Dawn lit the sky with swatches of orange and white, marbled across the horizon. Kira pumped her arms and legs back and forth. Each foot strike on the asphalt of the greenbelt path was more purposeful than usual. Focusing on form and the cool of early morning helped her keep out errant thoughts.
What she could’ve done differently.
What more she might’ve tried.
Patients die sometimes, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
She banished Dr. Barnett’s face from her mind. As if she didn’t know that. Kira had been a doctor long enough to have accepted facts she couldn’t change. What mattered was that she never lost the sense of grief that came with losing a patient. The moment she grew cold to loss, she might as well give up being a doctor, because she’d lost her compassion.
The truth was that a nine-year-old boy had died, and now his family would be faced with having to live all the days to come without him in their life. With memories fading and the constant, nagging absence of their loved one.
Because she couldn’t save him.
A dog across the park barked a couple of times. The owner threw a tennis ball, and the dog shot across the stretch of grass between the path and the kids’ playground. Life moved on. Another day, another chance to save someone’s life—except she wasn’t working tonight.
Lord, comfort the brokenhearted today.
She blinked and the child’s face filled her mind. She saw Rebecca on the gurney, administering CPR, trying to do everything she could to keep the kid alive. The bacterial infection had simply been too bad, too far gone.
A tear escaped the corner of her eye. Kira swiped it away and ran faster. Until sweat beaded at the small of her back and her leggings seemed overly warm.
Her thoughts drifted to Luca, and she let them.
Did the guy really have to be so good-looking? It was almost unfair, considering she had objections to so many other things about him. Her fault though, considering she’d built him up in her mind as the epitome of the American military warrior hero. What was even sadder was the fact she’d agreed to work with the US government because of his team. The way they’d clearly looked out for each other like brothers, and how they’d come back to check on her after she was struck.
Care and concern.
The same kind of concern he’d shown her in the hospital last night. It had thrown her when he’d suggested they go somewhere quiet so she could tell him what had happened and why she was upset. She hadn’t had anyone in her life who cared about her like that in years. She hadn’t known what to do with it, and in the emotion-laden heat of the moment, she’d chosen solitude rather than facing her feelings in front of someone else.
She had no idea what he’d do with an emotional woman dealing with something heavy. Kira didn’t need any more disappointment when it came to Luca.
She spotted a woman running the opposite direction and recognized her from other mornings, though the woman didn’t run on the same days each week. Not that Kira was obsessively keeping track, but it seemed like the woman’s schedule shifted days from week to week. She looked to be about the same age, her hair a dark blonde that looked almost brown, tied back behind her head. She wore shorts and a Renegade Fire Department T-shirt.
The woman nodded. “Morning.”
Kira sniffed. “Morning.”
They passed each other, and she focused on her form again, slowing at the four-mile mark, where there was a fountain by the fishing pond. She got a drink, then wandered around a little in an off-center circle, just to keep moving. Cooling down from the hard run.
Not too far away, on one of the benches that lined the path, a young woman sat hugging herself. She wore black jeans and flat canvas shoes, a gray zippered hoodie over her shirt. Hair hanging forward, covering the sides of her face. She looked a little familiar, but that wasn’t surprising considering Kira saw so many different people every time she worked a shift at the hospital.
But it was the way the woman held herself that drew her attention.
Kira wandered over, keeping her distance and giving the woman a chance to notice her. The woman drew in a sharp breath and looked up. Eyes wide, one of them rimmed with a blue bruise. Her lip was split, and she had a gash on her cheek. Those looked to have been tended to at one point, which made sense. This was the woman from the other night, the domestic-violence victim Kira had treated—the one Mack brought in.
Her ribs hadn’t been cracked, just bruised. Still extremely painful. Now she held her elbow to her body with her other arm, which was new.
“Hi.” Kira kept her distance and didn’t get closer, not wanting to spook the woman and cause her to leave quickly. “I’m Dr. Yassan. From the hospital?”
The woman nodded slightly. “Hi.”
“What was your name?”
“Frankie.”
Kira took a half step toward her. “Did you hurt your arm, Frankie?”
Her nose wrinkled and she said nothing.