Read Online Playing Doctor (Bandit Creek Books) by Julie Rowe - Free Book Online Page A

with it?”
    “No. I’d disarm him, tie him up and ask him what the fuck. But, that’s not what’s happening here. Someone is trying to kill me and endangering a whole boatload of other people in the process. I’m so angry that he would do this that I want to hurt him.”
    “Are you angry about him trying to kill you or the possibility he might hurt someone else as he’s trying to kill you?”
    “The someone else part.”
    “So, the trying to kill you part doesn’t make you mad?”
    “Who cares?” she yelled. “The number of innocent bystanders that could get hurt is staggering.”
    “So is the number of people you can help or save or get healthy again. You act as if your death would be insignificant, when it’s the opposite.”
    “I want to prevent a bloodbath, not treat a roomful of bullet wounds.”
    “By dying?”
    She recoiled as if he’d struck her. “I never said that.”
    “It sounded like suicide by nutcase to me.”
    “Suicide? I’m not suicidal.”
    “Anyone who says they’d rather be shot than not, sounds like they’re signing up for hari-kari detail.”
    “You’re twisting my words.”
    “I don’t think so. I also don’t think you can even hear what you’re saying.”
    “And what is that?”
    “A cry for help.”
    No one could help her. She’d already made the mistake and forgiveness would never come because she’d killed the people who could offer it.
    But, if it would get Smitty off her back, she’d play the game his way for a while. “Is there help for people like me? Like us?”
    He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Yes. I think there is. All you have to do is accept it.”
    “How?”
    “You could try talking about it, about the crash.”
    “I told the Sheriff, and it seemed to help, for a little while. I can barely bring myself to think about it without wanting to throw up. Who could I talk to? How do I talk about it?”
    “You could talk to me, and you talk about it any way you can.”
    She released a deep sigh. “I’m so tired, so very, very tired of carrying all this crap around.”
    “I know how you feel.”
    “Do you? Do you relive it over and over? Do you hear the screams and smell the blood?”
    “Yeah. I was there and I haven’t forgotten a thing.”
    She let the silence coat her open wounds for a moment until she felt like she’d been given an anesthetic for the worst ones. “I feel so damn guilty I survived when so many others didn’t.”
    “Survivor’s guilt sucks.”
    “I understand, rationally, that I shouldn’t feel that way, but reason seems to be irrelevant. I also knew I’d feel this way, yet that doesn’t seem to make a difference either.”
    “Emotions aren’t rational and never will be.”
    “What really bothers me in the middle of the night is all the people I could have saved had we been just a little closer to help. Had the chopper survived the crash just a little better.”
    “We’re lucky anyone survived the crash.”
    “I don’t feel lucky.”
    “Listen, all you can do is focus on the future and figure out how you can pay it forward. You’ve been given a second chance at life. Don’t waste it.”
    “You think that might help?”
    “It couldn’t hurt.”
    She stopped talking and let herself think about it for all of a second or two. No, there was only one way for this to end and it wasn’t with counseling sessions at another doctor’s office. “I’ll consider it.”
    They continued across the bumpy track, heading into denser trees. It almost looked like the trail ended abruptly in a wall of foliage, but there was a dip and a turn that took them to the right, then left and they were at the cabin. It wasn’t large, just one room with a loft, a wood burning stove and enough sleeping bags for a small army.
    The sun was setting, which meant they didn’t have long to move their supplies inside before they lost their light. They moved quickly, but efficiently together, working to get the job done as if they’d