He Scored My Life A 4 And Hers A 10 novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Four Minutes Away
Pinned in a freeway pileup, Casey watches her husband's location turn toward his ex, then watches him score her life a 4 and Brooke's a 10 in her own ER, strikes him off her chart and hands him her ring in a specimen cup, and sees the same numbers on the new triage screen.
My husband scored everything in his life.
His coffee. His workouts. His mother's phone calls.
One to ten, every night at ten, when his watch buzzed "Daily review."
High score meant high priority. Anything under five got cut.
His mother had been a 3 for two years. He let her calls ring out.
He wrote a bestseller about it. If It's Not a Ten, It's a No.
I never worried. I was his wife.
The night of his big launch party, Bryce scored my plus-one a 6.
"Come after the speeches," he said. "You'll be bored by the speeches."
So at 8:40 I was alone on the freeway in my good black dress, in a snowstorm.
The semi ahead of me started to slide sideways.
I watched it happen very slowly.
Then the world was glass and steel and a noise.
When I could think again, the dashboard was in my lap.
My right shin was pinned under it.
I'm an ER nurse. I knew what the angle of my foot meant.
I found my phone on the floor mat and called my husband.
He picked up on the third ring. Behind him there was music and a microphone.
"Casey? You're late."
"I've been in a wreck. I-94, by the Marquette Interchange. My leg's broken. I'm stuck."
"Okay. Okay. I'm coming. Don't move."
"I can't move, Bryce."
I opened the app where we shared our locations.
His blue dot was four minutes away.
I watched it start toward me.
Snow blew in through the broken window and sat on my knees.
At 8:46 his dot stopped.
Then it turned around.
I called him. It rang out.
On the fourth try he answered, breathing hard.
"Casey, listen. Brooke slid off Lincoln Memorial Drive. She's hysterical. She's all alone out there."
"I'm all alone out here."
"You're a nurse. You know exactly what to do. Brooke doesn't."
"My leg is broken."
"An ambulance is coming to you anyway. I'll see you at the hospital."
He hung up.
His blue dot slid away from me, toward Brooke Merriweather.
His college girlfriend. His co-founder. The woman whose name he'd said in his sleep twice last year.
Forty minutes later a helmet light filled my window.
"Hey. I'm Jesse, I'm a paramedic. What's your name?"
"Casey Wardlow. Closed tib-fib, right side, no loss of consciousness, pulse one-ten. Your light's in my eyes."
He moved the light.
A beard full of snow. Brown eyes I knew.
"Wardlow. Lakeshore triage. You yelled at me about my handwriting on Tuesday."
"It's still terrible."
"It's worse in the cold." He reached in and put his glove on my shoulder. "We're taking your door off. It'll be loud. You can yell at me the whole time."
The saw was loud.
I yelled.
In the rig he tucked a blanket around my bare shoulders.
"Somebody meeting you?"
"My husband."
He looked at the empty bench across from me and didn't say a word.
They rolled me into my own ER.
Every bed was full, so I got a hallway stretcher beside the triage desk.
At 9:55 the front doors slid open.
Bryce walked in carrying Brooke.
Her arms were around his neck. Her left wrist was wrapped in his scarf.
Camel coat. Perfect hair. Not one drop of blood.
"She needs a doctor now," Bryce told the desk. "She's in shock."
He walked right past my stretcher.
"Bryce."
He stopped. He looked at the splint and the blood on my dress.
"Good, you're here. You're in the right place." He nodded at me like I was a delivery he'd been expecting. "Brooke's terrified. She's never even been in a hospital."
Brooke turned her face into his neck.
"I'm so sorry, Casey. He just wouldn't leave me."
The waiting room was packed. Sixty seats.
A man with a bloody towel on his hand. A grandmother with a sleeping toddler.
All of them watching us.
Bryce set Brooke down in a wheelchair.
Then his watch buzzed.
Ten o'clock. Daily review.
He took out his phone and opened the Ledger, right there.
My stretcher was at the height of his hip. I could read every word.
He scrolled down to People.
He typed.
Casey: 4. Tough, she's a nurse, she'll manage.
Brooke: 10.
He saved it without looking at me once.
Ronnie Sayers, my charge nurse, came over with my admission sheet.
"Emergency contact and health care agent," she said. "Still him?"
Ronnie has one volume. The whole waiting room heard.
"No," I said.
Bryce looked up from his phone.
"Cross him out. Both lines." I took her pen and struck through his name so hard the paper tore. "Ronnie Sayers. Write it big. If I go under tonight, he doesn't decide one thing about me."
"Casey, you're in pain," Bryce said, in his podcast voice. "You're not thinking clearly."
"I'm thinking fine. I just watched you score me."
The man with the bloody towel lowered it.
Bryce's ears went red. "That's private."
I twisted at my wedding ring.
My fingers were swollen from the cold. It took skin with it coming off.
There was a sterile specimen cup on the counter.
I dropped the ring in, snapped the lid on and held it out to him.
"Here. Your four."
He didn't take it.
Ronnie took it out of my hand and shoved it in his coat pocket herself.
Somebody in the back row said, "Damn."
Brooke touched his sleeve. "Let it go, babe. She's in shock."
Ronnie pushed my stretcher past the desk toward X-ray.
Then she stopped.
She bent close, and for the first time in seven years she spoke quietly.
"Casey. Look at this. It went live tonight. Nobody told us."
She turned the triage monitor toward me.
Across the top was the hospital logo, and under it a brand-new banner.
Priority scoring by TenScore.
Below it ran the waiting room queue, highest score first.
Merriweather, Brooke. 10.
Wardlow, Casey. 4.
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