Val sat outside of the hospital on a bench with her head in her hands. She needed to breathe. She had to calm herself. She had already cried for the past thirty minutes at least. She had to get herself composed. But who was she kidding? She was an absolute mess. Tears worked up into her eyes, but she tried to keep them back. She was a failure. She was never meant to be in her line of work.
She leaned back on the bench. She craned her head back looking back at the oddly colored sky as the sun began to rise somewhere off in the distance. She reached into her scrub pocket and pulled out a lighter and a cigarette. She put the cigarette between her lips and lit it. She took a nice long draw and let it loose in a smooth stream.
She dug her phone out of her other pocket and scrolled through her contact list until she found Luke's name. She stared at it for half of her cigarette so she could calm her nerves enough so she could call him. He couldn't know that there was anything wrong. She pressed her finger to his name so she could call him.
Unfortunately, as soon as she heard Luke's voice, she could already feel the knot in her throat. It blocked off her breath so bad that it hurt. She choked back a sob and leaned forward on the bench. She ran her hand through her hair careful of the cigarette.
"Val, is everything okay?" Luke asked quickly. She sniffled as she ran her hand under her nose. She was almost certain that she had snot and all other gross bodily fluids that seemed to escape human orifices whenever they were falling apart.
"No," she managed to get out somehow. She took a deep breath leaning her head back to look at the sky. "Can you just come get me?"
"I'm already on my way, baby." She scoffed out a sob burying her face in her hand. God he was so perfect. Here she was in the midst of a mental breakdown and she didn't even have to tell him to come sweep her off her feet. She just hated that she was just too emotional to tell him.
"I'm sitting out front. I'll see you in a bit." She hung up the phone without saying goodbye because she didn't want him pressing the matter. All she wanted to do was go home and go to bed just so she could forget everything. She knew that was just wishful thinking, but it never hurt to dream. She took a long drag from her cigarette and let it out before she heard the strange sound of a man making a sound of pity.
She glanced over to see an old man sitting in a wheelchair that was being pushed by one of the nurses that worked in an area she wasn't apart of. His hair was so thin that she wasn't sure if he could be considered bald or not. He had liver spots all over his body. The rheumatoid arthritis was so bad that she was certain that he couldn't close his hands. He had a cigarette in his lips that the nurse lit for him.
"You look like you had a rough night," he said. His voice was weak, but deep. She didn't answer him at first. It wasn't that she was trying to be rude by ignoring him, it was the fact that she wasn't sure if she really could.
"Yeah." The old man hummed taking a drag from his smoke. He looked back at the nurse and shooed her away. The nurse looked to Val and Val nodded in a silent agreement that she could watch him while she took a step back. Val couldn't say what it was that made her agree to watch him, but she just felt like it needed to be done. The nurse stepped away leaving Val and the old man alone.
"What area of the hospital do you work in?" he asked scooting a little closer to her. She glanced at him then looked to the pavement beneath her feet.
"I work in the emergency room." The old man hummed taking another drag from his cigarette.
"Are you just trying to calm down or do you have someone coming to pick you up?" Val threw her cigarette down and stomped it out.
"My boyfriend is on his way," she quietly said. The term "boyfriend" still felt weird on her tongue, but what else could she call him? She felt too old to have a boyfriend.
"Boyfriend? He must be a lucky man to have such a pretty young thing like you," he said causing Val to chuckle. She looked at him and she could see a little sparkle in his eye.
"I'm going to be a little cliche and say that I'm the lucky one." The old man laughed a little then he began to cough. He shook violently as he coughed and Val frowned. It was hard to tell how old the man was and it was even harder to say how long that he had been smoking to cause those violent coughing fits. He finally settled down after a bit and took another drag of his cigarette.
"My late wife was a nurse," he started looking up at the massive building behind Val. "As a matter of fact, it was at this very hospital before it had become Sacred Hearts." He paused for a moment taking one more drag from his cigarette watching the hospital as if it held fond memories. "Of course, back in those days, times were a whole lot simpler. You didn't have these," he paused throwing his hand out, "gangs that you see on the news at night." Val shifted in the way that she was sitting thinking back to her experience with the gang member that came at her with a scalpel.
Val looked back to the old man. She supposed that back in his day, LA was a completely different place. People were still decent people. Back in his day, the worst thing you could do was smoke a joint. It was different nowadays. So different.
"My wife," he continued. "She was a nurse in the ER. Worked alongside doctors." He finally made eye contact with her. "Are you a doctor or a nurse."
"A doctor." The old man fell silent for a moment.
"You know, there was something my wife said to me." He paused for effect. "The day you come home unaffected by something you seen working in the ER, was the day that you had lost your soul." Val wasn't necessarily certain how that was supposed to make her feel any better, but somehow it did. The old man flicked his cigarette away and dug into his jacket pocket pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He put it in his mouth then reached his hand out to offer her a cigarette. She knew she really shouldn't have since smoking was something that Val never really did, but she obliged him. She lit the cigarette.
They sat in silence for a while just enjoying the night air and for that matter, each other's company. She flicked her cigarette away from her barely even half way through it because she just couldn't handle it. She had never really smoked unless the situation at hand was really, really stressful. She coughed trying to get the sensation of having something stuck in her throat out.
"How long have you and your boyfriend been together?" the old man asked. Val shrugged. How long had they been together? Seven months? Eight months? She relayed it to him. He hummed.
"Time doesn't matter when you're with someone. It doesn't matter if you've been together for one month or one year, just as long as you hold those moments you have together dear." Val grinned looking at him. Val's attention was drawn away from him as she heard Luke's truck pull up. She stood then glanced back to the old man to say her goodbyes, but he was no longer there. She frowned then looked around, but she was the only one there. Not even the nurse that had pushed him up to her was in sight. She stepped closer to Luke's truck as the confusion turned into an unsettling fear. She knew she wasn't going crazy. She was having a conversation with an old man in a wheelchair. Wasn't she? She glanced in the direction of where she had flicked her cigarette away, but she couldn't find it. She bit her lip then jumped in Luke's truck.
He didn't say anything as she buckled. He pulled away from the curb.
"Can we go back to my place?" Luke nodded. Val fidgeted with her hands until they reached her place.
"I'm going to go run a bubble bath," she said. Luke watched her as she made her way back to her room. He waited for a few moments before he followed after her. As he stepped into her bedroom he saw her walking into her bathroom wearing her robe.
Val stepped into her bathroom and knelt down next to her tub and put the stopper in the drain. She turned on the hot water and waited for it to heat up before she started adjusting the cold water until it was the perfect temperature. She sighed as she slouched next to her tub. She saw Luke standing in the doorway with his shoulder against the threshold. He said nothing to her. Val reached over to a small rack that hang on the side of her tub that held her bubble bath and other assortments. She grabbed her bubble bath and poured some into the water that was collecting in the bottom of her tub. When she placed it back in its place, she sighed once more than glanced at Luke.
"There was a fifteen year old girl that came in tonight," she started quietly. "She was in her third trimester and she had been stabbed repeatedly. Her vitals were all over the place and I was worried that she had went into an early labor because of the trauma that had been done to her body." Luke made no movement. "We got her into a room. We cut off her clothes so we could start on surgery and that was when I noticed some of the stab wounds were in her womb." She paused for a moment as she felt the knot return to her throat. She felt tears start rolling down her cheeks. She sniffled a little. "I couldn't save them, Luke. They were already too far gone. I did an emergency c section hoping that the baby was okay, at least, but one of the stab wounds were through his little heart." She paused again as she leaned her head back as if doing so would help her force the tears back. "The cops said that it was her father that did it and when he had realized what he had done, he shot himself." She wiped her tears away. "Why do people do the things they do?"
Luke finally moved by pushing himself away from the doorframe and stepped into the bathroom. He stepped next to her then reached his hand down to her. She looked to his large hand in front of her face, then looked up to him. She reached her hand out and wrapped her fingers around his hand. He pulled her up gently then placed his hand on her cheek.
"You did everything you could. You know as well as I do that you can't save them all." Val closed her eyes with a sigh.
"I know," she whispered. "But why her and that baby? Neither of them deserved that. I don't care what happened."
"I know." She glanced down to the bathtub to see that it was about half full so she started to undo her robe. She dropped it from her shoulders letting it collect on the floor behind her feet. She looked back up to Luke.
"Would you like to join me?" she asked. Luke's hand fell from her cheek and he made his way to the bathroom door.
"I don't do baths." She grinned. Val stepped into the bathtub and leaned back. She let out a relaxing sigh. She leaned her head back against the side of the bathtub and closed her eyes. "Are you hungry?" She shook her head. "I was going to cook some breakfast." She grinned opening her eyes to glance at him.
"Alright fine." Luke grinned at her then stepped the rest of the way out of the bathroom. Val let out one more sigh. She thought back to the old man that she had a conversation with before he had up and disappeared. She wondered what had happened. Could she have hallucinated the entire thing? Had she zoned out and the nurse had taken him back inside without her realizing it? She tried to think back to the last thing he had said to her, but she couldn't remember what it was. She lifted her hand from the water and rubbed her forehead slowly. She didn't want to tell Luke about him because she was worried that he would find her crazy. Hell, she felt crazy.
She drifted off into her own little world as the tub filled up to her shoulders. She turned the water off and let the silence engulf her. She was alone with her thoughts. If she actually thought anything at that moment. She was so fried from the night before that she was sure she wouldn't be capable of a solid thought for at least another couple days.
She came to when she could smell Luke's cooking wafting into the bathroom. She wasn't sure how long she had been in the tub, but it was long enough. She pulled the stopper then stepped out of the tub placing her feet on the floor mat next to the tub. She dried off with her robe then walked into her bedroom to put clothes on. Once she was dressed in bed clothes, she walked into the kitchen to see him standing in front of her stove. She could see something piled on a plate just before he placed something more on it. She stepped next to him to see what he was cooking. It was French Toast.
"How did you learn how to cook so good?" she asked grabbing one of the slices from the plate and tore a piece off to start munching on it. How was it that she wasn't even hungry, but when he cooked, she was suddenly starving?
"My mom. Her cooking is better." Val gave him a look of disbelief. There was no way that she could cook better than him. No one could cook better than him. His cooking could put the finest chefs in the world to shame. She lifted herself up onto her cabinet top then munched some more on her slice of French Toast. "So, I'm going to be going up to my cabin for a couple weeks in a couple days." He paused for a moment so he could flip the slice of French Toast in the pan. "Why don't you come with me?"
"I can't get that kind of time off work so soon," she said tearing another piece of her toast.
"You could try," he said moving the pan from the eye and turned it off. She rolled her eyes not really wanting to argue with him.
"Fine. I'll try, but it's not going to work." She grinned as he leaned against the counter next to her and looked at her. "Two weeks alone with you in a cabin? I think you'd get a little sick of me." Luke scoffed.
"Nah, that started months ago." Val gave him a flat look.
Author's Note: Here's another chapter guys! Hope everyone is doing well! Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. You're all wonderful! We are less than twenty reviews away from 100! Come guys we're almost there! Haha! I know this chapter is a little short, but I will make up for it. I always do.
Aven