AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When he was certain she was fully out, he reluctantly released her hand, tucking it under the blanket. A quick trip downstairs and to her car helped him locate her phone and confirm what she’d told him. She hadn’t brought anything with her. Hell, she must have left straight from the hospital. No evidence of stopping for a fast-food dinner, not even a bottle of water. He’d put one by her bed so if she roused tonight, she could hydrate. When she woke in the morning, he’d get breakfast into her. He kept a well-stocked kitchen.
He locked up the vehicle, moved his truck to the space in front of his unit, and returned to the bedroom. She hadn’t moved, except to burrow more deeply under the covers. Okay. Next step.
He entered the password and found Beulah in her contacts to send a text. Safe, took a road trip, back in a few days.
It didn’t sit well with him, pretending to be her, no matter how generic the message. That feeling increased when Beulah responded immediately, telling him just how worried Les’s roommate was.
U ok? Know u need space, but I’m here if u need 2 talk. Hospital attorney looking for u. Left you vm and texts. Even gave me his digits for u 2 call.
She’d followed the text with a few hug emojis. After thinking it through, Brick hit the call button over Beulah’s name. As he did, he moved into the hallway and took a seat on the top of the stairwell. He would hear Les if she woke.
Beulah picked up on the second ring. “Hey, girl, I’m so glad you called.” She had a full-bodied voice, Southern bonhomie and feminine confidence. “I was worried, since your car’s gone and no one’s heard from you since—”
“This isn’t Les. This is Brick McGuire.” He paused, curious if Les had told her roommate enough about him to stick in Beulah’s memory.
“The arson cop. Good. She’s with you? She’s safe?”
“Yes. She’s at my place here in Richmond. She’s sleeping now, but she’ll reach out to you herself tomorrow.” He’d make sure of that. Re-establishing connection after trauma was important, no staying alone in her head.
Her breath rushed out in a relieved sigh. “Okay. Wow. She has such good instincts—even her residents and attendings say so. She’s the last of us we’d expect to have something like that happen. I’m worried how she’s going to handle it. They tell us all the time it can and will happen, but for the first to be a toddler…”
“Beulah, stop.” She was upset, making the info dump understandable. The edge in his order was fueled by his frustrated desire to let her keep going, to find out everything. “She hasn’t shared much with me yet, and I don’t want to get that information without her consent. Not unless her health is at risk because of it. But is there anything she needs to do right away, to protect her interests or the hospital’s?”
Beulah’s tone reflected her surprise at his unwillingness to grill her for info, though it also suggested he’d earned an additional measure of her respect. “Okay, yeah. I told Dr. Portland, her advisor, that she was out of town, so no one will expect her to show up for class and stuff right away, but hospital legal wants her to call them as soon as she can. Though the heat will fall mostly on the supervising resident and the on-call attending, they’ll want to talk to her. Dr. Jack—Dr. Jack Tollman, but we all call him Dr. Jack—was the resident. Dr. Redmond was the attending.”
“Will they throw her under the bus?” Brick asked bluntly.
“It doesn’t exactly work like that. This is a teaching hospital, so there will be an M&M conference where a bunch of the medical staff will go over everything, to determine what should or could have been handled differently. That’s not supposed to be a punishment thing, but to map out how to keep something like it from happening again. Legal is different, though. They focus on what to do if the family brings a suit. They can name anybody who was involved. Including Les.”
Shit. He could imagine what that would do to Les. So apparently could Beulah.
“It’s probably good she’s away from campus for a couple days while this first part is happening, but she also needs to come back before it settles in too deep, if that makes sense.”
It did. Brick’s mind went to the first time—and not the last—the fire had won when he tried to rescue someone caught in it.
“She was really stressed out by the ER rotation,” Beulah said. “Honestly? She’s probably the best doctor among us third years, but she agonizes over having all the information, afraid of missing something. Which is why this might be even tougher for her. Sorry. I thought it might be helpful to know that.”
“It is.”
From being at past Wilder family gatherings, Brick had seen that quality in Les himself. Rory had mentioned his own concerns about that aspect of his sister’s character, the potential causes that had exacerbated it. The loss of their father, Thomas’s struggles, Rory ending up in a wheelchair…
“I’m glad she went somewhere she feels safe,” Beulah continued. “Should I call her family?”
“I’ll take care of that, but thanks. If they call before then, let them know she’s here with me. It’s up to you, but I’d recommend not telling them more than that. I think it’s her story to tell.”
“Agreed. I don’t want to second-hand grapevine that shit with her mom or brothers.”
The colorful observation offered him a grim spurt of humor. “I better go. Thanks for being a good friend.”
“Give her a hug from me. And tell her to remember the ‘when not if’ thing. Shit is going to happen.” A touch of female smugness transmitted over the line. “I’m not surprised she ended up at your place. You’ve been on her mind. A lot.”
Hearing it loosened some of the tightness in his chest. “Glad to hear it. Before I go, I’d like to ask a favor. I’ll send you the money to do it…”
After he hung up, Brick considered Beulah’s parting words. The problem wasn’t that Les didn’t know things like this could happen. It was that she did, and she’d likely pushed herself over and above the already taxing demands on her time and brain, to prevent it from happening.
And then it had happened anyway.
Even an experienced, licensed doctor couldn’t catch everything. There was a reason they called it practicing medicine. If she’d made a mistake, yes, it was her mistake. But there was a key difference in accepting that and moving forward, versus honing it into a blade and falling on it.
