Page 66 of Keeping It Professional

“I guess maybe I don’t,” I said.

“Bullshit, you don’t.”

I gripped the counter. “I’m selfish.”

“You’re a good listener.”

“I stood you up for our bowling date.”

“You got me through my divorce.” Brian came up beside me so his elbow jogged mine. “You deserve to be happy.”

Something welled up in me at his gentle tone, heat in my face and behind my eyes. I felt like I was choking. Drowning, maybe.

“Don’t you think you deserve a good life?”

My chest had gone tight, my throat all closed up. I tried to swallow and half-gagged instead. Deserve a good life? A happy life? Me?

“It wouldn’t be right,” I said, when I felt I could speak.

Brian shifted to look at me. “You being happy?”

“It wouldn’t be fair, with what happened to Nick.”

“Your brother, Nick? What were you, twelve?”

I coughed. “I was ten. And it was my fault.”

“How was it your fault? Didn’t he choke to death?”

I pushed away from the counter and turned my back, not wanting to watch Brian’s face when he heard the truth. “On a pizza crust,” I said. “We were up in our room. We weren’t allowed to eat up there because of the mess, but I’d steal us stuff sometimes out of the fridge.”

“And you blame yourself because you stole some snacks?”

“No, because… Shit.” I rubbed my dry eyes. “I screwed it all up, right from the start. I thought he was kidding, then I tried to help. I wasted, I don’t know, three or four minutes. Three or four minutes before I called Mom. Then it took her a minute to get upstairs, then she had to run back again and call 911. And I don’t know — did I wait because I thought I could help? Or because I thought if I yelled, we’d get in trouble?”

Brian took my elbow. “Come on. Sit down.”

I shook him off. “I was there in the hall when they took him away. One of the medics said to the other, shame we couldn’t have got to him quicker. If I’d yelled right away…”

“How long did it take for them to arrive?”

“Who, the paramedics? Five minutes, maybe.”

Brian moved closer. “So, they were five minutes out. You’re a medic yourself. You know what that means.”

I made a hoarse sound. My throat had gone dry. Brian kept talking, his voice low and calm.

“Three minutes without oxygen, you’re looking at brain damage. Five minutes down, you’re on the threshold of death. Let’s say you’d shouted the second he choked, that’s still a minute for your mom to come running. A couple of minutes to call 911. You’re three minutes in, add five for the medics, and they’re still rolling up on the edge of too late. Eight minutes down. You know what that means. If, by some miracle, he’d woken up, there’s almost no chance he’d have been the Nick you knew.”

I knew it was true, at least in my head. I’d known for years, but I didn’t believe it. In my heart, I believed I’d let Nick die.

“It wasn’t in your control.”

“What if it was?”

“That’s the thing with the past: there is no ‘what if.’ There’s only what happened, and that can’t be changed. It wasn’t your fault, no ‘what ifs’ about it. It was a horrible accident, and now it’s done. And you have a choice to make: are you going to accept that? Or are you going to punish yourself for the rest of your life?”

Was that what I’d been doing, punishing myself? For Nick, for my parents, for every patient I’d lost? I’d been over our hell day a million times, me and Sophie, the fire. The victims who’d trusted us and died all the same. I’d been over all of it, trying to find our mistakes, but we’d done what we should’ve done. The best we could.

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