Page 58 of Delta (Alpha #12)

M y coffee has long since gone cold. That's not new, though—when I'm working, I often misplace my coffee, find it, and drink it lukewarm or cold. This coffee, however, is too cold even for me to drink. I push it away out of reach so I don't keep grabbing it as I finish paperwork.

The office is dead silent, except for the soft hiss of the A/C from the vents overhead; office is a bit of a misnomer, really; it's more of a broom closet with a desk and chair, but it's an oasis of calm and quiet, a place to get away from the bustle and noise and chaos of the ER.

I hate paperwork. I hate charting. I hate bullshit admin work.

What I love is the medicine. The chaos. The rush.

The challenge of injury or illness. Yes, the patients are people—I have an impeccable bedside manner, thank you very much.

But really, deep down, it's the rush and the challenge that drive me.

I became an ER nurse because of Mom. She'd come home after a long shift and even though I could see the exhaustion in her eyes, she'd spend time with me. Talk to me. Watch my favorite movies with me. Make me food. Sometimes even before changing out of her scrubs.

And then along came Anselm—Papa. I was seven when I met him, that awful, terrifying night when the bad guys took Mom.

But yet despite all that happened, Anselm kept me safe.

I'm sure you've heard the stories by now, or read about them, or seen the various made-for-streaming film versions that crop up every now and then, some more accurate than others, so I won't bore you with the details.

Suffice it to say, Mom, Anselm, and I became a family.

Anselm came to live with us in Minneapolis.

They never legally married, so my last name is still Binyamin, like Mom's.

Not that I would've minded taking Selm’s last name, See.

Story See would have been a pretty damn cool name, honestly.

Although, it's pronounced "Zay" instead of the American English "see".

As a father, Anselm was…is…loving, supportive, compassionate, firm, quiet.

He never once raised his voice to me, not even when I, in a fit of irrational, teenage angst, stole Mom's car, went on a 100-mile joyride, ran out of gas on a deserted two-lane highway in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and had to be rescued.

At three in the morning. When he'd just returned, quite literally mere hours before, from a three-day op with A1S during which he'd managed to sleep a grand total of forty-five minutes.

He'd arrived at the car, filled it with fuel from a dented, rusty, ancient old red jerry can that probably saw action in WW2, wrapped me in a long, comforting hug, kissed my forehead, and said in a very quiet, incredibly soft, and gut-wrenchingly disappointed voice, "Do not do this again, please, liebchen . "

And then he left. My punishment, the only consequence delivered for my reckless behavior by him or Mom, was that statement, those seven words. And the long, agonizing drive home alone in which to think about what I'd done, and the crushing disappointment in his voice.

That was my one act of teenage rebellion. I couldn't stomach the thought of disappointing my beloved Selm that way ever again.

He loves Mom fiercely but quietly, as is his way.

I saw it day in and day out. The flipside was how Mom loved him—she defended his freedom to be himself with the same ferocity as he protected her and took care of her.

He's a wild thing, my Selm, my father. A creature of shadows and darkness and the hunt.

Houses, buildings, cities, streets, these things confine him, make him restless.

He can only stomach civilization for a few weeks before he needs time in the wilderness to recharge.

And Mom never, ever begrudged him that, even though I knew she missed him deeply when he was gone.

His work, too, was dangerous. It kept him away for days at a time, during which we wouldn't hear from him at all.

Unlike most children of men who do dangerous jobs, I was always intensely aware of the danger he was in every time he went on an op.

How could I not be? I'd been through hell with him.

I watched him end a man's life with a knife at seven years old, but of course, that was far less traumatizing than watching my biological parents get gunned down by a shooter in a mall at five years old.

My favorite memories of Anselm are of the times I got to go into the wilderness with him.

He began taking me with him on his days-long treks when I was ten.

I remember the first one with vivid clarity.

It was April. There was still snow in places, but during the day, it still got warm enough to not need a jacket.

He woke me up at five in the morning, made me pancakes, and let me drink a cup of coffee with him—heavily cut with chocolate milk, of course.

He gave me a special backpack—a weathered, battered leather rucksack, well-oiled, older than my imagination could fathom.

Only later would he tell me it was the same backpack his own father had given him as a boy.

He showed me how to roll my clothes up into neat, tight packages.

He gave me a brand new canteen, a six-inch fixed blade survival knife, a compass, and a Zippo lighter.

We got into his car and drove away in the lightening gray of dawn.

He'd already discussed this with Mom, of course, not that that ever crossed my mind. If Anselm said let’s go, I went, no questions asked.

We drove and drove—north into Canada, west toward British Columbia.

We parked at the end of a barely visible two-track path in the foothills, shouldered our packs, and walked into the mountains.

We spent two weeks out there, just the two of us, with nothing more than our bags, knives, and canteens.

He brought no food of any kind. In fact, the only concession he did allow was water purification tablets.

He taught me how to survive with nothing but my wits, courage, and determination.

He taught me orienteering, how to read a topographical map, how to make a fire, how to create shelter, how to find water and purify it, which plants I could eat and which would kill me, which would help with various ailments, which would soak up blood if I was to get cut, or since I'm a woman, deal with my periods when out in the wilderness.

He taught me to stalk-hunt with a bow—and how to make one from nothing with only my knife.

How to skin a carcass. How to defend myself if I'm attacked or threatened by a bear, wolf, coyote, mountain lion…

or that most dangerous of predators, man.

Yes, he taught me to fight with my bare hands and feet, with a knife, with a rifle, with a handgun. With a bow. With a spear.

By the time I was sixteen, I was a thoroughly competent outdoorswoman, capable of being left absolutely anywhere on the planet with nothing more than basic survival gear, and I could make it home.

He also taught me how to survive if I'm left out there with nothing.

And I have. He drove me out into the wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and left me hundreds of miles from anything with nothing more than the clothes on my back.

I loved every second of it.

To this day, I keep up those skills. Every couple months, I pack that leather bag and go exploring the way Anselm taught me. Just go. No destination, no purpose, just go and just be.

I'm finishing up the last bit of paperwork when my pager goes off—there was an MVC on the 35, multiple casualties inbound.

Fuck it, I’ll need the caffeine—I toss the cold, bitter coffee back in three swallows, chucking the empty cup in the small wire basket under the desk on my way out.

It's go time.

I hustle to the ER, arriving just as the first victims are wheeled in by the medics, and then I sink into the familiar flow of emergency medicine.

It's the only career I’ve ever even considered—other than out in the wilderness, the ER is where I'm most comfortable. My life has been shaped by trauma, defined by violence. It's just where I live. I move and breathe and exist in the chaos.

My current victim is a twenty-year-old female with an open femur break, multiple contusions and lacerations, and most concerning, free fluid in the belly from an internal injury.

She's screaming in agony despite having received the max dose of fentanyl in the field, thrashing and howling.

I FAST her belly and find the injury, but she's thrashing too wildly to be able to set her leg.

I grab her face with my bloody-gloved hands and fix her pain- and fear-maddened eyes. "Jen!" I shout. "Jen. Look at me. Look at me."

Her eyes find mine, panicking, frantic. "Jason—Jason—where's Jason? Jason!”

I scan the ER and see Tammy and Mario working on a young male with a massive piece of glass in his belly—I lock eyes with Mario, who gives me a shake of his head. Fuck.

I go back to Jen. "They're doing everything they can for Jason, but you need to stop moving. You can scream as loud as you want, but you have to hold still for me so I can set your leg."

She grits her teeth, nodding. Reaches blindly for someone’s hand to hold as I line up at her foot and prepare to set her femur.

Kelly, the charge nurse, takes Jen's hands. "Squeeze my hands, honey. We’ve got you." She looks at me, nodding her head in a three-count.

In synch with her, I grab hold of Jen’s leg, hold her frantic eyes.

"Ready? On three. One…two… THREE ." I pull her fractured leg straight away from her, and the jagged pink-white spur of bone slips back within the sheath of flesh and muscle.

A bedside X-ray shows that it's correctly set and ready for ortho to cast it, but first, we have to get her to surgery to stop the internal bleeding.