Edge of Chaos (21 page)

Ten hours
later…

Kayla collapses in
an empty chair by the triage desk. She closes her eyes for one delicious moment
and savours the break in action.  After a few minutes Doctor Collins joins her.
For him to be taking a break is highly unusual.  He takes the seat next to her,
swivels around and studies her with a practiced eye.

“So what’s going
on Kayla? You’re not yourself today,” he observes.

“Excuse me?”

“Come one Kayla,
we’ve worked side by side for over ten years. I think I know when something’s
troubling you."

She looks up at
her favourite ER doctor. He is actually extremely handsome. He is tall, about
six feet…three or so and very obviously spends a significant amount of his
downtime taking care of himself. He looks to be in his late thirties but she’s
pretty sure he is much closer to forty-five than thirty-five. He is the Michael
Jordan of the ER. Jordan had the ability to dominate others with his mind alone
before he even took a single shot. And that’s how Doctor Collins maintains
control in the one of the most chaotic work environments there is. He can see
when things are starting to spin out of control and his presence in the
department is like a very powerful analgesic. People just calm down. But he
also brings out the best in everyone too. They know how demanding he can be,
and he’s like a hawk. His eyes don’t miss a thing and when you don’t make the
best choice or do the procedure exactly right he gives you this look, kind of like
your parents used to do. Kayla remembers as a kid when she screwed up and her
parents would just sit down and tell her how very disappointed they were in
her. She always hated that. Like most kids they’d rather their parents jump up
and down and scream a little than tell them they have failed to live up to
their potential and have truly disappointed them. Doctor Collins is the same
way. You’d much rather have him go off and just start berating you than his
silent talk. Nobody wants to disappoint Doctor Collins especially if you have
aspirations of becoming a doctor; like so many of Kayla’s co-workers.

“You’re not
yourself Kayla,” Doctor Collins remarks as they sit and unwind.

“What do you
mean?”

“Since when do you
feel the need to constantly look over your shoulder? You are probably the most
decisive Physician’s Assistant I have ever worked with. You never second guess
yourself and your gut instincts are always spot on; except for today.  What’s
going on?”

When Kayla isn’t
immediately forthcoming he suggests they walk out onto the ER landing and
stretch their legs. The weather is nice, the air is fresh, it’s a perfect time
and place to tell the doctor about why she isn’t herself today, but she just
can’t. They chit chat a bit about trivial matters and Kayla does start to feel
better when the sound of an approaching motorcycle threatens to put her in a
tail spin. She jerks around and looks in the direction of the approaching bike;
a move not lost on Doctor Collins. When Kayla hears a second bike approaching
from the opposite direction she just about bolts right then and there for
safety of the ER doors. She just barely manages to clamp a tight lid on her
rising panic, but no telling how long she’s going to be able to keep it bottled
up. As Kayla looks from side to side for the approaching bikes she
automatically reaches behind her back where a Glock has sat every waking minute
for the past two weeks, but today it’s not there. The lid on her panic pops its
first screw.

“Kayla?” Doctor
Collins notes the change that has come over her.

She looks around
at her surroundings. She is about ten yards from the emergency department
doors, but only ten feet from the nearest vehicle she could crawl under if need
be. She kicks herself mentally. She should have been paying attention to her
surroundings when she first walked out of the hospital so she could make sure
she was near an escape route or door or something; just like she had been
trained.

With a loud roar
the first chopper comes up over the rise and into the hospital’s emergency
parking lot. In about five seconds it’ll be on the landing itself and right in
front of the glass doors to the emergency department itself. She stands frozen
in place staring at the approaching biker. The whole world has suddenly faded
away and the only thing she can hear or see is the bearded man on the chopper
in front of her. While she is frozen in time he doesn’t seem to be at all. She
watches in growing alarm as he reaches inside his leather motorcycle jacket.

“Kayla! Kayla
what’s wrong?” Someone from very far away is calling out to her. Who it is she
can’t be certain as the voice is just too faint.

“Kayla what are
you doing?” Calls out the voice; just a little louder this time.

The world for
Kayla goes dark as her knees buckle and she slumps to the pavement unconscious.

“What’s wrong with
her?” Another voice inquires.

Fifteen
Minutes Later…

“It looks like
she’s coming around.” A familiar female voice says.

“Kayla…Kayla are
you awake?” A man asks.

Kayla begins to
stir, and then she opens her eyes and looks around. She is in one of the exam
rooms, lying on a table, and Doctor Collins and one of the ER nurses are
standing over her looking at her with worried expressions.

“How do you feel?”
Doctor Collins asks.

“How… how’d I get
in here?” Kayla asks, thoroughly confused.

“When you fainted
outside we carried you in.” Doctor Collins replies. He turns to the nurse,
“could you give us a minute Joan?”

“Sure.” Joan turns
to leave, giving Kayla and Doctor Collins some privacy.

“Spill it Kayla!”
Doctor Collins commands. He smiles to take the edge off his voice. “I know
you’re dealing with some crap right now, but you’re going to have to open up
here or I can’t justify having you here at work today. We can’t have you
fainting in the middle of an emergency.”

Kayla starts to
sit up. “It won’t happen again doctor.”

“That’s because
you’re not going back out there until you start explaining why a motorcycle
causes you to go into a panic then faint.”

Kayla thinks for a
minute. This is a sticky situation and she’d better be careful how she frames
her words here or she just may be out of a job. Slowly she sits up. Time to
play up the,
I’m a delicate flower,
angle and milk it for all it’s
worth.

“So are you going
to tell me what’s going on?” Doctor Collins pushes. “Those guys on those
choppers…they’re looking for you, is that it?”

She nods
miserably.

“Did you witness a
crime involving them Kayla?”

She nods again.

“I’m going to
assume you have been in touch with the police regarding this matter and ask you—"

“They wanted me to
go into the Witness Protection at first, but I just can’t walk away from my
life here.”

“Kayla what
happened to you?” Doctor Collins presses gently. He takes her hand in his.
“It’s okay, you can tell me anything.”

She’s not sure how
it happened, or what triggered it, but something tripped a switch inside of her
and it all came spilling out. Maybe it was the soft touch of his manicured hand
on hers, or just the pleasant timber of his voice that did it, but all at once
she just lets it out. She starts from that awful day huddled behind the bar
while rival bikers shoot it out. She tells about crawling across a dead man’s
body trying to get out of the way of the bullets and flying glass. She recalls
meeting Luke for the first time and how he gave her ex a beat down in the
parking lot later that day. She tells Doctor Collins about her relationship
with Dillon and the times he’s tracked her down and assaulted her.  She goes on
about her relationship with Luke and then the day she was shot and he left her
for dead.

The entire time
Doctor Collins just listens quietly, not wanting to break the ‘spell’.

Kayla tells of her
kidnapping and torture at the hands of Luke’s father and how Luke came to her
rescue. She tells about her training; learning how to shoot a gun, fight with a
knife, and kill a man with your bare hands. Kayla tells Doctor Collins what is
was like for her stepping into Luke’s world of violence. Finally she gets to
the crux of the whole matter and what is really bothering her. In halting words
mixed in with copious amounts of tears, she recalls the attack earlier and how
she had to shoot the pursuing biker. She tells him about their harrowing out of
control ride on the back of Luke’s wildly gyrating motorcycle and of shooting
the biker just before they crashed.

She remembers
seeing his body react to the impact of her bullets and his bike disintegrating
as he goes down at 100 miles per hour. And finally Kayla tells Doctor Collins
how it was to shoot a man and how she feels about breaking her
do no harm
oath.
She tells him how foreign it feels being here saving lives the same day she is
out there taking lives. None of it makes sense anymore. Her whole life she
realizes has been turned upside down because of one man. Kayla’s not sure how
much more chaos she can take. Before this little ‘chat’ with the good doctor it
really never registered just how crazy things have gotten, she has been so
immersed in everything.

Doctor Collins is
silent for a long time after Kayla finishes talking, and it makes her wonder if
she misjudged him. Maybe she should have filtered herself today and not told
everything… or at least not every detail. Even as she tells it, it all sounds
too unreal. It all sounds like some action movie with that Jason Statham guy
and not the
real life of Kayla Underwood
. It doesn’t even occur to her
until now that he may not believe a word of what she has just said. Sometimes
she’s not even sure she believes it either. She’s just about to get up and
leave when he starts talking.

“Kayla, I’m not
sure what possessed you to take up with a man like Luke, but he’s going to get
you killed; or locked up in the Looney bin, either one. I mean, listen to
yourself. If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I wouldn’t believe half of what
you just told me. But I do know you very well. Plus I just saw you faint at the
sound of a Harley Davidson motorcycle so…yeah I believe every word and I
suspect you may still be holding some back but that’s okay too. If Luke really
loves you, as you seem to believe, why would he put you in a position to need
two weeks of training to kill people? You’re not a soldier headed off to some
foreign war, you’re practically a doctor trained to heal people. Can you not
see how very backward this is? And what does it say about him that his own
father has you kidnapped and tortured for three days. Would it be a giant leap
for Luke to go from where he is now to his father?”

Kayla catches her
breath. Good thing she omitted a few details about Luke. For some reason she
completely left out the bit about his tattoos commemorating all his kills or
that he used to be the US government’s top assassin and that he seems to have
liked it. The good Harvard educated Doctor Collins would have been horrified.

“How can a man who
loves you keep putting you in… never mind. You don’t fit into his world no
matter how you try to fit your square into his circle. He’ll never fit into
yours either. Have you not figured that out?”

Kayla nods, not
trusting herself to speak. He makes sense. She cannot refute what he just said
and it scares her. It’s almost as if she has been wandering around blind ever
since meeting Luke and finally someone has just taken the hood off her head and
what she sees is very disturbing.

“Look, I realize
my shift is not near over,” Kayla begins. “I think it would be a good idea if I
left early to process some things. June is floating and she can cover for me
here. She’s had a lot of ER experience.”

“Under the
circumstances,” Doctor Collins replies. “I think you’re right. You need to get
your head in the game before you come back here or someone is going to suffer
your lack of attention.”

Doctor Collins’
rebuke stings, but Kayla knows he is right. Her head is elsewhere and she
doesn’t want to jeopardize a patient’s life by staying on and working today.
After asking the doctor to keep things quiet she hops in a taxi and takes off
towards home. It’ll be good to get some shuteye and to process her feelings in
a safe environment.