Read Online To Begin Anew (Blue Jay Romance) by Eliza Gerard - Free Book Online

brother. He’d just finished a story about the time Daddy stubbed his toe and said a dirty word.
     
    Danny chimed in, “Yeah, he says he’s not but we can tell. Daddy doesn’t have any friends.”
     
    Debra didn’t think that the lack of friends meant a person was lonely, but then again, children saw the world differently. She said, “He works very hard and sometimes that means you have to give up things that other people have. I’m sure he has friends at work.”
     
    David shrugged. “We think we should find friends for him.” His eyes glanced up at her and when they met hers, he looked away quickly. “I think you should be Daddy’s friend too.”
     
    Danny sniggered. “We tried with Miss Morgan, but Daddy really didn’t like her.” He looked at Debra expectantly.
     
    Debra rolled her eyes but then smiled. “I’m his friend, I suppose.” She smirked, “I’ll be an even better friend if he doesn’t take anymore of my apples.”
     
    ~*~*~
     
    Eric ran down the long, confusing corridors, almost skidding as he came to a stop at the elevators. The overhead speaker was buzzing in his ears from previous calls to get his rear downstairs, his pocket cell phone having gone haywire. They needed more hands down in the E.R. and needed them yesterday.
     
    He felt his heart pound in his chest, sure that when he’d moved to a small town accidents would be few and far between and nothing like he’d seen on a regular basis in the city. He’d handled his share of cases where the wreck was the person and not the train. If his stint on the television had taught him anything, it was the fact that real life was far different than the edited version people were bottle fed as they sat on their sofas.
     
    As soon as he stepped from the elevator into the E.R., he was yanked by his white jacket and directed to triage, where he’d been told a man with severe lacerations was fighting to hold onto life.
     
    Eric’s eyes took the man in, his experience telling him all he needed to know in a matter of moments and with measured breaths he directed the nurses to do what they could beyond what the emergency technicians had been able to do. The man was recognizable as human as far as basic shapes in preschool went. When it came looking closer, there was nothing left that distinguished the man as an individual. In the back of his mind, Eric always fought the logic that warred with his heart, the cool and all-inclusive logic that never took emotion into account. Logic told him that this man had suffered too much blood loss, that in a small town like this the hospitals weren’t equipped to treat the severity of the wounds - that at most, he could attempt to fly him out to a larger city - even if the math said he would die before he got off the tarmac.
     
    Eric knew logic didn’t hold a candle to the perseverance of the heart, that sometimes no matter how much the facts dictated something was going to happen, if you believed hard enough, prayed hard enough, the outcome could change. He had seen it on more than one occasion, had known that sometimes what you thought didn’t matter to what fate had planned, to what The Plan was.
     
    He was in the middle of sealing a laceration when the heart monitor flat-lined.
     
    “No,” Eric managed in a whisper, his eyes darting to read the machine as his mind raced with his hands. As the nurses dropped what they were doing and prepared a defibrillator, he equipped his emotions to catch up with what his mind already knew was about to happen.
     
    Not like the movies , he thought briefly and strangled it before the nurses were clear of their patient’s body as he pressed the charged paddles to the man’s chest. The electricity conducted through the limbs, making the body jump and there was a second or two as the heart monitor responded before it flat-lined again. Eric hit the man again, noticed the same response and then nothing at all. The heart monitor continued to sound the