Page 17 of Near Miss

“Are you always this philosophical?” I tip my head.

The elevator dings, but it’s practically impossible to hear against the incessant buzzing and chatter of the lobby. This is one of my least favourite areas of the hospital—it’s the loudest, and to me, it’s the most unpredictable.

“No. Beckett Davis is not philosophical.” He cracks another grin, and I can tell this one is real. Lines at the corners of his eyes wrinkle and he gestures for me to go first into the elevator. “Beckett Davis just really, really doesn’t like hospitals.”

I study him when the door slides shut, effectively sealing us in for the next eight floors. The mirrored surfaces of the elevator distort our reflections: Beckett, standing taller than me, but stretched almost impossibly as he angles his head back and stares at the ceiling, breathing in and out carefully.

He rolls his neck and gives me a tight smile. Even though it’s not a physical pain like the one I saw in the lobby, it has me reaching forward and grabbing his wrist again all the same. “Do you really have to do this?”

His eyes cut down to my hand, and I go to take a step back, to let go, when his fingers wrap around my wrist briefly. He givesme another grin that doesn’t meet his eyes. “Yeah, I really, really do.”

“Okay then,” I whisper, offering him a small smile. It’s real, and I mean it, and even though nothing earth-shattering or beautiful and wonderful has happened, I think he could use it. “Then let’s hope I have some football-happy patients for you.”

“Well, that wasn’t a total bust.” Beckett holds his arms out, walking backwards through the lobby doors out onto the sidewalk.

The sun inches lower in the sky behind him, clouds tumbling across the horizon while they turn pink and orange. Dusk settles over everything like a blanket, and the haze of the city seems dull.

But it makes everything look beautiful. It even makes the concrete look pretty.

Beckett looks more alive than he has in hours, like someone plucked whatever weight and baggage he carries around from whatever happened to him and his family in a building not unlike this one from his shoulders and threw it away.

He turned his hat backwards before we came back down and he waited outside the staff locker room for me to grab my bag, and I think that was a good sign.

“No.” I nod in agreement. “Not a total bust. But I think you made more of an impression with the staff than the patients. What did that one guy say?”

“That he’d never heard of me,” Beckett answers, his whole face on display and lit up with a smile. “How fucking freeing was that?”

“I wouldn’t know.” I cross my arms. “But I think, maybe, you’ve chosen the wrong career if you find anonymity freeing. I’ve seen you in, like, four commercials since I met you.”

Beckett flexes his fingers before he finally drops his hands, shoving them into the pockets of his linen shorts. “There you go, calling it a career again. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re starting to—wait. Which commercials? I hope Gatorade. I look great in that one.”

“I really couldn’t say.” I lift one shoulder, pursing my lips. It was the Gatorade commercial. I didn’t watch the whole thing, but Stella sent it to me and told me to fast-forward to the one-minute mark where he pours a bucket over himself shirtless.

His eyes go wide, and he shakes his head before tipping it back for a minute. He’s smiling when he looks back at me, and he looks beautiful under the sky, too. “You’d remember if you saw the Gatorade commercial.”

“I don’t know, I see a lot of commercials,” I lie again. I’m not big on TV, I prefer reading.

Beckett leans forward with an exasperated groan. He gives a jerk of his chin, fishing his phone from his pocket. “You’ll never be the same after you see this.” He pauses, pointing at me. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

It all happens at once, the way that most things do when they go horribly wrong.

A car backfires a few blocks over somewhere to my right. Sirens start somewhere to my left. And Beckett steps into my space, thumb hitting the volume button on his phone.

My blood pressure plummets, and the edges of my vision go fuzzy. I feel my heart pressing through my chest against my rib cage. I think it might break it—that organ that’s supposed to keep me alive is going to find those weak, old striations from those old breaks and that other time my ribs were shattered andit’s going to shatter them again and impale itself and I’m going to die outside this hospital.

I hear a lot of things very distinctly—none of them are real and none of them are here. But they’re impossibly loud.

I blink, and I think I’m underwater.

I take a sharp exhale and plant my palm against my sternum. Maybe I can manually palpate my heart when it bursts through my chest.

“No.” I take a step back and give a tiny jerk of my head. I flex my fingers in and out. “I need to catch my streetcar.”

“What?” Beckett looks up, confused. “I’ll drive you. My truck is—”

“No,” I repeat, shaking my head more fervently now. I can’t breathe.

“Greer, are you okay?” He steps forward, and I think he might look concerned, and I think that might look nice and beautiful. But I need to leave.

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