***
Tai
One day later
“This was on your truck,” PD said. “I brought it in because it looked like it was going to start raining.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking the box with a furrowed brow and placing it on the bunk directly next to me.
PD left, and I was left staring at the box that didn’t have anything on the outside but three words.
I’m sorry. Mia.
I opened the box, wary of what was inside.
I hadn’t spoken to Mia in two months…not since the day of Colton’s funeral.
Not for the lack of trying on my part, either.
She’d just refused to talk to me. Answer the door. Hell, I’d even tried to talk to her mother, but her mother didn’t have any answers for me either, seeing as Mia was doing the same thing to her, also.
But for me to get to a random box from her all these days later was odd.
But I opened the box, nonetheless, and wished I hadn’t.
Because inside were three things.
One was a photo framed in an ornate gold trimmed picture frame, another was a bear.
A tiny little bear dressed in a fireman coat and hat.
The other was a note.
I didn’t want to get rid of this. I’m cleaning up my house for a move, and I just couldn’t give it away. I’ll want it back some day…just not today.
I’m sorry for everything, and I’m also grateful.
I hope you’ll accept my apology for how I’ve acted, and that you will forgive me.
<3 Mia.
I held the firefighter bear in my hand, remembering what it’d looked like in that little boy’s clutched fists, and swallowed the lump that formed in my throat.
The tones dropped, and I looked up at the red light above the door and winced.
I had a headache. Had one on and off for months now.
Ever since I’d met Mia.
Although we hadn’t spent much time together, we’d been through so much in that short time, and I found that I missed her.
Missed a lot of things about her, actually.
Like the way she laughed, and the way she smelled.
The way her smile drooped on one side.
I found myself dreaming about her a lot, and I hoped that maybe this olive branch she offered wasn’t riddled with thorns.
Because I really did miss her.
Standing up, I tucked the bear into my pocket and jogged outside into the bay where the ambulance was.
Today, I was on the bus.
I enjoyed the ambulance.
Especially when I had someone to drive it for me since people were stupid when it came to emergency vehicles.
“Yo,” PD said as he got into the driver’s seat. “What was in the box?”
I pulled the bear out of my pocked and showed him.
He cleared his throat.
“Shit,” he said gruffly.
I nodded.
My thoughts exactly.
“What’d we get? I wasn’t paying attention,” I asked.
“Fender bender from what I heard,” he answered, pulling out a full thirty seconds before the rest of the boys on the truck pulled out.
In East Texas, when ambulances were dispatched, the engines always dispatched with them, regardless of whether it was just a medical call or not.
The drive to the scene of the accident was riddled with stupid drivers, the banes of my existence.
I was getting less and less tolerant of all the bullshit that some drivers pulled on the road.
How freakin’ hard was it to pull over to the side of the road when you saw the red flashing lights coming up behind you?
Personally, I didn’t think it was that hard, but people never failed to surprise me, something that was happening more and more lately.
“Uh, oh,” PD said.
I looked up and growled.
“Fucking amateurs,” I said.
There were four people in front of a smashed up car, and all four of those people were from a volunteer fire department that was stationed just outside of the city limits.
The area of Kilgore that I worked saw a lot of calls that ran along the border, and the fire department they were with tried constantly to pick up the calls that were in the city limits.
Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal because we always wanted the patient’s safety to come first.
However, HEMS, this particular EMS service, didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.
Which also meant they didn’t know other people’s asses from that hole in the ground. Which, in turn, wound up fucking up the patient even more than they already were.
And none other than Tom Spurgis, the head dumbass in charge, was the first one to walk up to me the moment I got out of the truck.
“Ahh,” he said. “If it isn’t my favorite person ever, Taima.”
I grinned.
“What kind of patients do we have?” I asked, opting for business instead of the who has the bigger dick’ game that Tom wanted to play.
Tom narrowed his eyes.
“Sixty-one-year-old female; chief complaints are chest pain and abdominal pain. From the seatbelt,” he clarified.
I nodded and walked to the car, stopping when another HEMS member refused to move.
“Move,” I ordered shortly.
The man sneered.
He was new.
Obviously, he didn’t know me, because if he did, he wouldn’t be posturing. Instead, he would be moving his fucking ass.
“Easton,” Tom growled. “Move so they can look.”
Easton moved, but I could tell it was with the utmost reluctance.
He gave me about three feet, and I took it, stopping next to the window while the rest of the firefighters behind me started to get their gear ready to unstick the door that was keeping her pinned inside.
“Ma’am,” I said.
She shifted just her eyes to me.
“Hello,” she said the moment she saw me, awareness flashing in her eyes. “I’m okay.”
She wasn’t okay. She was grimacing in pain, and she was holding her chest.
“What hurts, Judith?” I asked Mia’s mom.
“My left arm, mostly,” she said. “But that’s pretty much it. My chest isn’t even hurting much anymore. Nothing else.”
“When did the pain start?” I asked, warning bells going off in my mind at the mention of her chest and left arm.
Her car wasn’t even that banged up, so her left arm most likely shouldn’t be hurting.
“Right before I hit that curb,” she admitted, rubbing her jaw. “It was the weirdest thing. One second I was fine, the next this awful pain hits in my left arm, and then I’m banging against the guardrail.”
I gestured for PD to get me the blood pressure cuff and went around the other side to wait while Fatbaby finished getting the passenger side door opened.
He finished in a few short moments, and I crawled inside.
Once inside, I could clearly see that she was sweating profusely, and she was now moving her jaw even more.
“Does your jaw hurt, Judith?” I asked.
She wiggled her jaw once more. “A little. Why?”
“PD, I need you to give her three hundred and twenty-five milligrams of aspirin and some nitro,” I ordered.
PD was back within moments with the aspirin, and Judith took it.
“Water?” She asked.
I shook my head.
“Chew it,” I said. “What’s her BP?”
“180 over 100.”
PD put the Nitroglycerin pill up to her mouth and said, “This one just melts under your tongue.”
I looked at Judith, at the question in her eyes, and said, “I think you’re having a heart attack.”
She gasped.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
I got the board in place behind her back while PD stabilized her neck, and within moments, we were removing her from the crumpled vehicle.
“Where’s Mia?” I asked.
“She’s at work. Wait to call her until we know,” Judith ordered.
I didn’t bother to tell her no.
I wouldn’t be keeping this from her. HIPPA be damned.
I’d deal with the repercussions of giving out patient info later. This was more important than my license.
Mia would want to know, and I wouldn’t be keeping anything from her.
She wasn’t a fragile flower.
We loaded Judith into the back of the ambulance, and I got in with her, taking a seat at her right.
PD closed the doors, and I got busy starting an IV on her and getting fluids running.
“You’re good for my daughter. I think you’ve helped her these last two months,” Judith admitted.
I grimaced.
“I haven’t seen, nor spoken to her, since Colt’s funeral,” I said, all business.
She may have sent me a peace offering, but that didn’t mean that I was going to put myself out there again.
Colt dying had dredged up a lot of old memories for me.
Ones of Catori, my sister, dying. Ones of Winter dying. Ones of my brother breaking and never really living again. Adam dying.
Memories assaulted me, and I hadn’t had a full night’s rest since I’d met her.
And I was pretty fucking pissed about it.
I was a fun person.
I let loose.
I celebrated.
What I didn’t do, however, was care.
Caring let to feelings, and feelings led to heartache.
I didn’t want that…and Mia made me care. Made me feel. Then she refused to see or speak to me, and I was left wondering what the hell I was supposed to do.
She’d changed something inside of me.
Made me consider a relationship with her…something I just didn’t do…and then took away that promise…the promise of her.
Yes, I realized she was hurting.
But I could’ve hurt right along with her.
I didn’t have to be there to have her back, but she wouldn’t give me that.
I knew it was selfish. She’d just lost her son. She was allowed to do whatever the fuck she wanted to. Me, I was used to people thinking I couldn’t handle the hard stuff.
My whole family thought I couldn’t handle it. So why should she be any different?
“Oh, such an expressive face,” Judith rambled. “My girl’s a survivor. She had to be. Her daddy died, and I could barely afford a single thing. I was working from sun up until four or five hours past sundown, before she was even old enough to watch herself alone. She’s been an adult for a very long time. She doesn’t know how to lean on others when she needs it…and, sadly, that’s my fault. You need to give her a second chance to prove she’s the one for you.”
I shook my head.
“I’m a mess myself. It’s probably for the best that she doesn’t realize what she was starting to mean to me,” I admitted.
Judith had the nerve to laugh.
“You’re fooling yourself,” she said as she reached for her left arm again.
I checked the time, then pulled out another nitro and opened it, placing it under her tongue for her this time.
Little by little she relaxed.
My heart, however, didn’t relax.
I couldn’t tell Mia that she lost her mom, too.
So I did some hardcore praying as I monitored her all the way to the hospital.
Then breathed a sigh of relief when the attending physician took one look at her and ordered some clot busters for her.
I backed away to let them work, then even further out of the room until I was standing in the hallway that would lead me upstairs.
“Hey, you ready?” PD asked.
I shook my head.
“Call and tell them we’re gonna take a lunch break. Then we can go up to the cafeteria for a bite, and I can stop by and tell Mia about her mom,” I said.
PD shrugged.
PD was laid back.
He could literally go with the flow for anything.
Which was why, when I handed him a twenty to buy me lunch, he took it without a word and left, not looking back once.
I started down the hall in the opposite direction of PD, not stopping until I got to the wing that led to labor and delivery.