He laughed. “You know nothing. Try reading some real stories about them.” He frowned when a group of teens stepped right in front of the ambulance and smirked at them as they strolled across the street. Some local gangs had been raiding ambulances during traffic accidents lately—stealing drugs and anything else they could grab. Every paramedic was on extra alert these days. “So, dinner with the family?”
“Fine,” she grumbled, narrowed her eyes on Jude. “But make sure you bring that Albuterol.”
He grinned, leaned back in his seat, and glanced at his watch. Eleven o’clock. “We still have an hour on our shift. Let’s stop for coffee.”###
Two hours later, coffee long forgotten, Jude slumped in a hard chair next to the nurse’s station and watched the doctors and nurses scatter as they took over the victims of a multi-car pile-up he and Rebecca had been called to. Rebecca had just gone home. There was nothing more he could do here, but exhaustion and heartbreak weighed him down. A tired delivery truck driver had drifted across several lanes on I-75 near Hopple and hit a bunch of teenagers driving home. Two had died on site. Another person had died in one of the cars behind the teens.
He rubbed his gritty eyes and tried to will his legs into moving so he could go to his apartment and wash this awful night away. The sounds of suffering surrounded him. Cries that ranged from grief to fear to pain. Grief was always the easiest to recognize because the noise stabbed into the heart and whited out all other emotion. Jude thought of it as the empathy sting—that moment when a person’s feelings perfectly meshed with another’s so fast that everything narrowed down to intense, stinging pain in the middle of the chest. Something similar happened with other types of cries, but that deep down sound of true grief pricked into him like a mass of stabbing forks. Every. Single. Time.
Dr. Frost’s deep voice drifted from his right. Jude opened his eyes, more than ready for the sight of the surgeon, and frowned at the closed, brown curtain. His low voice came from behind it—a murmur of comfort between intermittent feminine sobs. He’d heard those sobs all the way here in the back of the ambulance and knew hers came from fear. She’d been in one of the cars directly behind the teens. Her little boy had been cut from the mangled ruins of their minivan and taken directly to imaging before surgery. All the pediatric surgeons were busy, so more than likely Dr. Frost would be the one performing the boy’s surgery. He was probably telling her exactly what he’d be doing.
Jude closed his eyes again and cocked his head so he could hear more. Only a few words were audible. Frost had a surprisingly good bedside manner considering most here thought he was a jerk. Everyone new got the warning about how easy it was to piss the man off, yet they all learned fast that it didn’t matter—he was one of the best. Jude had seen him crack open a patient’s chest within minutes of rolling the guy into the ER and save his life.
The curtain slid open and those light blue eyes locked with his. His heart stuttered and familiar heat filled his gut. It took everything Jude had to force back a shiver of excitement. Frost had a laser-like stare that made him feel like he could see everything he kept hidden from the world. Ragged scrapes covered his cheek. Jude winced. Looked like road rash. Without a word, the doctor strode off—his long legs eating up the floor fast as he headed to surgery.
Jude flashed to that boy’s face, the terror in his wide, seven-year-old eyes as he was pulled from the wreck. The mother had stopped sobbing and Jude stood, seeing that she now stared pensively at the wall. Her injuries hadn’t been too bad—possible low-grade concussion that required some monitoring, a fractured wrist, and some additional bruises. He walked to stand next to her bed, then offered her a smile and a hand to hold.
“Julie? Is there someone I can call for you?”
She started to shake her head, then grimaced and went perfectly still. “No, it’s just me and Justin. His dad took off. My mother is in a home and would only worry.” She squeezed his hand. “Tell me that doctor is good.”
“Very. Justin is in great hands.” He smiled. “I’m going to grab a chair and wait with you, okay?”
She nodded and let go of his hand. Jude snagged one of the chairs and nodded at a nurse who offered him a tired smile. Usually good at remembering names, this time his brain, dull with exhaustion, couldn’t pull up her name for sure. Sandy, he thought. She brought him another cup of coffee.