Dr. Elijah Williams had seen, very early in life and very personally, the atrocities of what men could do to other men. And Women. Those experiences had shaped him, turned him into a man with an unexpected relationship with violence.
He knew how to fight, to bugger up a wanker with precision and without hesitation, in ways that left lasting scars. There was, at times, a need for violence. Sometimes, pens were not mightier than a sword and words were not more powerful than a fist. Elijah’s greatest secret was that he knew every weapon in his arsenal, and he knew how and when to use each.
He preferred words of encouragement over degradation, and he preferred using his hands to heal rather than inflict pain and injury.
Then there were the times when his hands failed to heal, when each stitch and suture felt like a futile attempt to fix the unfixable. Helplessness was a gnawing agony that ripped him apart inside, reminding him of his limitations. As he stood at the bedside of his patient, the sterile aroma of antiseptic mixing with the metallic tang of blood, he watched the trauma team file out of the hybrid operating room. His hand opened and closed into a fist.
When they were alone, with the shatterproof glass door closed, he faced his patient. The rhythmic metronome of the heart monitors now silent, he ached with the need to inflict some balance.
He would only have a couple of minutes, and a lot of doctors wouldn’t take the time, but these moments in the chaotic aftermath, while impossibly hard, were part of why he’d chosen emergency medicine. He would forever meet people on their worst day, and he would forever do his best to save them. Even when failure was imminent.
“Your baby bird is beautiful,” he whispered. “I’m sorry you’ll never know her.” He swept a stray hair away from her forehead, his finger traced the bat shaped dent at the edge of her forehead. “That she’ll never know you.”
The woman before him might have been pretty before she’d become someone’s punching bag. The butcher knife they’d pulled from her abdomen lay on a table and would be turned over to the police as evidence. Blood and bumps and bruises covered her face and neck. An arm hung at an awkward angle, so badly broken the bones were no longer connected.
Sometimes he helped them heal.
Sometimes he helped them deal with a death.
Sometimes he helped them face their own death.
Sometimes he helped them in ways they would never know.
“I’m gutted I couldn’t do more for you.” He’d known when she was wheeled in that they wouldn’t be able to save her. His job had been to keep her blood circulating long enough for them to save the baby.
She’d come to just long enough to lay eyes on the infant and reach out and whisper, “save her.”
When he received dying wishes and knew he’d be unable to fulfill the final hopes, regret twisted in his chest. He waited for the twist this time. It didn’t come.
In the bustle of helping their surviving patient, a premature girl, being hustled to the neonatal intensive care unit, Elijah and Sally, the charge nurse who’d stepped in to help, locked gazes over the woman’s body.
There’d been no time for conversation. With her next heartbeat the woman coded. Elijah and Sally leapt into action in one last life-saving attempt. He’d called time of death. Sally went to see if the police had arrived, knowing her earlier orders to call them would have been followed by someone.
Elijah didn’t cry over the loss of his patient; he knew he couldn’t save them all.
He didn’t cry over the senseless brutality; he knew violence too well.
He didn’t cry over anything. The emotions capable of bringing him to tears had been shut down, blocked off, years ago out of necessity. In his life, emotions were signs of capitalized on by opponents looking for quick victories. Self-perseverance demanded a shield of stone and ice.
He’d become an emergency doctor because he’d grown up seeing people suffer when they didn’t have access to proper care in their worst moments. He was coming to realize he wanted to help people before bad moments became worst moments. In the ER, he only got to help after the fact. Too often, after it was too late. He wanted to intervene before the ER. Somehow.
But how? How could he help people beyond what he did in the emergency room? His role in their life was to triage their wounds and ailments, and then patch them up so they could move on.
The most immediate rewards came when his patients got to go straight home, and he didn’t have to see them become frequent flyers. He rarely allowed himself to check up on a patient when they moved to another floor in the hospital. Before this woman and her infant daughter, there had only been one patient who managed to niggle into his brain and not let go until he followed up on her. Knowing that woman’s fate still hadn’t eased its grip on him. He didn’t understand her draw, but he suspected this woman’s infant would be the same way.
Was the ice around his heart thawing?
The only thing he could do for the woman on the bed before him was help bring her abuser to justice. In that vein, he’d carefully set aside the knife he pulled from her, careful not to smear any fingerprints on the handle. ER staff members quickly learned the importance of preserving evidence.
Sally had gone to call the cops, so the room would be left alone until the cops released it. And until the woman had been moved to the morgue.
A knock on the glass door preceded Sally and Officers Carlston and Fry. Carlston was an inch or two shorter and had a thin scar running down the side of his neck and disappearing into his collar. Fry had no visible scars, but he seemed to be surrounded by heaviness, as if he’d seen more heinous acts than Fry. Or maybe he just carried them differently. Elijah knew well that people carried their baggage differently.
These officers were, unfortunately and predictably, regulars in the ER. One thing emergency medicine never ran short on, especially with violence on the rise, was cops.
“Elijah. You okay?” Sally wasn’t old by anyone’s definition, but in the depths of her bourbon-gold gaze lurked the darkness and memories of every terrible thing she’d ever seen.
“This one landed in the bog.”
“The what?”
“The bog. The toilet.” He explained. “I believe you Americans call it the shitter.”
“Ah.” Sally nodded. “Matter of time in frequent flyers like her.”
“You recognize her.” Elijah’s past had formed him. Because of his past he had a hard time with abused women and a particularly hard time with orphaned children.
“Sophia Bradford,” Sadness layered with remorse in Sally’s tone. “I haven’t seen her in months. I’d hoped she’d gotten free.”
“We have her husband in custody. He denies they had a fight.” Officer Fry bagged the knife with a calm that bothered a lot of people. Elijah recognized the compartmentalization between his actions and the flash of rage in his tone when he asked, “Did she have the chance to name her abuser?”
Sally and Elijah shook their heads in unison. Elijah added, “her final words were ‘save her’.”
“Her?” Officer Carlston wrote notes in his notebook. “You think she meant the baby?”
“Yes.” Elijah didn’t have to think. He’d read desperation in Sophia’s fading gaze. She’d been afraid for her baby. Given the way she’d gone out, every instinct told him she had good reason for her fear.
He wanted to make her last request reality, but he didn’t have the contacts in town to help. He certainly wasn’t in a situation to be a solution for the girl. The idea of being the baby’s solution didn’t bother him; he found he’d like it if he could. The importance of maintaining detachments had been drummed into him during med school. Normally he did okay. This case wasn’t settling well for him. His mind was abuzz with possibilities.
He didn’t have to ask what would happen to the baby. A committee of hospital administrators would make judgment calls for the baby’s care until Child Protective Services could step in. With no parent to advocate for her, she’d become a ward of the state. If her father was released and showed up… Without proof that he was a threat to the baby, he would gain custody.
Elijah’s stomach rolled.
His own parents, and later his uncle, taught him too well how much damage an adult who should be trusted could do to a young child. Scars, some seen, some felt, possessed power. Power could be harnessed to improve a life or derail it. Until the infant upstairs was old enough, that power would be wielded by others. If the system worked in her favor, that power would not be wielded by an abuser.
A rush of activity in the hall erupted with new emergencies. Sally and Elijah finished up with the officers, made sure Sophia was taken care of, and jumped right back into the fray, because jumping into the fray was what they did in the ER.
Several hours later, knackered, and having lost yet another sunrise to the night shift, Elijah headed to the coffee stand in the hospital lobby for a cuppa. He needed something, anything, stronger than the sludge in the physician’s lounge.
It helped that the mood in the lobby was a vast departure from the ER. Windows flooded the space with morning light. Instead of exhaustion dragging them down, the staff wore smiles and offered cheerful greetings, the benefits of a full night’s sleep. Patients hadn’t had a chance to hear bad news, so their spirits were high. Volunteers and concierge staff spoke in welcoming tones as they checked people in and directed them toward their destinations.
“Buenos días, Dr. Williams.” Elise, a pretty, little Hispanic woman, greeted him when he approached the coffee kiosk. In the back corner of the coffee counter, a medical textbook sat open with a notepad beside it. “The usual?”
“Buenos días, Elise. Let’s do two shots of espresso today.”
“Rough night?” She was in her first semester of medical school, and from what he knew and witnessed, she poured her whole self into her studies.
“The place was a chockablock of chaos.” Not one to talk about himself or his concerns, he nodded to the book. He remembered the excitement of being where Elise was. “How are the studies going?”
“Tricky. I’m making it happen, though.” Elise’s parents supported her and taught her to be tough, but as undocumented immigrants, they weren’t in a strong position to offer financial assistance. So, she worked when she wasn’t in class, and she studied when she wasn’t working, and she made conversation with every person who came to her counter. More than conversation, she got to know her regulars and made herself invaluable to them by being reliable and remembering their preferences.
“Keep pushing.”
“Thanks. It’s just a lot of juggling.”
She handed him his drink and he paid. “I hope your day is better than the night was.”
“Thanks, Elise.” He dropped a folded twenty into her tip jar and headed back toward the ER. Since his shift was officially over and no one was looking for him, he took a side trip outside.
The look in Sophia’s eyes as she’d said ‘save her’ and then faded away stuck with him. Baby Bradford would be upstairs with a longer road ahead of her than most babies due to her premature and traumatic birth. In the system, infants were generally easier to place than older kids, but the little girl had the added complication of additional health issues. Her adopted family would need to be prepared for possible medical issues down the road. It was one thing to accept that level of responsibility for a baby that shared your blood, but for strangers to accept that responsibility for an orphan… It wasn’t unheard of, but it added a challenge.
Sitting on the bench outside the hospital’s main entrance, Elijah removed the mask he almost didn’t notice wearing anymore and embraced the fresh air coming off the coast. He allowed the caffeine to course through his veins and fire his synapses. The pace here, like the lobby, was slower and lighter than in the ER. Some people moved with purpose, but none with the rush of lives on the line.
A large SUV with a powerful growl pulled up to the curb a few feet from where Elijah sat. The passenger side window slid down, and Dominic “Dom” Walters, a very large black man with the look of a brawler, the heart of a teddy bear, and the brains of an Einstein, smiled broadly.
“Elijah. They let you out?”
“Temporary release.” Elijah went to stand by the SUV. “What brings you by, Dom?” Everyone in the ER knew Dom. He’d founded The Kitchen, L.A.’s largest and most popular soup kitchen, and frequently brought in one homeless person or another, making sure they got whatever emergent care they needed.
“Playing Uber for a friend who’s being discharged after an extended stay.”
“Is there anyone you don’t call a friend or anyone you won’t help?”
Dom pretended to think about the question. “There are a few people I call family.” He grinned his trademark grin. “Helping others feeds my soul. Isn’t that why you do it?”
“I guess. Helping people when they’re faced with their worst.” He’d needed to put something good out in the world, though it had been terrible to him, but had never thought about it in terms of feeding his soul. “Though some days it’s more of a drain than a nourishment.”
“You ever want to refill that well, come find me at The Kitchen.”
Before he could respond, a nurse wheeled a beautiful blonde out of the glass doors. Beautiful wasn’t the right descriptor. This bird was piercingly gorgeous. Her smooth skin gave her a delicate air. Then she looked up with fiery blue eyes that eradicated all thoughts of delicacy.
He recognized her. Specifically, he recognized the flame in her gaze that said she wouldn’t be defeated. She’d been his first case on his first day in the ER.
Battered and broken and near death, he’d assumed she was a hit and run victim. She’d slipped in and out of consciousness while he worked on her. In those moments, they’d learned her name was Haley Grace and she’d been attacked and there was no one they could call for her.
He’d been unable to dislodge her from his thoughts. Even after he’d stabilized her and turned her over to surgeons, she’d taken up residence in his mind. He’d tracked her progress during surgery and recovery. He’d visited her, read to her, when she’d been in a coma.
Something about the fire in her eyes and her declaration of having no one… He’d needed to be near her.
Now, sitting before him in a wheelchair with a long wig replacing the hair that had been shaved, she was barely recognizable as the woman who’d been wheeled into the ER.
When he didn’t look away or say anything, she notched her chin higher, as if she needed a little extra defense. The delicacy of her façade almost shuttered her strength, but it winked between the slats. He wanted to pry those slats open and set her free.
“Haley Grace.” Elijah opened the passenger door and offered a hand to her. She hesitated for a barely perceptible moment before placing her fingers against his. At her touch, a shot of warmth slid through him.
As foreign as the idea of belonging anywhere, with anyone, was, he recognized the sensation beneath the warmth. What he couldn’t pinpoint was why Haley Grace was the woman to grab his interest.
In her touch, the sense of delicacy returned. Yet, in that touch she gifted him, if only for a moment, with her trust and a profound sense of inspiration. She chased away the shadows of his last shift allowing the promise of light to enter the cracks.
Her moves were a little stiff and she was thinner than when she’d first crossed his path. A shattered hip was only one of her physical injuries. Between months of recovery and hospital food, the weight loss was understandable.
He helped her into the SUV and the time came for him to step back and close her door. He didn’t want to say goodbye, to watch her go. Neither did he have a good reason to prolong the interaction. “Congratulations on your recovery.”
Her brow crinkled up as if she wondered what he could know about it. She didn’t ask, though, and he didn’t offer. He waited until she had the cane settled, made sure she was clear, and then closed the door.
“I meant it, Elijah,” Dom said. “Come find me.”
“Maybe.”
Dom turned to the woman he’d called a friend. “Where to Haley Grace?”
Haley Grace. She carried strength in her touch and warmth in her gaze and welcome in her name.
He’d offered a hand to help her into the car, but with that touch she’d magically soothed his turmoil. Rubbing his fingers together he wondered… What do I carry in my touch? What do I have to offer beyond emergency medicine?
A delicate woman radiating strength after a long hospital stay blasted the darkness from his mind with a touch. A touch he’d intended to be helpful for her, not himself. The impact had boomeranged and brightened his day and made him want more.
He knew the kind of good work they did, and it was clear to see that Dom’s impact reached beyond a few meals for the homeless, yet, serving a few meals a week didn’t strike Elijah as something that would fill the hole inside him.
So, what would fill that hole? Refill the well as Dom had put it? What was he missing in his personal life that could help ease the turmoil of his professional one, and some of his personal issues?
Haley Grace.
He curled his fingers into a fist, drawing on the memory of her touch. He’d never been one to believe in fate or destiny or really anything mystical, but Haley Grace’s power lingered.
He’d read to her every day she’d lingered in her coma. He’d tried to visit after she woke up, but right after waking up she’d demanded only women enter her room. He had no reason to force the situation, so he’d retreated and hadn’t seen her again.
Haley Grace had popped into his mind on occasion, but he’d assumed she’d gone on with her life. She travelled her path. He travelled his. Then, in an unexpected moment during a dark mood, his path led to Dom who led to Haley Grace. She had come a long way from banning men from her room to taking the hand of a strange man while getting into the vehicle of another man.
He didn’t know where their paths were headed, but somehow, he felt certain they would cross again. Someone, he and Haley Grace were connected.