Page 3 of Steeped In Problems

“Blaze?” Kristy tried to keep her voice down.

“Tanner Blaze. Long story. Used to be Search and Rescue until his accident. Now owns this place. He’s grumpy but harmless. Mostly.”

Kristy looked again, but the man—Tanner Blaze, apparently—was gone from the table. She wondered how long he’d been there, wondered if he was grading her performance. Wondered if she’d just failed her first pop quiz.

The morning rush ended as quickly as it started. Rhonda was off chatting with a table of retired cops, so Kristy leaned against the counter and took a breath. Her heart was still a little wild, but it felt different than the hospital. Less like drowning, more like—well, like the time she’d run her first 5K and thought she might collapse, but in a good way.

She refilled the creamers, wiped down every surface, and rearranged the napkin holders just to keep her hands moving.Every time the door opened, Kristy’s nerves spiked, but each customer was a little less terrifying than the last.

The clock ticked past noon. Rhonda beckoned her over. “Go take a break. You’ve earned it.”

Kristy did as she was told, slumping into one of the big armchairs by the window. She sipped her staff mug of house blend and watched the cars slide by on Main. Out the side window, she caught a glimpse of Blaze, standing by the side door, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He looked like a statue, except she could feel his attention zeroed in on her like a heat-seeking missile.

She wondered if he was about to come inside and fire her. She wondered if she even cared. It wasn’t like she couldn’t find another job to fill her day, but there was something about this place that appealed to her. She wanted to stay even though she didn’t quite know why.

The door opened. Kristy braced herself for the inevitable confrontation. Instead, Blaze gave her a half-nod and walked past without a word.

Kristy grinned to herself, a small, private smile. Let him try to scare her. She’d survived the ER at County General. She’d survive her new grumpy boss, too.

With that, she stood up, smoothed her apron, and got back to work.

Not more than ten minutes later, though, her perfect first day was disrupted, so fast that Kristy didn’t see it coming. She was slicing a lemon pound cake when an ambulance screamed by on Timber, siren blaring, lights on full strobe. The sound punched through the front windows, through her chest, straight to her spine. For a second, she wasn’t in the Brave Badge anymore.

She was back at County General, running the trauma bay at 3:00 a.m. The smell of sweat and alcohol. Hands slick with sanitizer, never truly clean. Monitors beeping in uglysyncopation, and the code blue alarm, always there, always waiting to terrorize her. The worst was not the noise, but the look in everyone’s eyes, like maybe this time she wouldn’t be fast enough to save their loved ones. Even harder was when she did lose a patient, and their desperate expressions shifted to looks of betrayal.

A tray hit the floor. The clang snapped her out of it, and she noticed for the first time the destroyed plate on the floor.

“Sorry,” Kristy blurted, not sure who she was apologizing to. Rhonda, who was halfway through a joke at the other end of the counter, just waved her off.

“You’re not truly broken in till you’ve shattered something around here,” she called over. “All part of the process.”

Kristy knelt, picking up the scattered cake, pieces of porcelain, and metal. Her hands were shaking, and she hated that. She tried to will them steady. “It’s just cake,” she muttered. “No one’s bleeding out. No one’s dying.”

But that was the thing about trauma: it sneaked up, even when she changed everything in her life to erase the memory of it.

She finished cleaning up her mess, washed her hands, and threw herself into the lunch crowd. The noon rush was nothing like the hospital, and yet it was. People lined up three deep, shouting orders, grabbing sandwiches, telling stories. There was chaos, but it was low-stakes chaos. No one would code if she messed up a turkey club. The adrenaline hit was the same, but the outcome was better. At the end of it, everyone just got a cookie, not a devastating update that would change their lives forever in the worst way possible.

Rhonda darted behind her, loading the espresso machine and bantering with a group of EMTs at the counter. “You’re killing it, Kristy. Next week, I’m calling in sick; see how you do.”

“I think by then I could handle it,” Kristy said and meant it. She could feel herself getting faster, more sure. She even managed to upsell a giant cinnamon roll to a pack of high schoolers with zero guilt.

Through it all, she felt Tanner’s presence like an atmospheric pressure change. He didn’t hover, just stood at the end of the bar, arms crossed, eyes doing the Terminator scan. Once, she caught his gaze, and he just raised one eyebrow and looked away. It was like being in a spelling bee with a cop for a judge.

At 2:01, the last of the lunch crowd trickled out. The bell gave a sad little ding, and Kristy realized she was alone for the first time all day.

Rhonda poked her head out from the stockroom. “Break, then close with me?”

“Deal.” Kristy poured herself a glass of water and took it outside, where the world was softer. The sun was high and sharp, but she let it hit her face, let herself melt into the wooden bench out front.

She closed her eyes. Breathed. Counted. One, two, three.

No one was dying. She was safe. She had survived day one.

When she stepped back inside, the shop felt different. Like it belonged to her, just a little. She wiped down the counters, filled the condiment station, and arranged the pastry case for tomorrow’s crowd. Rhonda talked the whole time about her old job as a bartender, about how her dog once ate a whole bag of marshmallows and survived, about the time the mayor got caught TP’ing the police chief’s house in high school before either of them was anyone in town.

Kristy found herself laughing, genuinely laughing, for the first time in months.

They closed up at four after the after-school crowd left. Kristy helped Rhonda flip chairs onto tables, then stood at the door, not wanting to leave. She stared at the wall of hero photos. Somehad medals, some had dogs, and all had that same look: I made it.

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