Every Last Breath || Jay Halstead

ONE

"You're fine," she said into the phone.

On the other end, her father's voice was listing off the endless list of reasons why he was not, in fact, fine. He was going on about something, and Willa was only paying half attention.

"Nurse Brenda isn't trying to kill you," she assured him for the third time in as many minutes. "Listen, dad, I have to go. My shift starts soon."

The sound of the door opening and closing made her turn around. Connor lingered by the coffee machine. They made eye contact, but Connor didn't say a word when he noticed the phone pressed against her ear. She held up a finger to indicate that she'd only be a moment.

She turned back to her locker. "I'll speak to you a bit later, okay?" She waited for him to reply, but when he didn't, she assumed he'd just nodded and forgotten she couldn't see him. "I love you. Bye."

After hanging up, she put the phone in her locker before turning her attention to Connor. "Sorry about that," she said and approached the coffee machine.

He poured coffee into a mug and handed it to her. "How's he doing?"

Her smile fell. "Today's a bad day," she told him. About a week after she'd started her job at Chicago Med, her father's care facility in New York had called to let her know he wasn't coping as well as they'd hoped. Sensing that something was bothering her, Connor had forced Willa to tell him what was going on, and she'd laid her entire sob story out for him. He listened to every word without interrupting and had not judged her for any of it. That was the beginning of their friendship.

"What are you doing down here anyway?"

"Your coffee's better," he joked.

"Then why are you always bragging about your fancy coffee maker upstairs?"

"Point taken," he said and clinked his mug with hers.

The door opened, and Will's head of red hair appeared in the doorway. Spotting Connor, his brows furrowed. "What are you doing down here?" Halstead asked as he walked past them to his locker.

"On-call for trauma," he answered as Will shrugged off his coat and hung it up. Connor said goodbye to them and disappeared out the door to go back upstairs, where he had to check in a patient.

"You ready?" Will asked and opened the door out the ED where Maggie was barking orders at nurses and doctors, a child was crying somewhere out of view, and April argued with a patient.

"As I'll ever be," she mumbled and passed through the door.

She had not set more than one foot through the doctor's lounge door before Maggie caught both her and Will's eye. "We got incoming," she shouted. "Triple vehicle collision, it's looking pretty bad. Get ready!"

This was exactly what she had always dreamed of doing, and the adrenaline of saving lives never ceased to amaze her.

❋❋❋

"Push one of Epi!"

"Clear!" The sound of electricity tearing through the heart to restart it was a sound Willa was all too familiar with, but even after all these years, it still made her hold her breath.

The patient's vitals came back on the screen, with the beeping sounding more steady. She placed to fingers on his neck, checking his pulse. "He's back," Willa said and caught the eye of Dr. Rhodes, who nodded.

"Alright, people," he said. "Let's get him up to the OR now." They rushed off with the gurney as Willa and Dr. Halstead stood back, catching their breaths.

"Good job," he said and took his gloves off. They threw them in the waste bin and left the treatment room together, but Will stopped in his tracks. She followed his line of sight and found Will looking at a man with a very prominent cut at his hairline, the beginning of a nasty bruise around his eye, and a police badge around his neck.