Camila pushed her bike down the alley next to the three-story building and secured it to the drainpipe with her lock. Her apartment comprised one-half of the second floor and had both a front and back entrance. A wooden staircase with deck landings at each level extended from the rear of the house, and she climbed to the second floor, fit her key into the back door, and let herself into her new home. The door opened onto the kitchen, a long narrow room now nearly filled with boxes. Threading her way around the obstacles, she proceeded into the hallway that ran the length of the apartment. A bedroom and bath opened off one side, a small second bedroom that she intended to use as an office adjoined the kitchen on the other, and a large rectangular living room occupied the entire space at the front.
Every room was filled with unopened boxes, scattered pieces of furniture, and a few suitcases. The movers had finished unloading everything late the previous evening, and Camila had no energy to open anything other than the trunk containing her sleeping bag, critical items of clothing, and bathroom gear. Her sleeping bag was still spread out in the middle of the living room on her mattress, and she had a feeling that she would be sleeping in it again that night. She turned once in a small circle, surveying the strange apartment.
What am I doing here? How in hell did I end up like this?
In retrospect, the chain of events that had changed her life had been set in motion a little over four months before, but the particulars of the proceedings seemed to have kaleidoscoped into one endless nightmare that defied logic or reason. When she tried to make sense of them, Camila found that she could not. She didn't believe in luck or karma or fate. Sometimes bad things just happened. But that philosophy gave her very little comfort at the moment.
Wearily, she sat down on her sleeping bag, leaned her back against a pile of boxes, and closed her eyes. She knew she should eat, but strangely, she was not hungry. She knew she should sleep, but felt too restless inside for that. Her phone rested on the floor nearby. Briefly, she considered calling the woman she had dated on and off during the year of her fellowship in New York, but she found that the idea of talking with Dua will left her feeling empty. They had gone to the occasional party, taken in a few Broadway shows, and shared a physical relationship that had been satisfying if not earth shattering. They weren't lovers; in fact, they were little more than casual acquaintances.
Camila hadn't confided in Dua as her world had precipitously tilted and then simply crumbled, mostly because she wasn't used to discussing her problems with anyone. And especially not with someone she didn't completely trust to understand. Odd that we 've slept together, and I don't know her well enough to confide in her.
She hadn't had much time to think about such things when she'd been working eighteen hours a day as a trauma fellow. Now that she found herself in a professional position to which she had never aspired, alone in a life she had never anticipated, she had far too much time to think. Groaning softly, she rubbed her face, stared at the ceiling, and tried to put the past aside. But the future was almost as difficult to contemplate, particularly considering her uncertain welcome in the ER that morning.
Fleetingly, she wondered if Lauren Jauregui and Ally Brooke were lovers. They had that easy energy between them, and she'd caught Ally eyeing her speculatively a few times during the day. The nurse hadn't exactly been cruising her, but Camila had felt the interest. Perhaps she was the person who had given Lauren that wedding ring.
And just that quickly, Camila found herself faced with yet another thought she did not want to contemplate. Surrendering to exhaustion as much emotional as physical, she stretched out on the sleeping bag and wearily closed her eyes again.
* * * * *
"Lauren," a soft, deep voice murmured.
Instantly awake, Lauren jolted upright on the couch and stared into the pale blue eyes mere inches from hers. "Oh my God, did I fall asleep?"
Perrie Edwards, a solidly built blonde with a killer smile, grinned faintly. "About halfway through Wheel of Fortune."
"Where's Kyle?" Lauren rubbed her face, trying to clear the mists of vague dreams from her consciousness. She couldn't clearly recall what she had been dreaming, but she was left with a feeling of uneasiness and...peril? No, that can't be right. What in my life could possibly be dangerous? For no reason that she could imagine, Camila Cabello's face flashed through her mind. That's ridiculous. You must be tired.
"She's in the den. There's some kind of serious Call of Duty video game battle going on. Want some dinner?"
"Yes, please," Lauren replied gratefully, standing and stretching. "Did the kids eat?"
"All done. We fed them first and then banished them so that we could have some adult time." Perrie led the way into the dining room, where Ally was pouring an enormous pot of spaghetti sauce over enough pasta to feed a regiment.
"Yum, Looks great." Lauren slid into the seat that she always occupied at Perrie's and Ally's.
Ally cocked her head and studied the serving bowl filled to the brim with steaming vegetables, sauce, and pasta. "You're going to have to take some of this home. There's only so much in the way of leftovers we can handle, I wish you had been able to talk Phyllis into staying for dinner."
"You know that Monday's her poker night," Lauren replied, referring to her mother-in-law's love of gambling. "Nothing in the world would keep her from that."
Perrie heaped a generous portion onto her plate and passed the platter to Lauren. "Ally tells me that you've got a new doc at work."
Lauren paused with the serving fork in the air and cast a wary glance in Ally's direction. She knew without doubt that Perrie's remark was completely guileless, but she also knew that the blonde was naive enough to be set up by her less than scrupulous lover. And Ally, who refused to give up her self-appointed duty as Lauren's social secretary, looked suspiciously innocent as she cut chunks of garlic bread off a long loaf.
"That's right." Lauren intentionally kept her voice casual.
"A surgeon, huh?"
"That's right."
Ally interjected brightly, "A really talented, good-looking one."
"Is she gay?"
"If she's not, then neither am I," Ally stated emphatically.
"That's good, then, right?" Perrie looked questioningly from one woman to the other.
"Which part?" Lauren grumbled. I know which part Ally thinks is good. If I didn 't also know that she loves me and thinks she's helping, I'd be seriously pissed off at her.
"Uh..." Perrie hesitated, sensing a faint chill in the air. "Did I put my foot in something?"
Shaking her head, Lauren couldn't help but smile. Perrie, a computer software consultant who worked from home and cared for the couple's six- and nine-year-olds, was one of the sweetest people she'd ever met. Lauren could never remember being angry with her. "No, but your spouse just can't keep from putting her nose in everything."
"Oh." Perrie chuckled, tossed her lover a fond look, and went back to her dinner. "So what else is new?"
"Ha ha," Ally retorted. But she leaned close and kissed Perrie's ear, murmuring softly.
"Jeez, give it a rest, will you?" Lauren complained, but her tone was playful. She loved the way they cared for one another, and rather than making her sad over what she didn't have, their happiness made her feel less alone.
"So are you gonna invite her to the barbecue next week?" Perrie asked.
"No," Lauren said immediately.
"Sure," Ally overrode her.
"Ally..." Lauren's tone was threatening.
"Oh, come on! She's a new member of the department, and she's new to the city. It's only polite."
Lauren sighed, knowing Ally was right. She didn't even know why she felt uncomfortable with the idea. Camila Cabello had done absolutely nothing wrong, and she seemed personable enough. It wasn't Camila's fault that she'd been hired without Lauren's input. It wasn't her fault that she was a surgeon, and that Lauren had no great love for her generally self-centered, egotistical, and often insensitive medical counterparts. It certainly wasn't Camila Cabello's fault that she had the deepest brown eyes of any woman Lauren had ever seen, or that for some reason, Lauren couldn't seem to stop seeing the way Camila's hands moved with such surety and grace.
"All right. Fine."
Ally smiled and passed the spaghetti.
* * * * *
"Have you seen Dr. Cabello?" Lauren asked John Legend, one of the registered nurses who worked in the ER. "I've got a guy in six with a mandible fracture I want her to look at."
"I think she's in ten doing a tendon repair."
Lauren raised an eyebrow. "Down here?"
Generally, any hand injury more serious than a simple laceration or straightforward fracture was referred to orthopedics or plastic surgery for treatment in the operating room. But Lauren had noticed that since Camila had started working in the ER, more of those problems were being handled on site. It was only Camila's second week in the ER, and already the other physicians were triaging anything that looked surgical to her. She was rapidly becoming one of the busiest physicians in the emergency room.
Legend, a thin, sharp-eyed African American, shrugged. "Anything that gets them taken care of and off our board works for me. You know how long it takes for ortho or plastics to get down here for a consult."
Lauren couldn't argue. She'd much prefer that patients be evaluated, treated, and discharged rather than have them waiting for hours for a specialist to evaluate them. The long delays clogged up her emergency room and irritated the patients. Still, at this rate, Camila was in danger of being seriously overworked. Already, Lauren had noticed that the new attending was arriving early and leaving late.
"Thanks. Room ten, did you say?"
"Last I saw."
Lauren parted the curtain slowly and peeked inside. Camila and one of the emergency room residents were seated on either side of a narrow arm board. A young Hispanic male lay on a stretcher with his arm extended on the support, palm up. A laceration extended across the width of his forearm, approximately three inches above the wrist crease. From where she was standing, Lauren could see exposed muscle bellies, several pencil-sized white bands of severed tendon ends, and a blood clot in the region of the radial artery just above the thumb. "Can you talk?"
Camila glanced up from the wound and smiled in greeting. "Sure. Come on in."
With an inquiring expression, Lauren tilted her chin in the direction of the patient, who appeared to be unresponsive.
"Anesthesia by ethanol," Camila explained. The patient was intoxicated and, after the resident had injected the lidocaine to numb the wound, had promptly gone to sleep.
"Nerve injury?" Lauren leaned over the seated resident's shoulder for a better look into the depths of the wound. Camila held the edges open with two small stainless steel right-angle retractors that looked like miniature rakes so that the resident could work.
"Got the sensory branch of the radial nerve, but missed the median. Lucky for hi—yo, Zebrowski, don't grab the end of the tendon with your forceps. You'll fray it, and then it won't hold your sutures."
"Sorry," the resident mumbled, his hands shaking as he struggled to place the fine blue Prolene sutures through the ends of the lacerated tendons.
"Get it right down the center of the tendon."
"Okay?" Zebrowski asked tentatively as he edged the needle into the tissue.
"That's better," Camila commented as she watched him place his first stitch. "Now tag it with the hemostat and put in another one just like it." She looked up to find Lauren watching her with a serious expression in her emerald green eyes. Camila quirked a brow. "What?"
"Nothing." What Lauren had been thinking was that Camila was not only a fine surgeon, but also a good teacher. She appeared on the surface to be precisely as she had been advertised—an excellent addition to the ER. Except that Lauren couldn't make sense of the picture. Why should someone with Camila's skills be working there? All that she could imagine was that there had been some breach in ethics that had cost Camila her surgical career. That thought bothered her more than a little, because it was difficult not to like the dynamic surgeon.
Camila divided her attention between watching the resident complete the tendon repair and trying to figure out what she had just seen in Lauren's eyes. Curiosity, confusion, and, oddly, compassion. The mix of emotions was powerful and compelling. She caught her breath, feeling her heart trip unexpectedly. In the next instant, it was steady again, and she ignored the slight flutter of uneasiness. "Do you need me?"
"When you get a chance, I want you to take a look at some films on a twenty-year-old who took a header off his bicycle. I think he's got a fracture of the mandibular body, but I'm not sure. The x-ray isn't diagnostic and his exam is equivocal."
"Okay. As soon as we get a cast on Mr. Garcia, I'll be right there."
Lauren noticed that Camila had dark circles under her eyes, and for the first time, she realized that the young surgeon looked exhausted. She knew that Camila had been working hard—they all worked pretty much nonstop for twelve to fourteen hours—but it hardly seemed likely that the demands of the ER would be that much different than what Camila had experienced as a surgeon. Once again sensing something amiss, Lauren felt a surge of concern. "Take your time."
Ten minutes later, Camila leaned with a palm against the wall and studied the film, which had been hung on the light box, of the young man with the possible jaw fracture.
"What do you think?" Lauren asked as she walked up beside her.
"He doesn't seem to be very tender on physical exam, and his bite looks okay. His teeth come together perfectly," Camila observed.
"I know. That's what bothers me. The mechanism of injury is right for a jaw fracture, but his physical findings are unimpressive, to say the least. But then, the x-ray is suggestive." Lauren leaned forward as well, her shoulder brushing Camila's as she stared at the x-ray. She reached out to trace a faint line between two of the lower teeth. "Looks like a fracture right there. Maybe it's an old inj—"
"Lauren, I'm sorry to interrupt," Ally said with an uncharacteristic hint of urgency in her voice. "Perrie just called from the car. It doesn't sound serious, but there's been an accident."
"Oh my God." Lauren's face lost all its color, and for an instant, she swayed. There s been an accident. We 're sorry to have to tell you...
Camila felt Lauren tremble, saw the panic in her eyes, and without thinking, rested her hand against Lauren's back, supporting her gently. She made small circles with her fingertips, unconsciously hoping to soothe her. She wasn't entirely certain what was happening, but Lauren's terror was clear. And seeing her suffer made Camila ache.
"Laur," Ally said sharply, placing both hands on her friend's shoulders. "She's okay. Perrie says she's okay. They'll be here in just a minute."
Without even realizing it, Lauren leaned into the warmth of Camila's body, needing something solid to anchor her while she fought the memories and struggled to stay in the present. Heart pounding, her voice tight with fear, she asked, "What happened?"
"I'm not sure. Something about one ball and two heads."
"Is she conscious? Is she talking?" Lauren tried to think clearly, but she knew her words were rushing together as fear threatened to overwhelm her. There's been an accident...
"I don't have the details. I just got a thirty-second phone call." Ally shook her head in frustration. "But the most important thing is that Perrie said it—"
Lauren jerked away from Ally's grasp and ran toward the emergency room entrance. Camila looked after her and saw a muscular woman in a bloodstained T-shirt and gym shorts carrying a softly crying blond child in her arms. The child's face and neck were streaked with blood, and a white gauze pad was taped over part of her forehead and left eye.
"Who is that?" Camila asked, walking rapidly to keep up with Ally.
"Lauren's daughter."
An: "oopps I wasn't expecting that as well..."