.
Just charting and staffing and consults.
It would probably be boring as hell, without any of the fun and adrenaline-riddled cases that usually made her shifts go by quickly.
She would also probably be exhausted when she went home, considering she hadn’t done anything near as demanding in the last months of her recovering—unless hauling her ass up and down those flights of stairs counted. They had at first, Auntie Pat demanding that Raven join her on the beach, that the sea air would be good for her lungs (something she was right about). The stairs had also helped her regain her strength, even though she’d cursed them from the first time she’d arrived at the rental, all the way until she’d carried her duffels down them the day before.
Home.
She’d extended her stay for an extra month, had been tempted to do it indefinitely.
But…she had to get back to reality.
To work. To her life.
“You’re not going to go and overdo it, are you?”
Raven forced out a laugh. “Of course not.”
“Liar,” Auntie Pat said. “You’re one of those fancy emergency room doctors. Your kind never stops. You’re fueled by coffee and those dangerous energy drinks and microwave dinners.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“And I’m only on nights for a couple of shifts then I’ll be back on boring day shift.”
“Boring,” Pat tutted.
