“Minutes,” I said, taking another sip of the beer. “Minutes, that’s how long you have once the brain is shut off from oxygen. Do you get that? You should. You went through the training; you have a few months' experience working out here. I know this job is the first time you’ve had to face making tough calls and seeing things in action. You’re young, and you’re new to this, I get it, but I’m not.”
“You’ve been here a week,” he protested, but his anger was fading as he stared at me, shoulders taut.
“And you’ve been here a few months; the new guy before I was the new guy,” I said, following his line of thinking. “At this job, dealing with this sort of shit for the first time in your life, right?”
He hesitated again, and I could see the wheels spinning in his head. “I…yeah.”
“I’ve been making decisions like that for years, on my own, with a partner, with a whole group…groups. When it comes to shit like that, I’ve had to balance the scales of life and death more times than I want to think about. I’ve had to make choices that were…far rougher and harder than the one I made tonight. Ones I’ve had to stand by, even when they ate at me…even when I ended up making the worst call of them all.”
He stared at me, his hands flat on the counter as he stood there, shoulders slumping.
“I have had to make choices no one should ever have to make, choices I’m going to live with until I die or…follow in my grandparent’s footsteps and go through the horror ofAlzheimer’s,” I said with a wry, humorless chuckle. “And I not once made those choices easily. I never once made them arrogantly. The weight is too much; those choices were too big to have any room for ego. Maybe it was cold, maybe it was calculations done on human life, but those were the choices I had to make.”
He stared down at the counter with a heavy sigh. “I?—”
“You can hate me, be furious with me,” I told him softly. “But don’t you dare think I don’t understand what it was I did tonight, that I don’t feel the weight or understand the scope of what happened. Or that I won’t understand when, not if, when it happens again. Think what you want of me, but don’t…just don’t?—”
His face was twisting and contorting, and I realized he was trying hard not to let loose his tears. I wanted to reach out and take hold of him, but I stood opposite him instead. He stood there for almost three whole minutes before he sucked in a breath and nodded. “Eat shit.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I know.”
“No, really, fuck you.”
“Yeah, I know that too.”
He snorted, shaking his head, and we both jumped when he heard a bang outside in the hall and a demand to know what was going on. Carter’s head snapped up, and I winced when I saw he had a black eye, which paired beautifully with my split lip and aching jaw. Xander’s voice grew closer, and he probably wasn’t running, but he was sure as hell taking long strides quickly.
Xander would have burst into the room if there was anything but an empty doorway to burst through, his eyes sweeping between the two of us. “What thefuckis going on in here?”
“Well, before you came bursting in here like you were ready to go Rambo on everyone’s ass, we were talking,” I said lightly, and I could feel Carter’s eyes slide to me. Either not willing ornot daring to say whatever was on his mind. “A good, productive one.”
“One that required Cait to screech at me to get my ass here ASAP before someone killed someone?” he growled at me.
“Not sure she appreciates hearing you call it ‘screeching’ but you know, you’re the one who has to live with her after this,” I told him with a snort. “So…are you going to fight someone or scream at us or…stand there?”
He was livid as he glared at me. “You’re going to tell me nothing happened? That you were just…talking?”
“Seems to be what we were doing,” I said, glancing at Carter, who had a blank, almost scared look on his face.
“And your split lip? His black eye that looks like it’s about five minutes old?”
“We had a rough time tonight. I’m sure you know we went out on a call. It wasn’t the easiest thing, weather was shit, we got banged up,” I said, reaching down to pull up my jeans and show my bleeding leg. “I got banged up just walking around out there, is that part of your evidence?”
His jaw was iron-tight, his lips thinning and then reappearing as he glared at me, and then at Carter, who kept his silence. After almost a minute, he gave a low growl of frustration before pointing at Carter. “Get your ass in the shower. And then I want a full write-up, sitting on this counter before you take your ass back to the outer bunks and you stay there until I fucking call you back, you understand?”
“Yes,” Carter said, his shoulders hunching. He didn’t glance at me and left the room, somehow managing not to brush against Xander despite how much space near the door he was taking up.
“You, my office, cabin, whatever,now,” he told me and spun to leave.
“Xander,” Cait began, but Xander cut her off with a wave of his hand as he kept walking.
Well, stomping, but I suppose that detail wasn’t important.
Sighing, I drained the rest of my bottle and set it in the sink, sure I was going to have to come back here later anyway. I’d clean it up then. I walked into the hallway, leaning against the doorway and finding Cait and Jake staring back at me. Jake looked like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to give me a hug or start yelling and carrying on about what had happened with Carter.
“So, my ass,” I began wryly. “Would you say it’s grass or just in hot water?”
“Not quite grass, but that water sure is boiling,” Cait said softly, glancing up at Jake. “And you, you big lug, I wanted your help, not for you to beat ass.”