This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bay

Colson shows up at her ER with flowers and Chantal, and begs her not to go with Lowry.

I slept four hours in an on-call room, and at seven the next morning Colson was standing in my emergency department with flowers.

They were carnations from the grocery store, still wrapped in the plastic with the price sticker.

He wore his county uniform, the gray jacket with the patch on the sleeve.

Every nurse at the triage desk had stopped typing.

"Mara." He held the carnations out in front of him. "Can we talk? Just five minutes."

"I have a case at seven thirty."

"Five minutes."

"Not here," I said.

"Then where? You blocked me. You blocked my number, Mar, I had to borrow a phone to reach you." His voice rose. "My wife won't take my call."

"Your ex-wife, in about a month," a nurse muttered behind me.

I did not turn around. I think I loved her a little for that.

"Colson, I signed the papers and so did you. That is all that's left to talk about."

"Because I left dinner for twenty minutes!" He looked around at the faces. "Does anyone here think that's a reason?"

Nobody answered him.

The doors from the waiting room slid open.

"Colson? Oh my gosh, there you are."

Chantal came in carrying a cardboard tray with two coffees, wearing a cream coat and a soft, worried face.

"I couldn't sleep," she said. "I've been calling you all night."

She walked straight past him and held a cup out to me.

"Mara, honey. Oat milk, one pump of vanilla. I remembered."

It was my coffee order. It was exactly right.

I took the cup, because it was hot and I had been up since five.

"Thank you, Chantal."

"Please let me say something." She pressed a hand to her chest. "I know I lean on Colson too much. I know it. It's just that nobody else ever answers when I call, and I get so scared by myself."

She was crying a little. The tears were real. They always were.

"He loves you," she said. "He talks about you all the time. Don't throw away eight years over me."

I looked at her, and for once I let myself see the whole thing.

A woman who had been scared for twenty-six years and had somebody to call every time.

And a husband who had never once told her to call someone else.

"I'm not throwing anything away," I said. "I'm putting it down."

"Mara..."

"You can keep him. You've had him longer."

Her face went still for half a second.

Then she turned to Colson and said, "See? She's just upset," and put a hand on his arm.

An ambulance backed into the bay behind the glass.

I heard the doors thump and the crew shouting the report, a car accident, a man with a chest injury.

"I have to go," I said. "That's mine."

"Wait." Colson stepped in front of me. "Walk me out, at least. The truck's at the far lot."

"You're parked in the far lot again?"

"It's the only free spot."

"The ambulance bay is right there. It's a hundred feet shorter."

"I'll go around."

"Walk through the bay, Colson."

I said it lightly, and I did not know why I said it.

"Your crew is bringing a patient in. You work for those people. Walk through the bay and say hello."

He looked at the bay doors.

All the color went out of his face.

He took a step toward them, and then a step back, and the carnations slipped from his hand onto the floor.

"I'll go around," he said again, very quietly.

He went out through the waiting room.

Chantal watched him go, and her eyes slid to me and back again.

"He's under a lot of stress," she said brightly. "I'll go talk to him."

She followed him out.

I stood there with the coffee going cold in my hand.

I had been married to that man for eight years.

I had never once seen him afraid of a door.

The crew wheeled the stretcher in, and I threw the coffee in the trash, pulled on gloves and ran the chest trauma.

It took ninety minutes. The man lived.

When I came out, my hands were still shaking from the adrenaline, and I leaned against the wall by the vending machines.

Someone caught my sleeve.

Colson had come back. He was alone, and he looked ten years older than he had that morning.

"I saw it on the calendar," he said. "The one we share. The flight confirmation came in at six."

"You went through my calendar."

"It was right there. Mara, listen to me."

His fingers were tight on my scrub top.

"Don't go on that mission. Don't go with Lowry."

I stared at him.

"How do you know who's running it?"

"It's in the invitation. Padraig Lowry." He said the name slowly. "Promise me you won't go. Please. Anything else, anywhere else. Just not him."

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