Chapter Twenty-Six
Morgan
Tuesday
I hated working the night shift. I wasn’t totally sure why I’d agreed to switch with Franky when she asked me, especially now that I could not stop yawning, however hard I tried.
Actually, I did know. She had asked me after Terrance said he couldn’t see me, so I agreed to spite him in some way. It was a silly decision that was now biting me hard on the ass. It was also very strange to be working without Nickie here for a catch up during break, but it was only the once. It would be okay. I’d just sleep all day tomorrow.
Plus, being at the hospital was better than being at home alone with my thoughts circling around and around in my mind. Being in the emergency department wasn’t easy, but it always kept me busy and kept my mind off my very confusing life.
Or so I thought...
“Gunshot patient, coming through,” a loud voice screamed out, setting me right back into action. I snapped into professional mode and raced to where the ambulance would stop and the paramedics would wheel people through.
I’d been going through this same routine all night long, but it never got any easier. It was always hard to see someone in such distress. I was just glad I could get to help them.
But as this patient’s body came into view, it was even harder to deal with because I knew the victim laying on the gurney. Not well, but enough to stop dead where I was and stare with wide eyes.
I’d recognize that gentle giant anywhere; he was sweet and kind, even if he was potentially mixed up in something very dangerous – a fact that was pretty much confirmed by seeing this view. It was incredibly unlikely that anyone being wheeled in here with gunshot wounds was simply an innocent bystander. It did happen, but not very often. Not regularly enough for me to attribute that to this situation.
The blood pumped from a wound on Braxton’s chest. Even through the bandages that the paramedics had administered to stop the blood flow, it cascaded over him. It wasn’t a good sign. Even if they got to Braxton quick enough, there was a strong chance he’d already lost too much blood. He actually could die. I might have been about to lose someone that I actually knew.
But even as that information washed over me, I felt numb, like it was an out of body experience, happening to someone else and not me. Not him. My limbs were frozen to the spot, my heart had stopped beating, and I couldn’t breathe at all. I was stuck in the moment, frozen forever, watching the same scene roll over and over again.
Then Terrance crashed into the building behind him, and that sickly feeling came back over me, sound whooshed back into my ears, everything sped right back up again. Just having him here reminded me of all my own current issues. It overwhelmed me completely.
“Morgan, we need your help, what’s wrong with you?” One of the doctors yelling at me was the only thing that managed to get through to me. I forced my heavy legs to move towards the room where they were taking Braxton, trying my best to forget that this was someone I knew. Just because I could feel Terrance’s gaze prickling on the nape of my neck didn’t mean I couldn’t act professional. He would be pushed into the waiting room any minute now anyway, leaving me to do the job I was hired to do.
I needed to just get this done.
A hushed calm overtook the room as everyone set about working to keep this man alive. Admittedly, I had to keep pushing my panic to one side, but I did okay. The one good thing about being in the line of work for so long was that I could keep my focus when I really needed to, even if it felt impossible at the time.
It took a while – it probably felt a little longer to me than it actually was – but we eventually got to the point where Braxton was stable enough for us to stop working on him. He was still in critical condition, but there was nothing more we could do. We had to just wait and see whether his vitals would go up or down, making the next move obvious.
I huffed loudly and wiped the sweat from my forehead as I left the room. The exhaustion was even more intense now, racking through every part of my body, and was made a lot worse by the knowledge that Terrance was somewhere in the building. One of the doctors would probably tell him what was happening with his friend, but I couldn’t not speak to him – it would just be an awful thing to do. Whatever weirdness was going on between us, this was a horrible situation and I couldn’t be a bitch.
Before I braved going to find him, I went to the nearest vending machine to buy myself a cold drink. I needed something to cool down my insides. While I was at the machine, waiting for the drink to fall, I caught a glimpse of my face in the glass. I looked as terrible as a nurse working a nightshift in the ER could be expected to look, which was disappointing...but at the same time I didn’t fully care. Looking good wasn’t helping me with Terrance anyway, so what did it matter?
Come on, Morgan, I told myself firmly in my mind. Just go and speak to Terrance already; stop being a wimp.
I sucked back as much of the drink as I could in one go and determinedly walked down the hallways to where the waiting room was.
Once I popped my head around the corner, I spotted Terrance right away, slumped forward in his seat with his head in his hands. Someone had already been in to tell him about Braxton, and clearly, he wasn’t taking it well. My heart went out to him, and all I wanted to do was comfort him.
Even if both men were involved in something sketchy, even if they weren’t the sort of people I should be mixing with, they’d never been anything but nice to me. I had to remember that.
“Terrance?” I called out kindly, keeping my tone soft and caring. “Are you okay?” He nodded his head, but he didn’t look up to see me. “Do you need anything? I could go and get you a drink or something to eat if you’d like?” If there was one thing I saw a lot, it was people not taking proper care of themselves while they looked out for their loved ones. It felt a bit heartless to remind people that they needed to keep themselves going, but quite often, it was essential.
“I don’t want anything. I just want Braxton to be okay.”
As he looked up to finally see me, I could see blood all over him, too. He had obviously been there when Braxton got shot, which didn’t bode well for either of them. His pale face was stressed, his whole body was trembling, and he had his walls up high, but I couldn’t leave him right now – not when he was in so much distress.
“What happened?” I asked, reaching out to touch him. As my fingers connected with his skin, he flinched badly. “Are you hurt, too? Should I get someone to look at you?” The more I examined him, the more obvious it was that there had been a struggle. “You look-”
“I’m fine,” he snapped quickly, too quickly. “I don’t want you to worry about me. I want to worry about Braxton.”
“He’s stable; the doctor came out to see you, didn’t he?”
Terrance didn’t answer that; instead he stood up and he paced the room. “I want to stay here. I want to wait until Braxton is awake again, but I can’t. The police are obviously going to want to interview me, and that’ll happen sooner rather than later. I don’t want Braxton to wake up and to find me gone.”
“I will make sure he knows,” I insisted, while pulling him back onto his seat. “I’m here for the night shift anyway. I’ll make sure if he wakes up in that time, I’m here to tell him where you are. If you aren’t back by the time my shift is over, then I’ll stay, wait until you are here.”
My body protested hard at that remark, but my brain stayed strong. I had to do this for Terrance. It was just the right thing to do for a friend...or a whatever he was to me. My hand fluttered down to my stomach – not that he noticed – and I held onto the thing that bonded us.
“Are you sure you don’t need looking at?” I asked him cautiously. “It might be a good idea for me to at the very least clean you up a bit. It might not help your case if you’re taken to the police station looking like that.”
Terrance glanced down at himself and reluctantly nodded. “Yeah, okay, you might be right.”
I took him into the nearest nurse’s office and started to clean him down. As I ran the cotton wool down his face, I couldn’t help being reminded of the first time we met. I didn’t know him at all then, I wasn’t even sure of his name, but there was an intimacy to the moment that was still there now. Brushing his skin in a non-sexual way, cleaning him, looking after him...it built a connection that was on another level entirely.
It reminded me that even though I felt like I didn’t know him, actually I did.
“Seems like you’re always doing this, doesn’t it?” Terrance half joked, clearly thinking of the same things I was. “Looking after me, keeping me safe.”
“Shame I wasn’t there to save your life this time.” I didn’t mean it to, but that comment sounded a little accusatory. It felt like I knew something, when I really didn’t. I wasn’t sure if the two incidents were connected, only that they’d both happened.
“It’s always a shame when you’re not there.”
I stood back and examined Terrance’s face, trying my best to ignore that remark. “You look cleaned up,” I smiled thinly at him. “Now you just have to hope things go well at the police station.”
When he didn’t reply, I felt even worse. Would I be the woman whose baby daddy was in jail? What kind of hideous cliché was that? I saw it all the time in here – naïve girls who couldn’t understand why their life wasn’t working out with their dirt bag boyfriends. I just always assumed that I was better than that, smarter.
What an idiot.
“I better get back to the waiting room, where they will be coming for me...”
“You can go and sit in with Braxton if you like while you wait?” If Terrance was about to get locked up, then he at least deserved some time with his friend. Whatever he’d done wrong, he seemed to have a lot of admiration and love for Braxton. “He isn’t doing much, but I’m sure he’ll appreciate you being there.”
“Thank you.” Terrance leaned into me and hugged me for just a split second. “I really do appreciate this, and the cleaning of my face, too. You’re such a lovely person.”
Lovely, naïve, dumb... Any of those words would work right now, but I just wanted to do the right thing. “Come on, let’s go.”