The dread turns to fear.
Then Molly speaks for the first time since she sat.
“Jordan, Allie was shot about twenty minutes ago outside of the ER while she was waiting for me to pick her up.”
I blink at her, my breath hitching as I try and make sense of the words she said.
Allie. Shot. Outside. ER.
I understand each of those words by themselves, but together they don’t compute. My brain works rapidly, trying to make them fit, but I can’t. They don’t.
When I say nothing, Molly keeps talking.
“The person who shot her was the father of a patient she lost last week. The bullet hit her in the chest, and she lost a lot of blood. They couldn’t save her. She died, Jordan. Allie is gone.”
I clench my jaw so hard I wonder if my molars are cracking, my body seeming to understand something my brain can’t quite comprehend. I open my mouth but close it when I can’t form words. Then I do it again. I shake my head vigorously, not sure if I’m trying to dislodge Molly’s words that are pinging around my brain looking for a place to dig in or disagree with them entirely.
“She’s not. She can’t be. I just saw her. I came in early so I could see her before she had dinner with you since we’re working opposite shifts this week. She was just sitting right where you are, and then she got called to the ER for that consult. You guys are having dinner. She said she told you to pick her up outside the ER instead of at the front. That she was going to wait for?—”
I break off, as the truth of it slams into me like a fist. Allie told me she was going to wait for Molly outside the ER after her consult. Molly was picking her up there.
Allie. Shot. Outside. ER.
A cold sweat drips down the back of my neck, and my heart thunders. My hand tightens around Molly’s. My head spins and my breaths come in fast pants as the room around me blurs. I can’t see anything except for Molly sitting in front of me, and then I can’t see anything at all because tears are flooding my eyes and spilling over as I try and comprehend the incomprehensible.
Allie. Shot. Outside. ER.
“She died?” My voice is a raspy whisper.Died. The word sounds wrong in my mouth. Foreign. And for a second, I feel a surge of hope because any word that feels this wrong can’t possibly be true. Allie is perfection and brilliance and joy andlife. It’s impossible that all of those things exist in the same world asdied.Diedis impossible. Impossible things can’t be true things.
“She died, Jordan. I am so, so sorry.”
Molly’s voice is both stoic and full of pain, and it’s that combination that shoves reality at me like a high-speed train. And suddenly I know what she’s telling me is true, because I can feel it. The severing of a tie. An absence that lives and breathes.
A love so enormous that suddenly has nowhere to land.
The shattering of my heart, like it knows its other half is missing.
A grief too deep for tears.
“Allie.” It’s all I can manage, the word a whisper made up of the jagged pieces of a broken heart that will never be whole again.
CHAPTERONE
JORDAN
April
“6-0 prolene,” I say, holding out my hand to the scrub nurse standing to my right. When nothing lands in my palm, I turn to see what the holdup is at the same time as I hear snickering from the surgical intern across the table.
“What?” I ask, fixing him with my bestI’m an attending and you’ll do what I tell you to dolook. He immediately averts his gaze, suddenly extremely interested in the suction device in his hand. I sigh, so tired of interns I could scream. Ignoring the patient on the table with an open abdomen, I keep my stare on the intern whose name I can’t remember. Or maybe I never knew it at all. Learning interns’ names has not been high on my priority list in the two years I’ve been working at this hospital.
The operating room is silent as I wait for the intern to lift his eyes to mine. When he finally does, I see the hesitation in his eyes. Every part of me wants to ignore this entire non-exchange, but that’s not how teaching baby surgeons works. I may no longer be much of a people person, but I’m still a surgical attending at a hospital with a residency program, so teaching is part of my job.
“What exactly is so funny about my request for sutures to close this patient’s abdomen, and why are those sutures not in my hand right now?”
The intern says something, but between his nervous whisper and his surgical mask, I can’t make it out.
“Speak up,” I say, feeling my frustration rise. I want to close this patient and get the fuck out of this OR.
