“Maybe it says that you were enjoying yourself, that you were getting something out of spending time with them that you didn’t expect.”
He remembered how it had felt to hold Daisy, to sit on the floor playing dump truck with Daniel, to see Ellie’s face when she inhaled the scent of his meat sauce.
“Have the two of you been intimate?” At the expression on his face, Esri held up a hand. “I’m asking for professional reasons, not to gossip about it. Nothing you say to me goes outside this room.”
“Not yet, but we did kiss and stuff.” He would leave it to her to decide what “stuff” meant. “I care about her. I care about the three of them.”
The moment he said it, he realized it was true.
Esri seemed to consider this. “Sometimes when we’ve shut off our emotions to try to stop feeling bad things, we stop feeling altogether. Then, when we let ourselves have good emotions again, we turn on the spigot and the dark stuff comes up, too.”
Wasn’t that just fucking convenient?
“So that’s it then?”
“It’s possible. You’re looking for a one-on-one correlation for the nightmare, a single cause. You don’t want to have that dream again. No one would. But I’m working on a puzzle, trying to help you put the pieces together, and there are a lot of puzzle pieces you haven’t shown me.”
Shit.
Chapter 10
The bus crash had shaken Scarlet Springs to the core, and people were doing what they always did—coming together.
As Ellie drove to work Friday morning, she passed homemade signs of wood and cardboard that had been spray painted with the words, “Protect our kids from drunk drivers!” and, “Thank you, first responders!” Flowers were piled at the base of the flagpole outside Peaks Elementary School. Posters were tacked to utility poles announcing a benefit at Knockers tonight to help the Kirby family cover funeral costs. She would have to bundle up the kids and take them there for supper this evening.
Thinking of Carrie and Jim and little Tyler put a lump in Ellie’s throat. But the outpouring of love reminded her why she’d moved back here after Dan’s death. No, Scarlet wasn’t a big town. It didn’t have a shopping mall or a Starbucks or even a McDonald’s. But it had a big heart.
She parked, walked in through the hospital’s employee entrance, and clocked in. She’d gotten a text from Pauline this morning so she knew she’d be working in the pediatric unit, where every bed was full with children injured in the crash. She’d worn her special bunny scrubs and had brought a set of bunny ears to wear—anything to make the kids’ stay in the hospital less scary and more fun.
She was one of two RNs on duty—the others were LPNs—which meant she was responsible for ten patients. Sebastian, 5, Room 201, had a broken arm that needed surgery. Ryder, 7, also in Room 201, was stable after surgery for a ruptured spleen. Ava, 9, in Room 202 had been kept overnight for observation for a concussion and would be discharged soon. Ava’s little sister Emma, 7, had a broken femur and needed surgery, too, so she would be staying.
Ellie took as much time as she could with each little patient, making sure their pain was under control, letting them talk about what had happened, assuring them and their parents that they were getting good care and would be going home soon. She gave lots of hugs and held a lot of hands. Nursing wasn’t just about giving meds, checking vitals, and treating the body. It was about healing the heart and mind, too.
She worked through her scheduled lunch break, finally getting a bathroom break and a few bites of her sandwich while charting at about one. Then her mother texted to tell her that Claire was out of surgery.
That was a relief.
By the middle of the afternoon, Ava had been discharged, Emma was out of surgery and in recovery, and little Sebastian was on his way to the OR.
Ellie was hanging a second bag of antibiotics for Ryder, who was sleeping, when her father walked into the room. “Hey.”
She’d been expecting to see him. Most of the kids here were his patients, children he’d known since the day they were born. Though the children were in the care of hospitalists for the moment, he wanted to see them and keep up on what was happening with their treatment. He was just that kind of doctor.
He gave Ellie a side hug and walked over to Ryder’s mother. “It looks like Ryder’s in good hands. How are you holding up, Marie?”
Marie stood and accepted a hug, her voice quavering. “How could something like this happen? I feel terrible for the Kirbys.”
“Sometimes there’s no ‘how’ or ‘why’ in life. Bad things just happen.”
Ellie got the antibiotics flowing into Ryder’s IV, then went to check on Emma, who had just been wheeled back into her room. She and her father went room to room separately, each doing their job. They’d run into each other at the hospital many times before, but never under such awful circumstances.
Ellie was finishing the uneaten half of her sandwich when her father came up behind her, bent down, and kissed her cheek.
“I’m heading into my office. Keep me posted, okay?”