Page 40 of The Exception

“He could still make it,” Trav offered, but she shook her head.

“No, he can’t. He’s a danger to himself and he’s going to be here for a while.”

Trav nodded. “It’s what he needs right now.”

“Yeah, but he’s still missing a big day in his daughter’s life.”

“He is,” Trav agreed. “But maybe missing this day will help him not miss any more.”

He gave her a soft smile, and she sighed, finding comfort in the fact that Trav agreed with her. If he saw it the same way, then maybe she hadn’t been projecting her own shit with her dad onto this case. All she wanted was for Frank’s family to be spared the same fate, but she needed to keep her head on straight, not let her emotions affect her clinical decisions.

“You’re right,” she said. “This job… I love it but it’s so hard sometimes. I thought… he was getting better, you know? But he does this and I can’t help but wonder what more I could’ve done.”

She absolutely hated the way her voice cracked as she spoke. It felt like she was cracking apart and all of the emotions she’d kept bottled up for so long just seeped out for everyone to see.

Trav stepped closer, ducking his head to look her in the eye. “Sonya, you care about your patients. I’ve only been working with you a short time and even I can see that it’s because you have the biggest heart. But you can’t blame yourself when things go wrong. It’ll eat you alive.”

“You don’t understand,” she interrupted. He didn’t understand how hard it was for her, especially with patients like Frank, and she couldn’t explain it to him without completely breaking down.

Her eyes stung with tears and she tried to step around him, needing to get out of there before the grip she had on her control loosened completely. But Trav’s hand gently wrapped around her fingers and stopped her progress. She glanced down at where their bodies were linked and her instincts screamed at her to pull away. This was beyond unprofessional and anyone could walk by and jump to the wrong conclusion.

But when her eyes traveled from their hands, up his arm, to his face, any thoughts she had about pulling away vanished. His eyes were full of compassion but they also burned right through her and rooted her to the spot.

His voice was low when he finally spoke. “I understand what it’s like to think you’re helping someone, how you can think you’re doing everything right for them. I understand how everything can be going as expected one minute and the next… you’re watching your friend bleed out and there’s nothing else you can do.”

The anguish on his face sucked the air out of the stairwell. She recognized that specific kind of pain like it was a member of her family. Because it was.

“What happened?” she whispered.

He ran his free hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “We were out on patrol and got ambushed. My buddy Nate was hit in the leg, and upon assessment, it looked like the bullet passed through. I gave him shit about being such a baby about a scratch and started cleaning off the blood to wrap him up…” he paused and blew out a whoosh of air. “That’s when I saw it was way too much blood. The bullet nicked his femoral artery. I did everything I could—compression, a makeshift tourniquet, everything. But I was only able to get him seventeen minutes before he bled out.”

A few of the tears she’d been trying so hard to hide slipped down her cheeks. For once, she didn’t care about professionalism or about showing weakness. Trav’s pain radiated off of him and all she wanted to do was soothe it somehow. Her fingers wove through his, and she held on to his hand, her thumb rubbing tiny circles at the base of his.

“Oh God, Trav… I’m sorry.”

He was squeezing her hand so tightly that she vaguely worried about her circulation, but in that moment, she wouldn’t have let him go for anything.

“He was a good man who didn’t deserve to die like that and I blamed myself for not realizing he was hemorrhaging sooner, for teasing him. But the thing was, we were pinned down miles from the field hospital and there was nothing more I could’ve done for him even if I had realized it.”

His eyes found hers again and her heart skipped a few beats. “So I get it,” he continued. “I know what it’s like to beat yourself up for something you had no control over. It breaks you, and every time a few of those pieces of yourself get lost, making it damn hard to keep putting yourself back together.”

Sonya’s breath caught in her throat because hedidget it. There was something different about talking to someone who’d experienced the same things, wrestled with the same feelings of responsibility and helplessness, professional detachment and crippling loss. She walked a tightrope everyday between caring for her patients and caring too much about them; between being satisfied that she was able to help them and devastated when she couldn’t. And now she was staring into the face of a man who understood her completely.

For the first time since their accidental bed-shopping, she allowed her gaze to linger on his face; from his slate blue eyes, to the smattering of freckles across his nose and cheeks, down to his lips that were more full than they had any right to be.

When those lips quirked up in a half smile, she knew she’d been caught staring and she lifted her eyes to meet his.

The way he was looking at her stole her breath. What would it be like to have those lips pressed against hers? To let him hold her with those arms that had so capably taken care of the situation with Frank? At that moment, she thought she must truly be falling apart, because all she wanted to do was find out.

The sound of voices filtered down from the landing above them and Trav cleared his throat, taking a deliberate step back. His cheeks had turned a bright pink and she felt the blood rushing her face too.

Two nurses who Sonya recognized from the ED trotted down the stairs, falling into single file so they could pass between her and Trav. Sonya smiled politely, willing them to move faster and to not take notice of the way she and her intern had been staring at each other.

Her heart was still in her throat even as the moment passed. The moment she’d felt all the way to her toes.

“Um…” Trav shifted his bag higher up on his shoulder once the nurses passed. “Anyway, I just thought you should know that I’m here, if you ever want to talk.”

“Right. Yes, same here.” She pressed a hand to the side of her neck. Still on fire. “I should go.”

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