“But you could’ve been shot, Brown. You could be in there being worked on right now.” He pointed with the pen at the double doors that led to the OR suites, then clenched his jaw and dropped his hand into his lap. “Or—you could be dead.”
“Amelia would be dead if I hadn’t gone in. Listen, I don’t regret it. How about you ask me more about what I saw when I got into the room? Why don’t you ask me about the man on the ground or the blood or the smoke in the air?” All the things she had wanted to avoid talking about moments earlier now seemed twenty times better than why she had broken every single protocol when it came to violent crime and put her job on the line.
“That’s fair, I guess.” Travis paused like he wanted to say something else, but instead he picked up the pen and put it to the paper again. “We’ll get back to Amelia and Steve. Let’s talk about the scene. Start at the beginning.”
Ellie went through the call and the scene and treating Steve as well as she could remember. Then she tried to hold back her tears as she recalled, detail for detail, the door hitting Amelia’s body as she forced her way through and the way the carpet squished under her feet, saturated with blood.
Travis wrote quickly and fluidly, and Ellie distracted herself by watching the words form on the page in black ink. When her narrative slowed and Travis’s pen hovered above the page occasionally, she grew increasingly contemplative. The story almost hurt more being told than it had when it was happening. When they finally reached the part where Amelia went off in the ambulance, Travis put his hand up to make her stop.
“Who do you think did this, Ellie? Who would you look at closer if you were me?”
In all the tears and anger and worry, this was one question she had been struggling to look straight in the eye. Who would want to hurt Steve or Amelia or even steal money from them? There were the day workers, one name in particular. Sam. She’d heard Amelia mention him before. A desperate man who’d lost his cool when he was paid late one too many times, so Steve fired him. It was a silent understanding that he was most likely the one behind the slashed tires. Maybe he acted alone or teamed up with someone else who felt gypped out of a day’s wage. Or . . . or . . . the name that popped into her head over and over again, the one she was trying to push away and keep from thinking, much less saying ever again . . .
Travis’s eyebrows tilted toward each other, and he leaned in like he knew she was on the edge of revealing something important. She hated that he could read her so easily. Was it as a result of years of investigative instinct or something more? Could he really see through her “tough girl” fa?ade and into her true self with so little effort?
“You know you can trust me, right, Brown?” He was leaning toward her now; with both of their heads dipped, their foreheads weren’t far from touching. At that moment she knew that if she could tell anyone her suspicions, it would be Travis. He brought her help when she was helpless and stranded inside the house; he’d let her go to the hospital instead of answering his questions; he was concerned but understanding about her rule violation—he was trustworthy.
She rubbed her lips together, noticing how dry they were. She bit her lower lip, wanting to hold back but also wanting to say the name out loud. She opened her mouth, her heart pounding like it had when she walked into a dark house with no more protection than the paramedic bags on her shoulders. But, just as she was about to tell the truth, her deepest, most conflicted thoughts, the door to the waiting room finally opened and a doctor walked out, tall with a shaved head and glasses.
He glanced at the chart in his hands and then quickly rested his gaze on Ellie and Travis, the only occupants of the waiting room. Ellie didn’t like the way the middle-aged doctor reset his shoulders under his starched white lab coat. He walked over to her slowly, jaw clenched, eyes flicking down to glance at the chart in his hand like he was afraid to forget the name of the loved one Ellie was waiting to hear about.
This was one of those life moments. The ones that you knew just before they happened would change everything. Like when Amelia called and said that her father had collapsed on the job. It was the two-second pause just before she said the words, “It was a stroke,” that let her know something was about to change forever. The thickness of the envelope from U of I that held her acceptance letter. The tiny smirk on Collin’s face just before he went down on one knee. Life forever changed.
She sat up straight; there was no use in hiding from it. No matter what the news, there was no altering it now. She might as well hear it and face it boldly, like a firefighter facing a burning building or a paramedic working on a seemingly lifeless victim. She’d face the news like her family faced everything—like a Brown.
“Are you”—he looked at the chart, wavering on trusting his memory—“Amelia Saxton’s family?” He didn’t make eye contact with Travis, just Ellie. His bloodshot eyes weren’t exactly a confidence booster, but Ellie held his gaze and kept her chin up, realizing that she probably looked like someone pulled out of the psych ward on the fourth floor.
“Yes. I’m her sister.”
He nodded slowly.
“I’m Dr. Floyd.” He put out his hand, and she shook it briefly before returning her own hand to the armrest. His hands were softer than she’d expected, like he’d just put on lotion. “So, are you alone right now?” he asked, a touch of concern in his voice.
Ellie glanced at Travis, wondering if he was invisible or maybe just a figment of her imagination. She guessed that his uniform was a type of camouflage that made him seem like neither family nor friend.
“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, my fiancé is here in the hospital, but I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
The doctor frowned. Just as she started to worry that he wasn’t going to tell her about Amelia’s status until Collin returned, she felt a warm, callused hand wrap around her own limp one. Travis’s dark skin contrasted nicely against Ellie’s ghost-white complexion, and though his touch was unexpected, it also felt soothing. She turned her hand up until their palms were pressed together, so natural it was like they’d been holding each other’s hands for their whole lives. When his fingers wrapped around the back of her hand, he gave it a soft squeeze; she looked back at the doctor, this time with confidence.
“You can tell me now. I’m ready.”
Dr. Floyd held the file in front of him, holding on to both sides like it could blow away in some unseen wind.