Page 60 of Clinically Awkward

And I still had no idea what the hell I was going to do about it.

But first?

First, I had to save some lives.

Then I could deal with the fact that mine was completely falling apart.

The ER doors burst open and chaos erupted.

Ambulances screamed into the bay one after another. Paramedics shouted vitals. Nurses ran in every direction. The waiting room was already overflowing with the walking wounded—people with lacerations, possible fractures, and shock-glazed eyes. The smell of blood and antiseptic hit me like a physical force.

I dropped my bag at the nurses’ station without breaking stride.

Martha, the head triage nurse and a woman who’d been doing this job longer than I’d been alive, thrust the phone at me before I could even ask what was happening.

“Your lead,” she said simply. “Organize it.”

Right.

Lead doctor of Emergency Triage.

That was me.

I took a breath—just one, because that was all I could afford—and my brain shifted. The personal catastrophe, the dread about Julien, the awkwardness with Vivian—all of it got shoved into a locked box in the back of my mind. There was no room for it here. There was only the work.

“Martha, I need you coordinating triage,” I barked into the phone, already moving toward the ER floor. “Get me a count on incoming. Nathan, internal medicine. I want you in bay three. Gabriel, pediatrics in bay five. Hayden, cover minor cuts and breaks, bay two. Fitz, you’re with me in bay one.”

“Quinton, I’m OBGYN,” Fitz protested, appearing at my elbow like a bad penny.

“Not today, you’re not. Move.”

He moved.

Vivian was already in motion, her nurse’s instincts kicking in as she started assessing patients, her hands steady, her voice calm as she directed people to different bays. I caught her eye for half a second, just long enough to see her nod, and then she was gone, all business.

The next two hours were a blur of controlled chaos.

I fell into the rhythm of it: assess, triage, direct. A woman with a compound fracture went to Nathan. A kid with a possible head injury went to Gabriel. An elderly man with chest pain went to Hayden. Each decision made in seconds, each one potentially life-or-death, each one requiring absolute certainty I didn’t actually feel but had learned to fake years ago.

The ER transformed under pressure. What had been pandemonium became precision. Doctors and nurses moved like they’d choreographed it, responding to my orders without question. IV lines went in. Monitors beeped. Surgeons were called. The machine hummed.

And I was the one keeping it all running.

It was the only thing I was good at, really. The only place where my brain didn’t betray me with feelings and complications and the terrifying reality that I had completely destroyed my best friendship by sleeping with his sister.

Here, I was just a doctor.

Here, I could save lives.

Here, nothing else mattered.

The last ambulance arrived around 7 PM. A teenager with a laceration to the leg, stable vitals, nothing we hadn’t already handled a dozen times. I directed him to bay four and actually sighed in relief.

The worst was over. We had made it through. Everyone was accounted for, everyone was being treated, and the ER was no longer drowning in incoming patients. I could feel the tension in my shoulders ease for the first time in hours.

That was my mistake, because in the next moment, Nathan grabbed my arm. “Come with me,” he hissed, yanking me toward the supply closet before I could protest.

“Nathan, what the—” I barely got out as he shoved me inside and slammed the door.