“Shit, Ollie.” Reid set the picture back down.
“So I know what it’s like to wake up and not know who you are. I didn’t for a few days, and even when my memories came back, I wished to God they hadn’t.”
He was quiet for a long time. “I’m so sorry that you had to go through all that.”
“It’s okay. Makes you grow up fast.”
“Is that why you decided to go into the medical field?”
“Good guess.”
“If I’m asking too many questions, you can tell me to shut up.”
I chuckled. “I imagine you have a lot of questions in general right now.”
“That I do.”
“Then fire away.”
“Yeah? You asked for it,” he said, then took a sip of his water and leaned back on the couch, one arm spread along the back. “Why’d you decide to become a paramedic? Why not a nurse or doctor?”
“I think the decision was made for me the night of my accident. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the woman who got to me first. She was able to get me out of the car before it caught fire. She saved me. Stayed with me. Gave me a fighting chance. I want to be the first one on the scene to try to give someone else that chance.”
“Like me?” Reid said, a small smile curving his lips.
“Like you.”
“That’s pretty brave. Do you ever get scared?”
“All the time.”Especially when I saw a certain someone’s crushed red Mazda3…
“I don’t think I could ever be in the medical field. I’d probably pass out at the first sight of blood.”
“You wouldn’t believe how common that is,” I said as I ran a hand over my hair. It occurred to me then that I was still in my pajamas with my hair doin’ what-the-hell-ever, while Reid sat on my couch in perfectly starched jeans. Oh well. Too late now. I coughed to clear my throat and took another drink of coffee before saying, “My buddy, Mike…his first day on the job, and we got called out for a fall. So we get there and the guy had cut his cheek pretty good when he fell. Had blood running down his chin and neck. But the thing about facial lacerations is that they bleed like crazy, so it looked worse than it was. I sent Mikeout to get some supplies and later found out he’d puked his guts everywhere. All over the bushes, the sidewalk. He will never, ever live that down.”
Reid let out a loud belly laugh. “That would be me. Needle prick and I’m out.”
“Yeah, maybe stick to teaching those middle schoolers.”Oh. Wait. Open mouth, insert foot.Again.“I mean…if you ever go back to it. Shit, sorry.”
Confusion filled his face. “How did you know I did that? Taught middle schoolers?”
“You told me. The day of…” I gestured in his general area and realization dawned in his eyes.
“Oh. So that’s what we talked about? My job?”
“Mhmm. You said you’d been teaching for a few months and they could be a handful.”
“Huh.” He scooted forward on the couch, his elbows on his knees. “So let me get this straight. We’d never spoken before, but I complained to you about my job?”
“To be fair, you were having kind of a shit morning.” I shrugged. “The latte machine was down.”
Reid looked at me like I’d lost my mind, and then he began to chuckle, softly at first, and then louder until he dissolved into a fit of hysterics. I didn’t know what he found so funny, but his laughter was contagious and had me grinning. No matter what the cause, it was good to see him laugh like that.
“I don’t know why I’m laughing,” he said, coughing as he tried to get a hold of himself. “I know this isn’t funny at all. I just find it weird that my day was horrible because of supposedly scary middle schoolers and a broken machine. What’d it do, spew all over me when I walked past it or something?”
“I almost wish it had. Then what happened after could’ve been avoided.” I clamped my mouth shut and scrubbed my face. Obviously I hadn’t meant for that to come out the way itprobably sounded to Reid’s ears, and I attempted to clarify. “I only mean so you wouldn’t have been in the accident?—”
“I know what you mean, Ollie,” Reid said, sweet understanding in his smile. “But I guess that leads me to something else I’ve been curious about. Something personal.”