Open Heart One Shots (Choices)

Forevermore

Convinced that something bad had happened, his dad told him to get in the car and they drove to the grocery store, looking for his mom's car in the near-empty parking lot. His father parked the car near the entrance, switching off the engine before turning in his seat to face Ethan.

"I'm just going to check inside in case someone saw her or knows what happened. Lock the doors and stay alert."

"Sure, dad," said Ethan, nerves forcing him to lace and unlace his fingers.

He had never seen his father this way before and he was afraid. Of what? He couldn't say. He had certainly seen enough episodes of cop shows on TV to know that bad things happened to random people all the time.

Four days later, Ethan Ramsey learned that hate was as powerful an emotion as love. He had spent the last 48 hours with a babysitter ─ not that he needed one, but the state of Rhode Island had strange rules about not leaving an 11-year-old alone overnight ─ while his father went searching for his mom.

The police had told them that they couldn't do anything for 48 hours, exactly like what the cops would say on TV. Rather than wait, his father called in favors to swap his shifts at work, hired Mrs. Giraldi's niece to look after Ethan, and marked stops on a map of everywhere he could think of that his mom could have gone.

He came home tired and weary, his clothes wrinkled from sleeping in the car, and his eyes full of grief. When the police arrived the next morning, he'd seen hope on his father's face before it was wiped away as one of the patrolmen said that he had been dumped while the other laughed at the tears gathering in his father's eyes.

Ethan rushed them out of their home, slamming the door behind them before leading his desolate father to the worn-down couch. That night, and for several nights after, he heard his father wailing through the thin walls of the old house and resentment built.

Ethan couldn't figure out why his father still loved his mom; no, not mom but Louise, he thought. She was no longer his mother.

The woman had walked away as if they meant nothing, like he meant nothing. At that moment, he hated her for breaking up their perfect little family and he hated his father for holding on to the memory of a love that was never real.

"I will never let that be me," he muttered in the dark room, covering his ears with a pillow to block out the sound of grief. "Never."

And the vow was made.

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Dr. Ethan Ramsey was known for being occasionally grumpy and sometimes indifferent to everyone but his patients, for knocking down a peg rivals and contemporaries when he didn't agree with them, and for reducing interns to a bundle of nerves ─ well, all except one intern, they whispered in the hallways.

But lately, he had been smiling more than usual and the nurses, especially those that had a crush on him, were hard-pressed to uncover the reason for this change.

Some people said that he was dating that former intern and now junior fellow on the Diagnostics team, Dr. Valentine. She always had a sweet smile and a kind word for everyone she met.

Others thought that was pure conjecture as someone as nice as her wouldn't be attracted to Dr. Terminator (everyone had heard her call him that once and the name had stuck), no matter how handsome he was.

Besides, he was a stickler for rules and wouldn't dating a subordinate go against that? Not really, they said, as Dr. Valentine was now his peer on the Diagnostics Team and there wasn't anything in the employee handbook about not dating colleagues.

Ethan ignored the whispers that followed him, focusing instead on his patients, the medical mysteries presented to the Diagnostics team, and Cassie. Not necessarily in that order.