Not Quite Forever (Not Quite #4)(33)
Author: Catherine Bybee

“We found her on the other side of a barbwire fence.”

“Second line is in, Dr. Eddy,” Valerie said while she attached an IV bag of Lactated Ringers. “Labs are on their way. We have four bags of O negative on standby.”

The radiology techs pushed in and shoved a plate under the patient as gently as they could.

“Her temp is 96.5, Walt.”

“We need to warm her up, but not too fast.” Her head wound had lost a lot of blood, but was only a trickle at this point.

Before radiology could snap a picture, the monitors started alarming.

Everyone turned, saw the rhythm of the patient’s heart. V-tach.

The woman who was not Dakota, but looked so much like her Walt had to stop glancing at her face, had just lost a functioning heartbeat.

Four units of blood, one chest tube, three rounds of CPR, and one hour later, his patient lost her battle. They never managed to get her to the OR.

He pulled off his gloves, his soaked gown, and slippers, dropping them in the contaminated waste container by the door. After washing his hands, he went through the department to take a moment in the doctors’ room.

“Walt,” one of the nurses who wasn’t in the trauma room called out.

He turned, knew what to expect. “Smith’s CT is back, labs are on his chart. The child on eighteen has finished his Albuterol treatments and his fever is down—”

He lifted a hand, stopped her. “Five minutes, Deb.”

The ER was packed, patients in the halls, ten deep in the lobby. Some moaned, some coughed, some bled. But all of them were breathing, except one.

He never made it to the doctors’ room.

“Dr. Eddy?”

He didn’t want to respond, but the hospital chaplain wasn’t someone he could ignore.

“Mrs. Comer’s family is in the chapel. John is ready to go with you.”

Mrs. Comer’s husband couldn’t be any older than Walt. He jumped when the three of them walked into the room. Fear, anguish, and dare Walt say, hope, filled the man’s eyes.

The chaplain introduced them and Walt delivered the news no one ever wants to hear.

Chapter Twelve

He lurched from his bed, his heart pounding too fast. “Fuck!” he swore to the empty room. The images of Dakota mixed with the fading memory of Vivian . . . and Mrs. Comer. Damn it, he hadn’t brought his work home with him in years. Now, two days after the trauma, his head kept going there.

He kept seeing Dakota dead, felt the heartache of another doctor telling him she was gone.

The clock by his bed said two thirty. The hotel shades he’d placed over his bedroom window blocked out the daylight after a graveyard shift, but his body knew it was sleeping at the wrong time.

Giving up on sleep, he pushed out of bed and slid into a pair of pajama pants. His refrigerator was pathetically bare. Dakota scolded him the first time she saw it. “One week supply minimum, Doc. The only thing you’re prepared for is a ball game.”

“Don’t underestimate the game,” he’d told her.

He finished the milk with the tail end of a box of butter crunch cereal.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Yet he hadn’t called her in three days. He was being a coward, he knew . . . but life was so fragile and he didn’t think he could handle losing Dakota. Not to death.

He’d cared for Viv . . . but the growing pressure in his chest every time he thought of Dakota was so much larger, and that scared him.

The threat of loss kept his dates with other women to only a few and then it was time to move on. So why had he broken his own rules with Dakota?

“Back off, Walt,” he told himself. “Slow down.”

What he needed was a distraction. Space and time away from the woman who had forced her way into his thoughts every damn day.

He moved to his small office and removed his new cell phone from the charger. Sure enough, Dakota had sent a text. I’m told that sexting always ends up on the Internet, so just imagine the picture I want to send. Call me when you wake up.

His palms itched with the desire to hear her voice, take her up on her obvious invitation. Instead, he listened to the voice message blinking on phone.

“Eddy! It’s Klein.” Dr. Klein was one of his colleagues with Borderless Doctors. “BD is looking for a full-time doctor to coordinate staff, train, and be first on scene. I thought of you. Call me.”

Instead of calling Dakota, Walt made a detour.

The same blinking cursor had mocked her on chapter fifteen for a full day. What comes next? What comes next?

Dakota checked her phone for the fifth time that hour.

She gave in and let a call go through.

Walt’s voice told her to leave a message. “Hey, Doc,” she attempted to sound unaffected by his sudden absence in her life. “I’m calling to see if you’re still breathing.” Which wasn’t a lie. A part of her worried something awful had happened. A bigger part of her worried that he wasn’t calling her, texting her, for an actual reason. She didn’t add anything else to her message before hanging up.

Her eyes started to blur and her head started to pound so she gave up on what comes next and turned off her computer.

It was after six when her phone buzzed. She jumped, like a teenage girl with a one-way crush. And that pissed her off. When had she become so needy for a man’s attention?

Still, she smiled when she saw Walt’s face appear on her screen. “You’re alive,” she said when she answered.

“Yeah. Sorry. I’ve either been working or sleeping.” His voice was flat and the background was filled with noise.

Was it too demanding of her to suggest a text, a quick call? Was admitting she worried about him too big a step? Channeling her latest heroine, Dakota found her backbone. “You know, Ace, a text between shifts so I know you’re alive isn’t a time-intensive activity.”

He paused. “I know. My bad.”

My bad? What are we, sixteen?

“I’m at work. Picked up a shift,” he told her. “I’m going out of town for a few days. Didn’t want you to worry.”

There was a definite chill in his voice as he rattled off his incomplete sentences. “Is everything OK? Any natural disasters I haven’t noticed happening in the world?”

“Nothing like that—”

Dr. Eddy? Dakota heard his name called over the phone.

“I’ve got to go. I’ll let you know when I get back.” Not I’ll call you, not we’ll get together . . . just a let you know.