Page 7 of Grumpy Sunshine

“Reign,” I said quietly.

Her head jerked up, then she was running toward me.

I caught her in my arms and folded them around her, despite the blood on her shirt.“Are you okay?”

Working in a hospital, I was more than used to blood.

At least this blood was dried.

She swallowed so hard I could hear it and said, “I am.Yes.But I think I killed two people.”

My heart stopped.

I closed my eyes.“What happened?”

“I was driving…”

“You know you’re not supposed to be driving,” I ground out.

For two years now, her license had been suspended.

“I know.”She sounded broken.“But I’m so tired of being a burden.”

I gritted my teeth to keep the anger at bay, but that was futile.

“You…” I closed my mouth.

She didn’t need me berating her.

I clenched my jaw and counted to ten in my head.

“When did this happen?”I asked.

“A couple of hours ago,” she whispered.“They took me into the ER to get my blood alcohol level because they didn’t believe that I wasn’t drunk.When they realized that, they let me go.But they said that I needed to stay close in case they had any more questions.”

I scrubbed my hand over my face.“Come on.You can come up to the surgical floor with me and wait.”

“Thanks,” she breathed.“Are you super busy today?”

Yes, yes, I was.

And I’d only gotten about four hours of sleep thanks to an emergency call in the middle of the night that required me to come up here and work a couple of surgeries when Tennenbaum, the anesthesiologist that worked in tandem with me and one other, got sick and had to go home.

“I have a couple of surgeries that I have to cover today,” I grumbled as I headed for the elevator when I would’ve usually taken the stairs.“You can hang out in the break room until you know if you can go home or not.”

She nodded and fell into step beside me.“Are you sure you don’t want to meet me up there?You can take the stairs.”

I got onto the elevator with her instead of answering.

When we got onto the floor, I showed her to the physician break room where the showers were, then grabbed her some clean scrubs.Then I went in search of the charge nurse that could give me a breakdown of the surgeries that I would be performing today.

“Hey, Val.”I nodded at one of the female doctors that wasn’t usually up here.“What are you doing up here?”

“Checking on a patient I sent up earlier.”She looked haunted.“A woman with a suspended driver’s license hit the couple head-on.The female was pregnant.”

I closed my eyes as I felt like I’d been sucker punched in the solar plexus.

“Fuck,” I said.“That was my friend.”

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