Page 11 of Whenever You Call

“Listen,” Buck said, resting his arms on the table, breaking me from my thoughts of Hannah, and making me look back up at him. “It was a high-profile patient we lost that day—”

“We?”

“Yes,we. I may not have been there, butweare a team. You don’t get to carry the burden of this on your shoulders without my support.”

“Maybe I deserve to.”

“The only thing you deserve is a harsh wake-up call, kid.”

“I don’t need to hear this.”

“Well, I need to say it, so shut your mouth,” he said, bringing me into submission the way only he could. “We all have that one incident. The one we can’t let go of no matter how much time passes. The one that changes who we are as professionals as well as human beings. Ain’t nothing you can say to me to make me believe that you aren’t suffering the aftereffects of thatoneright now, is there?”

He had the decency to wait a beat and let my silence answer for me.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, reading me like a damn book. “Mine happened when I was twenty-eight years old with a young woman who we’d come across four times already. Pretty little thing, but boy, was that girl broken in the head after everything her husband put her through.”

I scowled at him, watching as he let out a heavy sigh and leaned back in his seat, his eyes drifting down to his coffee.

“She reminded me of my younger sister. Not just in looks but in the way she tried to convince the world around her she was doing okay, even when everyone knew that poor woman was crumbling inside.” His eyes rose back up to meet mine. “Suicide,” he said. “Both my sisterandthe woman who would become myone.”

“What happened?”

Buck shrugged. “Sister passed away the year before. Too many demons she couldn’t get a hold of. Back then, mental health wasn’t talked about so much. Not like it is today. Everything about the subject was considered taboo. I guess she thought that made her taboo, too. Nothing could be done. She knew what she wanted.” He filled his cheeks with air and blew it all out in one long breath. “Fortunately, I didn’t attend the scene of my sister’s death, but a year or so later, we got a call to a house in Culver City. Possible suicide attempt. As soon as we saw the address, we knew who it was.” He shook his head. “That poor girl’s sorry excuse for a husband had beat her up a few times before. We’d taken her in with multiple injuries; you know how it goes. Broken ribs, cracked femur, contusions to the cheeks, head, jaw. You name it, she had it. That bastard refused to take her to the ER every time. Of course, she always denied it was him. She’d eitherfallenor been tooclumsyornot been paying attention to where she was going.Man, that side of the job sucks, doesn’t it?”

I nodded, having seen my fair share of unreported domestic violence over the last six years. The number of times I’d had to walk away from a patient, knowing full well they were going to go back to the very asshole who’d split their face open, killed me. It was a side of the job I struggled with, having to stay quiet and respect their wishes when all I ever wanted to do was push them to safety behind me before I gave their sadistic abusers a taste of their own medicine.

Buck cleared his throat. “When we found out it was a possible suicide, and we’d got her in the back of the ambulance, my partner drove like crazy to the hospital. I stayed in the back with her. That’s when it happened.” His face turned stern. “I froze. For the first time in the back of that unit, I froze. All I could see were the rope marks around her neck and the life literally bleeding out of her eyes, just like my sister. She didn’t make it, and I should have saved her. I should have saved both of them.”

“Buck…”

“What? You gonna tell me it wasn’t my fault?” He raised a brow. “You gonna tell me I probably did everything I could?”

“I know you’d have done everything.”

“Just like I know you did everything you could for Cole Newman.”

I closed my eyes for just a second before I looked up at him again.

“Like I said… we all have that one that never leaves us. The one we blame ourselves for. Yours just happens to be a famous guy.” Buck took a sip of his coffee before dropping it back to the table and leaning forward again. “The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can get you the help you need.”

“I don’t need any help. I need time.”

“Then take your damn time but use that time to forgive yourself for things you don’t even need to forgive yourself for. Take a vacation, a road trip. Hell, I don’t care. Just don’t come to work for a while,” he said, bringing my attention back to him. “We can arrange that within a week.”

“And what would I do with that time off, huh? My jobismy life.”

“You just answered your own question. It’s time to go out there and geta life.”

I rolled my head back on the booth, staring up at the ceiling.

“You know I can put you on forced leave any time I want for however long I want, don’t you?” he said.

Bringing my head back up, I laid a confused look on him. “Buck, c’mon…”

“I’m not messing around, Logan. This job requires mental fitness as well as physical, and you’re letting yourself down. Times have changed, and wedotalk about mental health these days, but even if we didn’t, after my sister, I’d still be sitting here putting this out there. There’s no shame in struggling. There’s no need to hide it. Nothing is taboo. Even if it makes you uncomfortable, as your superior, it’s my job to fix whatever’s broken.”

“So, you’ve already decided what’s happening.”

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