The Neighborly Thing to Do Book 1: Neighborly

Lara’s foot slammed down on her brake pedal, and at the same time, her palm slapped hard against her steering wheel. The whiny, high-pitched horn on her fifteen-year-old sedan blared at the imbecile that had just cut her off.

“Honey, are you all right?” Her mother’s worried voice spilled from her phone, which tilted precariously on its mount on the passenger-side vent.

“Fine, Ma,” Lara said, barely hiding her exasperation. “I’m doing fine.”

“You know I worry—”

“The whole planet knows you worry,” Lara grumbled.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Lara blurted. “I’m pulling into work, Ma, so I gotta run.”

“Oh, all right. Have a good shift, honey, and get home safe!”

“I will. Tell Dad I said hi.”

Lara bid her mother goodbye as she pulled into a parking space at Kinsley General Hospital. She loved her parents dearly, but sometimes talking to them left her feeling on edge, like bile was rising in her throat with anxiety bubbling in her belly.

She sat in her car for a few minutes to calm her nerves. Between the phone call with her mother and her little bout of road rage, she needed a moment to herself.

That was one thing she hated about evening shifts—the commute was indisputably more stressful than the early mornings. She made it a point to leave early to account for that, always wanting to put her best foot forward, especially when it came to work.

Lara considered herself a pretty fortunate person.

She had a good job, one she felt fulfilled by, even though it was grueling work. The hospital paid well enough for her to afford rent on a decent apartment and a car, and she always had food in the fridge.

Generally, it was a pretty good life.

Except for the days it wasn’t. And when the hard days came for her, boy, did they come.

A few hours into her first day back after a two-week leave to settle into her new apartment, Lara felt like she had easily stepped back into the swing of things. She had just finished sutures on her third patient of the night, and so far, it had been a relatively calm shift.

“You have a gentle touch.” Mr. Mandaby’s voice warbled as he watched Lara set her suture hook aside. He had been green in the face since he had come in with a long but superficial cut on his thigh.

Lara smiled at him, hoping to ease his nerves now that he was clear and on the mend. “Best stitches in my class,” she boasted, mostly joking, but also sort of not.

She pivoted her attention to his wife, who stood dutifully at his side, looking far less shaken than her partner. Lara ran through his dressing instructions before directing them to the ER resident, who would provide any necessary prescriptions.

“Thank you, Nurse Hendry,” Mrs. Mandaby said.

Mr. Mandaby yelped before clearing his throat and stammering, “Yes, yes, thank you, Nurse.” He rubbed a hand soothingly over his backside, which Lara suspected had just suffered a nasty pinch from his wife’s long red nails. “Hope you have a quiet night.”

As if on cue, the tone preceding an announcement sounded, and the room around her stilled in anticipation.

“Code orange, all available units report to the Emergency Department. Repeat, code orange, all available units report to the Emergency Department.”

As a trauma nurse, Lara was already stationed in Emergency, so she was one of the first to report to her station manager to await instructions.

Slowly, then all at once, more hospital personnel crowded the station. Nurses, orderlies, doctors—anyone who wasn’t fist-deep in a patient—all reported for duty.

A highway overpass had collapsed, resulting in an unknown number of fatalities and countless injuries. As the nearest trauma center, KGH was in for an influx of emergency patients.

After instructions were doled out, Lara busied herself with clearing beds and making way for the first wave of injuries into her ward. When patients started flowing in, Lara assisted where she was needed most.

While helping a resident reset a broken tibia, Lara glanced to her side, catching the eye of Dr. Baumgartner, the head of surgery at KGH who also happened to be a trauma surgeon. The doctor gave her a long, scrutinizing look before shaking his head in disapproval.

Indignation filled Lara’s chest.

Dr. Baumgartner was notoriously difficult—meaning impossible—to please. Despite the many times she had worked with him, prepping his patients for surgery, assisting his residents in the ER, and dressing his patients’ wounds, he always managed to find fault in her.

Lara could handle a bit of criticism, but he would consistently go far beyond that. When her performance was meticulous beyond reproach, he would complain that her bedside manner left something to be desired.

Rich, coming from a man who was so prickly he put cacti to shame.

A few minutes later, Lara was cleaning up her station, sending two friends with shallow cuts on their way, when a sudden commotion caught her attention.

Two bays away, a large patient was flailing on his bed. His arms and legs thrashed about, colliding with both doctors and nurses alike and sending a tray of tools clattering to the floor.

His massive hand sailed toward her head, and then, miraculously, it stopped.

Another hand wrapped around the fist in front of her face and forced it down, holding it steady enough for her to fix the restraints.

“You all right?”

Lara turned to face the orderly that had just saved her from a potential black eye, maybe even a concussion. “Yeah, I’m—”

“Y-yeah, I’m good, thanks. You saved my life,” she half-joked.

“Nah, just your dignity,” he teased with a gentle smile.

He helped the team ensure that all restraints were fully in place before moving on to whoever needed him. With all the shock and horror moving through the hospital, Lara had no doubts there were more erratic patients needing to be subdued.

It wasn’t until her long, arduous shift ended that she realized she had never even gotten his name.

Lara sifted through her mail absentmindedly as she rode the elevator up to her floor. Usually, she sort of enjoyed looking through it, but she was too tired to take any real pleasure in it today.

She sighed as she continued to leaf through the envelopes—and that was not her mail.

The doors swished open, and she padded past them, turning right and still looking down at the unfamiliar name.

She wondered if they could be the previous tenant, or maybe they had simply made a typo when inputting their unit number.

She frowned, speculating about this person’s story when she promptly walked face-first into a hard, warm body.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, doubling over to pick up her dropped mail. “I had a long day at work, and I can be such a klutz—”

Lara froze, staring and blinking at the man before her as she crouched on the carpeted hallway floor.

There he was—the beefcake from the hospital—holding out her envelopes with an outstretched hand.