Chapter One

There were three things Sage Nichols knew with absolute certainty:

Death couldn’t be escaped.

Mr. Right Now was never Mr. Right.

Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone; it was a cold April day in Denver.

In the dark, dank basement of her sister’s house, Sage held up two sets of scrubs and looked at her dog, Otis, who was sprawled across the bed. This was the time of night his poor body gave out. Missing a hind leg took a lot out of the golden retriever.

He lifted his head, and his amber eyes looked between the two uniforms. He touched the blue one with his wet snout.

“Blue it is.”

She ruffled the fur around his neck, and Otis rolled to his back while she gave him his final belly rub of the night. He pulled back his lips to show his teeth in what she could only describe as a smile.

If Sage didn’t hurry, she’d be late to work. She yanked at her unruly curls and forced them into hair tie submission. Dressed, she took the stairs two at a time up to the main level. The exertion got her blood pumping so she’d be ready to take on the triple-shot latte her sister Lydia would pass off at the front door. After two years of working the night shift at the hospital, Sage should be used to the schedule, but she needed that surge of adrenaline that came from three hundred milligrams of caffeine.

Keys jingled in the front door lock, and Sage greeted her sister with a “Hey, Doc. How was your day?”

Lydia handed over the coffee. “Too long. One gunshot wound. One car accident. Can you believe a little boy broke his arm and leg playing Superman? He tied a tablecloth around his neck like it was a cape and jumped off the roof.” Lydia shook her head and wrapped Sage in a bear hug and squeezed. “Have a good night. Don’t kill anyone.”

“That’s always the goal.” Sage laughed at their conversation. Anyone unaware that Lydia was an ER doctor at Denver General and Sage was a nurse in the geriatric ward of the same hospital might find the comment shocking. Sadly, despite the gang fights, shootings, and car accidents average for the city, Sage saw more death than her sister.

The door closed behind Sage, and she walked into the thick layer of fog, normal for the spring when winter battled for its final breath. It was as if the cold had wrapped its fingers around the city and refused to let go.

She hopped into her RAV4, started the engine, and pulled out of the driveway to cut through the arctic chill one mile at a time. Normally, the trip to work took twenty minutes, but with poor visibility, she’d be lucky to make it in thirty. She sipped her latte. At least she’d have enough time to wake up before she had to make her rounds and fill out patient charts.

On the seat beside her was a stack of pink paper and envelopes for her favorite patient, Bea Bennett, the third such delivery in as many weeks. It was a good trade. She supplied paper, and Bea brought sunshine into Sage’s otherwise gloomy life. Hospitalized for pericarditis, Bea spent her days writing letters that seemed to disappear as quickly as Sage brought supplies.

Fluorescent lighting blinded her as she pulled into the parking spot reserved for the night-shift employees. There was no name on a placard for her. That benefit was reserved for important people like Lydia’s boyfriend, Dr. Adam McKay, the hottie who ran the ER.

“Everyone make it through the day?” Sage asked her colleague Tina as she arrived on the ninth-floor ward. She tucked her purse into the desk drawer and set the stationery down on the desk for a later delivery. Tina handed over the clipboard so she could leave. The halls of the ward were quiet except for the beeping of heart monitors and the whir of oxygen tanks. All seemed in order.

Tina tucked the hair that had fallen from her ponytail behind her ears. “It’s been a busy day.”

That wasn’t the answer Sage wanted, but it was typical because talking about patients would keep Tina there a few more minutes, and she gave no one extra time. Five minutes later, Sage started her rounds, checking vitals and stats as she moved down the hallway of the nearly full ward. She pulled a chart from a once-empty room to find it was now occupied with a new patient. “Clive Russell.” Saying the name out loud helped reinforce the fact that these were real, living, breathing people, not just medical notes and numbers on a page.

Sage skimmed through his records and understood that Clive’s life clock wouldn’t be ticking much longer. He had stage four pancreatic cancer. A shiver raced down her spine. Of all the cancers she’d seen eat up her patients, pancreatic cancer seemed to be the one with the sharpest teeth and biggest appetite. It weighed on her that she couldn’t save these people. She cared for them and did her best to bring them joy in their final days, but it wasn’t enough.

She pasted on a brilliant smile and walked into his room.

Monitors beeped, and the air was filled with a scent that seemed to be synonymous with the elderly. Sage tried to figure the smell out, but the closest thing she could ever come up with was Bengay for arthritis mixed with contraband candy.

At ten o’clock at night, her patients were often fast asleep, but not this one. He was sitting up in bed with his thick gray mane of hair shooting in every direction, a roadmap of lines etched deep into his smiling face. At eighty years old, he still had all his teeth, which surprised her. His hand gripped the remote control. The glow of the television lit up his jaundiced skin.

“Hello, Mr. Russell,” Sage said in a quick, caffeine-induced rush.

“I told them not to send in my date until after the news.” His eyes shifted between her and the television.

While he watched his show, Sage moved through her checklist, which started with vitals and ended with fluids.

She wrapped his arm with the blood pressure cuff and pumped the inflation bulb. The bladder filled and released as she counted the ebb and flow to his arteries. “I couldn’t wait to see you,” Sage said as she swiped the thermometer across his forehead and recorded his numbers. “They told me there was a handsome new man in town, but they didn’t do you justice.” She checked his IV fluid levels and the output from the bag collecting his urine.

The old man grinned. “Call me Clive. I mean, since we’re on our first date and all.” His blue eyes shone behind the veil of ill health.

“You’re a charmer, I see. Just the way I like my men—with a bit of mischief and a lot of sweet.” The fact that Clive Russell, a man fifty years her senior, was as close to being her boyfriend as any living, breathing person with a Y chromosome spoke to the sad state of her love life.

“A beauty like you must have a boyfriend.” He adjusted his pillow and flopped back.

“Oh, I do. His name is Otis, and he has a thing for kibble and Milk-Bones.”

Clive laughed, then winced.

She filled his water and pulled a spare blanket from the cupboard in case he got chilled during the night. “Well, Clive, everything looks great.” Great being a relative term, its scale ran the gamut from “great for almost dead” to “great, you’ll make it out of here alive.” Clive ranked closer to the former. Even though the pallor of impending death dulled his skin, she was buoyed because Clive clutched on to every moment of life he had left. Or at least he gripped the remote control as if it contained magic elixir, and to Clive, it might because he was not watching the news like he said. No, Clive was watching Game of Thrones, which included a weekly naked dose of a blonde beauty called Khaleesi.

“Let me know when you get to the weather report.” Sage patted the old man’s hand.

She left him to his “news” with a promise to check in on him later, then continued her patient rounds. Mr. Dumont needed pain meds. Mrs. Young, who had celebrated her ninety-first birthday yesterday, needed a new IV bag. Nora Croxley needed a hug. Mr. Nolan needed to be slapped upside the head for flashing his old man parts for the second time this week.

In her second-favorite patient’s room, Sage found him sneaking a Snickers bar. “No junk food for you.” She confiscated the candy and reminded David Lark that a man with diabetes shouldn’t feed his disease.

“Come on! I gave up women. I gave up alcohol. I gave up swearing. I’m dying.” He watched her tuck the candy bar into her pocket.

“Not on my shift.” There was no dying allowed on Sage’s shift. That was one of her silly rules. One she could never enforce. She understood dying was a part of life. The minute a human was born, they started to die, but somewhere deep inside, she believed if she cared enough, worked hard enough, and brought joy to those around her, it would be enough to keep them tethered to this world.

As Sage passed the nurses’ station, she picked up the packet of pink stationery from the desk. She shouldn’t have favorites, but she did. Bea was hers. Just walking into the older woman’s room lifted Sage’s spirits. Despite Bea’s failing health, she was full of life. It didn’t hurt that she also reminded Sage of Grandma Nichols—“Grandma Dotty”—with her head of white hair and a voice sweeter than honey.

Her mind skated around distant memories of her grandma who had stepped up to love and care for her and Lydia when their parents died. Had they really been gone for fifteen years? Grandma Dotty for two? She couldn’t believe how quickly time evaporated.

Sage stopped at the lounge to get two cups of coffee—sweet and creamy for Bea, black and bitter for herself. She tucked the writing paper under her arm and hurried toward Bea’s room, ready for a hug and another story.

Bea entertained her with tales about her hometown of Aspen Cove. A town straight out of a television series. A place where everyone had enough. No one went without. All residents, though not related, were considered kin. Sage knew the stories were told from the perspective of a woman looking back on her life, where the memory was sweeter than the reality, but Bea told it all in a way that made it sound possible.

Coffee in hand, Sage turned her back on the closed door, pressed the handle down with her elbow, and shoved her tail end into the room. It was alarmingly silent and almost black, except for the outline of an empty bed. Bea was gone. The pink stationary fell from her arm and hit the floor, spreading out like a carpet to soak up the coffee that fell next. Sage stumbled back to the wall and slid down to the cold industrial floor—the lifeless white tile that filled the hallways of so many institutions. As the pink stationery soaked up the spilled coffee, Sage came to terms with the reality that Bea was gone.

There was no way she’d been released. Just yesterday she’d had a cardiac MRI, and no changes were noted in her condition. Nothing was better, but nothing was worse. Pericarditis didn’t cure itself overnight. No, her Bea had passed, and with her went one of the final sparks of light that shone in Sage’s eyes.

Sage pulled herself into a tight little ball and buried her face against her knees. She released a wail that sounded foreign but vibrated deep within her soul. She knew she needed to get on her feet and resume her shift, but her arms wouldn’t move from the hug in which she wrapped herself. Her eyes remained shut, trying to stanch the coming flood of tears. Her heart beat with a sluggish rhythm that negated the effects of her latte.

Why did Bea’s life mean so much more than the others? Why did her death create a cavernous hole inside her? It was one more loss in a life full of them. One more soul she’d tried to hold on to without success. Another person who abandoned her before she could say goodbye.