Page 3 of Saving Texas

Joy: How’s Texas? Are you craving kale salad, artisanal pasta, and kombucha yet?

Me: I’m pretty sure I can get kombucha here somewhere. Maybe Austin.

Joy: Today’s your first day, right?

Me: Yeah, I just had my first staff meeting and I’m about to do some rounds in the ED to check things out.

Joy: Maybe you’ll meet a handsome cowboy out there.

Me: You know I don’t want to be in a relationship.

Joy: Who said anything about a relationship? I’m just suggesting you find a cowboy to...ride! [laughing emoji]

Me: You’re terrible. Thanks for checking on me, but I’d better get back to work.

Joy: Same. Good luck.

The next two weeks passed quickly. My new team proved to be dedicated, efficient, and damned good at their jobs, which was a relief. I threw myself into the job, spending as much time in the ER as I could, then staying up late to catch up on paperwork. Somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I knew I was trying to distract myself from what had happened in Ukraine, but if there was one thing I’d learned after a career of seeing the worst situations imaginable, it was the value of compartmentalizing.

Late one afternoon I looked up from checking the patient board as a pair of EMTs rushed by, pushing a man on a gurney.

“Status,” I barked, falling into step beside them.

My eyes automatically began a sweep of the situation. White male, mid-thirties, wearing a suit, a patch of blood seeping in a circle on the side of his thigh.

“GSW to the thigh,” the EMT reported, confirming my assumption that the wound on the patient’s thigh was from a bullet. “Guy flew backwards and hit his head on a brick wall, causing a LOC. Wound is stable. Bystander applied pressure on scene, minimizing blood loss. Pulse strong.”

As we entered the treatment room the man’s suit jacket shifted and I noticed the telltale bulge of a shoulder holster. This might be Texas, but I didn’t allow guns in my ER.

“He’s got a gun,” I said, reaching forward, intending to remove it from the holster.

The man started, as if my touching the holster had shocked him awake, and reached up to grab me, both hands coming to my neck.

“Aw shit,” one EMT mumbled.

I saw a flash of movement from the side, then the hands relaxed as a beefy arm came down on the patient’s chest and pulled on his wrists.

“Stand down, Harrison. You’re okay, you’re at the hospital.”

It wasn’t just the situation that gave me a flash of deja vu. It was the familiar voice. My head shot up as shocked dark brown eyes turned my way.

“Sorry Doc...Oh my God, Clara? Is that you?”

His hair was longer, and his face more weathered, but even wearing that rumpled suit I would have recognized him anywhere.

Allen Jeffers. The one who got away.

Allen

Harrison moaned beneath me, and I loosened my arm from his chest. My eyes stayed fixed on Clara’s shocked face.

I hadn’t seen her in nearly twenty years, but I would have known her anywhere. Her hair was shorter, and her face was rounder, but she was still the combination of lean and curvy that had driven me crazy way back when I was a Corporal in the Army sent to help with hurricane response.

The truth was I’d fallen in love with Clara the minute I’d laid eyes on her way back in 2005. I’d walked into the triage area to start my shift and she’d been the first thing I’d seen. She’d been straddling a man’s waist, giving him CPR, blonde hair falling out of her braid as she pounded on his chest. When the man’s heart had restarted, she’d looked like she’d won the lottery. Her sunny smile had loosened something in my chest that I never knew was tight.

I’d spent the next ten days following her around like a damned puppy. Eating lunch with her. Handing her instruments while she worked on patients. Moving gurneys. Making sure I was always working nearby, which turned out to be fortunate when some drunken redneck with PTSD tried to choke her.

We’d never really talked about how we felt, but it’d been obvious. To me. To her. To everyone on both of our teams. But I was in the Army, and she lived in Portland and somehow we’d both convinced ourselves it was just some kind of weird adrenaline-fueled attraction. Our lives were too complicated for it to be anything else.