Marc.
He’s been my friend since we both landed down here at the same time. But even he’s not enough to stop the discussion around me blurring into nothing.
Protocols.
New drugs.
Where to keep the fucking pens.
All of it matters, but as I lose the battle to stay present, all I hear is the pounding of a gavel on vintage wood and the roar of motorcycles in my ears. I smell blood and I glance at my hands again. Seeing them stained red is a daily occurrence, but this blood, phantom and yet not, it’s old.Rusty. And it makes my scrubs feel heavy on my skin—it makes me want to fucking puke.
No.
I’m not doing that. Not today.
I shove my mind somewhere else. To the streak on the window. To Marc across the table as he gives the bed manager who won’t stop talking the driest look I’ve ever seen. To the nurse beside me who smells of biscuits and antiseptic. For a few minutes, it works. Then my mind starts to drift again, taking me back in time to how I started my day. Different table. Different people. It’s a twisted, fucked-up thing that it all feels the same to me.
“You’ll probably never see him.” Jack sits bolt upright in his chair, his broad shoulders rigid with stress he doesn’t deserve. “If he even comes. I can’t get a straight answer from him, but that might be my fault.”
Doubt it. Jack shoulders the blame for just about everything, but he’s rarely right. “It’s fine if I do see your brother,” I remind him. “Just like I told you already it’s fine for him to live here. How can it not be? He owns this place as much as we do.”
Malachy Gallagher. Jack’s younger brother and silent partner in the shitshow downstairs we call a business. He’s a soldier. Or hewas. And now he’s not, and he’s coming home, and I know way too much about him for a man I’ve never met.
“Still doesn’t feel right,” Jack frets, the anxiety in his deep green eyes out of place with his rugged exterior. “I mean, it feelsright for him to be here, even if it’s the last thing he wants, but it’s your home too, and I don’t like that I’m forcing this on you.”
“You’re not forcing me. I agreed, remember?”
Maybe he doesn’t. Jack doesn’t forget as much as he thinks he does, but the last few weeks have been tough on him, dragging the past into the present, and fuck if I don’t know how that feels.
I rise, leaving untouched the tea and toast he put in front of me, and press my fist to his arm. “Never worry about me, Jack. It’s going to be okay.”
“All right, Skylar?” My name brings me back to the present. The meeting has finished, I realise, and Marc has moved to claim the space beside me, his perceptive gaze bouncing off the neutral expression that comes too naturally to me. “I thought you’d have more to say.”
“About what?”
“Everything. That meeting was bollocks.”
“They always are.”
“Bollocks foryou,” Marc expands. “That’s why the bosses looked so nervous when you came in. They were waiting for you to shut them down with that fierce efficiency.”
“I don’t do that.”
Marc swipes a weathered muffin. Peels the paper and pulls a face, tossing it back where it came from. “I respectfully disagree. It’s why I like you. And it’s why the other nurses send you to these meetings instead of their manager.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Every damn day.” Marc grins. Then his expression sobers, all business again. “What are you on tonight?”
“Late shift. Triage.”
He’s already shaking his head.
I frown. “Why? What do you need?”
“I need you in majors. If they’re going to cut nursing levels, they need to think harder about who goes where.”
He’s right, but it’s not his call. Marc’s a doctor—a good one, the best—but he’s not God. If he wants me somewhere else for the night, he’ll have to deal with the nurse manager, and I wait for him to stride away to do just that. He’s not scared of anyone, and he doesn’t waste time.