Silent Fall

problems closer to home, like your girlfriend. You can probably get Gisela back if you call her tonight."
    "Why would I want to do that? She almost killed me."
    "If you'd moved faster, she wouldn't have hit you. You've gotten slow, Parish."
    "I have not gotten slow." Even though his job kept him at his desk for long hours at a time, he worked out every day. "Frankly, I think I've had enough of Gisela anyway. What is with that baby-girl voice she uses? It makes me want to rip my hair out."
    "Thank God she finally got to you. She's been driving me crazy for weeks. She was hot though."
    "Cole Parish?" a nurse asked, interrupting them. "Come with me."
    Cole got to his feet. "You can wait here, if you want," he said to Josh.
    "I'll stick with you. It's a zoo out here," Josh replied as a group of drag queens came into the waiting room.
    They followed the nurse down the hall and into a room with three beds, each separated by a thin curtain. An elderly man lay in one bed. The other was empty. "A doctor will be in shortly," the nurse said. She had barely left the room when they heard a commotion in the hallway.
    A flurry of people in scrubs dashed past the door, shouting out various medical terms as they pushed a gurney down the hall. Cole's reporter instincts kicked in despite the pain in his head. He craned his neck, trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on.
    "I'll check it out," Josh said.
    Cole frowned as his friend rushed out of the room, irritated that he was sidelined while someone else caught the action. He sat down on the bed, holding the ice pack to his head, and wished for a television set. If they were going to make people wait this long, at least they could offer an all-news channel to take their minds off their pain.
    Josh walked back into the room a few minutes later. "Gunshot victim," he said. "Convenience store robbery in the Mission district. The owner shot the robber, a seventeen-year-old kid."
    "Will he make it?"
    "They took him to surgery."
    "I should call Blake," Cole said, referring to the assistant editor who ran the city desk on Friday nights.
    "I'm sure he's already heard about it."
    "Where's my phone?"
    "Who knows? Relax, dude. You might have a concussion."
    "I don't have a concussion, and I don't want the Trib to miss the story. We have a lot of competition these days with blogs and online news outlets."
    "We can handle the competition." Josh sat down in the chair next to the bed. "Besides, you have a lot of people working for you. Let them do their jobs." Josh leaned back and toyed with a piece of tubing hanging from some sort of a machine. "What do you think this is?"
    "I have no idea. Where is the damn doctor anyway? I could have bled to death by now."
    "'Death by Stapler,'" Josh said with a laugh. "There's a headline for you. Or how about 'Psycho Supermodel Snaps'?"
    Cole groaned. "Not funny."
    "It is kind of funny."
    Josh was right. His personal life was now officially a joke. Gisela's parting shot had definitely gotten his attention. Maybe he did need to focus on something or someone besides the news. But not Gisela. That was over. He'd known it for a while. He'd just been too busy to end it. Now that she'd done it, he felt more relieved than anything else.
    Cole looked up as a woman entered the room.
    "Good evening, Mr.—" She stopped abruptly, looking up from the chart with wide, shockingly familiar eyes. "Cole?"
    Natalie?
    His heart thudded against his chest. It couldn't be Natalie. Not now, not after all these years. Not here, not in his city.
    She moved farther into the room, slow, small steps, as if she wasn't quite sure she wanted to come closer. Her hair, a beautiful dark red, was pulled back in a clip, showing off the perfect oval of her face. Her eyes were a brilliant blue, her lips as soft and full as he remembered, but it was the tiny freckle at the corner of her mouth that made him suck in his breath. He'd kissed that freckle. He'd kissed that mouth. God! Natalie Bishop. The only woman he'd ever... No, he couldn't think it, much less say it.
    It should have been easy to see her. It had been ten years, but it seemed like ten minutes.
    She was older now, a woman—not a girl. There were tiny lines by her eyes and around her mouth. She'd filled out, grown up, and she'd come back. He wasn't ready to see her again. She didn't look ready to see him, either.
    Cole suddenly became aware of the white coat she was wearing, the stethoscope around her neck, the chart in her