Page 34

THIRTY-FOUR

KIT

The heat smacked me in the face on the way out of the hospital. I stood at the entrance to the Emergency Room and closed my eyes before licking my lips, the sting of salt water hitting my tongue.

One.

I inhaled car exhaust and humid summer air.

Two.

A hot breeze coated my skin in perspiration. My pant leg clung to my shin. My brain pounded against my temple.

Three.

In the parking lot, a car honked its horn. An ambulance wailed. The automatic doors behind me whirred open and closed again. Someone sitting outside the ER asked another person for a smoke.

Four.

I opened my eyes, blinking against the sunlight. Blurriness faded from my sight, and I watched as a red sedan pulled up in front of the door. An elderly man eased his way out. The pink scrubs I’d worn this morning were gone, replaced by a drab blue set of Operating Room scrubs. There was a dot of blood on my knee.

Five.

I stopped myself from wiping the blood away. It wasn’t mine, and I sure as hell wasn’t going back into the lab to clean up. The grounding technique I’d learned in therapy after dad died did nothing for my nerves. The tightness in my chest grew, and my heart beat against my chest, a reminder of my dad’s heart attack. Would I die of a heart attack?

No. I had anxiety. I was stressed.

I pushed aside the feeling, the thoughts, and I barreled down the street before someone asked for directions or hit me up for money. Despite the heat, I kept up a brisk pace, eager to get home. Eager to get out of these scrubs. Eager to wash the blood off my arm and probably out of my hair. Eager to lie down.

The stress I’d built up over the course of a very long shift in the blood bank didn’t dissipate as I walked home. Instead, it built as I replayed the events of the day: the frantic call from the operating room that came just a little too late and the frenzied whirlwind as I issued one unit of blood after another. Blood, plasma, platelets, clearing out the stockpile kept in the lab.

My fingers shook as I fumbled to open the door of my apartment. Derek had finally come home three nights ago, but he had a date with Gavin that evening. And I’d been avoiding Trent’s poorly veiled requests to hang out, scared to find out where we stood without a rally and an empty apartment to keep us together.

“Hey.” Trent’s voice startled me as I walked into my apartment. He sat on the couch, phone in one hand. His face morphed from a friendly smile into a concerned frown. “Hey, are you okay?”

Relief flooded me as he stood, folding me up in his arms. He cradled my head as his other hand slipped around my waist. His quiet hushes broke through the pounding in my head. I collapsed my head against his chest until the grip on my chest loosened.

“What’s wrong, Kitten?” he murmured into my hair, kissing the top of my head.

“I had a really terrible day,” I choked out, holding back sobs. “A surgery went sideways, it was really stressful, and I’ve got blood on me.”

Trent tensed. “Your blood?”

I shook my head, but he didn’t let go. “What are you even doing here?”

“I stopped by earlier to check on Derek and thought I’d stick around until you got home. I texted you, but you didn’t answer.”

My five-year-old phone burned through its battery before lunch, and I hadn’t had a chance to charge it. If I had, maybe I would have texted Trent and asked him to come over.

“What are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “It’s been days since I’ve seen you. It felt weird.”

My chest tightened, but my mind was too wired to decode the admission. Maybe he just wanted sex, or maybe h e really missed me, or maybe he was bored and didn’t know what else to do.

“I should take a shower.”

He nodded, trailing me into my room.

I pulled my scrubs over my head, placing them in the “work clothes” laundry bag.

Trent itched the back of his neck, eyes darting around the room as if he didn’t spend half his time here. “Do you want me to go?”

I kicked off my pants, eyeing my arms and legs for any splash of body fluids that weren’t mine. “No, but I need to shower first.”

Trent sat on my bed while I retreated to the bathroom, taking off the rest of my clothes without shutting the door.

“So, what happened?” he called over the roar of the shower.

I dropped my head, letting the hot water fall over my face. “Someone took a turn on the table. Surgery. I don’t know the details, but they needed a lot of blood.”

Soaking a loofah in body soap, I scrubbed every inch of skin. Twice for good measure.

“Did they make it?” Concern tinged Trent’s voice.

I winced. “I don’t know. The nurses stopped coming for blood, and I meant to call to find out, but one of our students dropped a unit right in the middle of the blood bank.”

“Oh, god.”

“It bounced. Five hundred milliliters of blood hit the floor and splattered all over the place. On the walls, the refrigerators, the ceiling.” And all over the back of my clothes, which is why I came home in surgery scrubs, still paranoid over whether blood had gotten in my hair.

I shampooed my hair a second time and muttered, “It sucked.”

I held back tears under the rush of water, inhaling shakily. Derek knew to just leave me alone after days like today. My job was ninety percent monotony. But when things went bad, they went really bad. And today had gone really bad.

“Have you eaten?” His voice startled me, no longer booming from the bedroom but in the bathroom, standing just on the other side of the shower. “I didn’t mean to tease you. Well, I did, but I shouldn’t have. You had a bad day. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I lied, choking on a sob. “It was just really stressful and a little scary. At least in the operating room, you know what happens. I just hand out blood and hope for the best.”

I’d call in the morning. I’d ring up the operating room nurse, who I at least had a passing relationship with, and ask whether the patient had survived. And then I’d wait for another emergency.

“It usually doesn’t bother me,” I lied.

I’d applied to the medical technology program because I didn’t want to be around patients. I didn’t want to get my heart broken day after day, but somehow, even in the further recesses of the lab, I still felt involved somehow. Responsible.

“Of course it bothers you,” Trent huffed.

It shouldn’t bother me. I wasn’t in the room. Beyond name, birthday, and blood type, I knew nothing about the person.

“How about I order us dinner? You can decompress on the couch. We’ll watch a movie.”

“You don’t need to stay,” I said, already feeling better. Less morose anyway. “You’ve probably got plans.”

He scoffed. “Chinese or pizza?”

“Chinese, please.” I rested my head against the cool tile as hot water slid down my back, my hair cleaned twice over.

“I’ll order. You think of the most obnoxious movie that you love and you’re sure I’ll hate.”

I settled on Pitch Perfect, not the least bit bothered when Trent revealed that he actually liked musicals. Which led us down a slippery slope of increasingly more terrible musicals that crescendoed in Trent putting on Repo! A Genetic Opera, which I’d never seen, but he claimed was his sister’s favorite movie.

“Your little sister was obsessed with Paris Hilton?”

“She has awful taste.” Trent reached for the last egg roll. “She grew up telling people she was an ‘old soul.’”

“A millennial? Your sister thought she was a millennial. That’s an ‘old soul’ to her?”

“Apparently her soul isn’t that old.” Trent stuffed half the egg roll in his mouth. “She got ahold of my parent’s old video recorder and would direct remakes of all her favorite movies.”

“Would you do it?”

“For my baby sister?” His face melted into a smile. “Every time. If I didn’t, she’d go crying to Mom and Dad, saying I was being mean.”

“And you weren’t a mean older brother?”

“Sometimes. But I make a kick ass Grave-Robber.”

“I need to see these videos.” I smiled, surprised at how normal the evening felt after the day I’d had.

“Not a chance.” He bounced his shoulder against mine before wrapping his arm around me. “But, speaking of meeting new people, what are you doing Saturday?”

“Not working? Kickball?”

“We have a bye week.”

I smiled. “A bye week? That sounds so official.”

“What do you call it?”

I shrugged. “A weekend off?”

“Well, since you have the weekend off, how about coming with me to a barbecue?”

“A barbecue?” My eyebrow lifted at the offer. “Where?”

“My head coach’s house.” He kneaded a knot in my shoulder, fingertips slipping under the edge of my t-shirt, making me melt just a little. “It’s an off-season mini-camp get-together thing. He does it every year.”

“So, a football thing?”

Trent shrugged. “Sort of. It’s a chance for the new players to meet the vets and the vets to catch up. The food is good, and there’s a pool and free booze.”

“Free booze?”

A faint tinge of pink broke out over his cheeks. “Not for me, obviously.”

“You’re inviting me to a football thing?”

“Right.”

“And you don’t want to invite Derek?”

“He’s not exactly around much anymore, is he?” Trent shook his head. “And no. I don’t want to invite Derek. I want to invite you.”

I weighed the offer. Kickball was drawing to a close. Football would clearly start soon, and where did that leave Trent and me? We weren’t dating. We weren’t friends. Not really, anyway. And come football season, I doubted he’d need some townie hook up to hang out with anymore.

When we got home from the rally, I thought we’d slowly ease away from each other. Games and practices, and then he’d be gone. But instead, he’d nearly moved in. Now, he was inviting me to his work barbecue.

“Wouldn’t you rather just hang out with your teammates?”

“It’s not just my teammates,” he insisted. “Spouses, girlfriends, kids. It’s really a big family get-together. Besides, my teammates would love to meet you.”

He dropped that fact easily. Like I should have known he talked about me. “Wait, what? They know about me?”

He tilted his head. “Um, yeah. I took a five-day car rally with you. They saw the posts.”

My cheeks burned, and I ducked out from under his arm, pulling my knee up on the couch to face him. “What did you tell them?”

“That I charmed you with my good looks and irresistible personality? That we’re wildly close?”

I laughed. “Not wildly close.”

“That I really like you.” His face turned serious, green eyes boring into me with an intensity that sent a chill down my spine and a quick punch of lust to my stomach.

I really like you too.

The admission was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t push it out. Couldn’t admit that maybe, just maybe, I was falling for Trent, the cocky frat boy NFL hot shot.

Instead, I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Since you’re being so nice about it.”