Page 6 of Gray

“Thanks, Ellen. For everything.” Dammit, she felt herself getting choked up and she didn’t want to get overly emotional.So much for that.Tears blurred her vision.

“Get over here.” Ellen opened her arms and Aubrey walked into her comforting embrace.

“Thanks for taking a chance on me.”

“Thanks for putting up with all my demands.”

Aubrey stepped back and grinned. “I learned so much from you. And, Ellen, if you need me to stay—”

“Go!” Ellen shooed Aubrey toward the exit. “Get your ass out of here. And I say that with all the love in the world.”

“You’re the best,” Aubrey said as she walked away.

“I am the best.”

They both chuckled and Aubrey gave one final wave before stepping out into the hot Colombian sun. Even though the last year had been hard and sometimes dangerous, she wouldn’t trade it for anything. She’d grown more in the last twelve months working down there than she had in all of her twenty-seven years growing up in Indiana, away at school and during her clinicals combined.

“Miss Aubrey, are you ready to go?” Juan Antonio, their driver, walked toward her, lifting the Jeep’s keys and jangling them. “Hotel Rosario, right?”

“That’s right. Thank you for taking me.”

“My pleasure.”

They climbed into the Jeep and Aubrey took one last glance at the collection of tents and small buildings where her team had done their best to help the locals and displaced people. She specialized in treating trauma patients but, during the past year, she’d done it all. From training local nursing staff to organizing a mass vaccination initiative for measles to managing drug stocks. She’d even been responsible for triaging an influx of displaced people who’d been fleeing conflict.

Now, with her brother’s voice encouraging her, she planned to work at a trauma center Stateside, preferably on medical flights. She just hadn’t decided where yet. She supposed her final decision would be based on what job offers she might receive.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières had been her home for the past year, but Aubrey knew Ellen was right. The time had come to move on, and that’s exactly what Aubrey was going to do. After Garrett died at twenty-six, Aubrey learned how important it was to live her life to the fullest. Because the future wasn’t promised to anyone.

Not even to a young man with the whole world at his feet.

Pushing thoughts of Garrett to the back of her mind, Aubrey watched the lush jungle pass by on her side of the open Jeep. She wouldn’t miss the godawful humidity or endless mosquito bites, but she would miss the people she’d met and worked with. Despite the constant danger in the area—it was crawling with rebels and the cartels—the locals were lovely and she’d spent a lot of time making friends who would last a lifetime.

It made her sad knowing that her South American adventure was coming to an end. But it was time to go back to her lonely life in the States. Maybe, if she was really lucky, things would turn around. Especially when it came to her love life.

Ah, what a sad joke. Although she supposed she had no one to blame but herself. Her dating history consisted of a brief boyfriend in college who’d broken it off because she’d been far too busy studying and tackling a heavy schedule of classes when he wanted to go out and party every night.

But now that she was getting older, Aubrey started thinking about all of the potential relationships she’d shot down because she had the tendency to immediately friend-zone any guy who showed interest in her. First she blamed it on school, then her busy career. Easy scapegoats. Of course, if she’d felt any flicker of attraction, she might’ve pursued something. But the only thing that seemed to get her excited was fixing up a patient. If someone was bleeding, she knew exactly what to do. If a man asked her out, she immediately panicked, shut him down and ran away.

Aubrey didn’t want to keep running from possible relationships but, at the same time, she didn’t want to settle either. She wanted a good man who would love her fiercely. Butterflies were an added bonus. And, above all, she wanted a man who made her as excited as treating a patient rushed into the ER withabrasions, open fractures, bony abnormalities and active bleeding. Give her blunt or penetrating traumas any day over a boring date.

Did a man like that exist, though? One who made her heart race and didn’t view her job as a threat because it consumed so much of her time? Because if he did, she certainly hadn’t met him yet.

Juan Antonio pulled the Jeep up in front of the Rosario Hotel and Aubrey thanked him.

“We’re going to miss you, Miss Aubrey.”

Aubrey hopped out of the car and swung her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m going to miss you, too. Take care.”

“You, too.Adios!”

“Adios.” She slapped the side of the Jeep as it drove off, kicking up a swirl of dust in its wake, and turned to face the hotel. It was her last night in Colombia and she didn’t want to spend it by herself.

With a sigh, she looked up at the sky and asked the Universe for a sign. Even though it sounded silly to some people, Aubrey believed in signs wholeheartedly and often made decisions based on them. After all, fate had never steered her wrong. It’s how she’d ended up in South America in the first place. She’d stumbled upon a website for Doctors Without Borders, read up on it and immediately decided going down to Colombia by herself would be too scary.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Later that night, she’d asked her older brother for a sign. Should she do it? As if on cue, a brilliant red cardinal had landed on the windowsill and peered in at her. Aubrey had immediately filled out an application and found herself on a plane three weeks later.

Should I go up to my room? Or be brave, go out by myself and have a drink?

---