Page 32 of Give Me Forever

I straightened my shoulders. "Why do you think I was hesitating?"

His eyes flashed. "You were right. We do need to identify a few more things as off-limits."

I nodded. "Yeah. I'll try to come up with more, but not tonight."

"Why? Too distracted by my holy hotness?" He smirked.

"Oh shut up."

Chapter Nine

Sam

Some days at the hospitalwere good. There was no better feeling than saving a patient. Not just saving their life but making their pain go away, or infection, or simply improving their quality of life. It was why I'd gotten into this line of work in the first place. But other days were plain hard. You had losses.

And on days like this, things were really shitty. There'd been a massive accident with thirty patients arriving in the ER. They called me down from peds. All hands had been on deck. Everyone had pulled their weight, and it still hadn't been enough. We'd lost more patients than we saved. This was a bad day for all of us.

The mood in the doctors' lounge was grim. It was crowded. All seats were taken, and a few people were standing against a wall. No one wanted to be alone, not after a day like this; as humans, we processed losses better as a group.

When I first started the job, I used to drive myself crazy going through everything I'd done, wondering what I could've tried. Now I knew better than to do that. What was done was done. I needed my head clear so I could save someone else. Or in this case, I needed to leave what had happened at the door of the hospital so I could relax tonight and be ready to hop back on tomorrow.

It was imperative not to take my losses forward with me. But even though I knew the drill, it was easier said than done.

I was one of the first to leave the doctors' lounge that afternoon. I wasn't on call tonight, and for the first time in many years, I debated actually turning off my phone. It wasn't frowned upon, since I was officially off duty, and I really needed to decompress tonight.

I heard footsteps behind me as I approached the locker room, and I turned around.

"Hey, Sam.”

It was Jean. She and I were the same age, but she’d started here after we graduated med school.

"Hey, Jean.”

"Look, we all did everything we could today," she said, maybe more for herself than anyone.

I waved my hand. “Let's just leave it at that. All I want is to get out of here and not think about this shitty day.”

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