Chapter 2 - The Shift Change
By eight o'clock that evening, the storm outside had settled into a steady, dreary drizzle.
Beatrice stood in the locker room, unlacing her worn white leather sneakers. Her feet felt like two blocks of swollen lead. She pulled off her plum scrubs, threw them into the hamper, and pulled on a thick gray wool sweater, dark jeans, and her old combat boots.
When she opened the back exit door into the hospital parking lot, she didn't find the quiet night air.
She found a black Cadillac Escalade idling beside her ten-year-old Honda Civic.
The rear door of the Escalade swung open. Marco Vance stood beside it, holding an umbrella over his head. His expression was still rigid with dislike, but there was an unmistakable layer of forced respect beneath it.
"Mr. Castellano wants to ensure you arrive home safely," Marco said flatly.
Beatrice pulled her keys out of her pocket. "Mr. Castellano needs to take his antibiotic at nine PM and stop issuing orders to people who aren't on his payroll."
"It wasn't a request, Gallagher," Marco said, stepping closer. "The men who shot him on Thursday are still in the city. They saw the ambulance routing. They know which hospital he was taken to. If they find out an ER nurse kept him alive, they might decide to ask you questions."
Beatrice stopped with her key halfway to her driver's door lock.
She looked at Marco. She looked at the tinted windows of the Escalade.
"Are you threatening me, Vance?"
"I'm telling you how Detroit works," Marco replied. "Leonardo doesn't leave loose ends. And right now, you're the biggest loose end in his life."
Beatrice turned on her heel and walked straight past Marco toward the rear passenger seat of the Escalade. She yanked the door open.
Leonardo was sitting in the leather interior, wrapped in a dark cashmere coat over his hospital gown. A portable IV pole was squeezed into the footwell beside him.
"You're supposed to be in the ICU," Beatrice said, leaning into the vehicle.
"The ICU is noisy," Leonardo said smoothly. He gestured to the leather seat beside him. "Get in, Beatrice. Let my driver take you home."
"I have my own car."
"Your Honda has a flat left rear tire and a rusted exhaust pipe that’s going to fall off on the highway," Leonardo noted without blinking.
Beatrice narrowed her eyes. "Did you slash my tire?"
"I am a businessman, Beatrice, not a vandal," he said softly. "My man noticed it when you parked this morning. Get in the car. We'll put your Civic on a flatbed and have it fixed by tomorrow."
Beatrice looked back at her rain-slicked Civic, then at the warm, leather-scented interior of the luxury SUV. Her knee was throbbing like a bass drum.
"If you touch me," she said, climbing into the seat, "I will use the tourniquet in my coat pocket to cut off the arterial supply to your left leg."
Leonardo chuckled, closing the door behind her. "Fair deal."
As the heavy vehicle pulled out of the hospital parking lot, the quiet inside the cabin was thick. The rain streaked across the dark glass.
Leonardo leaned his head against the headrest, closing his eyes for a moment. The color was leaving his face again; the effort of sneaking out of the hospital was clearly taking its toll.
"Why didn't you let them make you a doctor?" he asked quietly, without opening his eyes.
Beatrice looked out the window at the passing streetlights. "Doctors diagnose. Nurses keep you alive while the doctors figure out what name to put on the chart. I prefer doing the work."
"You served."
It wasn't a question.
Beatrice glanced at him. "How do you know that?"
"The way you look at a room before you sit down," Leonardo said, opening his eyes to fix them on her profile. "The way you handled my blood like it was just water on a floor. The limp in your leg. You were military."
"68-Whiskey," Beatrice said flatly. "Trauma specialist. Afghanistan, two tours."
"And you came back to Detroit to deal with drunk teenagers and mobsters?"
"I came back because people everywhere break the same way," Beatrice said. She turned her head to meet his gaze. "Which brings me to my next point, Mr. Castellano. What 'She’s mine' is supposed to mean."
Leonardo’s mouth curved into that slow, dangerous smile. "It means what it sounded like."
"I am forty-one years old," Beatrice said coldly. "I weigh one hundred and eighty pounds. I have a mortgage on a small house in Ferndale, a cat with one eye, and zero interest in being a trophy for a man who uses gun violence as a negotiating tactic."
Leonardo didn't laugh this time. He looked at her—really looked at her—taking in the lines around her eyes, the strength in her shoulders, and the absolute lack of pretense in her posture.
"I don't need a trophy, Beatrice," he said softly, his voice dropping into a register that felt far too intimate for the back of an SUV. "I have dozens of trophies. They're fragile, they break when things get difficult, and they run away when they see blood."
He reached out. His large, calloused fingers brushed gently against the back of her hand resting on her lap.
"I need someone who doesn't blink when the world starts burning."
Beatrice pulled her hand away, her heart giving an uncharacteristic, treacherous thump against her ribs.
"This is my house," she said, pointing out the window at a modest brick bungalow with a small porch lamp burning in the rain.
The Escalade pulled to the curb.
Beatrice grabbed her bag and opened the door. Before she stepped out into the rain, she turned back to face him.
"Take your antibiotics, Leonardo. If you end up back in my trauma bay because of sepsis, I won't be nice."
Leonardo watched her walk up the wooden steps of her porch, her broad shoulders squared against the storm.
"She's going to be the death of me," Marco muttered from the front seat.
May you like
Leonardo smiled, his eyes never leaving her front door until the light inside turned on.
"No, Marco," he whispered. "She's the only reason I'm breathing."
