Page 124 of Grumpy on the Mountain

"Oh honey," Piper's laugh carries through the speaker. "You sound like you've been drinking way too much coffee and overthinking again. What's the cabin like? Please tell me it's not some rustic nightmare with questionable plumbing."

I glance around at my temporary paradise and can't help but smile.

"It's perfect. Annoyingly perfect. Like someone took a Pinterest board titled 'cozy mountain retreat' and made it real. There's a clawfoot tub, Piper. A clawfoot tub!"

"See? I told you the universe would provide exactly what you needed."

There's rustling in the background, probably Piper grabbing coffee between patient rounds. Even on her day off, she can't stay away from the hospital completely.

That's usually me, but… I've decided I'm taking a break.

"Have you stopped checking the medical news alerts yet?" Piper asks, cutting straight to the heart of why I'm really struggling.

"I... tried to read a romance novel."

"Brooke."

"It's one of those spicy ones you said to get!"

"Brooke."

"Okay, fine. I may have googled Tyler's memorial service. But just once! And then I threw my phone across the room."

The silence stretches between us, filled with everything Piper knows I'm not saying.

How Tyler Matthews came in four weeks ago after a playground accident. It was just a routine head trauma that should have been a simple fix.

But I spent six hours in surgery fighting for a little boy with dinosaur stickers on his backpack. He took a turn and soon his parents kept asking if he'd wake up in time for his birthday party.

I had to walk into that waiting room and tell his mother and father that sometimes, even when you do everything right, it's not enough.

I slurp my coffee and stay silent on the line, shaking my head as if it will make the memory disappear.

I locked myself in a supply closet that afternoon and cried so hard I couldn't breathe. After ten years in the profession, I was used to losing patients, and it's never easy.

But this one… it hit hard.

"That's progress, babe," Piper says dryly, letting me off the hook like she always does. "What about the job? You start Monday, right?"

The job. My temporary position at Mountain Rescue that Piper found and basically forced me to apply for when I was too broken to make decisions for myself.

"It's just a small-town operation," I say, repeating what I've been telling myself since I accepted the position. "Basic emergency medicine. Maybe some rescue coordination."

"Exactly. Which is perfect for someone who needs to remember that medicine isn't just about life-or-death decisions in an Operating Room."

Piper's voice gentles, but it's been like this for weeks now. Gentle reassurance that life will get easier, that those dark regrets will heal.

But maybe the words hit harder than they should because they're true.

Every patient I've operated on, every parent I've had to deliver terrible news to… it all loops back to being nine years old and helpless while cancer slowly stole the most important person in my world.

My dad.

The man who taught me to ride a bike and read medical journals at bedtime. Who called me his "little doctor" and never once suggested I should dream smaller.

He fought his cancer battle for two years with the kind of brave courage that made me believe doctors could fix anything, that medicine was magic wrapped in science.

Right up until the day I sat beside his hospital bed, holding his hand while he whispered that he was proud of me and that I should never stop believing in miracles.