Page 121 of Last Chance Love

Opening the door, I motioned for Leon to step in, carefully closing it behind us and leaving the brick untouched as I followed him. The break room was quiet and hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been in there. I would bet my leftovers from lunch were still sitting in the fridge.

“C’mon,” I said in a low whisper that felt like the loudest sound I’d ever heard in the clinic. Then again, I had never been in the clinic when I wasn’t supposed to be. “God, this is weird.”

“What?” he asked, and somehow, his whisper didn’t seem as bad as mine.

“Just, c’mon,” I said, peering into the hallway to ensure no one else lurked around that Leon might not have seen earlier. I wasn’t surprised to find it empty or the office doors closed, which they shouldn’t have been. I was never more thankful that Dr. Gideon was a work-avoiding napper than I was right now.

“Kind of a shame we can’t get in the office,” Leon said in a low voice. “To have better access.”

“Doesn’t matter which computer,” I said with a shrug. “I set it up a while ago, so everything was on secured, shared drives. You only need the login to access anything from approved devices.”

“God, no wonder Mona loved having you in the clinic. From what I heard, the clinic used to be disorganized, which drove her crazy.”

“Helps when I didn’t bother checking if he was alright with it. I just did it with Mona’s permission, and he had to deal with it,” I said as we reached the front desk. Without hesitation, I moved to close the blinds completely, which might look weird, but I hoped this would prove to be one of those quiet nights where no one showed up, at least for another hour or so. “Also helps when I set everything up so it just…did things automatically. He didn’t notice half the shit I did.”

“Probably for the best, considering how that guy can be,” he muttered as I sat behind the desk.

“Right,” I agreed as I booted up the computer, rolling my eyes that it wasn’t even logged into our basic software. “God, did he doanythingtoday?”

“Can’t say if he did or not. I wasn’t exactly watching the place like a hawk. I just came in earlier for something for my ‘aching back’ and overheard that he was the night shift doc.”

“God, this is going to take a minute,” I said, booting the software up. “I’m not a programmer, and this takes forever to boot up. It takes in all the indexes and checks all the files. Even if it doesn’t give immediate access to the locked files, it still needs to check to ensure they’re…why are you looking at me like that?”

“Because you’re sitting there, nerding out like we’re just casually doing things we’re not supposed to be doing,” he said with a snort. “If you weren’t so calm, I’d say you were feeling a little cavalier yourself.”

“Not even remotely close,” I muttered as the program’s loading bar shifted along the screen at a glacial pace. “Talking about something inconsequential and normal makes me feel better. Makes me feel…I don’t know. Ever since we got here, I’ve felt like a stranger in the clinic. I’veneverfelt like that here, and it’s just…unnerving.”

From the first moment I stepped into the clinic, after being informed they would test-run letting me work there, I felt immediately at home. Of course, it wasn’t the hustle and bustle of the ER, but there was something about it that I immediately grew to love. I had settled in at a remarkable pace, and I had just…stayed there.

“What’s wrong?” Leon asked, leaning in close to look me in the eyes. “You look…I don’t know, talk to me.”

“I don’t know, I just…I realized I’ve spent so much of my time here, and I’d always wondered what I was going to do with myself when I got out of the program.”

“I mean, that’s pretty normal. I constantly wondered the same thing. Still didn’t have any idea until recently.”

I knew what he was talking about and smiled. “You’d be a good candidate for sticking around to help future mentors and expand their existing programs. I mean that. That’s what Mona believes too.”

“Considering what she believes about you right now, I’m not exactly putting stock in her beliefs,” he muttered.

I smiled. “She’s a woman who believes when she sees it. Which means she believes in you because she’s seen you in action; she sees what you’re capable of. And we’re here right now, hoping to find something to help her see that this wasn’t me.”

“I know, but I’m allowed to hold a bit of a grudge, right?” he asked.

“I suppose,” I said, realizing that I didn’t. She was just doing her job and following her nature to the very end. “But it’s kind of sad how it’s taken this shit for me to realize how much I enjoyed it here. And maybe…maybe I should have realized I didn’t want to leave.”

“What, like stay on the staff here, full-time as a doctor?”

“I mean, the thought definitely entered my head a few times, I won’t lie. But I never really considered it,” I admitted, watching the bar on the screen slowly move toward the right side. “Even when I was miserable and guilt-ridden, something was fulfilling about being here, working for this place, and helping the guys.”

“I’ll be honest, I always figured you’d end up back at some emergency clinic or try to see if some ER would let you work again,” he said. “You seemed bored sometimes.”

“When it was slow and plodding for long periods, I found myself missing my old job,” I admitted with a shrug. “But most of the time, it was pretty nice to see the same faces repeatedly. To know the people I cared for when I was here, to know their problems, good days, bad days, I just?—”

Routine could breed boredom. Precisely why I’d always been glad to work in the ER. Even when I became numb to pain and catastrophe, the flow of patients and the variety of problems always kept me involved and dedicated. Now I had come to learn the opposite side of things: its drawbacks and positives.

Sure, I got bored sometimes and yearned for something more interesting and different to happen. Yet, the handful of times that had happened, while I had always risen to the occasion without hesitation, I always felt sick to my stomach with worry after the chaos died down and the worst had passed. I had come to care about these people, and seeing them in serious trouble, while something I could professionally handle, wrecked my nerves in the aftermath.

If I stayed here for the rest of my career, I would see new faces and add them to the list of familiar ones. I would think of these men as my family even more and be there to help take care of them and, if necessary, push them in the right direction so they didn’t end up veering off track and causing themselves trouble.

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