His voice causes another deep, dull ache in my chest. Even when he calls her a stupid woman it sounds like a term of endearment. I have never been married, so I don’t really know much about marriage or understand the communication between a couple. Maybe he even cares a bit too much. I don’t know the whole story. I don’t know who Sexy Babe is, and I have no idea how he feels about all that.
“Can I talk to her?” he asks me. “Please.”
Heat creeps into my neck at the sudden softness. There was a thick sheet of ice covering a frozen lake, and it just somehow splintered apart in the center to reveal that the water was actually boiling hot underneath. How strange. I’ve never known someone who could flip a switch so instantly and go from sounding like a rabid, snarling beast, basically a fire-breathing dragon, to so gentle, sensitive, and vulnerable.
I clear my throat to try to cast this confusion aside and remain professional. I extend my arm toward Yvette, so that she can speak to her husband. But she shakes her head. Trying desperately to suppress a coughing fit, she wipes a few tears away from her cheek. She pushes the phone away like it’s hurting her. I have the odd thought that she seems to be in more pain from loving this man than she is from the coronavirus.
“You do it,” she manages to say with a rasping breath. “You handle him.”
With those words, she has no idea that she has signed her own death certificate. And possibly mine.
“Okay,” I respond, unwittingly.
Before she spoke, there was only one almost-guaranteed dead woman in this room. Now there are two. She’s about to infect me with something far more deadly than the virus that is killing people all around us.
Our fates are about to become intertwined in a permanent way that will have repercussions for as long as we can both keep breathing. Now it all depends on the strength of our lungs, and hearts, and minds—whether we can survive this or not. Whether we last minutes, weeks, or days.
I can see on the monitor above her bed that her heart is not very strong, and it’s failing her worse by the hour. But I wouldn’t expect her to be in better health after being married for who-knows-how-long to the fire-breathing dragon from the frozen lake, who also sounds sweet enough to cuddle newborn kittens. That kind of emotional rollercoaster would wreck anyone’s body and soul.
Except for mine. I recognize that frozen lake, because I have one too. It’s not on the surface, where I am usually kind and caring and friendly. As a nurse should be. But underneath, my heart is cold and empty from not having been used or touched by anyone in so long—it doesn’t really feel much anymore. I feel tired and worn out from the hard work, of course. But nothing really affects me deeply anymore. So why am I being so affected by this dying woman and this asshole man?
It was just an innocent moment, doing my job. But I’ll never be innocent again.
Chapter 2
“How is that pretty woman doing, the smoker?” Veronica asks. She’s a pediatrics nurse and she only ever wears pink from head to toe. Pink shoes, pink scrubs, pink mask. She is a sight for sore eyes in the dreary breakroom.
“Not good,” I respond, opening the fridge and staring into it blankly. I’m starving, but food seems suddenly very uninteresting. “We might need to intubate.”
“Crap. Really? She’s so young.”
“Yeah. Close to our age,” I respond.
“I guess you just never know,” Veronica says, stuffing her face. I turn to watch her eating for a second, and it soothes me. She is the sweetest person I know, and it always lifts my spirits up by at least a few inches when I see her. For the past few hours, I felt like my heart was sitting somewhere on the floor, stuck to the bottom of my shoe like flattened gum… my friend is able to make it feel like it’s at least glued to one of my shoelaces instead. Hanging on by a thread.
Better than being smashed like roadkill.
“The weirdest thing happened, Ronnie,” I find myself saying, without really intending to.
“Hmmm?” she asks, with her mouth full.
“That woman… I spoke to her husband on the phone.”
“And?”
“He cursed at me,” I explain. “In French.”
“Okay,” she responds, her eyebrows knitting together. “So?”
“I cursed back at him, too,” I say, wincing at the memory. “A lot.”
She stops chewing and looks at me carefully. “Milla?” she asks with warning. “Is there something you’re trying to tell me?”
“No… no,” I say, waving my hand in dismissal. “It’s nothing like that.”
“Nothing like what?” she asks.
“Nothing like anything,” I respond. “I just… haven’t heard a person’s voice filled with so much rage in a long time.”
“Honey, we’re all angry. Some of us just hide it better than others,” Veronica says with a wise nod before diving back into her sandwich.
Her words seem right, so I just try to shrug it off.
I am back to staring into the refrigerator when a familiar alarm goes off. Code Blue. The door to the breakroom flies open, and a male doctor steps in.
"Camilla, we need you. She's in cardiac arrest. We can't wait any longer."
"Okay, Mike," I say, shutting the fridge door and moving to grab my mask and face shield and put them on carefully and quickly, before following him.
"Don't forget that your shift was supposed to be over like three hours ago!" Veronica says cheerfully as she continues to eat her sandwich, unfazed by the threat of imminent death. Unbothered by the gravity of the situation.
That's why you can't help but love Ronnie—she is like an angel floating around this hospital to remind us that things aren't that bad. She never seems to forget that life is good, life always finds a way.
Until it doesn’t.
As
