“I’m not looking to date,” I add. “You know that.”
“Oh, of course,” Hazel responds a little too quickly. “I just thought if you were free, maybe you could swing by her house. Make sure everything’s okay. I just hate to think of Angelup there on a ladder, all by herself… And what if something happens, and her daughter is the only one around to help? How traumatic would that be?”
The mention of Angel’s daughter is another reminder why dating Angel wouldn’t be a good idea. A single mother wants commitment. She wants a man who’s open to a ready-made family. A man who wants to go to school concerts and dance recitals and all the other shit my buddies do with their kids.
I’m not that man. I don’t think I ever will be.
Still, Hazel has a point. I don’t like the idea of Angel putting herself in danger like that. And really, it wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience to swing by her house to check on things and put Hazel’s worries to rest.
“Okay. I’ll stop over there,” I say. “Not for long, though.” As Hazel’s face brightens, I remind her, “It’s not going to lead to anything, Haze. Don’t get any ideas. And don’t go off telling the others and getting them going, too.”
Hazel plasters on a smile as she glances over at one of her tables and gestures that she’ll be right over. Then she turns back to me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ro.”
I shoot her acome onlook. “So you’re not going to tell Winter, Lark, and Rory about me going over to Angel’s? And you three won’t sit around plotting how you can orchestrate another meeting between us?”
Winter, Lark, and Rory are the partners of my other Green Mountain Guardian teammates, and they’re just as invested in me finding a relationship as Hazel is. Which is why I know damn well that Hazel will be texting them about Angel only minutes after I leave.
“WouldIdo that?” Hazel asks innocently.
I chuckle. “Yes, you would.” Grabbing my takeout bag, I angle my chin towards the exit. “I should probably get going then. If I want to check on Angel before it’s dark.”
“I guess I ought to check on my tables, too.” She darts forward to give me a quick hug. “Thanks, Ronan. For going over, even though I know you don’t want to.”
I pat her back before releasing her. “It’s fine, Hazel. You know me, if there’s a damsel in distress…”
She grins. “All of you guys are like that.”
As I start walking away, I reply, “Part of the job, you know.”
“No,” she calls after me. “It’s because you’re a good person, Ro. The job is only secondary.”
Her comment follows me as I hurry to my car, my head ducked against the brisk November chill and the few scattered snowflakes that appeared during the fifteen minutes I was inside. With my free hand, I adjust my collar so it covers my neck.
Am I a good person?I’d like to think I am. I work for a company dedicated to protecting people when they find themselves with nowhere else to turn. I’m a medic at a ski resort, providing care and comfort to frightened skiers and snowboarders. I was a Green Beret, and then Delta, risking my life time and again for my country.
As I begin to make my way towards Angel’s house—in a town of just over one thousand, it’s not unusual to know where most people live—I let my thoughts fall back to the events that brought me here.
Entering college, I had everything planned out. Science track at UMaine, MCAT prep, summer internships, admission to medical school, and hopefully, a residency in the Northeast so I could stay close to my family. I’d specialize in family medicine and eventually open a practice of my own. By forty, I’d be living in a nice house with a wife and two point five kids and a couple of dogs for good measure.
Then I started paying attention to what was going on in the world.Reallypaying attention. The more I thought aboutthe shitty things I was seeing and reading about, the more determined I got to do something about them. Then an Army recruiter came to campus, and he suggested I take the ASVAB, just to see what I might be qualified for.
“If you’re so determined to join the Army,” my mother suggested when I first brought up the idea, “why not be an Army doctor? You could work at a VA hospital. That wouldn’t be much different from working in family practice.”
But once I started thinking about my other options—Special Forces, in particular—it was hard to move past it. “Special Forces can always use medics,” Nils, the recruiter, told me. “Think about it. You could get the best of both worlds—saving the lives of your fellow soldiersandprotecting our country.”
It wasn’t that simple, of course. There was Basic, Advanced Individual Training, and several years at my first station before I began the arduous process of becoming a Green Beret. I spent six years as a GB before being recruited to Delta, where I stayed until my contract ran out three years later.
Did I love what I did? Fuck, yeah.
Have I ever regretted giving up on my dream of medical school? Not really.
Am I happy where I am now? Most of the time.
Do I still look back and wish I could have done some things differently? Absolutely.
But that makes me think of something my fellow GMG teammate, Alec, told me once, after he’d gotten together with Hazel and was well on his way to letting some of his own personal ghosts go.“I used to spend a lot of time on what-ifs,”he admitted.“A lot of time blaming myself for things I really didn’t have any control over. Honestly, it took meeting Hazel to show me that I can’t take on the responsibility for other people’s actions. It’s easy to look back and say, oh, I should have donethis, or I shouldn’t have done that. But we’re not omniscient. We can’t know everything, as much as we’d like to.”
I know he’s right. But when I let myself think back to that time and all the red flags I ignored… Shit. It’s awfully hard not to blame myself for not stopping things sooner. And it’s really fucking hard not to be bitter about it.