Page 1 of Holiday Love
Chapter one
OCTOBER
Teddy
“My sister is going to kill me.” That’s my last thought before I die.
Chapter two
Helen
“Dr. Chu. Dr. Chu. EMS is calling.” Lindsey’s voice is tight, a high tone of excitement mixed with anxiety. She’s new to the Emergency Room, fresh out of nursing school. She still gets keyed up when the more acute traumas like this one come in.
I drag my attention from the lab results I was just reviewing. Except they aren’t a patient’s; they’re my mom’s. “What is it?”
“The ambulance is bringing one in. A drowning.”
A drowning.
Those words used to send a spike of adrenaline through me. Back when the flashing lights of an incoming ambulance had sparked my heart to beat faster, my palms to sweat. I used to love the challenge of it, knowing I was about to fight death on his own turf and maybe win.
Those days are long gone.
After seven years of working in the ER, first as a resident and now as an attending physician, what once was electrifying has now become routine.
“Helen,” Dr. Giardini calls from across the nurses’ station. His oversized glasses give him an owlish appearance, his brown eyes magnified behind thick lenses. “Can you take that one? I’m not great with drownings.”
Of course he’d ask. He has a way of being mysteriously “busy” whenever the more-complicated cases come in. It shouldn’t bother me. I actually prefer these challenging patients, but when the staff lovingly call him “Dr. G” and laugh at all his awful dad jokes while giving me stiff hellos and wide berths in the hallways, it gets hard not to feel just alittlebitter.
That’s fine. I tell myself I don’t care. Most days, I believe it.
“No problem.” I blow strands of straight black hair off my forehead and shove my stethoscope into the bulging pocket of my white lab coat. My sneakers squeak against the polished floor as I head toward the doors, where they’re already unloading the patient.
The stretcher rolls in, its wheels caked with wet sand, leaving a damp trail across the floor. I stand aside and watch as they wheel the patient into Trauma Bay Two.
Larry, the EMT, gives me a half-wave, averting his gaze as he moves past.
Great.
He asked me out a month ago. I said no, and it’s been awkward ever since. I let out a quiet, resigned sigh and trail after him and his partner as they lock the stretcher’s wheels into place.
That done, Larry turns to me with his hands full of paperwork. “Dr. Chu,” he says stiffly, his tone too formal for someone I’ve worked with for the past three years.
“What’s the story with this one?”
“Drowning.” Larry barely looks at me.
I move closer but can’t make the patient out from where I stand by his feet. Just a wisp of light brown hair and too pale skin peeks out from the thin sheet covering him. Even from here I can see that he isn’t shivering, which worries me because usually in the ER,
Shivering = good.
Not shivering = bad.
It means his energy stores are depleted.
“Who goes surfing in the middle of the night?” Larry snorts with disgust and lightly kicks the metal frame of the stretcher. “Another idiot thinking he’s invincible.”
My spine stiffens. This, right here, is why I said no when Larry asked me out. “He almost died.”
