Redemption FinalWPF6 7 (9 page)

“I started drinking in medical school. Not just me, we all
did. It was better living through chemicals. We were self-medicating, caffeine
or amphetamines, alcohol or sleeping pills. I was working thirty-six to forty-eight
hour shifts as a resident and I needed either to stay awake or grab some shuteye.
It was brutal, but it wasn’t anything that thousands of other doctors haven't
done.

“It became a habit. One I liked a lot. I could do anything.
Work all day, party half the night, then grab a couple of hours of sleep and do
it all over again, and then crash. For nearly ten years, that was how I lived
my life. I was careful not to get too drunk, too high, always watching that I
wasn’t becoming that cliché of physician needing to heal thyself.” He gave a
snort of derision and looked away.
Jesus.

“A few years later, I was an attending at Phoenix General,
and per our contract, I worked the overnights two weeks per month, and I
supervised the residents. One night I was on duty, but there were three
residents sharing the rotation. It was my turn to grab a couple of hours of down
time. I had a little drink to help me drop off to sleep quickly. Not much, just
enough to relax me. At least that’s what I told myself.

“There was a multiple car accident on the highway. One of
the big dust storms, a forty-seven car pile-up. It was everybody to their
stations, and I was pulled from the bunkroom to come back after only an hour
down time. As you would expect with that many cars, there were several serious
injuries, including a car of teenagers who had been on their way home from a
baseball tournament. I caught one of the boys. I learned all about him later.
His name was Kirk. Played shortstop. He’d been in the middle of the back seat
and not wearing a seat belt. Why do we all think we’re so fucking immortal?”

The bitterness of his own words shamed him. He looked at
Uriah and Diane, and his throat tightened. He didn’t want to talk about this,
didn’t want to tell them. These two were good people, who deserved their chance
at happiness. They were blaming themselves for the act of a man either too
selfish or too weak to face the consequences of his actions. They needed to
know that there were some things in life beyond forgiveness, and that the two
of them weren’t anywhere close to crossing that line. The line he’d already
crossed. He was very aware of the age difference between them. What was Diane?
Twenty-seven? That made Uriah twenty-three…At thirty-six, Gabe felt ancient.
Too old, too scarred by life to let them get mixed up with someone like him.
Someone beyond redemption. A shudder rocked through him and he forced himself
to tell the rest, to put himself beyond forgiveness.

“Kirk wasn’t conscious when he was brought in. My job was to
stabilize him and get him up to surgery, if needed. In his case, it was
definitely needed. His leg had been smashed from the knee down. My main
priority was to get him typed and crossed because he needed the surgeons. While
we were working at stabilizing him, he crashed. His heart just stopped beating.
I pushed everyone back, called the code blue. I worked on the kid for thirty
minutes before my nurse went and got the supervising ER physician to call time
of death. They had to pull me from Kirk’s body. And when they did, they smelled
the alcohol.” He hurried on, anxious to get to the end, anxious to get to his
backpack.

“I was suspended, of course. Pending the outcome of the
investigation, but we all knew it was a formality. My career was effectively
over. At the hearing, the autopsy report revealed a complicating genetic
condition that I couldn’t have known about. I was found not guilty of
contributing to his death, but still faced a six-month suspension and public
censure. Nothing changed the facts for me. Kirk was dead. A young man just
beginning his life and he deserved a better chance to survive. It was his bad
luck that he got me as his doctor.”

“You can’t know—“ Diane began.

“I do know—I do know that I broke my oath to do no harm,” Gabe
shouted. His words bounced off the cavern walls.

Uriah squeezed Diane’s hand and kept his dark gaze pinned on
Gabe. “Just tell us the rest. You know our secrets, why not tell us the rest of
yours? You’re obviously still a doctor…” Uriah trailed off.

Gabe nodded, then looked off toward the Colorado River
before he began to speak. “Kirk’s father confronted me at the medical board hearing.
He accused me of killing his son. That spilled over into a civil trial. Eventually,
I was cleared of the wrongful death charges. But not before it got out that
this wasn’t the first time I’d had a drink or two on duty. Likely never enough
to be legally considered too impaired to operate a vehicle, but most definitely
in violation of every written and unwritten rule for physicians. The hospital
fired me. My partners kicked me out of our practice. I lost my license.
Everything I’d worked for.” He blew out a long breath.

"I did a lot of public service and a lot of groveling,
but eventually my license was reinstated. Then I realized there wasn’t really
any point. No one wanted to insure a doctor who was a drunk, and without
insurance, you can’t practice medicine. One night my good friend Marcus called
and needed a favor. He and his partner Max are the guys in one of the
threesomes I mentioned the other night. They own After Hours, a private BDSM club
in Phoenix. One of the Doms had gotten carried away and hurt his submissive
before the staff could intervene. I was at the club most nights anyway, so it
was a natural to ask for my help.”

“Wait,” Uriah interrupted. “Are you…have you… Holy shit.”

“Am I a Dom?” The somewhat breathy tone of the question brushed
against his dick and nearly derailed his confession, but he knew he needed to finish
now that he’d started. “No, not really,” he answered truthfully, but didn’t
expound.

“Anyway,” he said with a sigh, “the injury at the club
wasn’t serious, but it was painful. I treated his welts, prescribed some painkillers,
and recommended an appropriate therapist for the Dom. It was all kept quiet. Marcus
and Max were happy with the resolution, and eventually, I became the official
doctor on staff at the club. I started working for Michael Enwright’s security
company, occasionally patching up some of his employees when the injuries might
be a little awkward to explain.

“I’ve put my life back together, piece by piece. I practice
part time, I work at the club as needed. I spend a lot of time just trying to
stay low key. I quit drinking. Seven times now.” His laugh was bitter.

“You know what they say, it’s not the quitting that’s hard,
it’s the staying quit. It’s why I took the summer gig up here at the canyon. I
figured I could eliminate stress as a reason for drinking. On the nights that
I’m off duty, I spend a good deal of the time halfway to drunk and planning how
I’m going to get sober. Every time Marcus calls to check up on me, I lie. I tell
him it’s going great. Told myself this trip to the backcountry was my last
chance to prove I’m not a drunk.”

“But you brought the alcohol with you,” Uriah said softly.
“Do you have any more?”

The sharp jerk of his head told the others what he didn’t
want to admit. What he couldn’t admit.

Uriah stood, and pulled Diane to her feet. Together they
moved close to him, and as one, reached down to pull him upright. Gabe stood,
but couldn’t bring himself to meet their eyes, to see his own disappointment
mirrored in theirs.

“Let’s unpack it, Gabe. We’ll pour it out. Do it now, while
we’re here to help.”

He slowly raised his gaze to look into the deep, black of
the other man’s eyes. Diane’s soft hand rubbed gently down his forearm and then
gripped his hand.

“Come on, Gabe. I’m an expert at staying quit. We’ll do it
together,” Diane said.

Uriah looked around their small shelter and when he spotted
the heavy backpack, he walked to it. As if from a long way off, Gabe watched as
Uriah removed the supplies, the clothes, the first aid kit. Everything he’d so
carefully packed and weighed out so that he could be sure to have enough room
for those little bottles secreted in the bottom of his pack.

When the bottles were all lined up, like little soldiers
waiting to do battle with his conscience, Uriah started to open one, clearly
intent on pouring the contents into the dirt. Diane stilled him with a gesture,
so that the bottle was poised in midair.

Gabe wanted to argue that they should wait, that they should
keep it, in case the other two wanted a drink. He wanted to point out that
alcohol could be used as an antiseptic in an emergency. He wanted to beg to
have one last taste. And then he knew. Knew without a shadow of a doubt. He
flashed a look at Diane and found her gaze steady and sure. As if she’d been
waiting.

“My name is Diane,” she said. “And I‘m a drug addict.”

He nodded, cleared his throat. “My name is Gabe and I’m an
alcoholic.” 

Chapter Nine

The flow of the Colorado River was controlled by the Glen
Canyon Dam, which fed the lower river from outlets at the deepest part of the
man-made lake. As a result, the river temperature remained cold year-round
despite the stifling heat of the inner canyon in the summer. The pool that
Diane was using to bathe in had been part of a naturally occurring diversion
for a small stream of water. With very little effort, they’d scooped out more
of the sand and surrounded the sun-warmed pool with smooth river rocks.

Diane pushed the hair back from her face and blinked to
clear her eyes. She smiled as she scrubbed away the heat and grime of the day
and wondered how much a sand exfoliating treatment would cost at a spa. All
she’d had to do was hike forty miles and…the smile slipped from her face. All
she’d had to do was say goodbye to a man who had been a friend when she’d
desperately needed one, even if he hadn’t been a very good husband.

They’d gotten up at sunrise and backtracked along the trail to
ensure they’d be out of range, just in case the shooting was more than a
one-time event. Once they were as sure as they could be that they were safe,
they stopped along the river to scatter Pete’s ashes and share memories. There
were a few good times and family stories, but not nearly as many as there
should have been. Uriah had admitted he and Pete hadn’t been close, their
father had seen to that, by effectively choosing one son and letting the other
flounder. He’d mentioned more than once today that he would miss the
opportunity to get to know his brother rather than missing Pete, the man. There
was no great sense that she’d lost the love of her life. Her relationship with
Pete had been about surviving. He’d given her the support she’d needed to leave
the rehab facility, and she’d given him the cover he'd needed to avoid his
father’s harsh judgment. A depressing epitaph.

At least the shared ritual and daylong reflections loosened
the tightness in her chest at the terrible way he’d died. In the way that death
followed life, so too, did the need to reaffirm life after an unexpected death.
She was alive, and it was time to emerge from her self-imposed isolation. For
eleven years her actions had been distorted by substance abuse or tempered by
the lies she and Pete had lived. Now her pulse quickened with the need to
celebrate life. She looked around their campsite and realized exactly what she
wanted.

Gabe stood a little distance from their small camp stove, waiting
for the water to boil to add to the dehydrated food packets. Uriah stood with
his back to her, not out of some misplaced modesty, but so he could scan the
surrounding cliffs for any sign of their gunman. It had been twenty-four hours
without any sign of trouble. The canyon was a vast wilderness that they shared
with soaring condors and mountain goats, and the creepy-crawlie scorpions that she
pretended weren’t there.

“You about done in there, princess?” Uriah asked. He no
longer had his back to her, but was eyeing her with apparent interest. He was
wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, and stood with his arms crossed, which
made all his muscles bunch and from this angle he looked massive. His black
hair was pulled back into a tail, his chiseled features looked strong in the
shadows. His skin glowed a dark bronze in the waning light. She was more aware
than she’d ever been of his Native American heritage.

The saliva in her mouth pooled as she shifted her gaze and
came eye-to-crotch with visible evidence of his interest in her. She forcing
herself to look back up, she met his broad grin and she had to smile back.

“See something you like, Dee?” he asked. She loved that he’d
adopted Gabe’s nickname for her. It was as if they were starting new, no longer
bound by their mutual histories.

Tomorrow, Uriah would spend the morning scouting the
surrounding cliff tops for signs of their tormentor from the previous day, but
since there’d been no further attack, they all wanted to believe it was random.
Providing it was all clear, they would spend one last night at their site, this
time under the full moon. Then they’d hike out and—

Her mind stalled at thinking about what would come next. She
blinked rapidly. She wasn’t ready for that step, yet. She couldn’t think about
returning to the rim, about going home. About saying goodbye to Gabe. She knew
it was too soon to be thinking about love, about forever, but there was a small
voice that insistently whispered two small words, a mantra in her mind.
What
if…what if…what if…

As if following her thoughts, Uriah half turned away and
watched as Gabe moved around their camp. Deep evening shadows obscured his
features now that the sun had crossed over the tops of the steep canyon walls.
Dusk descended early at the bottom of the canyon. The three of them were
functioning like a family. Gabe prepared their evening meal. Uriah served as
the protector. Both of them caring for her. Something about the moment made an
idea click into place for Diane.