Forgotten Trail by Claire Kells

Author:Claire Kells [Kells, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CROOKED LANE BOOKS

CHAPTER

14

ARIA LANGUISHED IN the murky bowels of the cave. She wished she had taken the time to change out of her skimpy cocktail dress. At least she had traded her heels for a pair of tennis shoes after dinner, but she wished she’d changed into pants, too.

What worried her the most was how cold she was after running all night on trails that were sun-exposed in the daytime but unprotected after nightfall. Without the flashlight, she surely would have lost her way on the trail. She’d heard stories about people getting lost in national parks, never to be seen again. Stories about people whose bones were found months or years later, less than a hundred feet from where they were last seen. She knew it could happen to her.

Aria had always been the practical type, maybe too practical. As a resident physician, she worried constantly about making a mistake. One time, she’d missed something small at rounds—a lab value, not even relevant to the patient’s current condition—and her senior resident, a dark-haired New Yorker who was only a year or two older than Aria but reminded Aria of her father, had taken her into an unoccupied room and chewed her out until she cried. “You’re not smart enough to be a doctor,” the woman had said. “You couldn’t even handle one admission. You’re going to kill a kid if you don’t get your shit together.”

Aria had tried to take it in the way she’d been raised to respond to conflict—dutifully, stoically, apologetically—but to hear these things from a peer, a person who should have been an ally, shook her resolve. She remembered the look of disgust on the third-year’s face when Aria broke into tears. Later that day, she cried in the cafeteria, tears streaming down her cheeks while she ate a stale sandwich in silence. On the way home, riding the shuttle back to her apartment, the tears came a third time as she pressed her face to the window and watched the city spring to life as darkness fell.

The next day, she woke up determined to go back to work and act like nothing had happened. She would be more meticulous, even if that meant waking up at four AM to round on her patients at 5, these sick, tiny children who needed their rest more than they needed her pointless questions. But such was life as a resident, and she didn’t question it. One day, she would finish the program and be out on her own, unencumbered by the expectations of others.

But was that really true? Aria wondered. Her parents would never let her do or be anything else. They were counting on her. Their three other daughters had gone on to do fun, unusual, exciting things; it was Aria they were counting on to restore pride to the family.

Chris, of course, was the escape she’d been looking for, the small act of rebellion that even her sisters disapproved of. Aria’s parents didn’t even know about him,

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