Page 15 of What We Break
"She had the carrier, Tony. She was unzipping it. I saved your dignity."
Tony opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. Reid doesn't wait forpermission — he just launches himself onto Tony's back, wrapping his arms around his partner's neck. Tony staggers but catches him with the resigned sigh of a man who's been through this before. How long have these two been partners? Because this has the energy of a very specific, very practiced dysfunction.
"I hate you," Tony says, already walking toward the doors.
"You love me. I'm a delight." Reid hooks his arm over Tony's neck, making him gag, and grins back at us. "How many is that, Laine?"
I'm laughing too hard to answer immediately. My eyes are watering. Joyce is shaking her head but her shoulders are going too. "This'll make eleven and twelve."
"Eleven and twelve, Tony! We're making history!"
"We're making a scene is what we're making." But Tony's smiling now too, even as he adjusts his grip on Reid's legs. "You're buying breakfast after this."
"Deal. Waffles. Mountains of waffles."
They bicker their way through the automatic doors, Reid still clinging to Tony's back like an oversized koala, their voices fading as they head toward the ambulance bay.
"— and I want bacon —"
"You always want bacon —"
"Because bacon is perfect, Tony, it's the perfect food —"
Joyce and I exchange looks, both of us grinning.
"Hey, Laine?" Reid's voice echoes back through the doors.
"Yeah?"
His head pops back around the doorframe, still perched on Tony's back like the world's most chaotic parrot. "Thanks for tonight. For being..." He searches for the word. "You."
God, he's deadly.
"You too," I manage.
"Dude, let'sgo," Tony groans, and then they're gone for real, the sound of their arguing fading into the early morning.
"You know," Joyce says, "I've known that boy for five years, and I've never seen him chat this much during a shift." She laughs. "I mean, you saw, he's chatty, but tonight was something else. I think you might have a little something to do with that."
I should not care about that. He's a Paramedic I met a few hours ago. It should not matter that Joyce — who has been watching people interact in this ER for three decades — noticed something different about how he talked to me.
But my stupid heart is still doing the thing. "Maybe he's just having a good night."
"Mmm-hmm." Joyce gives me a knowing look. "A very good night."
"It's funny, I've never met him before tonight. I thought I knew all the EMTs."
"He's day shift, honey."
Of course he is.There goes my hope of continuing this... whatever this is. This flirting-over-hallucinating-patients thing. This weirdly specific connection forged over butterfly metaphors and alien pizza interrogations. Day shift. Which means I won't see him unless?—
Unless what, Laine? You switch to days? Stalk the ambulance bay? Just casually happen to be at the hospital twelve hours early?
No. No, that's insane. You met him tonight. You don't rearrange your life for someone you met tonight.
But what if?—
No.
