Two and a half years later-Bella

New York is the city that doesn’t sleep. That’s very appealing, these days, to a girl like me. What’s not appealing is how they like to taunt fragile-hearted radio listeners, with the same song, over and over.

While I’m parked in the lot of New York Presbyterian Hospital, already two minutes late for my shift, another New York native raps while his even more famous wife sings. I should turn it off and get inside the hospital. I should just forget about my feelings for him already and bury my head back into the job I have to do.

Instead, I turn it up so loud my windows shake from the bass. As if her voice will drown out the images of him, I close my eyes and listen to the radio DJ rev the song as the beginning melody plays under his deep voice. “Another Smash from Jay and Bey. Here’s ‘On the Run Pt.2’. Catch Them in Concert This…”

“Just get on with it,” I mutter, wanting to hear the beginning to remind myself that even famous couples suffer the same thing plaguing my head right now.

The song begins, and I listen about cliché love for a minute before I shut it off.

“Bad guy goes good,” I shake my head. “Whatever you say, Bey.”

I hop out of my car and walk inside, fully prepared to face the insanity of what awaits inside the ER.

“Happy birthday, Bella.” Alexander hands me a cupcake loaded with glittering sprinkles, lit with a single sparkler as the candle. I hate the memory of birthdays, but I roll with it, and play like I love birthdays. And I try to love it. I try to love my life. And I do most days. I try. He has no idea that his kiss will never soothe the voices that scream to me how wrong this all is. Because my love is a lie.

He extends his strong hand, asking me silently for mine. I comply, turning to put the cupcake on the table, but he halts my movement with his words. “No, no.” he chastises. “You have to make a wish.”

I plaster a smile on my face and blow hard. “Done.”

He smiles. “Must have been on your mind for a while, that wish. You didn’t even think about it.”

“I have you.” I smile at him. “What more could I wish for?”

He rubs softly on the back of my hand with his thumb and then gives a light kiss to my wrist.

“Crappy way to spend a birthday, I know.” He kisses my wrist again and then looks down at me with baby blue eyes full of hope. “You were gone from bed again last night. Everything alright, sweetheart?”

I put on a brave, reassuring smile. “I’m fine. I just don’t like getting old.”

“You’re all of twenty-two.” He chuckles. “Hardly old. You’ve barely lived.”

But that’s where he’s wrong. I’ve lived a life longer than most in my few years on this earth. I had to leave Florida. Everywhere I turned reminded me of Evan. Of the life we had.

Just the littlest of things, the smallest memory of my life before Alexander can shake me to my core, make me yearn to go back to the easier, sweet-filled days of carnival rides and strangers who were real strangers, unlike the type of stranger Alex is in my life—a man who knows everything and nothing all at once. Back then, I was able to fill in the blanks of my life and replace them with something so vital and new that it made all the days prior to it fall away, as if they never even mattered.

I paint a smile on my face and cup his cheek, looking appreciative of his kind words. “If you say so.”

He beams. “I know so.”

He’s about to lean in and kiss me, but the door swings open to the lounge and a nurse calls his name in a rush. “A cop’s been shot. They want us prepped.”

Alexander rushes to follow her out without another word to me. My heart races in my chest at her words. Cop. Shot. Those words spear a girl like me.

It’s Friday night in New York. For an ER, that means it’s a madhouse of varying things: sick kids, bodies with knives stuck in them, homeless people looking for a place to escape the rain, and then my least favorite—true emergencies.

Alexander assembles his team and he’s quick to put everyone to work. On the job, there is no us.

He takes what he does seriously; I’ll give him that. He truly cares about the lives that he is appointed to save. Most of the doctors in the hospital look right past the nurses. We are nothing more than slaves to the truly talented, or so they believe.

The double doors of the ambulance bay burst open.

Bad things happen in threes. That’s the old adage. It never changes, no matter who you are or how hard you try to defy it.

Two bodies from a car accident are hurried in. My heart thumps as I watch Alexander send the wounded men to an operating room with a team of nurses. Not a second later, a third ambulance pulls up, and the EMT’s frantically rush him inside of the hospital. “Male, thirty, gunshot. Lost a lot of blood.”

We move so quickly, I can barely keep up, grabbing for the IV bag and keeping pace with Alexander's sprint as he whips the patient down the hallway into an empty room.

Alexander sheers away the man’s clothes and I’m rendered still. The IV bag in my hand nearly drops before I can steady myself.

The ink on the man’s chest slices through me, severing every lie I’ve carefully woven for the last three years of my life. Black dragon eating itself alive. It might as well be eating me alive, because that’s how it feels to be this close to him. Evan.

“No,” I whisper to myself still stunned in place.

“Bella,” Alex calls out, “hang the bag.”

The team rolls Evan to his side. There’s so much blood. His tattooed skin is swathed in red.

“We need to know blood type. Transfuse O neg until we get labs back,” Alexander orders.

I shouldn’t say it, because these are details I shouldn’t be aware of in front of the man I’ve sworn to marry, but there’s no way I’m letting him die. No secret is worth that cost. I refuse to pay a ransom this high.

“He’s AB negative,” I blurt out in a rush.

Alexander looks at me with an unfathomable stare. “We haven’t even gotten labs back. Run O negative.”

“No,” I nearly shout. “I’ve treated this man before. I remember because his blood type was so rare.”

Like mine.

He looks at me unsure. I baulk. “We don’t have to argue over it. Trust me, please.”

He huffs a little. “We can still run O negative.” He orders a nurse to do just that. “There won’t be enough on supply for him of AB neg anyhow.” His eyes are a bit harder, because I never challenge Alex the man, much less Alex the brilliant doctor.

I feel so damn frustrated. Is this a trick? I feel like shaking Evan and waking him up and demanding to know what kind of sorcery this is.

I take a deep breath, my hands steady, as I search through the canvas of blood painting his once perfect, beautiful body for more wounds.

“Arm,” he groans. “It’s my arm.”

Alex shines a penlight in his eyes, checks his vitals, and asks him if he knows where he is. He does. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” Alex tells him.

Evan’s eyes meet mine, and he lifts his lips into a semi-smile and murmurs “Happy birthday.” for only me to hear.

My chest warms, and I can’t help but smile until Evan groans out, “AB negative.”

‘Told ya,’ I don’t say when Alexander glances to me.

“That’s hard to come by,” Alex says.

“I’m AB negative, too,” I blurt out. “I can donate.”

His stare hardens. “O negative will do.”

“Is your arm the only place you’re hit?” I ask Evan. Our eyes catch for a moment. “I need to know if you’re hurt any other place. Do you remember getting shot?”

Evan half laughs, even though his face cringes from pain. “Oh, I remember.”

Alex nods, clicking his penlight and shoving it back into his white coat pocket. “You’re making jokes, so that’s a good sign. We’ll take good care of you, just stay calm.”

Eyes bluer than Alex’s lock with mine, but I don’t fall into their trap, because I know just how dangerous that will be.