But although her days were busy, she couldn’t stop worrying about Jesse. He seemed to be okay. He wasn’t drinking as far as she could tell—and she had a pretty good nose for that sort of thing. He came over almost every evening, sometimes early enough to play with the kids before bedtime. One night, he’d brought his lasagna, which had been every bit as delicious as he’d said it would be.
Their sex life had gotten even better—if such a thing were possible. He knew how to make her scream, how to make her come fast and hard, or how to draw it out until she thought the pleasure would kill her. But he never slept with her. When it was over, he would hold her for a while, then kiss her goodbye, and leave her to sleep alone. There was a barrier between them now, and Ellie couldn’t seem to breach it.
I don’t think we should make this relationship out to be more than it is.
He’d said it that terrible night when he’d had the flashback. For whatever reason, he still seemed to believe that keeping his distance was better for her. She hadn’t brought it up—not yet. She wanted to give him time, give him a chance to sort through all of this himself. He was seeing Esri, which was good.
Still, she couldn’t let this go on forever. She loved him. Somehow, she’d fallen in love with Jesse Moretti, and there was nothing he could do about that.
*
The Friday morning of SnowFest, Ellie got up at five just like she would on any regular work day. She showered and dressed in layers—polypro long underwear and turtleneck under her blue scrub pants and snowflake scrub shirt. Then she bundled the kids up and dropped them off at her parents’ house and drove the short distance to the SnowFest grounds.
The sun hadn’t yet risen, but Ellie could see that Scarlet Springs had been transformed. First and Second streets were lined with booths and stalls. Merchants, artists, and restaurateurs from Scarlet Springs, Boulder, and the surrounding mountain towns bustled about, getting ready to sell their wares to the thousands of people who flocked to Scarlet for the festival. Stalls and tents adorned with white fairy lights stretched all the way to the reservoir, electric lanterns that looked like old-fashioned miners’ lights hanging above the walkways. Crews had plowed the snow away and laid wooden walkways to keep people dry and minimize the mud. Trucks stood on the periphery of the event like circled wagons, people pushing dollies up and down their ramps, working in the darkness and frigid cold to be ready for the public by eight.
Ellie parked and walked through the cold in search of the first-aid tent. Thank goodness she’d dressed warmly because it was freaking cold. She found the tent standing close to the reservoir where the polar bear plunge would take place. That made sense, given that some of her first patients would inevitably come from that event. The fire department had already cut a hole in the ice, marking it with tape and orange cones so that no one would fall in.
Larger than the other tents, the first-aid tent was made of heavy, insulated green fabric, a white cross on both sides, a banner running across the top that said “FIRST AID” in big white letters. Ellie opened the flap to find the tent cold and dark. A row of light bulbs hung from the ceiling. She reached up and tugged on a pull chain, and light filled the space. She might not have heat yet, but at least she could see.
There were two rooms—the larger front room and a smaller back room that would serve as the warm-up room. The supplies that Megs and the other Team members had helped her inventory sat on their pallets still wrapped in plastic. The oxygen equipment, blankets, and AEDs were there, too, along with cots, two folding tables, and an aluminum shelving unit.
She was supposed to have all of this set up in an hour and a half.
The only way to get it done was to start, so Ellie got busy and was soon joined by Lolly, who had brought her a latte. “Oh, God, you are an angel.”
Lolly fluttered her lashes. “I know.”
Gus, one of the hospital’s pharmacists, showed up ten minutes later. “Sorry. I slept through my alarm.”
They worked together in the cold to set up tables and the shelving unit, where most of the supplies would go. Then they set up two cots, covering the canvas with cotton sheets and placing folded blankets at the bottom. The back room—the warm-up room—was smaller. They managed to fit the oxygen equipment, IV poles and two cots back there, too, as well as the blanket warmer. They were unpacking supplies when a woman walked in wearing a hard hat, a tool belt around her waist.
“I’m with the Town of Scarlet. I’m here to make sure all your equipment is hooked up to electricity and running.”
Ellie, Lolly, and Gus waited outside while the woman went to work, taping electrical cords out of the way and running them beneath the wood floor out the back. In ten minutes everything was operational, from the infrared space heaters that sat in the corners to the blanket warmer in the back.
Ellie bent over one of the space heaters to warm her hands. “Ahhh.”
Now it was just a matter of getting all the supplies on the pallets opened and set out in a functional way. They were almost done when they got their first patient.
“You got a minute?” A man in a hardhat stood near the entrance holding his hand in a blood-soaked handkerchief. “I ran a drill bit through my own damned hand.”