Page 33 of Forced Proximity
But I remembered a nurse who worked with Chevy, a club brother, on the surgical floor where he worked as an anesthesiologist, had recommended a few things to remember Tavi by after he was gone.
She’d suggested taking a lock of his hair, and his feet and handprints.
She’d been there on the worst day of my life, and she’d helped make it better, even just by a little bit.
“You were with him during his honor walk,” I found myself saying. “And you stayed with him while they harvested his organs.”
Her breath hitched. “Yeah.”
“I never thanked you.”
Her eyes snapped up to meet mine. “You didn’t have to. I was just doing my job.”
I was already shaking my head. “Doing your job would’ve been checking on him. Keeping him alive. You sent me a blanket.”
Her eyes lifted to meet mine. “You…I didn’t sign the card. How would you know that was me?”
Because I’d researched the hell out of the nurses on his floor that night. But since she hadn’t been officially scheduled to work, I hadn’t actually found her name.
But now, seeing her looking so sick at the thought of my son dying, I knew it’d been her.
She likely reached above and beyond for all of her patients like that.
I wasn’t special, and neither had Tavi been.
That was what made her so special.
She treated everyone with the kindness and dignity that they deserved, until their dying breath.
Until Tavi’s dying breath.
Whatever I’d thought that I felt toward this woman beforehand now seemed a distant sort of feeling.
What I was feeling right now was bordering on possessive.
I wanted that kind of kindness in my life.
I’d only thought that I liked her before, but knowing that she’d helped me on the worst day of my life was making me feel like I might be halfway in love with her.
That was crazy, right?
Maybe I was a little bit out of sorts.
I might have a concussion, because no one fell in love with another person in less than a day.
Then again, I might have a lot more wrong with me based on the fact that I’d fallen out of the sky, crashed into the ground, and then had a literal tornado run over me.
But I didn’t think that I was too far gone that I couldn’t realize what was in my own brain.
“That was a really bad day,” she admitted. “But my bad day wasn’t anywhere near as bad as y’all’s.” She hesitated. “Chevy is really intimidating, or I’d ask him, but how is the baby girl doing?”
I smiled at that. “Growing like a weed. She’s crazy, just like her mama. And her daddy has ‘his little terror’ on his hands that gives him a run for his money.”
The smile that tipped up my lips was a genuine one this time.
Seven
“Wow, you’re so determined.” Thanks, I do everything out of spite.
