sweetheart

two

Chapter Two | Gabriel

The 28-hour shift was not built for the weak and by the time I get to sit down for longer than 5 minutes, my eyes close on their own. The on-call room is empty and I am grateful for the silence since my last patient had a knack for speaking and I didn't have the heart to tell that gentle old man that I did not care that his granddaughter was of marrying age and fertile.

My mind loops back to my patients for the day, the stories I have heard, and the faces I have encountered as I officially admit defeat and lay down on the lower half of the bunkbed in the sad beige room. I settle in and take a deep breath, my mind zoning in on the curly-haired brunette in ER room 5.

She was so incredibly far when speaking. Her mind was not here and her golden eyes took everything in.

She's too self-aware.

She did not look away while explaining her situation once as if she needed me to really understand and to really get what she was saying. She did not want to live. That was her message to me.

I sigh as my pager goes off and ask myself why medicine for the umpteenth time this week before running off to where I am needed, tucking away her gaze in a corner of my mind for me to look at later.

***

Filling out charts is never truly fun, but it is necessary. And yet, I never find myself as entertained as when I am writing down notes and acquiring all of the tea from the nurse's station. The nurses around me chat and laugh and I join in on some of the conversation when it comes to something I also heard or found interesting. Shannon, one of my favorite nurses, comes into the area where my other nurse friend Haley and I are speaking and sighs, "That girl is so quiet."

Haley and I look to where she gazes and I watch as Elara is looking up at the tiled ceiling with a concentrated expression. As if feeling our collective gaze she looks down and out into the hallway, her eyes taking in Shannon and Haley before settling on me.

Her head tilts just slightly and she offers us a miniscule smile before looking back up and sighing.

"All the nurses say being on her watch is peaceful. She talks and makes genuine conversation, but never bothers much," Haley adds with a small frown on her face.

"She's too beautiful to be that damn sad," Shannon shakes her head.

"It's a shame," Haley adds before they start conversing about something different like their kids' soccer games.

I finish up my last chart quickly and hand it off to Haley who is preoccupied with discussing the different flavors of tea she uses to go to sleep faster and look around once before heading to Elara's room.

I knock gently on the door to get her attention and the nurse smiles at me before saying she is going to take the chance to go to the restroom. I nod and give her a smile, taking a seat at Elara's side. "Hello, Elara, how are you doing?"

She looks down from the ceiling and runs her eyes over me before resting on my face, "I feel sad. Stable but sad. I also feel a lingering sense of being a failure as well as frustration that I wasn't able to snap myself out of this episode this time."

"You've had these episodes before?"

"Yes, but never this bad. I have never actively entertained death."

"I see."

"Yes."

"Well, what have you been doing for fun?"

My eyes glance up at the ceiling once and she lets out what sounds like an exhaled laugh at my unspoken question, "I wanted to see if I could find a pattern on the tiles."