Page 3 of Fighting His Fate
She pulled out of the driveway with an angry huff. Brett Champion didn’t matter in her world. He was a gnat, a nuisance, a foul scent on the breeze that only served to ruin everyone’s enjoyment whenever he was around.
Johnwasa good man. Better than she deserved. So what if he didn’t have a bodybuilder’s abs or eyes that could devastate her self-confidence with a single glance in her direction? She didn’t want that anyway. Who in their right mind would want that?
She wanted John, and if she was right, he was about to pop the question. He’d invited her to dinner at Rosario’s tomorrow night for what he said would be a very special evening, and the church picnic was the day after tomorrow. What better time to announce to the congregation that he’d be taking a wife?
Her stomach lurched at the thought, and she told herself it was a good thing, a dream come true to marry a man like him. Nothing would make her happier. And if she wasn’t exactly a natural preacher’s wife, then she would learn to watch her language and be more gracious and put on the perfect face for his congregation.
Her fingers gripped the wheel tightly, and she deliberately loosened her hold. Champion had gotten to her, the obnoxious son of a bitch. She took a deep breath.
Maybe John would agree to a short engagement. Yes. They could be married by fall, get a little house close to the church, and move out of this duplex, leaving her useless waste of a neighbor in her dust.
Nausea rolled in her stomach as she pictured herself hosting the church picnic with John, year after year. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead and palms. “You’ll get used to the idea,” she said to herself. “You’ll fit in just fine.” She was just worried about being the perfect wife, filling that role as well as it should be filled. Yes, surely that was it. “They’re going to love you.”
The words sounded hollow in the tiny car, and her mouth settled into a determined line. Being John’s bride was all she’d ever wanted, and she was about to get it—Brett Champion be damned.
3
Grace pulledinto the staff parking lot at the hospital and jogged through the downpour. She stepped into the ER, an air of urgency and chaos instantly apparent, and she could see why she’d been called in on her day off.
She flagged down a passing doctor. “Where do you need me?”
The chief resident looked harried, sweat on her brow and her blonde hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. “Trauma one, hit-and-run, pedestrians versus van. Young couple, two babies. Husband died at the scene, wife’s hanging on.”
Memories surfaced from Grace’s mind like tentacles darting through inky black water. Her throat constricted, and she forced her words past the sudden knot. “Are the kids okay?”
“Miraculously. J’von’s got them in the lounge. ” The doctor walked away, calling over her shoulder, “The parents were carrying them in their car seats. Protected them from the impact.”
Adrenaline controlled Grace’s limbs as she pushed into the trauma area, falling into step with the rest of the team as she’d done countless times before, but this time was different, the image of two little babies held firmly in her mind. Babies who might lose their parents in a car accident, just as she had lost her own. Babies whose lives would be forever changed, just as hers had been.
There was a frantic quality to her movements, an urgency beyond critical care. Flashes, images from childhood pierced her awareness as she worked. A birth certificate tucked neatly in a drawer, a folder filled with photographs of strangers. She knew firsthand what it meant to be orphaned at a young age, alone in a world meant to be navigated with a parent, and she desperately wanted this woman to live.
Her stare homed in on the monitor, the erratic electrical activity of the woman’s heart on full display. Those children needed their mother, but she was fading quickly, the life-sustaining efforts of the team failing to win the tug-of-war that pulled her closer to death. And there wasn’t a damn thing Grace could do about it.
She followed orders without thinking, drawing another dose of epinephrine and injecting it into the line. “You have to make it,” she urged the woman on the table. “Your babies need you.”
“Clear!” yelled the doctor, placing the defibrillator paddles on the woman’s chest and shocking her heart. But with each failed attempt at life, it became stunningly, painfully clear this woman’s children would soon be alone. A tear slid down Grace’s cheek and she let it fall.
The doctor cursed, trying the paddles several more times in earnest, but the woman’s heart refused to beat on its own. With a heavy sigh, he dropped the paddles onto the crash cart and declared, “I’m calling it. Time of death, one thirteen a.m.”
Grace’s arms fell to her sides. She’d seen people die. Many people. In her line of work, it was common to see men and women make the difficult transition from life to death. She imagined it helped her deal with her past, put her own parents’ deaths in some kind of perspective, but today she was gutted just thinking about those children.
The trauma room was quiet. Machines flicked off. Tubing disconnected as members of the team walked away. Grace stood alone until she was the last person in the room. Aware of the blood on her hands, on her shirt. The tears running down her face.
Tragedies occur every day.
She moved to the locker room and showered, hands shaking, barely aware of the world around her. She needed to see the babies herself, put her hands on them. She needed to be clean for the children, to wash their mother’s blood off her body before standing in front of them.
There’s no reason for you to find them.
You should leave them alone.
But she needed them like she couldn’t explain, needed to hold them. Oh, she knew it was a bad idea. Her mind had sewn together this accident and her parents’ deaths with a tight, sure stitch. Nothing good could come from seeing the babies.
Perhaps if she took a long enough shower, social services would arrive first and take them away. That would be better, no matter how much she wanted to touch them, connect with them at this divisive moment she’d lived through herself.
She showered until she was dizzy from the heat. She dressed in clean scrubs and went in search of them. The ER had calmed down like the ocean after a storm, staff taking the time to regroup, restock, prepare for the next disaster. But Grace needed something else entirely.
“Grace.”
