Page 7 of Doctor Hot Mess

I glance at the clock on the wall. The whole ordeal has taken hours. Harper’s voice echoes faintly in my mind from earlier, steady even in the chaos. I didn’t even know she was back until she called me into that madness.

I finish the final stitch and step back, stripping off my gloves with practiced ease. Patel nods at me, confirming Joey is stable for now. “We’ll keep him under observation.”

“Good,” I reply, giving everyone a smile. “You guys did great.”

The door swings open just as I’m heading out, and two uniformed officers step into my path. Great. Exactly what I don’t need right now.

“Dr. Bellinger?” the taller one asks, his hand resting on his belt. “We need a word.”

I pause, exhaling slowly. My mind is still half in the OR, running through the list of post-op protocols for Joey. The last thing I want to do is be interrogated. “What can I do for you, Officer?”

“We need to know what happened tonight,” he says, his tone firm but professional. “The injured kid on that table—when did his partner-in-crime leave, and did he say anything before he took off?”

I think back to the chaos of the ER. The gunman’s voice echoes faintly in my memory—desperate, raw, his words sharp like broken glass. Fix him. He’s all I’ve got left. “He didn’t say much. Just kept insisting we save his brother. Once we started moving him to the OR, I never saw him again. I'm not sure at what point he ghosted.”

The taller officer exchanges a glance with his partner. “So, he walked out during the transfer?”

I nod. “Looks that way. But I was more concerned about the kid bleeding out on the gurney than keeping track of him.”

The shorter officer jots something down, then looks up again. “Did he leave anything behind? A bag? A weapon?”

I glance back toward the OR, where Joey lies in recovery. “Not that I saw. But you’re welcome to search the area. He was in triage room four. I'm not sure if they've used the room since, but besides this, it has been fairly quiet, so chances are it is still preserved.”

The taller cop gives a sharp nod. “We’ll need to follow up with a formal statement.”

“Of course,” I reply, keeping my tone polite but firm. “But as I said, I’m a surgeon, not an investigator. My job was getting him into surgery. I'm not sure I have anything else helpful.”

The shorter officer scribbles one more note before snapping his notebook shut. “Thanks, Doc. We’ll be in touch.”

I nod once and watch them leave. As the doors swing shut behind them, I take a deep breath and head toward the scrub room. The blood might be off my hands, but the knot in my chest says this isn’t over.

9:57PM

The adrenalinefrom the OR is still buzzing faintly in my veins, but the tension in my shoulders feels heavier now, knotted by the questions I couldn’t answer and the ones I didn’t ask.

I pull my phone from the pocket of my scrub top, hesitating for half a second before tapping out a message.

Hey, stranger renegade nurse extraordinaire. Long time no see!

Where are you? Can you take a break?

Coffee’s on me.

I stare at my texts. It seems a little manic, but what just went down for our reunion deserves a little mania. And, plus, I want to catch up.

I didn’t even know she was back at UAB. The last time I saw her was two years ago, before she left for a travel nursing gig, and she hasn't been back since.

There was that one night a few months before she left. The one we never talked about. The one that was just... what it was. Friends crossing a line for one night and going back to normal the next day. It happens all the time, but not usually with such a cool chick.

I do often wonder how fun it would be if she still worked here full-time. I'm not a one-girl kind of guy, but I could certainly get excited about a friend with return benefits.

She threw herself into the traveling nurse life, and it was a good six months before any of us heard from her after she left. It felt like a clean break. There was no awkwardness, no fallout. But I miss her sarcasm and fun personality around.

We’ve kept in touch, though—not often, but enough. A random text here, a check-in call there. And now, after all this time, she’s standing in my ER like she never left. Confident. Steady. Completely in control.

It threw me tonight, seeing her like that. But if she’s back, even temporarily, I need to catch up. Weird that she didn't give me a heads up that she was coming to Birmingham before beckoning me to the gun-to-the-head operation.

I shove the phone back into my pocket. She's usually on the triage floor, so I'll stop by there once I chart my surgery.

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