Page 56 of Keeping It Professional

CHAPTER 20

SOPHIE

Isat sipping coffee, staring out at the road, playing a car game to stay awake. Every time a car went by that wasn’t white, black, or gray, I’d take a sip. That was the game.

We were two hours into a twelve-hour shift, and nothing was happening. I was crawling out of my skin. The longer we sat, the more jumpy I got. When that radio blipped, would it be for a slip-and-fall? A kitchen mishap? Or would we roll up on a scene straight from hell, screams, burning bodies, buildings on fire? Patients we couldn’t save, couldn’t comfort even?

I glanced over at Miles. He avoided my eye.

“Hey, Miles?”

He just grunted. I shifted to face him.

“Have you been sleeping? Because I can’t sleep. Whenever I close my eyes, all I see?—”

“Did you fill out your damaged equipment form?”

I blinked. My eyes hurt, all dry and gritty. “Form? What form?”

“The ding on your tablet from the other day. Clive said he was missing your damage form.”

I tried to think what ding he meant. Did he mean from weeks ago, our accident? When my tablet went flying and tore through my sleeve? I couldn’t remember if I’d filed a form or not. I didn’t care. People haddied.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “But how are you?—”

“Do it now, while it’s fresh in your mind.” He pulled out a form and passed it across. He still hadn’t looked at me, not once all day. Not yesterday, either, that I could recall.

“Miles—”

“Try to focus. We need to focus.”

I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant bythat, but our radio blipped. Wonderful timing. We ran calls through our lunch break and all afternoon, and back at the station, Miles was distant, shut down. I tried again, anyway, to ask him to dinner, but he didn’t look up from his shift report.

“Clive wants to talk to me. I need to stay late.”

“Clive? Did he say?—”

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry.”

“I could wait if you want.” I tried to catch his eye. “Hey, Miles? I could wait, and we could get something after.”

He looked up for the first time, but not at my face. Miles frowned straight past me, at the clock on the wall. “I don’t think so,” he said. “See you, uh, Monday.”

I stood scowling down at him, angry, ashamed. Fine, so I’d screwed up. I’d lost his trust. But how could I fix it if he wouldn’t say how? I’d been over and over both our reports, and I couldn’t see what I’d done wrong. Every step we were meant to take?—

“Do you mind?”

“What?”

Miles waved me off. “You’re in my light.”

The air all went out of me like he’d thrown a punch. I wanted to scream at him, but the station was busy, bustling with shift change. If I went off on Miles, I’d be the jerk.

“All right,” I said. “Have a good night.”

Later, at home, I dumped it all out on Mom, sprawled on my couch with the TV on mute. “It’s just, he’s the only one who’d get how this feels. He was there with me through it. He saw what I saw. But he’s pulling away from me. He won’t even talk. Not even about stupid things, like how was his night? It’s like he can’t stand the sight of me, and I can’t… Ugh!”

“You could tell me,” said Mom. “You can always talk to me.”

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