Page 112 of The Embers That Remain

Her ice-blue eyes found mine.

Twice.

Three times.

Each quick glance carried more concern than the last. A chill crawled over my skin. She ended the call, immediately grabbed the phone again, and dialed another number.

“Dr. Wrosch, this is Nurse Lacy in the ER. We need you to report immediately.”

My fingers went cold. That was the thing about trauma. Before your brain processed the details, your body recognized danger.

This was usually the call I made. Lacy had watched me walk into chaos with steady hands more times than I could count. The fact that she was making the call for me meant something was different.

Multiple victims.

A mass casualty.

Or—

My stomach twisted.

Someone I loved.

The room shifted beneath the weight of what I already knew. My grip tightened around the edge of the counter. I had worked trauma in Austin. I knew the signs—the urgency in her voice, the decision she made before anyone else knew what was coming. My heart already knew which possibility it was.

She hung up and crossed the room toward me.

“Cali.” Her hands wrapped around my shoulders, grounding me.

“Just tell me,” I pleaded.

“Lane has a head injury.” The world narrowed to those five words.

A breath caught somewhere in my chest. Lane.

“The EMTs heard you were dating and called ahead because they knew you were on shift,” Lacy explained quietly, watching my face. Things like this only happened in a small town, and I was grateful they had the foresight to call.

“I’ve got this,” I said. The words came out steadier than I felt.

Outside, sirens cut off as the ambulance turned into the bay. My feet moved before my fear could catch up. I would do everything in my power to be the Nurse Practitioner I needed to be, then I’d hand things off to Dr. Wrosch so I could be the girlfriend that was barely holding herself together.

The ambulance doors flew open.

“Thirty-two-year-old male,” one of the EMTs called as they rolled the gurney inside. “Blunt force trauma to the head from assault. Loss of consciousness at the scene. Regained consciousness briefly during transport. GCS thirteen on scene, now twelve and trending down. Laceration to the left temporal region. Blood pressure eighty-seven over fifty-six. Heart rate one-ten.”

Assault.

I had treated broken bones. I had closed wounds. I had stopped bleeding. But I had no idea how to fix the fact that someone had looked at Lane and decided he deserved to be hurt. That was the part I couldn’t process.

My mind searched for answers before I wanted it to.

Who? Why? And then one name surfaced—the one Lane had spent years trying to escape. I pushed it away. Not because I believed it wasn’t possible. Because I was terrified that it was.

A different emotion followed close behind the fear. Something hotter. Sharper. Something I knew exactly how to name.

Anger.

Because whoever had done this hadn’t just hurt Lane. They had hurt someone who spent his entire life trying not to hurt anyone else.