CHAPTER 17
Evan
The last foster family I stayed with, the Vicents, had been fairly decent. In fact, after the several rounds of Hell I’d been through with the previous families, the Vicents had practically been like The Brady Bunch. By the time I made it to their household though, I was already in my late teens, on the brink of adulthood. While the Vicents had treated me kindly enough, I had always harbored resentment toward them and it took me the longest time to figure out why. Logically, I knew I should have been grateful to have finally ended up with a family who didn’t treat me like a second-class citizen. Yet, it wasn’t until I reached legal age that I realized my issue with the Vicent family; I had simply resented them for not coming into my life sooner. I lamented about how my life could have been different had they been the first household I ended up with. I often wondered how much pain and suffering I could have potentially bypassed.
As I got older, I eventually learned to let go of the resentment and accepted that the Vicent household was the only place I could somewhat call home. Whenever I got a break from the military, I wound up on the Vicents’ doorstep. Yet, the military quickly began to change me. It got to the point that when I returned to visit the Vicents, it felt like coming home to a place I truly didn’t belong to anymore despite my sense of loyalty to the only people who had actually treated me like family. I had simply changed too much to fit into their world.
That was precisely how I felt when I returned to the night-shift. Entering the hospital during night hours felt like home, but it also felt like I didn’t entirely belong there anymore. The day shift had changed me—or more accurately, Tessa Kennery had changed me.
“Dr. Sholly, are you all right? You seem a little distracted tonight.”
“I’m fine,” I said to the nurse before me. Sheryl was her name. She was nice, skilled, pretty—but no comparison to Tessa.
Stop it, I said to myself.
“Dr. Sholly!” I turned around, seeing another nurse running toward me, out of breath. “You’re needed to fill in for Dr. Hans. We have a GSW. We have him stabilized, but you need to do the final assessment before surgery.”
I hurried off after her. She led me to a young man with a gunshot wound to the side that had broken a rib. When I got there, the other nurses and technicians stood around as if their job was done.
“He’s all set, Dr. Sholly,” one of them informed.
“Was a full-body examination conducted?” I asked.
They all paused to look at me. “His only injury was in his side and we’ve—”
“Standard procedure is to do a full body examination. You all should know that,” I said, feeling mildly agitated. They all muttered awkwardly around me, apologizing as I finished the full body examination and then sent out a request to get the patient to roll up to surgery.
Sheryl stayed behind to help me organize the patient’s files and waited to accompany me in updating his family.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Dr. Sholly? I can tell something is up.”
“Do you know Nurse Kennery, Sheryl?”
She titled her head to the side and glanced up at the ceiling, jogging her memory. “The name sort of rings a bell…”
“Tessa,” I said. “That’s her first name.”
“Tessa Kennery…Oh! Is that the one who just saved that woman a couple days ago? Rode in the ambulance with her, administering CPR?”
“Yes.”
Sheryl nodded. “Yes, I’ve seen her a couple times. She’s really pretty, and a damned good nurse from what I’ve heard. I don’t know much about her though. I think she only works the day shift. Why do you ask?”
I stared at Sheryl for an instant, no longer sure why I had asked. What did I expect? For someone to fill me in on Tessa’s whole life story? For someone to let me know if she had a serious boyfriends in the past and whether I stood a chance with her, or if I was nothing more but a passing fling?
I shook my head. “Never mind. No reason.”
Sheryl narrowed her eyes suspiciously at me, but didn’t push it. She knew me enough not to.
Naturally, for the rest of my shift, I hadn’t been able to get Tessa out of my head. It occurred to me once and for all that walking away from her just didn’t seem like a viable option, no matter how much I wished it was. It wasn’t just physical, as it had been with so many others before her. Those, I had easily been able to walk away from afterwards without a fleeting thought. But Tessa—she had a hold on me that I just couldn’t shake no matter how much I wanted to.
I needed to see her again.
To be with her again.
Although I was so tired that I bordered on the point of delirium, I decided to stick around until the day shift came in so that I could see Tessa. I didn’t know what I planned to say to her, but I knew I wouldn’t be satisfied until I saw her face. If I didn’t see those baby blue eyes of hers, I thought I might go crazy.
But as the day shift continued to roll in, Tessa wasn’t amongst them. I watched the steady shift of doctors, nurses, technicians, and interns. Each time someone entered the hospital, my heart gave a hopeful leap, only to be disappointed again when each face I saw did not match the one I was craving to see.
Nearly an hour after the day shift began, and unsuccessfully dodging questions regarding why I was still there, I decided there was no use in sticking around. So I left with another plan brewing in my mind.