Yours Truly: Chapter 12

It was Saturday, the second of four days off, and I was up at the cabin working on the yard. It was overgrown and I’d spent the day before cutting down a few maples that were blocking the view to the lake. I had my shirt off and Lieutenant Dan was watching me chop one of the trees into firewood from the porch. I was stacking the logs to dry out when the notification pinged on my phone. When I swiped it open, I stared at it for a solid minute, my heart in my throat.

Briana sent me a friend request.

Instant jolt of adrenaline.

My social media was not easy to find. She’d had to have gone looking for it. Why?

We’d been passing notes back and forth—it wasn’t flirting. She’d been clear with me on that. I’d actually felt a twinge of disappointment when she’d said it.

I mean, I guess I wasn’t really flirting either. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, I just wasn’t that bold. It took a lot for me to make a first move or even to accept that a woman might be open to that. Everything we were doing was more forward than I was usually comfortable with, even on a friends-only level. Maybe it was easier because we didn’t speak to each other? Just the letters. It felt like speaking to each other wasn’t allowed, like it wasn’t part of it. Was this? Being friends on Instagram?

I wasn’t one of those people who collected followers. The only people I let follow me were my closest friends and family. Not acquaintances, not people from high school. Close. The photos I shared were for those who knew me better than anyone, so I never worried about what they thought. But I cared what Briana would think. I cared a lot.

What if I accepted this friend request and she realized how boring I am? Or I somehow failed to meet some expectation of who I was outside of work? What if she simply didn’t like me once she knew me better?

I dragged a hand down my mouth and sat on the back steps. Why was a woman like her even engaging with me in the first place? I wasn’t interesting, I wasn’t fun.

Still, she’d sent the request. She must want me to approve it.

I stared at the notification for another long moment. Then I swallowed hard and accepted it.

I went straight to look at her wall. Her first picture was of her with a gray cat on her lap. He was rubbing his head affectionately on her chin. The caption said “my new roommate.” That must be Cooter.

Farther down the timeline there were a few pictures at a wedding. She was in a black dress, posing with the beaming bride, a redhead.

There were some nature pictures. A trail with light green leaves on the trees. A selfie in front of Minnehaha Falls. She was wearing sunglasses and a gray baseball hat in that one. She liked to hike, like me. There were a lot of pictures in the woods, camping. Superior Hiking Trail.

There was one of her in a bathing suit in a pool. I looked at this one longer than I probably should have. She had a nice figure. It was hard to tell under the scrubs, but she did. She was a very attractive woman.

There was a shot of her in a blue ballgown, like she was headed to an event, seven months ago. She looked beautiful.

As I scrolled down, I spotted a picture of her with her brother from two years ago. The difference was stark. The before-and-after of his illness. He was tan and fit. She looked happier too. She was wearing a wedding ring in this one.

She was married before? Maybe this is what she meant about the last year being hard.

If I didn’t know the situation with Benny, I might not have noticed the weariness in her now. She was beautiful then and she was beautiful today. But I could see the toll it had all taken.

I got a notification that she’d liked one of my pictures. Then another one that there was a comment. I tapped on it. It was my last picture of Lieutenant Dan. She’d written “he’s so cute! 😍” I smiled.

Maybe she’d like to meet him. I thought about asking her if she’d like to go to the dog park with me after work one day. I could DM her.

We could message back and forth. Right now. I wanted to.

It was hard to have a running conversation via letters. It took too long. Even on days when we passed three or four notes, I had to wait all day to get a written response to just one question. And then on our days off, there were no notes at all.

The days where there were no notes felt particularly long.

But what to say? What message would I send? “Hey”? I couldn’t send Hey. It had to be something smart. Or funny. Not Hey.

A notification popped up. I had a message. From Briana.

My heart lurched. I hurried to click on it.

Briana: Hey

My mind started to race. What should I reply? Hey too? Maybe I should ask an open-ended question. That way she’d have to respond so it wouldn’t just be Hey Hey and then nothing.

Another message popped up.

Briana: What r u doing?

Panicking???

I stood and started to pace. I typed into the message bar.

Me: Not much. At my cabin this weekend. You?

I read it over five times before deciding it was good. I changed You to U and then back again. I hit Send and stared at the screen.

No new message came through.

I waited a few minutes. Then I decided to go back to her wall, just to have something to do. But when I got there, I saw a red #1 on the message arrow telling me there was a DM. I went to tap it, but there was nothing there.

Shit. It was the Wi-Fi. My messages weren’t loading. Noooooo.

The cabin had crappy internet. Crappy cell service too. In fact, this was one of the reasons I came up here this weekend, to have plausible deniability when my family couldn’t get in touch to interrogate me. I knew if I’d stayed home, they would have shown up to corner me, so I fled up north. Only now my plan was backfiring because the only person I actually wanted to be able to talk to couldn’t get through.

There were times when I couldn’t get Instagram to load for hours. My cell phone had only one bar unless I went over to the little cabin-themed restaurant down the street to get a signal.

I was going over to the little cabin-themed restaurant down the street to get a signal.

I pulled on my shirt, grabbed my coat and wallet and Lieutenant Dan’s leash. I clipped it to his collar faster than I’ve ever moved in my life and then started running with him the quarter mile to the restaurant. As soon as I made it to their patio, their Wi-Fi connected to my phone and her message pinged.

Briana: Nothing. So bored.

I stood there, panting.

A server nodded to an empty table and I realized how I looked—sweaty and out of breath, like I went jogging in my jacket and work boots.

The server set a menu on the table and I took a seat and stared at the screen wondering what I should reply. But before I got the chance to, she sent another message.

Briana: Can I just call u?

She wanted to talk? On the phone?

I raked my hand through my hair. I did want to talk to her. But this didn’t really give me the time to change mental gears and get used to the idea that it was happening right now. I didn’t really do spontaneity, especially in social situations.

But I did want to talk to her…I wanted to talk to her a lot.

Me: Sure.

I typed in my phone number.

My cell rang immediately. I picked up on the first ring, and then kicked myself for looking so eager.

“Hey,” she said brightly.

This was the first word she’d spoken to me in person since the day over a week ago when she’d told me what cupcakes to bring.

“Hey,” I said back.

“Sorry, it’s just typing takes so long. Better just to talk to you,” she said.

“Yeah. No problem.”

“Okay, so I have to ask,” she said. “And I need you to be super honest. Are you sending me all the butt stuff?”

I choked out a laugh. “What?”

“I have gotten all of the weird butt-stuff patients this week. A zucchini, a headless Barbie, an antique candlestick—and the guy asked me to be careful pulling it out because it was his mother’s—are you sending me these? Do you have an arrangement with the charge nurses?”

I shook my head with a chuckle. “No. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ve gotten all the drunk frat boys this week. One pulled out his IV and stripped naked and took off and I had to tackle him before he escaped. Do you have an arrangement with the charge nurses?”

“Of course. But I’m not sending you all the naked drunk frat boys. I’m only sending you the runners.”

I laughed so loud the waitress looked over at me.

“The last drunk frat boy I got thought he was in a drive-through,” she said. “I had to be all like, ‘Sir! This isn’t an Arby’s!’”

I had to pinch tears from my eyes. God, she was funny.

“Every day is a full moon around here,” she said. “Was it this busy at Memorial West?”

I shook my head. “No, not this bad. But then they weren’t a level-one trauma center, so…”

“Yeah, it keeps us from getting bored for sure. Do you like it better?”

I nodded. “I think I do. Never a dull moment.”

She sounded like she was stretching. “Why’d you pick emergency medicine? I’d think it would be a hard specialty with your anxiety.”

This was a common misconception. And I understood it—high-stress job, not great for the nerves. But it was perfect for me.

I’d always known what I was and was not capable of, even as a child. Your parents tell you that you can grow up to be anything. But I knew from the earliest age that wasn’t true. I remember my teacher telling me I could be president one day, and me replying that I didn’t want to because I didn’t like parades.

“I did a short stint in the emergency department when I was in residency in Las Vegas,” I said.

“You lived in Las Vegas?”

“Just for a few years. Zander and I were roommates—I don’t know if you knew that. We go back a long time, he’s one of my oldest friends. Anyway, he wanted to live there. It was close enough to Utah and I wanted to hike all the parks there, so I went with him. It was between pediatrics and emergency services, but I ended up picking the ER. It’s so fast paced it makes me focus. It’s like my brain gets quiet because it only has time for the task at hand. It’s actually pretty relaxing.”

“I guess that makes sense,” she said. “You get in the zone. It makes work go by so fast. God, could you imagine being a surgeon? Nothing to do but think?”

“I would hate it.”

“Did you ever see any celebrities over there?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

I couldn’t tell her who because of HIPAA and she wouldn’t ask for the same reason, but I could give her broad strokes. “Lots of performers,” I said. “Mostly drunk. Contusions, lacerations. Once I had a big musician come through. He had a bruised hand, but I wrote it up as a fracture.”

“You did? Why?”

I shrugged. “Something told me he needed to take some time off.”

“That was nice of you. But what if you’d gotten busted?”

“I’d just do what our residents do to us. Act like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

She laughed. “It’s a time-honored tradition.”

I smiled. Then the server approached the table.

“Can you hold on a second?” I asked.

I put her on mute and ordered a salad and a club soda with lime. I wasn’t hungry, but I was taking up the table. And I got Lieutenant Dan a grilled chicken breast with no seasoning and a bowl of water.

“Okay, I’m back,” I said.

“So, what do you do for fun?” she asked. “Hector said he saw you at the Cockpit. Do you like bars?”

I shook my head. “No, definitely not.”

I’d had a nightmare once about being in a crowded bar that didn’t have table service and I had to order at the packed counter, squeezing in and shouting at the bartender. I’d woken up in a cold sweat.

“He must have seen me there last summer,” I said. “I’ve only been in there once. Jewel’s wife, Gwen, owns that bar. I went to the farmers’ market with her. She wanted to bring stuff back, I carried a watermelon.”

“You carried a watermelon?” She sounded amused.

“Yup. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

She laughed at my Dirty Dancing reference and I smiled at making her do it.

“So if you don’t like bars, where do you take dates?” she asked.

“I’m not dating. I’m just trying to get used to the new job right now. You’re not dating either, right?”

She sighed. “I was trying to date for a little while. But it’s bad out there.”

“Really?” I asked. “How bad?”

“Oh boy, strap in. Bad. There was the guy who brought his three cats with him—”

“He brought his cats?”

“Yeah. I told him I like animals, so he brought his three tabbies. They were loose in the car. Then he realized they couldn’t stay in there while we went to go eat, so he tried to get me to come back to his house to drop them off and see his custom catio.”

“A what?”

“An enclosed patio for a cat. Which I was interested in seeing if I’m being totally honest, but I wasn’t going into some rando’s cat house to get murdered. The whole time he was trying to convince me to come he was wearing one of the cats around his shoulders like a shawl. It was so weird. Then there was the guy who wanted me to look at his rash—”

“I’ve had that date. Before my ex.”

“Why is it always a rash?”

“Sometimes it’s a mole.”

She laughed, hard.

She continued, still cracking up. “One time I met this guy online and he was just like you. Handsome, smart, funny—normal. I kept wondering what the catch was. We made plans to go to dinner and the second we got our drinks he went into a pyramid-scheme pitch.”

I chuckled. I also tried to hide how much I liked that she thought I was handsome and smart and funny.

“God, sometimes I think I only attract the weirdos,” she said.

“You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman,” I said. “You attract everyone.”

She went quiet at this and I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t have. It just sort of came out. Maybe it came off as flirting and she didn’t like that? But when she started talking again, she had a smile in her voice.

“It’s amazing how much this dating stuff wears you down after a while. I’m over it. At this point I’d be excited if someone just had their shit together enough to have a headboard.”

“Ha.”

“Do you have a headboard?” she asked.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

The server set my drink down in front of me.

“Congratulations. You’re the one percent.”

I was happy I seemed to have fallen into a category that she approved of, a man in possession of complete bedroom furniture.

“I’m a hair’s breadth away from just finding other like-minded women and starting a coven,” she said, going on. “Anyway, Lieutenant Dan is pretty cute.”

I looked down at my dog, sleeping under the table at my feet.

“The rescue almost didn’t let me have him.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t like men. We think he was abused by a man when he was a baby. He wouldn’t even let me get near him.”

“How’d you work through that?” she asked, sounding impressed.

“I showed up every day. I’d bring food for him and sit down on the floor and talk softly to him until he trusted me.”

“Awwwwww. And were you the one to name him?”

“I was. It seemed appropriate.”

“What happened to his leg?”

I squeezed lime into my club soda. “We think he was born that way. Probably at a puppy mill.”

“Ugh. That’s so sad. I used to get all the abused/neglected animal videos on TikTok before the algorithm realized I didn’t like them. Animals adopting orphaned babies or military service members coming home and surprising their dogs—I am not emotionally equipped to deal with that kind of energy right now. Are you on TikTok?”

“No,” I said. “Well, sort of. I watch videos on house restorations, but I don’t post anything.”

“I’m on lesbian TikTok right now and it is the most glorious place on earth.”

“Really? I get a lot of Fail videos on my For You page, for some reason,” I said. “I hate those.”

“Me too. Like, how are you just gonna show us the accident and not give us the follow-up. I need a Six Months Later Where Are They Now video with a list of the injuries.”

“Yes. It feels like a documentary that stops just as it’s getting interesting.”

“Right? Anyway, you have to engage with the app,” she said. “Swipe away videos you don’t like, like right away so they know what you don’t want to see. You’ll be in the warm embrace of lesbian TikTok with me in no time.”

“Do the TikTok lesbians know how to remove old wallpaper? Because that’s the kind of content I need at the moment.”

“Oh, yeah. They know everything. It’s where I learned how to fold a fitted sheet.”

I made a TikTok lesbians mental note.

We stayed on the phone and talked about nothing like this for hours. The time just flew by. Talking to her was easy in a way I wasn’t used to.

She drew me out. Made me feel comfortable. And the words just flowed. She made me feel interesting, like she wanted to know about me and what I had to say. And we had a lot in common too. I guess that made sense, we had the same job. But we both liked being out in nature. We liked cultural vacations over relaxing beach ones, and we liked the same movies. We even had the same Lola Simone songs in our phones.

About an hour into the call, it started to drizzle. I squeezed in under the not-big-enough table umbrella. I’d been in such a hurry I hadn’t considered the logistics of bringing my dog. I couldn’t go inside the restaurant because of Lieutenant Dan. I could hang up with Briana and run home and drop him off, then come back. But I got the feeling if I asked to call her back, she’d just say she’d talk to me on Tuesday, and I didn’t want to risk it. So I huddled under the umbrella with rain soaking through the back of my jacket and Lieutenant Dan hiding under the table, drier than I was. The waitress looked at me like I’d lost it.

After three hours, a slice of rhubarb strawberry pie, and the sun starting to set, Briana hung up with me to go do Benny’s dialysis.

The mosquitoes were eating me alive, so it was probably a good thing—but I still wouldn’t have hung up with her first.

I liked her. A lot.

The weird thing was, she seemed to like me too, for some reason. I couldn’t imagine why.

It filled me up. It made me smile when I thought back on it. Probably because I’d been feeling so flawed and rejected for the last few months and suddenly I wasn’t. At least to her.

I didn’t hear from her again for the rest of the weekend, but it didn’t matter because I knew when I went back to work, we’d resume our back-and-forth. I looked forward to it. A little more than I wanted to admit.

On my way into the hospital on Tuesday, I ignored another call from Jewel. I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do about the situation with my family. Call and cancel on family dinner tomorrow was about all I’d worked out.

Just as the stress of my new job and coworkers began to mercifully quiet down, the stress of my family began to ratchet up.

I made my way down to the ER for my shift, putting Jewel’s number on mute so at the very least I wouldn’t be alerted to exactly how many times my sister was trying to get me on the phone. I was coming down the hallway focused on this when Briana flew around the corner.

“There you are! Come on, you’ll miss it!” She grabbed me by the elbow.

This was the first time she’d touched me outside of crashing into me. It made me feel a little breathless—the unexpected interaction and the contact.

“Miss what?” I asked, letting myself be dragged along.

“Opera Lady.”

“Who?”

“There’s this group of opera singers who come in drunk like once a month and they always sing in the ER. You have to see it. I was looking for you everywhere.”

I stifled a smile.

We went through the double doors to the ER. There was already a small crowd hanging out outside room six when we sidled up to the front. An aria in a high soprano belted out of the room. Everyone stood silent, listening.

I knew this one. “Der Hölle Rache” from The Magic Flute. Mozart. Breathtaking high notes that rose like fiery sparks. I could hear the missing instruments in my mind. Flutes, oboes, violins, clarinets. I melted into the poignant vocal gymnastics of the piece. It was beautiful.

I glanced over at Briana while we listened. I’d noticed the way the staff had made a space for us, parting to let us through so we could be closer to the door. It was a sign of respect—and it wasn’t for me.

I’d gotten more friendly nods since the cupcakes. The nurses weren’t as cold to me anymore. But this reception to our arrival was for Briana. Her bringing me sent a message to everyone that I was liked by someone they loved and respected. Maybe she even went to get me in part to let everyone know this.

I felt myself soften. Like the fight-or-flight instinct this place had activated was finally dismissed.

I was always braced here. Braced for confrontation, braced for open dislike. Braced for unpleasantness in general. Only just now did my brain decide that I didn’t need to be. And that was because of her.

I liked coming to work now. I looked forward to it. I got a little jolt of dopamine every time I saw a letter.

I got a little jolt of dopamine every time I saw her across the ER…

I knew for her they were probably just notes. She was likable and easy. She probably had this fun little back-and-forth with everyone in one way or another. But for me it was a lifeline. An outstretched hand while I was falling, an umbrella in a downpour. Friendship in a hostile place.

I’d been doing something for her the last few days. I’d been watching Schitt’s Creek.

I didn’t usually watch new shows. I just rewatched the same ones over and over. I liked the familiarity, the predictability. If I rewatched a show, there were never any surprises. No emotional jump scares. I didn’t have to process new feelings or stress over cliffhangers. I knew where it was going and how it would end. Music too. When my anxiety is extra high, new music is too draining to process. I’d lean on old playlists. A lyrical safe space, the comfort of repetition. And my anxiety hadn’t been as high as it was right now in longer than I could remember.

But I’d been watching Schitt’s Creek because Briana had mentioned it on our phone call the other day, and I wanted to understand her references. I wanted to have things in common with her. I wanted to try the things she liked.

It was a small, invisible gesture of friendship from me. Something she’d likely never even fully appreciate because she didn’t know the effort that came with it. She’d just think I watch the same popular show she does and that would be it. This was me making space for her, even though she would never know it. My way of saying thank you for her friendship, even if it was too quiet to hear.

The singing stopped. Half the group was dabbing at tears.

Everyone started dispersing and I turned to Briana. “She’s good,” I said. “Amazing she can do that drunk.”

“You should hear the tenor.”

Then we just sort of stood there, like we weren’t sure how to proceed now that the distraction was over.

God, she really was beautiful. She had her hair up in a loose ponytail, reading glasses on.

I cleared my throat. “Thank you for getting me. I appreciate it. It means a lot to be included.”

“I told you I was going to.” Then her brows drew down. “You are covered in mosquito bites.”

I looked at my arms. “Yeah. The cabin’s buggy.” Or rather the table on the patio of the restaurant I talked to her at was buggy…

She put a thumb over her shoulder. “So I was going to go visit the sob closet around noon today—”

“Oh. Good to know,” I said. “I’ll schedule my breakdown around two to give you a chance to finish up.”

She laughed. “No. Do you want to meet me? I was just going to have my lunch in there. There’s a new box of paper towels, so we both have a seat now.”

The corner of my lip twitched. “I could eat at noon. You don’t want to eat in the doctors’ lounge, though? Or the cafeteria?”

Not that I wanted to. Frankly, I preferred the supply closet. Most days I ate lunch there or in my truck. I liked the quiet. But it was an odd choice for her.

She shook her head. “The closet’s quiet.”

“The closet is quiet,” I agreed.

She smiled. “Cool. See you at noon.”

She made a finger gun at me and joined a small group of nurses who were waiting for her. I watched her walk down the hall and turn a corner.

Then the panic set in. I obsessed over what to eat for the next four hours.

I didn’t want anything that would stink up the small space. No feta cheese or heavy garlic. We wouldn’t have a table, so nothing that required silverware. Soup was out of the question. I didn’t want anything crunchy since it would be amplified in the tiny room. No apples or chips. I finally decided on a sandwich—no onions and no spinach in case it got stuck in my teeth—with a fruit cup.

It occurred to me that this overthinking was very likely not happening on her end. But I was too self-conscious for this.

Eating was intimate. It took me a long time to truly feel comfortable doing it in front of someone.

It took me a long time to feel comfortable doing a lot of things in front of someone.

At noon I let myself into the supply closet with my food. She was in the same spot as last time, looking at her phone. When she saw me, she peered up and smiled warmly. “Hey.”

She had a Cup Noodles on the floor next to her and she picked it up as I shut the door. “I waited for you to eat,” she said.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, sitting on the paper-towel box.

She pulled out a plastic utensil and took the cover off her noodles. “So what’d you get?”

“Just a sandwich,” I said, leaving out the part where it took me all day to decide on it.

I unwrapped it on my lap and felt a twinge of dismay as I realized they’d put vinegar on it. I looked up at her to see if she had any reaction to the smell, but she was twisting noodles around her fork and pulling them to her mouth, catching the fallout in the cup—and I realized this woman didn’t care. She didn’t care what she looked like eating and she probably didn’t care what my damn sandwich smelled like either. Hell, the whole room smelled like soup.

I relaxed a little. I had to remember that not everyone overthought everything the way I did.

Wouldn’t it be amazing to live like that? To not carry that burden around with you. To not feel constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated and second-guess every little thing.

It got better the more I got to know people. At Memorial West my anxiety was hardly a problem at all. They were my friends there, my team. I was used to them and comfortable around them.

All things considered, I was comfortable around Briana too, I realized.

Briana made me nervous, but she didn’t make me uncomfortable. That was a big distinction. For me, nervousness usually got better with time. Uncomfortable didn’t.

At least it didn’t with Amy.

Amy never stopped making me uncomfortable. She still did. Mostly because I don’t think she knew me well enough to know how not to.

I took a bite of my sandwich while Briana ate her noodles, and we fell into a silence. But unlike most silences, this one didn’t feel awkward. It was like the pause between our letters. Just a small break in the dialogue.

Briana reached down and picked up a Snapple. “What’s on your socks?” she asked, nodding at my ankles.

I pulled my pant leg up to look. “Elephants.”

“Do you always wear animal socks?”

“I do it for my niece and nephew. They like them.”

“Are you going to see them today?”

I shook my head. “No. But kids like them, so I always wear them to work.”

She smiled. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked, putting the cap back on her drink.

I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “Sure.”

“You said your mom had a kidney transplant?”

I nodded. “She has lupus. Her best friend donated.”

She paused for a moment. “How is she?”

“She’s great. Healthy. Her lupus is managed for the most part.” I peered at her. “How’s your brother?”

She shrugged, looking into her soup cup. “He’s not really thriving on dialysis. I thought by now he’d at least be getting adjusted, but…” She went quiet again. “He’s so depressed I’m beginning to think that his infected catheter was on purpose.”

I blinked at her. “You think he’s suicidal?”

She poked at her soup. “I don’t think he wanted to die so much as he just doesn’t have any interest in living like this anymore.”

I stared at her. I had no idea it was that bad.

She still didn’t look at me. “I think if it had been more gradual, it wouldn’t have hit him so hard. But it all happened so fast. He lost his job because he couldn’t work with his health issues. Then his girlfriend broke up with him a few months into it, which didn’t help.”

I knew this. Gibson had mentioned it. But having it confirmed was upsetting all over again. “Because he was sick?” I asked, incredulous.

She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t know that she left because he was sick, or more that he stopped being the person she knew he once was. He got moody and short with her, self-conscious about his body. He didn’t want to be touched. Maybe he pushed her away. I don’t know.”

Not a good enough reason. I could never leave someone I love when they need me—especially if they were sick.

I studied Briana’s face. She looked so tired when she talked about her brother.

“Any status on a donor?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. I have a website for it, and we all have HELP BENNY FIND A KIDNEY. YOU COULD BE THE MATCH! stickers on our cars. But it’s been eight months since I started looking for someone.”

“Do you have any more stickers? I’ll put one on my truck.”

She looked up at me and brightened. “You will?”

“Yes, of course.”

She beamed at me like this tiny thing was everything. “Thank you. And thanks for having lunch with me,” she said.

“Anytime,” I said, meaning it more than I think she knew. “Maybe next time we can do the cafeteria.”

She laughed a little. “I know you don’t like loud, crowded places. I never see you in the lounge. I just figured you’d be more comfortable here.”

Now my face went soft.

She’d picked here on purpose? For me?

Briana had just managed to do what Amy never could after almost three years together. She took me someplace to meet for lunch that wouldn’t make me anxious.

It wasn’t Amy’s fault I was like this. But I wondered if we’d still be together if every date with her didn’t wear me out. Would we have seen each other more if it wasn’t so exhausting for me? Maybe she would have known me better if she’d understood how to get to know me better. Like this. Putting me at ease. Meeting me halfway.

Someone knocked on the supply room door. I was sitting against it, so I had to get up to open it.

“Expecting someone?” Briana teased.

I was smiling at this when I opened the door, but the second I saw who it was, my expression flatlined. It was Jewel.

“What…what are you doing here?” I asked, confused.

She crossed her arms over her hot pink T-shirt. “I had to do a wellness check since nobody can seem to get you on the phone. Some nurse told me you were eating lunch in a closet?”

Then she peered past me at Briana. A huge grin ripped across my sister’s face.

“Hey,” Briana said, getting up with a smile. “You must be Jewel.”

My sister had a shaved head, she was covered in tattoos, and she looked just like me. She wasn’t hard to spot based on my brief story about her.

Jewel looked positively elated. “I am. And you are?”

“Briana,” she said brightly, offering a hand.

“Briana. Very nice to meet you.” My sister shook her hand, beaming. “So what are you two doing in here?” she asked, looking back and forth between us.

“We’re just having lunch,” I said.

“I see. Well, now that I know you’re alive, I’ll let you kids get back to it. Call me after work.”

“Yes, sure.”

She gave me a smile I couldn’t interpret and left. I shut the door and sat back down.

“She’s nice,” Briana said, picking up her Snapple. “In an I-gave-you-a-lawn-mower-chest-tattoo kind of way.”

I scoffed.

“Does your family do these wellness checks often?”

“She’s very in my business right now,” I said. “They all are.”

“Why?”

“Eh, it’s a long story.”

She looked at her watch. “We have fifteen more minutes.”

“It’s going to take longer than fifteen minutes.”

“Okay. Want to meet for drinks after work? Everyone’s going to Mafi’s for Hector’s birthday. We can get our own booth while we do our part to keep the liquor industry strong.”

I laughed. Then I immediately wondered if she really wanted me to go, or did she invite me because she didn’t think I’d actually come? I studied her expression. She looked almost hopeful. She really was trying to include me.

“I’m actually going anyway,” I said. “With Zander.” He’d texted me earlier for drinks after work.

“Perfect. I’ll come say hi.”

When our break was over, I held the door for her to let her out. “See you tonight,” she said before heading back to her side of the ER. As I watched her go, my cell pinged from my pocket. Then it pinged again and again and again in quick succession.

I pulled out my phone to see what was going on, and the second I saw it, my smile fell.

Oh no…