The next dip lasted longer. The recovery lagged. I felt the shift before the monitor confirmed it.
I stepped closer to the resident. “We need to intubate now,” I said, my voice firmer this time. “She’s failing.”
He hesitated, eyes wide, breath shallow. “Let’s just give it another minute. Dr. Harris should be here any second.” Her parents were on their way. She’d been at school.
A minute was an eternity when a child was already burning through her reserves.
Her breathing hitched—once, twice—and then she stopped breathing at all.
The alarm screamed. The resident froze for half a second too long, staring at the monitor like it might tell him what to do.
“Call it,” I said. “Now.”
“Intubate,” he finally said, his voice breaking.
Of course he did.
By the time the tube went in, her airway was swollen, uncooperative, harder than it ever should have been. We worked her for forty-three minutes, long enough for Dr. Harris to arrive, take one look, and understand exactly what had happened.
They called it.
It wasn't my fault. I'd done everything right.
But the attending had panicked, and tried to throw me under the bus to save his own career, and they’d shut him up fast because any allocation of blame was a lawsuit waiting to happen.
My boyfriend had said he believed me.
Gavin had said it over and over, holding my hands across our kitchen table, promising he'd stand by me no matter what.
And then he'd written the article, and his betrayal had felt even worse than the hospital covering their backs.
Hospital's Fatal Mistake: Inside the Tragedy That Shocked Denver Emergency Medicine.
He'd used my name. My words. The things I'd told him in confidence, late at night when I was too broken to know better. Gavin had taken every vulnerable moment I'd given him and turned it into a byline.
The article went viral.
It was the excuse they needed to fire me.
He'd tried to apologize. Said he thought he was helping, that exposure would force the hospital to take accountability. Said he loved me. When in actual fact, he’d been angling for a chance from the Metro Desk Editor to get noticed, and used me to get it.
I'd moved out the next morning.
The radiator clanked, struggling to push heat through pipes that had probably been installed before I was born. I pulled my jacket tighter and lay back on the futon, staring at the ceiling.
Somewhere above me, someone's TV blared a laugh track. Below, a baby cried. Outside, sirens wailed—constant, overlapping, the soundtrack of a city that never stopped moving.
I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the loft. About the bed we used to share. About the mornings he'd bring me coffee and kiss my temple while I tried to wake up.
Tried not to think about the little girl. Her name was Emma. She'd been six.
I stared at the ceiling, counting the hairline cracks that spread like veins across the plaster.
Taranis Rees.Taz, he'd wanted me to call him. His name had been on the roster for weeks, but I'd never paid much attention. Goalies were different creatures—separate from the rest of the team, isolated in their own world behind the mask. They didn't come through the medical bay often, unless something went catastrophically wrong.
Yesterday had been catastrophic, but not in the way I'd expected, and I hadn’t seen any of the team today because I’d been on that pointless course that management needed to send me on to check boxes.
I rolled onto my side, pulling the thin blanket higher. The cold from the window seeped through the glass, drafty and persistent, reminding me I needed to stuff more towels in the gap.