I breathed a sigh of relief and before she could object, I pulled her into me and kissed her. “I love you,” I whispered. “Wait for me.” Then I turned and jogged down the hall as the rest of the crew streamed out of the bedrooms.
Leaving her felt wrong. Everything between us was fragile and I knew how easily she could shut down on me. The timing of this call couldn’t have been worse. I practically dove into the driver’s seat, determined to get this over with as quickly as humanly possible.
The guys got in and Shawn put on his headset. “Kristen’s here, huh?”
“Not now, Shawn.” I turned on the lights and pulled out into the street. The accident was only a block over, thank God.
Javier opened the laptop. “Might be a DUI,” he said, reading the notes from Dispatch.
Luke scoffed from the seat behind me. “Not even nine in the morning.”
“Hey, it’s five o’clock somewhere.” Shawn snickered. “So, what’s got her panties in a bunch now?”
I turned onto Verdugo and gave Shawn the finger over my shoulder.
I pulled up to the accident. The police were already on the scene, blocking traffic at the intersection, so I parked the engine behind a cop car with its lights on, and Shawn, Javier, and Luke hopped out to get the trauma kit.
A Hilton Garden Inn, newer-looking apartments, and an artists’ senior living complex flanked the four-lane, tree-lined road. The brown, tired Verdugo Mountains loomed in the distance.
I checked my watch as I climbed out of the engine. If she was gone when I got back, I’d lose my fucking mind.
She’d said she’d stay, and she usually did what she said she would. But this thing had her shaken, and I couldn’t wait forty-eight hours to run after her if she took off on me again. I’d go insane.
My mind was exhausted. I hadn’t slept last night. I didn’t fully absorb everything she’d said in the kitchen and some of it began to catch up to me now.
I didn’t come here to tell you so you could decide whether you want to date me. That’s not even on the table.
If Kristen thought I was going to let her go, she was fucking nuts. Not now that I knew she loved me. Not ever.
I finally understood the kind of love that made men give up everything. The kind that made someone change religions or go vegan or move to the other side of the world to be with the woman they loved. If someone had told me six months ago that I’d choose a woman who couldn’t have kids, I’d have called him crazy. But being with her wasn’t even something I had to think about. I did want kids. But I wanted her first. Everything else was just everything else.
Sure, a part of me grieved a life I knew I wouldn’t have now. Kids that I’d never meet, a future different from the one I’d spent the last few years wanting. But I processed it like I’d been the one who just got a diagnosis. Because in a way, I had. This thing didn’t feel like her problem. It felt like our problem, to figure out together. It was as much mine as it was hers.
I fell in next to the guys and we made our way onto the scene, our feet crunching over broken glass.
I stepped over a side-view mirror and nodded to a cop talking to a sobbing woman by the open door of her blue Kia. I assumed it was the other vehicle involved in the accident. The bumper had damage.
No skid marks. The lady blew right through a red light.
“Probably prescription pain pills,” Luke mumbled.
Shawn scoffed. “She looks like vodka to me.”
I shook my head. “I hope the accident didn’t ruin her buzz. She’ll need it where she’s going.”
We saw too much of this bullshit. And now I had to be here cleaning up this lady’s mess instead of talking to Kristen.
Javier nudged Luke, and he veered off to check on the lady.
I tried to put myself into work mode, though most of it was autopilot at this point.
The motorcycle rider lay facedown twenty feet away. He’d been thrown. I knew walking up the injuries were bad. By the looks of his twisted leg, he’d been pinned between the car and his bike during impact. The mangled bike sat on its side next to a planter full of birds-of-paradise on the sidewalk in front of the hotel.
I stared at the bike as I walked.
The bike…a Triumph, but with that new exhaust he just put on.
I looked back at the patient, everything suddenly slowing.
The helmet…a blacked-out Bell Qualifier DLX.
The man’s shirt…from the gift shop at the Wynn in Vegas.
Shawn and Javier must have noticed it at the same moment, because without speaking, we all began to run the last few feet.
Brandon.
It was Brandon.
I fell to my knees on the asphalt. “Hey! Hey, can you hear me?”
Oh my God…
He was unconscious. I put a hand to his back and felt the slight rise and fall.
Breathing. He’s alive.
This is Brandon. How is this Brandon?
I picked up his hand and checked for a radial pulse in his wrist. It was weak and thready. I could barely feel it.
It meant blood loss.
I didn’t see him bleeding heavily, so it had to be internal.
Internal bleeding.
He could be dying.
My mind raced. We needed to get him stable and into the ambulance.
Shawn dove into his trauma bag, kneeling in a rivulet of metallic-smelling blood. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Come on, fucker, you’re getting married! You gotta be okay!”
Sloan.
My heart pounded in my ears. “He’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine, buddy.”
I got out my pocket light, opened his visor, and pulled back his eyelids. His pupils shrank to small black dots. They were equal and reactive. Good. That was a good sign. He didn’t have brain damage. Not yet. We needed to get him to the ER before his brain started to swell.
I gulped air. I had to stay calm. Stay calm!
The ambulance pulled up, and Javier jogged to meet them.
“I need a c-spine and a gurney!” I shouted.
Jesus Christ, his helmet was fucked. Dented from the impact. Covered in skid marks.
She didn’t stop.The lady didn’t fucking stop. It was a forty-mile-per-hour zone. A forty-mile-per-hour impact if she wasn’t speeding.
And she probably was.
I pulled out my trauma shears and started cutting off his clothes. “Sorry, I know you like this shirt, buddy. We’ll go back and get you another one, okay?” My voice shook.
As I cut away fabric, more injuries bloomed over his body before my eyes.
I grappled to make sense of it.
Where the fuck had he been going? Why wasn’t he home with Sloan?
His tux. He had a final tux fitting today at 9:00 a.m. He told me about it.
Why couldn’t he have been late? Or early? Why didn’t he take his goddamn truck? Or a different street?
I cut his pants off. He had a break. Compound fracture, left leg. His femur pushed jagged through his skin.
I swallowed hard looking over his mangled body, and my brain ticked off injuries.
Serious.
Serious.
Serious.