“Thanks. His loss is my gain. I need the caffeine right now.” Accepting the tall cardboard cup, she cracked the lid. Billows of white steam shot upward. The older woman sniffed appreciatively. “You’re too good to him, Charlie.”
“I have to be. He puts up with all my teasing.”
An oversculpted auburn brow cocked at her. “So, you going to ditch the contest and marry him?”
“Everybody’s asking but I really have no idea what I’m going to do. I’m thinking about it.”
“We have a pool going so if you do, could you accept on May fifteenth for me, after six? It’s up to two hundred right now and I could use the money.”
Her laugh drew several tired faces to her. “A pool? Who started that?”
“Dr. Bushani. He’s betting Dr. T. gives in first, most of the men are. The women are betting you say yes before that.”
“Oh my God, Bastian must hate that.”
Lynne took a small sip and sighed in bliss. “Yeah, he took down the signup sheet a couple of times but it keeps reappearing. Poor man, they’re really ribbing him over this.”
“That’s how I like him, ribbed for my pleasure,” Charlie quipped, sending the woman into gales of laughter.
She weaved around the crowded waiting room and headed for her car. Weight settled in her stomach as her sandals slapped the concrete. Artificial flickering light poured through the night, too-bright white and red, as an ambulance screamed past her. It would be a long time indeed until Bastian got to take a break.
She recognized the rock in her belly as frustration and disappointment. All day she’d looked forward to a few stolen minutes with him, and not getting them left her cranky. Before, it was not unusual to go a day or two without seeing him, depending on their schedules. Now, she resented the tasks that separated them.
The thought made her head thump. Her mind spun with all the emotions she’d denied before. So many feelings rushed her she had trouble sorting through them. This was one of the more unpleasant ones. She missed him, missed being with him. A brief fear kissed her skin as she imagined her life without him.
The drive home was short and made almost unconsciously. A quick glance at the dashboard clock showed she had an hour to kill before going to work. An hour she’d hoped to lessen by sneaking a visit with him. Light filtered from the kitchen and upstairs of the Cape Cod, beckoning her. She plowed through her mother’s yard.
“Mom?”
“Upstairs!”
She found her mother sitting in the middle of a strewn-out mess of clothes spread along her bedroom floor. Charlie frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Feeling old.” Eddy shrugged, holding up a tiny pink bonnet. “You looked so adorable in this.”
“You’re not old.” Charlie sighed and lowered her frame beside a stack of folded miniature outfits.
“I guess just thinking about you getting married has made me sentimental. Do you remember this?”
The blue sundress was faded but Charlie smiled. “I think so. Easter, right?”
Eddy nodded before folding the garment carefully. “You’re back early. Did Bastian like the chili? I left the green peppers out for him.”
“He was too busy. I just stowed it in the fridge, he’ll nuke it later.” Fingering a tiny pair of shoes, Charlie glanced at her mother. “Mom, should I marry him?”
Eddy smoothed a pastel blanket before staring into the distance. “You really think I could give you advice on picking men? You’ve always known what you wanted, Charlie. You’d know it now if you’d stop running from it.”
“So you think I should?”
“Didn’t say that. If you don’t want to get married, don’t. If you do, then say yes. Bastian’s not a bad guy, better than most. It’s just a matter of you choosing to make it work or not.”
Charlie leaned against the bed. The coverlet was soft behind her hair as she stared at the off-white ceiling. “When Lisa divorced him, he took it hard. I couldn’t put him through that again. I’m just not sure I can handle the ’til-death-do-us-part thing. You couldn’t. Hell, even Bastian couldn’t when it mattered. Why should I think I can then?”
Across the room on the nightstand, an old-fashioned wind-up clock ticked, a mechanical heartbeat counting the time.
Countdown.
No matter what Bastian said, their friendship was slowly counting down. A no answer would nail the coffin shut. She could say yes now and hope for the best. But forever didn’t come from maybes. Maybe was all she had.
Her mother returned a colorful stack of things to the cedar chest. “Do you know why I named you Charlie and not Charlotte?”
Charlie shrugged. “I figured you wanted a boy.”
“Now why would I’ve wanted a boy? Good Lord, can you imagine how I’d have screwed up a boy?” The derisive snort made Charlie smile. “I named you Charlie after the man I wished had been your father.”
She stared at her mother. Unease zipped through her blood. Eddy wouldn’t look at her, her head buried in the chest. Sitting back on her heels, she pulled a small snapshot from its depths.
“Charlie Martin was my boyfriend in high school.” The slight smile of remembrance that tinged Eddy’s lips made her seem years younger, softer and less hardened. “I’d known him most of my life. He was the sweetest boy you’d ever lay eyes on. He loved me but his daddy was pushing him for a football scholarship, and a steady girlfriend got in the way of practices and drills and homework. We snuck around for almost two years before his father got wind of it. And that was it. We broke up.”
She handed the picture over and Charlie cradled it like glass. The faintest hint of yellow darkened the photograph. Dead center, seated on a hay bale, a good-looking boy with russet hair smiled into the face of a teenaged Eddy. Charlie couldn’t recall her mother ever looking so carefree.
“He broke my heart.” Quiet in the still room, Eddy’s voice brought back snippets of lullabies and fairy tales. Her mother had tried, the best way she knew, to give her daughter happiness. It was a hard thing when you didn’t have it to give.
“You know me—when I get hurt, I get wild. I ran straight to Charlie’s opposite, a mean, lowlife turd who only wanted one thing, one thing I never gave the boy who had my heart. And I got you.”
One slim hand rubbed across her mouth and then slid around her neck. “When I told Charlie about you, the look on his face nearly killed me. He thought I’d wait for him to graduate, move away from his dad. But I didn’t. I was too hurt. So, he went to school and a few years later married some other girl and I moved on from your daddy to someone else. And I just kept moving. Never did find that kind of love again.”
Life lessons shone bright in her tired eyes. “I wouldn’t change having you for the world. It was the one thing I did right. But I can’t help wondering what would’ve happened if I’d waited until my Charlie was out from under his father’s thumb, wondering if maybe I could’ve stayed married to the right man.”
Her hand was cool as it gripped Charlie’s, a wealth of experience shimmering on her face. “Don’t live to regret whatever you chose. If it’s saying no, then that’s okay. It’s better than making a mistake. But if it’s yes, then go into it determined to last. Don’t give up when it gets hard. Take that lesson from me.”
The familiar scent of Tide and Jergens lotion filling her nose, Charlie buried her face in her mother’s neck. Maybe she wasn’t the traditional mother who baked cookies and served on the PTA, but Eddy was hers and that was all that mattered.
At times, she’d been like an older sister, playing dolls and watching TV late into the night. Other times, she’d been a whipping post, taking the wrath of a confused teenager. They’d traveled hand in hand through a multitude of heartbreak surrounding men and poor choices. If anyone would understand her fears, it was the woman holding her now.
“I’m afraid I’ll die if I say yes and then it falls apart. How did you get over losing your Charlie?”
Eddy clamped her lips shut and grabbed handfuls of folded clothing, shoving them into the cedar box. A knowing weight sank in Charlie’s belly as she waited. She had to strain to hear the quiet admission.
“Who says I did?”
Ten minutes, Bastian wanted ten minutes to close his eyes and just not move. He wasn’t exactly tired. No, he was too exhausted for that. The shift had been too busy to give him much time to think about catching a nap so far. Or was it the shift before this one? He didn’t remember anymore, all his brain power streamed into patient care and remaining upright at this point.
The damp night air crawled underneath his scrub shirt while he waited in the ambulance bay mentally reviewing what he might have to do. All the information he’d been given was to be ready for multiple stabbing victims in less than two minutes. One minute and twelve seconds later, he snapped latex gloves into place and listened to a fast listing of vitals as the crew unloaded a very drunk, very large man crying for Marcy.
A second ambulance blared into the bay and vomited more paramedics. Yet another set of sirens grew louder.
“Grab Rav.” He slid the clear plastic fluid guard over his face.
Suzanne bolted back inside at his order and he started working before the gurney stopped in Trauma Three. The drunk’s glassy eyes opened, saw the bright overhead light snap on, and he began fighting as if they were trying to steal his wallet after payday. Medics jumped in to grab at his arms and legs while Bastian concentrated on the thick wad of cotton packed around the man’s neck. Blood shot in rhythmic arcs when he peeled the soaked padding from around the palm-sized shard of glass. Air hitting the wound seemed to invigorate the patient and he fought harder.
“Sir, you’re going to have to calm down. Suz, tell surgery a big one headed up in five.”
The drunk either didn’t realize he was just a few spurts from real trouble or didn’t care, because he swiped out with meaty hands and knocked a skinny medic into a tray of instruments. The metal clattering barely registered as Bastian fought to get a clamp in place. The spurting blood stopped but that was just the most immediate concern. More slices than a pack of cheese soaked the sheet a deep, wet red, and warm fluid pumped from various wounds.
“Man, cool it!” The quick mutter slipped out as Bastian listened to Jennifer running down the other two patients’ situations. All stabbed with more broken glass but comfortable status twos Rav could handle. He turned his full attention back to his patient and a finger-sized sliver of glass centimeters below his eye.
Suzanne bumped his arm when the drunk knocked her with his knee. She caught herself before she went down in the small pool of blood dripping off the table. Bastian’s irritation bled out like the vein under his thumb. “All right, enough! Calm the fuck down before I sedate you!”
“Marcy! Why, baby? Marcy!”
A surprise spray of blood splattered his face guard. Bastian turned to his nurse and she swiped a gauze pad over it. “Is Marcy one of the others?”
“No.” Her eyes caught his and she shook her head, relaying more than words. Marcy wouldn’t be coming to the ER…ever. “Cops are in the hall, too.”
Biting down on a curse, Bastian went back to work. “Well, they’re going to have to wait. This guy has a date in the OR.” He reached for another instrument and got an elbow to the chin. “That’s it. Get me some restraints and Geodon, twenty milligrams IM. I’ve had enough boxing. Once he’s out, we’ll stabilize him more and send his ass upstairs.”
Bastian knotted the restraint as tight as he dared, binding one thick wrist to the bed frame. A medic practically lay diagonally on the patient’s bleeding chest so the nurses could tie down the other flailing fist. Suzanne handed the narcotic-loaded syringe over his back. The patient vaulted, forcing the medic up, knocking the syringe from her grip. It landed on the gurney between the drunk’s wildly moving legs, and Bastian lunged for it.
Piercing fire slammed into his groin, and his feet left the floor from the massive force of the kick. The air ripped from his lungs. Every muscle in his body shrieked. The slick tile crashed into his knees but that minor pain wasn’t noticed as waves of nausea flooded him. Curling into a ball, he fell to his side. His lungs froze. He couldn’t see but his pinched eyes leaked immediate tears. His own blood filled his mouth as he bit back a scream.
Someone yelled for security over the continual calls for Marcy. The scurry of feet and frantic voices permeated his misery but only peripherally. The energy bar he’d eaten earlier surged and he struggled to his knees. He yanked the plastic guard from his face. Excruciating spasms made it impossible for him to reach the waste bin and he retched on the floor. The involuntary muscle clenches spiraled more pain through him.
Spots dotted his vision when he peeled his eyes open. Suzanne knelt beside him, her smooth brow wrinkled in fear. Rav’s tenor vibrated above her.
“Get him into Four. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Masculine pride should have made Bastian shrug off the slender nurse’s help but he physically needed it at that minute. He’d taken his share of hits in the ring, but never felt anything like this. Sweat dripped down his neck, and drawing a breath was torture. Suzanne pushed him toward an empty bed and he collapsed on it, holding his aching testicles. He hadn’t realized she’d even left until she thrust an ice pack at him. He clutched it to his crotch and the metal rings rattled when she jerked the curtain closed around him.
He had no idea how long he lay there while the sounds of the ER pulsed around him. This was not what he’d expected when he wished for ten minutes to lie down. Slowly, slower than he imagined, the immediate pain receded but the lingering throb remained. He resituated the pack lower, angling his thighs farther apart. Numbness eased the tension around his lungs.
How much did I spend on med school for this?
The sarcastic thought brought a snort. Well, this was one way to win his bet with Charlie. Sex was so far from his mind right now he couldn’t remember how to spell it. Pain was a great mental blocker.
The curtain opened and he rolled to find Rav’s black eyes filled with professional concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He tossed the ice pack away, pulled himself to a sit, and a wince tightened his face. “Sore, but I’ll live.”