Page 34 of Full Moon Frenzy

He poured the troll a cup from his own thermos once they were back in the ambulance. “I’m going to tell you what no one bothered telling me a decade ago.” They’d been driving in silence for several minutes, but Trapp knew it was only a matter of time before the radio crackled to life. “If there’s something else you’re good at, you should do it. If you have another job opportunity, take it. Because this will bleed you dry. Mental health emergencies that will break your faith in the system. Domestics that’ll make you sick. You’re going to be first on the scene to accidents you won’t ever be able to stop seeing in your head, families and kids—” Trapp broke off, swallowing hard. “There’s a reason Vinlop and I both took the fire exam. Because I’d rather deal with a burning building every day of the week than the shit you’ll see every day in the box before lunch. If you think you won’t wind up with PTSD from this job, I’m here to be the bearer of bad news.”

Oleg laughed weakly. “Yeah, I’m starting to see that. Thanks, I guess. That doctor at the clinic . . . thanks for trying to defend me. I wanted to say something to the captain—”

“No, don’t,” Trapp cut in. “That was on me. Rosh wasn’t wrong; I shouldn’t have argued with her. She and I have a personal history and I let that get in the way, but you don’t ever do that. That’s the other thing you need to get used to. The doctors are going to treat you like shit. Make friends with the nurses and learn to hold your tongue.”

“Why did you leave? I mean, that’s what you were in school for, right? To be a doctor? Why did you drop out?”

Trapp blew out an aggrieved breath. “I didn’t drop out! I was at the top of my class! The next bit of very important information you need to internalize before this fucking light changes is that you can only believe an eighth of whatever story you hear at the bar or at the coffee shop. The rest of it is bullshit that changes depending on who’s telling it.”

Oleg laughed as Trapp considered how he wanted to proceed.

“I finished medical school,” he went on after a moment. “I did two years of my residency. Then I dropped out. I hated it. That was it; there’s no big secret reason. I didn’t punch my attending. I didn’t start crying because I screwed something up, or whatever the fuck Xenna and her crew are spreading around. I hated the hospital I matched into, that was a big part of it. I hated all of the politicking and bureaucracy. Half the attendings I worked under spent more time trying to backstab each other and influence their way up the ladder than they did actually helping patients.”

Trapp trailed off, the memory of his residency closer to the surface these days, stirred up from the bottom of the pot by Adriana’s arrival in town. What he didn’t disclose to Oleg was how easy it would have been for him to ascend in the hospital ecosystem. How much weight the Hemming name carried in certain circles; how a well-timed round of golf with the right hospital board member could change his fate, having nothing to do with his skills or lack thereof on the hospital floor, and perhaps worse — how good he was in particular at exploiting that advantage. His easy smile, his always on-script delivery . . . politicians by birth, if not by profession, the whole lot of them.

Trapp hated it. He knew it was a system that he’d benefitted from starting the moment he was born, but he’d had a front row seat to the uglier, internal side of that easy privilege as well. He didn’t want to play the same games Jackson and Gray plotted their lives around. He didn’t want to be like his father. He hated the thought of ever being anything like his grandfather, and that on its own had nearly been enough for him to quit the system that was all too eager to hoist him up. Hating the hospital had been a bonus.

“When you come from a family like mine, you know firsthand how all of that shreds folks from the inside out,” he finished half-heartedly, not clarifying his words for Oleg. Luckily, the troll didn’t ask. “I hated being in a human-centric city, that was like 90 percent of our patients and no one gave a shit about the other 10 percent. That’s not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I just figured it out a few years too late.”

“But you wanted to do this?” Oleg’s voice was laced with disbelief, making Trapp laugh again.

“Believe it or not, yes. I wanted to help people. I mean, not this specifically, because I’m not joking. You will wind up with serious psychological damage doing this job for more than a few years.”

The radio crackled at last, an orc with lower abdominal pain, too strong for him to drive himself to the hospital. “All bays at Healers are currently full. Proceed to the urgent care facility,” the dispatch instructed.

Perfect. He’d not seen her since his first day back, the day they’d picked up the ogre from the same engineering campus where Owen worked. His cock jumped against his leg, thickening at the mere thought of seeing her long, dark hair, remembering the way it had tickled his chest as he’d fucked her from behind, thinking of the way she’d moaned beneath him, making his wolf howl . . .

He’d already given her the first taste of the new status quo. Those four days of his suspension had given him plenty of time to revisit the procedural manual, for if having Jackson and Grayson as siblings had taught him nothing else in life, it was that compliance could be malicious. He just needed to get through the handoff without coming in his pants.

“I don’t think I like that face you’re making,” Oleg laughed nervously.

“Don’t worry, Oleg,” Trapp told the troll with a sharp-edged grin. “This will be completely by the book . . . Copy that, dispatch. We’re en route.”

Adriana

She was standing at the central desk when the automatic doors slid open, the ambulance’s flashing red lights casting a brilliant gleam on the clinic’s windows.

Trapp looked exactly as he had the last time she’d seen him — immaculate, rigid, his uniform shirt buttoned to the throat despite the stifling humidity outside, like an advertisement for public safety, the navy-blue fabric stretched over his biceps in a way that tested every single thread.

The troll recited the patient’s status and vitals in a practiced, robotic tone, doing his best to emulate his ride-along mentor, and Adriana was forced to admit it was already a marked improvement from the very first day the ambulance had pulled up to their doors. An orc with acute lower abdominal pain. Shileen was already pushing another cot for the transfer, but Adriana held up a hand, stopping her.

“Before I accept the transfer of this patient, I require a physical demonstration of your field diagnostic verification.”

His eyes locked on hers, fury trembling his jaw when he arrived at the meaning of her words. It was the first time he’d looked her fully in the eye since before she’d filed her complaint against him, and the fire she saw there thrilled her.

“Patient is presenting with acute lower quadrant abdominal pain, suspected appendicitis. Core vitals are stable. The data is on the electronic run sheet, Doctor.”

“I see the run sheet.” Adriana kept her hands plunged into the pockets of the lab coat so that he wouldn’t see the way she trembled. “What I don’t see is the documented confirmation of a negative Swillup’s sign to rule out cholecystitis. Your report lists a generalized abdominal assessment. Per Tri-County protocol Section 14, assessment must be performed and verbally verified in front of the receiving physician for all non-traumatic abdominal distress cases.”

A weak huff of incredulous laughter escaped the troll at Trapp’s side, the young EMT taking a small, seemingly involuntary step back towards the glass doors.

“I performed the assessment in the field, Doctor,” Trapp said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register that vibrated with barely-suppressed fury. “The abdomen is rigid in the lower right quadrant. It’s the appendix.”

“Your verbal claim is not a clinical verification, Medic.” She took a step closer, if only to let the smell of him invade her fully. Pine and black pepper, spicy on her tongue, cut with something bright, like a juicy orange. Her mouth watered, and she hoped he was not able to tell that her knees were shaking. “Palpate the right upper quadrant. Right now, let’s verify it together. Unless, of course, you’re unsure of the anatomical boundaries for a localized gallbladder assessment.”

It was an insult to his medical knowledge, his training, especially galling as she knew for a fact he had the same medical education she did . . . but that wasn’t the fucking point. He wasn’t the doctor on this floor. He wasn’t going to come into this clinic over and over again and try to humiliate her.

His knuckles were white around the metal rail of the stretcher, tendons raised on his sinewy forearm, showing her how tightly he was holding himself. Trapp turned back to the patient slowly, deliberately, his huge hand hovering over the orc’s upper right abdomen.