“Bummer. By the time I leave here at night, I’m too damn tired to go out and all these damn doctors are married. Maybe I’ll become a lesbian.”

I chuckled and chewed on my carrot sticks while I people-watched. A young girl came in needing stitches from a dog bite, a construction worker shot a nail through his hand with a nail gun and a little old man was severely constipated. The day was not quite as eventful as I’d hoped it would be.

“Break-time’s over, Jensen,” Maureen called out as she went from room to room. “A woman with chest pains is being brought in by ambulance any minute, can you prep Room 4 and get her vitals for me?”

Hopping up eagerly, I tossed my carrots in the trash. “I’m on it.”

I went into room 4, turned on the monitors and got the blood pressure cuff ready. There wasn’t much else to do.

A minute later, the curtain pulled back, startling me as a young man with curly black hair pushed a stretcher into the room. Another EMT who wore a baseball cap over his blonde hair, had his back to me as he pulled the other end of the stretcher and called out stats.

“Female patient in her early sixties complaining of chest pains. BP is 220 over 130, temp is 99.2, pulse is 110.”

I awkwardly tried to stay out of the way as they swiftly transferred the patient from the stretcher to the bed. My pulse was probably as high as hers at the moment because I was so damn nervous.

The curly-haired paramedic smiled at me and left the room as quickly as he came in.

“Okay, she’s all yours,” said the blonde EMT as he turned around.

I locked eyes with him and stopped breathing, my body grinding to a halt.

Oh. My. God.

Zach.