Code Blue Read online

  BLURB

  Marie Parker has known life.

  Death.

  Somewhere in between.

  And now, with Dr. Landon Cross's help...

  She'll fight with everything in her to get back to [MOU1]between, and a happiness that could be real...

  If only she can convince Dr. Cross that she hasn't lost her mind.

  A year ago, a tragic accident almost ended Marie's athletic career—and her life. Yet a flatline in one world jump-started her mind into another; a new reality where Marie became someone she didn't recognize, had never thought she could be. A wife. A mother. A career woman, instead of a renowned athlete. She had love. A family. A house on a half-acre of land with a hyperactive dog and a finicky cat. An entire lifetime that saw her through triumph and tragedy, growth and loss, love and heartbreak, until the very end as a feeble old woman with a lifetime of memories and satisfaction.

  Only to die again.

  And wake up in a hospital bed, once more twenty-two years old, tubes bristling from her mouth and arms, head and heart full with memories of people who may have never existed.

  But she wants them back.

  She wants the love she felt. The joy. The fulfillment.

  And she'll do anything to find it.

  Even if it means fight Landon Cross every step of the way.

  Landon isn't sure what to make of the unorthodox young woman he's recently admitted to the recovery program at the Silver Garden Clinic. Her trauma symptoms are undeniable. Her faith in her other reality, unshakeable. But Marie's stories are as compelling as Marie herself, and Landon catches himself in a dangerous folie a deux where her delusions sweep him up until he begins to believe them. Until he wants to help her get back to a place that doesn't exist. Until he's desperate to help her.

  Desperate to save her.

  Desperate to change every idea of what he knows is real.

  And more than anything...Desperate to make her his.

  CODE

  BLUE

  LARISSA DE SILVA

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  CHAPTER ONE

  MARIE

  It had started to rain on the field, and visibility was lower than Marie would have liked. They were on minute thirty-nine of the second half, and Marie didn’t think the referee was going to be charitable with extra time.

  Danielle dribbled the ball and then passed it to the strikers with a high kick. Marie looked up, the sky dark and the rain falling hard, making her blink and practically miss the ball. She took a step back, managing to barely avoid an interception from the other team’s midfielder. Marie didn’t go for the ball quickly enough, but Danielle managed to intercept it, kicking it up high again, giving Marie the perfect opportunity for a header.

  She didn’t look at anything other than the ball, which was coming fast toward her at a left angle. With all the momentum she had, she propelled herself in order to jump up and hopefully—hopefully—score a goal. There was a second where she craned her neck, high up off the ground, absolutely certain that she was going to score.

  As she tilted her head, trying to score a goal, she noticed the blur of another human body right in front of her. The opposing team’s center-back had jumped at the same time as she had, and there was no way for Marie to tilt her head back quick enough to avoid what was about to happen. The ball wasn’t in play anymore, and if a goal had happened, Marie was not aware.

  The whole ordeal couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, but time slowed down as the center-back moved her head up, trying to get the ball away from the goal and finding Marie’s face instead.

  The pain happened quickly, spreading from the bridge of her nose to her cheekbones, a deep burning under her skin. She could feel herself falling back, a splitting headache that felt like her skin had been ripped open, like her skull was exposed and raw through a seam being torn in the middle of her face, like someone had grabbed the skin from the side of her cheeks, close to her jawline, and torn her apart like paper.

  And it burned.

  It burned so much; Marie wanted to scream. She had to scream. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t open her mouth to scream; she couldn’t open her mouth to do anything and then she felt herself land on her back on the artificial wet turf, her back bouncing on the ground, her head still tilted back.

  She opened her eyes, unaware that they were closed until she was on the ground, and saw a million upside-down legs walking toward her.

  She wanted to croak out any words, anything, that would get people to help her. But her mouth wouldn’t move. None of her would. The legs became blurry, her eyelids heavy, the pain overtaking all of her senses.

  There was no release after that. No scream, no help.

  Only darkness.

  ***

  LANDON

  Dr. Landon Cross was leaning against the reception desk, scrolling through his phone and looking up at the electric glass door every few minutes. It was one of his last rounds at the ER before he wouldn’t be doing this anymore, because his clinic was about to open, and he wouldn’t have time for rounds, even when he wanted to do it. The clinic was the result of a lot of hard work, but it was probably never going to be as crazy as the ER.

  He sighed as he looked around. When he was in undergrad, he had never thought he was going to be back as a doctor in his hometown. He had wanted to go to the big city and work in private practice, and he had, for a bit.

  When his father had gotten sick, though, Landon knew that he had no other choice. Technically, there were other doctors only a quick drive from town, but none of their offices had the prestige of Dr. Anthony Cross’ office, and the community never seemed to trust them quite as much.

  And he didn’t want his father to die alone, whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not. The most charitable description for the man would be absentee, but a better description of him would have been the word terrible. With wild mood swings and a penchant for tyrannical control over minute matters at home, Landon often wondered how it was possible that he was so renowned for his bedside manner and his charismatic nature.

  If it had just been for his father, Landon would have never gotten into medicine. But he had lost his mother to a quick and merciless cancer, diagnosed so late that there was no point in doing anything to stave it off. He had sat with her through hospice and watched the disease wear her away into nothing, her once plump fingers becoming skeletal as the cancer took away her drive to eat.

  For the first time in Landon’s entire life, he had seen his father make himself useful. Landon watched as his father spoke to hospice doctors, as he advocated to have her doctors up her dose of morphine as she battled with her own ending.

  “Dr. Cross?” Nellie said.

  Landon blinked; a bit surprised by the abrupt removal from his thoughts. “Nellie,” he said, smiling at her. “What can I do you for?”

  Nellie smiled, a little wearily. She was young and relatively new, but he could tell that she had spunk, and he liked that about her. She would go far in her nursing career if she could withstand the challenges that came with providing em
ergency care to patients.

  “I just got a phone call from my father,” she said.

  Landon cocked his head. “Is everything okay?”

  “My sister had an accident,” she said. “She’s on her way here.”

  “I thought your sister lived in Boston,” he said. “Why is she coming here?”

  “She does,” Nellie replied, looking down, nervously sticking her hands in her pockets. “She had a game this weekend. Do you remember me talking to you about it? I was hoping I was going to be able to get the night off, but no luck. In any case, I’m glad I’m here.”

  “Do you need…”

  Nellie shook her head. “She’s fine. Well, no, not fine,” she said. “She probably broke her nose. But she fared much better than the girl on the home team.”

  “There were two people involved?”

  “Yeah,” Nellie said. “I don’t know if this is indelicate, but I did get a video from my dad when it happened, if you would like to see it.”

  Landon blinked. “I reserve my judgment on how indelicate it is,” he said. “I would like to see it. To be clear, I would like to do this for medical reasons. Medicine is often, in practice, rather crude.”

  She nodded as she gave me a knowing smile. She grabbed her phone and I watched as she unlocked it with her fingerprint and found the message thread from her father.

  From the video, he could tell that Nellie’s father had been sitting back in the bleachers, the phone’s focus zooming in and out, his hand shaky. The accident wasn’t hard to see, either. Two women, hitting each other with a lot of momentum, both of them suffering from a head trauma. Withholding my medical opinion for a second, it looked bad.

  “Yikes,” I said, pointing at the woman wearing the red shirt. “Is that your sister?”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s my…”

  “Dr. Cross, Nellie,” Laverne said, coming toward them with a quick step, her gait perfectly distinguishable from every other nurse in the hospital. “I just got word that two women at a soccer game are coming to the hospital.”

  “We know,” Landon said. “Do you know what the condition of them is?”

  “One is alert; probably a fracture,” Laverne said. “The other one is unconscious. The head trauma seems to have been more severe for her. In any case, the ambulance is on its way now.”

  “Are we the closest hospital?”

  “Yeah, and still twenty minutes away,” Laverne said. “The fracture doesn’t worry me.”

  “Okay,” Landon said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Laverne, go upstairs and tell them to prepare the OR. You can page me if needed. I want a consult from neurosurgery, so page the attending on call. I want an expert here when she comes in.”

  Nellie’s eyes widened, big as plates. “Do you think that will be necessary?”

  “I hope not,” Landon said. “But we must prepare, in any case. Nellie, you are officially discharged for the night. We might be understaffed for a few hours, but I’d much prefer for you to be able to look after your sister than to find yourself worrying, unable to pay full attention to your patients.”

  “Yes, Dr. Cross,” Nellie replied, turning on her heels and walking away from them.

  He felt Laverne’s hand grip his arm, giving him a brief and tight squeeze. “I will miss you around here, Dr. Cross,” she said, more to herself than to him. “I’ll go upstairs now.”

  He smiled at her, already feeling a little nostalgic.

  He was going to miss her, and this place too.

  For the time being, he needed to focus on the upcoming patient. He needed to help. He needed to do what he could in order to save her life.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MARIE

  She stood by a cliff, the wind whistling past her ears. She could smell the cold sea air and hear the seagulls, unrelenting, as she held her woolen coat closer to her body, trying to keep out the cold. Her eyes were watering slightly from the wind and she tried to sniffle as her nostrils dripped.

  “Hey,” Troy said, walking up behind her. He met her gaze and smiled as he handed her chips wrapped in a newspaper. “You should look at those before you eat them.”

  “I always trust potatoes,” she replied, amused.

  “Don’t trust these,” he said. “I got them from a truck, and I’m not certain if their intentions are pure.”

  She laughed, unwrapping the newspaper from around her food. Looking down at the chips, her eyes widening as she settled her gaze on what Troy was calling attention to.

  The ring was small, a silver band with a princess-cut diamond, and the twinkling of the gem was the most beautiful thing Marie had ever seen. She picked up her gaze to smile at Troy, but when she searched for him, he wasn’t standing in front of her anymore. He was on one knee, looking expectantly at her, waiting for her to say yes.

  He opened his mouth, but there was no need for him to say anything. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course I will marry you.”

  He stood up, grabbed the ring, slid it on her finger, and kissed her firmly on the lips.

  When he pulled away from her, he was smiling. Marie smiled back at him, then furrowed her brow. “Did you happen to buy me a drink too? I’m parched.”

  “No,” he replied. “Let’s go get you a celebratory drink now. And some chips you can actually eat. I promised you I would feed you, and you know I always keep my promises.”

  She grabbed his hand when he extended it, enjoying the way her hand felt in his. They walked together, hand-in-hand, until they reached the boardwalk.

  In the distance, Marie could hear the sirens of an ambulance, and for a split second, she wondered what had happened, before she looked down at her fingers, intertwined with Troy’s, her diamond ring shimmering even in the overcast day.

  ***

  LANDON

  Dr. Turner was a small, fierce woman in her sixties, with large round glasses and ungroomed eyebrows. She was the best neurosurgeon at the hospital, maybe in the state, and Landon felt lucky that she had taken Marie Parker’s case at all. She was standing across from Landon, in the ER, the cold harsh light of the room shining overhead.

  Looking down at her tablet, the surgeon cleared her throat. “The patient had an intracranial hematoma with mass effect,” she said. “A decompressive craniectomy was performed, and the patient is now in a medically-induced coma.”

  “Which grade?”

  “Hard to say,” she replied, putting her tablet down on the desk and looking worried for the first time. “My hope is grade one. Hopefully, we got there in time, but it’s hard to know, and I don’t want to evaluate her yet.”

  “Understood,” he replied. “Would you like me to notify her family?”

  Dr. Turner shook her head. “Brain surgery might be best for them to hear from me,” she said. “Considering you won’t be able to be part of her aftercare team.”

  He sighed. “They are on their way,” he said. “She didn’t sustain any back injuries to speak of, which is surprising considering how bad the accident was. Nevertheless, we must monitor the patient for any other issues.”

  Dr. Turner nodded. “So young,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “She was lucky this happened when she was so young, but it was so bad in terms of head trauma…”

  “Early intervention is the key to a successful outcome,” Landon said. Dr. Turner, of course, knew that, but he was saying it mostly to reassure himself. Patients, like Marie Parker, caused him to feel hurt, and worse than that, he vaguely knew her.

  She was an acquaintance; someone he had been out for coffee with once. He knew that she curled one strand of long dark blonde hair that fell in front of her face and bounced every time she laughed. He waved at her, every now and then, when he encountered her at the gym.

  He knew of her family, though luckily, he didn’t actually know them. His father had been friends with hers, but he rarely took Landon around when he visited the town’s mayor. He still knew of her, of course. It was hard not to when the town was so s
mall, and when she was something of a well-known figure. Then again, everyone knew everyone, so even if she hadn’t been, he would’ve known who she was.

  “It is,” Dr. Turner said. “We did good, Landon. You did good.”

  He smiled at her.

  “The ER can be heartbreaking,” he said. “I know her prognosis is up in the air, but…”

  She smiled. “I am glad the clinic is opening,” she said. “A rehabilitation clinic is going to be a boon to this community.”

  “I hope so,” Landon said, then looked up. “Patients, like Marie Parker, shouldn’t be having to drive hours and hours in order to get therapy.”

  Dr. Turner let the silence hang between them. What he was saying was dependent on a lot of things: the outcome with Marie, whether she would even be able to be rehabilitated. All things that neither one of them wanted to talk about, but both knew well.

  “Let me know if you need a neuro consult,” she said. “I’m only a phone call away, and would be happy to help.”

  He smiled at her. “Thank you, Dr. Turner,” he replied softly. “I appreciate it.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Will you let me know when the family arrives?”

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  She turned around and he watched her walk away, her heels barely touching the ground when she did. He sighed and looked at Laverne, then up at the clock on the wall.

  Four more hours, he told himself. And then he would go home, go to sleep, and it would be the start of the rest of his life. Finally.

  CHAPTER THREE

  MARIE

  They decided to elope.

  Wrangling all their families together at once would’ve been a nightmare, so they went down to the courthouse, got married with two witnesses that they barely knew, then took themselves to the fanciest bakery nearby. They tried several different flavors, sampling each and every one of them as if it was going to be for a big wedding party, then decided on lemon with buttercream icing, and bought a modest cake to take and eat over the upcoming days.