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Maybe. She could provide book-related answers at the drop of a hat. Yet learning how to respond to attendings, residents and patients, when the answers had to be deduced, by connecting all the dots, was different. She did it, and Beulah said she did it well, but a small tornado had become a frequent weather condition in her lower belly, while the muscles in her neck and between her shoulders remained permanently knotted.
She would get through it. Plenty of med students did. She wasn’t unique. Unless her uniqueness was that she couldn’t get through it, that the pace was too much.
Nope. It wasn’t. Denial. The key to success. She reached for her personal mantra. I’m strong and smart. I can handle anything, as long as I stay calm and take it one step at a time. She wouldn’t miss something as simple and potentially fatal as honey given to an infant.
“Were you scared, the first time you went into a fire?” she asked.
“Not so much when I was a pipe man. That’s an adrenaline rush, and the focus is on your training, everything you learn about technique, strategy, and how fire works, to knock it down or keep it contained. You’re wearing gear, and you have faith in it to do its job while you’re doing yours.”
“But things can go wrong.”
“A lot of things can go wrong. That’s why you train and train and train. City councils think firemen mostly sit around and play with their shiny toys, while asking the town for more of them. But when the fire starts, you have to be as ready as you can be for what it throws at you. Even as you know there will always be variables you can’t predict.”
“Yeah.”
He touched her hand. “Those variables are what play holy hell with a control freak’s compass. It was search and rescue where I had to teach myself to manage fear. The fear of not having enough time to find someone and get them out. Then came the first time it happened.”
He paused. “Backing out when the IC, the incident commander, tells you it’s a lost cause, knowing someone’s still in there, even if there’s no chance they’ve survived…it’s tough. Or getting someone out, only to have them die when the EMTs or docs are working over them, because they inhaled too much smoke, or were burned too badly.”
“Oh, God. I’m sorry, Brick.” She stopped eating and covered his hand with her own. “Was that part of why you decided to do arson?”
His gaze touched on the contact between them before it lifted back to hers. “No. I still miss doing the S and R. The more I did it, the more I learned to manage my reaction to that possibility, even as I fought like hell, just like the others in my firehouse, to make it the exception rather than the rule.” He tapped her hand. “But something else I found out. Seconds are a lot longer than you realize. The more experience you get, the more you can do with them.”
Her brow creased. “I’m not following.”
“New guys often dash around. The more experienced ones take the time to check the perimeter, evaluate the scene. Flake out the line and hook the hydrant up right, rather than fumbling it from being too much in a rush. In the ER, I expect it’s the same. Those extra moments to think it through can save lives.”
He smiled. “You’re a thinker. That’s why I know you’re going to be fine. You just have to let yourself accumulate the experience to get there. That’s the terrifying part. Because we know how much we don’t yet know, and lives can depend on our knowledge.”
“Yeah.” She dropped her gaze to her food again, toying with it.
“Tell me about your current rotation. It’s Behavioral Medicine, isn’t it? Psych? Do they have a diagnosis that explains Rory?
She smiled. “I haven’t found ‘asshole’ in the DSM yet, but I’m sure they’ve given it some convoluted Latin name.”
He chuckled. She wondered if he’d intended for the humor to pull her away from her worries. Whether he did or not, as he asked her more questions about her rotation and studies, the two of them fell into a comfortable back and forth, leaning toward one another as he finished his meal and she had the rest of hers boxed up.
The persistent sexual undercurrent gave their conversation a nice edge. It rose and fell, through eye contact and the brush of his legs against hers under the table. And yet…
A crush was about imagining kisses and moments where the other person gave titillating hints about their feelings. Connecting with him in a real way, about things that mattered to them both? He’d said he liked the look of a woman engaged in what mattered to her, and here they were, talking like adults interested in one another beyond sex. Interested in finding out more. Everything, in fact.
Alarm bells went off. If it was just sexual attraction, she could put that away once he dropped her off and left. Like she’d done with every man she’d met since entering medical school. She couldn’t make it about more than that now.
She was giving herself whiplash. Wishing he was going to be here longer, even knowing it was better that he was headed home. Wishing they could stay in closer touch, when she had no time for that kind of maintenance.
Shut the fuck up, Les. Sheesh. Maybe with a little time and space, she’d put this in better perspective. After she used her vibrator twenty times.
When Brick paid for the meal, he left a generous tip. He drew her over to the firefighter and cops and shook their hands, mentioning the training that had brought him here. He didn’t linger on that, though, before introducing her.
“Les is a med student working at the hospital. She’ll be starting her ER rotation soon, handling what you guys send her way.”
Sheila had talked about this, yet Les was surprised to feel it herself, a subtle but detectable shift in their attitude toward her. An acknowledgement of the common bond between first responders and hospital staff. She was one of them, or trying to be.
“Her accent’s stronger than yours, Brick,” the firefighter noted. “A lot prettier, too. She sounds like honey and sweet cream, whereas you just sound like a braying mule.”
“Yeah, yeah. You Tarheels are the ones with the accents. We Virginians talk the way you’re supposed to talk.”
The firefighter grinned. Les excused herself to use the restroom. On the way there, she heard them re-engage with Brick on the course work that had brought him here. Easy networking.
