by Sarina Bowen
I told her I’d sit tight, so that’s what I’m doing. I’d way rather be naked with her at the moment, but you can’t win every game in the third period, right? Sometimes it goes to overtime. Jess and I are in overtime right now, skating around each other until one of us scores. Except in this case, we both score, which…I guess ends in another tie and another OT period?
Fuck. My thoughts are getting away from me and I don’t like it. I try not to think Deep Thoughts if I can help it.
The lake outside my apartment window looks a little purple in the sunset. The lights of Toronto shimmer above the waterline. It’s a Tuesday evening, there’s no game tonight, and I’m hanging around the ol’ apartment, considering my options. My place is awesome, but it’s a little too quiet at the moment.
There are probably a few of my teammates drinking down at Sticks & Stones, our favorite bar. I could head over there for a couple of beers. That’s always a good time. In fact…
I dig out my phone to check for messages. The guys usually let me know where they’re drinking on our nights off.
My shoulders tense when I see the screen. Someone has left me a message, all right. But it’s not the name I was hoping to see. Not by a long shot.
Fuck.
Carrying the phone over to my brand-new chair, I sit down and lever my feet into the air. Then I use the clicker to dial up a whole-body massage and press start. I lean back as the chair begins to do its thing, the rollers kneading my lower back and calves first.
Only when the relaxing powers of the world’s best chair have kicked in do I dare press play on the voicemail message.
“Hi Blake,” a soft, familiar voice says into my ear. “It’s Molly.”
Pity. There goes the possibility that she’d butt-dialed me by accident. I brace myself.
“I was hoping we could go out for coffee,” she says timidly.
“No can do!” I announce to nobody in particular.
“We need to catch up, okay? I convinced my firm to relocate me to Toronto for good.”
“Nooooo!” I yell.
“So we’re going to see each other from time to time. I’ll be at your sister’s shower next weekend. Let’s not be awkward, okay? I want to see you and hear what’s new. It would be good for us to be friends again.”
That’s it. That’s all I can take. I hit delete on the voicemail and drop my phone on the rug.
The chair does its level best, rolling its tireless mechanical hands over my back and then down past my ass. But no massage chair in the world could overpower the bad news I just received.
I’m good at staying upbeat. The team psychologist loves me, because I can always put the last game behind me and focus on the next challenge coming down the road. But when there are toxic people in your life, it’s trickier.
I need some non-toxic people. Quick!
With a flick of my wrist I shut off the chair and then bounce to my feet. It only takes me a couple of minutes to ride the elevator down a few floors and pound on Wesmie’s door.
There’s a muted grumble, and a chuckle, too. Sounds like I interrupted a make-out session on the couch. Oops.
“I’ll come back later,” I tell the door.
“S’okay,” Jamie’s voice says, coming closer. “We were going to order some dinner anyway.” The door opens, revealing a tousled-looking Jamie.
Wes is headed for the kitchen, where he pulls a third wine glass out of the cupboard and pours for me without even asking first.
Did I mention how much I love this man?
“What are you ordering?” I ask.
“How do you feel about Indian?” Jamie suggests.
“Indian food always makes Blake Riley smiley,” I answer. “I’ll buy.”
It’s usually my treat when we order in, because I eat Jamie’s cooking a few times a week. He told me he buys extra of everything because he knows I’ll probably turn up. “And when you don’t, I have leftovers for lunch,” he explained.
Wes hands me a glass of wine. “You want your usual?” he asks, pulling out his phone.
“Yeah, and let’s get the samosas, too. I’m starved.” Bad news makes me hungry.
I sit down in their massage chair, which is identical to my massage chair. This leaves the whole couch for Wesmie. They sit at opposite ends, but Wes puts his feet in Jamie’s lap.
Jamie’s eyes are on the TV screen, where some sports highlights are playing. But his hands unconsciously attach themselves to Wes’s left foot, and he begins to stroke the arch with his thumbs. Watching, I can almost feel how awesome that must be, the pressure just right against muscles tired from today’s brutal morning practice. I could use a massage. Maybe I’ll book one tomorrow with the team therapist.
Wes gives me a frown. “You okay?”
Fuck. I must have been staring. “Sure. ’Course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well…” Jamie chews his lip thoughtfully. “Got any hot dates lined up? You just seem a little lonely lately.”
“Lonely? I don’t get lonely.” Maybe I’m at loose ends a little bit right now, but it’s only because our season hasn’t really started up again. That, and Jess Canning still refuses to accept the inevitable.
Wes and Jamie exchange a glance that irks me. Cheezus. Just because a guy spends a lot of time being the third wheel to the happiest couple alive doesn’t mean he’s lonely. That’s ridic.
“Want to watch some Sense8?” I suggest, changing the subject. “We’re almost up to the one with that orgy scene that everybody’s talking about.”
“Sure, buddy,” Wes says kindly. “Cue it up.” He tosses me the clicker and then slides his other foot into Jamie’s welcoming hands.
I dial up our latest show and sit back to watch. I put the massage chair on the quiet setting and relax into its comfy robotic embrace. And everything is just great.
Of course it is.
12 The Leader of the Alien Race
One Month Later
Jess
I’m freaking out.
Again.
This isn’t me, either. I’m not a worrier. Or I didn’t used to be. I’m a California girl, damn it. We’re chill. We take each day as it comes and make the best of it.
But a month into nursing school I’m not any more relaxed than I was on day one. It’s still hard, and I still feel like an alien dropped onto a planet where everyone else has a photographic memory and speaks Latin with great fluency.
The leader of the alien race is Violet Smith. She’s squinting at me right now, in fact, as I lean against a hallway wall in the pediatric oncology ward at the hospital. My evil roommate can tell that I’m not paying enough attention to Nurse Hailey, our instructor. But I need a moment to compose myself, because around the corner there’s a playroom for patients on the pediatric oncology ward. I am about to come face to face with kids fighting cancer.
My classmates are all bent over their clipboards, taking notes as the instructor speaks.
“The play dough is non-toxic, but we still don’t want anyone eating it.” Nurse Hailey smiles at us. “So feel free to shut that down right away. And if you have any trouble with the rubber-band looms, I’m pretty much an expert now. And just have fun with this. Interacting with the kids comes first. And then, when you’re feeling settled, that’s when I want you to start to check off all the observations we’ve been working on in the classroom with regard to patient assessment. Since this is a stealthy assessment, you don’t need to ask the patient any questions. But even without verbal queries you should be able to learn things from the patient’s movements, skin tone, audible breath sounds, et cetera.”
I clutch my bag of play dough and follow the rest of the class into the big room. It looks like the set of a Nickelodeon show—bright furniture in interesting shapes, a wall painted to resemble the facade of a castle. There are tables and chairs and a TV playing an animated movie.
It’s paradise until you look a little closer. A dozen heads turn in our direction as we enter. The
kids are all shapes and sizes, but my worried gaze trips over a small bald head and then another. One little girl—she’s wearing a glittery T-shirt that says Girl Power on the front—is so thin that it hurts to look at her. She smiles, though, and her front teeth are missing.
I want to bolt from the room.
My hesitation costs me. The other nursing students scatter like heat-seeking missiles. They each pick a child and sit right down to do their thing. Seconds later, they’re bonding already.
I look frantically around, but all the kids have been taken. My evil roommate smirks at me over the top of the painfully thin little girl’s head. For the last four weeks, she’s enjoyed my discomfort. Whenever I have to ask her a question—when my notes aren’t clear enough or when I just don’t understand something—it makes her entire week.
Now I’m standing here in the center of the room, uncertain. My eyes sweep one more time, finding only unaccompanied adults around the edges of the space—nurses in their bunny-rabbit pediatric scrubs, and a parent or two.
And a teenager.
Oh.
She’s sitting at a table alone, stabbing angrily at her knitting. Her fingers are white sticks against the dark yarn. She’s wearing a scarf tied around her scalp, and there’s a dark circle under each of her eyes and a scowl on her face.
I wander over, feeling tentative.
“Don’t want any,” she mutters as I approach.
“Well…” I sit across the table from her anyway. “I’m here to force you to make a play dough jack-o’-lantern with me. My entire semester’s grade is riding on this, so make it good.”
She looks up quickly, confusion and scorn mixed together on her face. “What the fuck?”
“Joking,” I sputter, the tension getting to me. I actually giggle. “Jeez.”
For a split second something like humor crosses her face. Then the scowl returns. “You’re a nursing student?”
“Yup.”
“Pay close attention when they teach you to draw blood. Because most of the nurses here suck at it. Big time. I look like a junkie with track marks because none of them can find a damn vein.” She shows me her forearm, where I see some nasty bruising.
“Ouch. I’m sorry.”
My sympathy doesn’t go very far with her. “Whatever. I’m having a spinal tap tomorrow. That’s ten times worse.” She squints at her knitting and then suddenly throws it down. “My mother says that knitting is relaxing. But this ribbing is all wrong and I just want to stab someone with the needles.”
Given the look on her face, I think she’s mere seconds away from following through with that threat. “I know ribbing,” I say quickly. “What’s the problem?”
“Really?” For the first time since I sat down, she looks hopeful. And the change of expression takes years off her gaunt face. “Why do I have all these extra loops?” She passes her knitting to me.
And it’s a total wreck.
“Hmm…” I say, taking care to find the right words. “The regular stockinette stitch looks great.” She’s made a bunch of stripes—burgundy and mustard-colored.
“Thank you.”
“But the ribbing has some issues.”
“It’s a disaster.”
“I think I know why. When you switch between knit and purl, you have to move the yarn before you take the stitch. Those extra loops happen when the yarn is in the wrong place. When you’re going to knit next, it needs to be in back, and when you’re going to purl, it has to be in front.”
“Oh,” she says slowly. “Can you show me?”
“Sure. But we’re fixing this, right?”
“Can it even be fixed?”
“Anything can be fixed.” I grab the stitches and slide the whole thing off the needle.
With a gasp, she clutches her heart.
“Omigod, are you okay?” I squeak, sounding nothing like a nurse.
She points a shaking finger at the knitting. “You just…murdered it.”
“No I didn’t.” I grab the working yarn and tug, and her stitches start to fly apart.
“Holy…” With a sob she buries her eyes in her hands. “You’re going to drop all the stitches. That took me weeks.”
“No—look! If you want to be a good knitter, you have to be a good unknitter.”
One eye emerges from behind her hand. “Can’t look. That’s like…gory! Blood and guts everywhere.”
“Do you have a name?” I ask, working quickly. It takes me about sixty seconds to remove the bad stitches and then catch all the remaining ones on the needle again.
“Leila,” she says from behind her hands.
“Look now, Leila. See? You only lost a half inch of knitting.” I pass it back to her.
“Wow.” She turns it over in her hands. “Okay. That’s pretty cool.” She picks up the other needle and knits two stitches. “Now tell me what you mean about moving the yarn.”
I show her. “Now, with that yarn in front, purl.”
She hesitates.
“You’ve got this.” I mimic the right motion and give her the memory line I used to learn knitting. “Come out the front door, grab your scarf…”
She puts the needle through and wraps it.
“Now duck out the back before the cat barfs.”
“Oh my fucking God,” she says, squinting at the needle. “Worst rhyme ever.”
“It worked, though. Where is the gratitude? Now move the yarn to the back and get ready to knit.”
She does. And a few minutes later, she’s holding her knitting up to the light and crowing about how great it looks. “Like real ribbing!”
“That’s because it is.”
We talk knitting for a while longer, and then I’m surprised when Nurse Hailey taps me on the back and says our time is up. “Meet us out in the hallway, please,” she says.
“Thank you,” Leila tells me. “I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Jess. Good luck with your…is it going to be a sweater?” I ask, although the knitted piece is really too small for that.
“A hat,” she replies, and then the shape makes more sense. “It’s for my little brother. He loves Harry Potter, and these are Gryffindor colors. It’s for Christmas.”
“Oh! That’s brilliant. He’s going to love it. And you’re almost there. This will be done way before Christmas.”
Tired eyes lift to mine. “Has to,” she says, and her gaze dares me to look away. “I’m stage four. Might not make it to Christmas.”
Just like that, I crumple inside.
My exterior keeps going. I take her hand and give it a gentle squeeze. I call her by name and make eye contact and tell her I’ll be thinking about her. I pick up my bag with the play dough inside, and my feet carry me out the door.
Half the nursing students are in the hallway already. They’re bent over their clipboards, their pens flying over the page, their observations spilling forth. When I come to stand beside Violet, she’s writing “contusions on the inner arm.”
She sees me looking over her shoulder, and her head snaps up, clipboard hugged to her chest. “What the hell? Are you copying me?”
Of course I’m not. But it wasn’t until I saw Violet’s handwriting that I remembered all the observations we were supposed to be making.
I failed. Again.
This realization is a second little bomb going off inside my chest. So even though Nurse Hailey hasn’t come out yet to speak to us, I turn and march down the hall, heading for the elevators.
“Where are you going?” Violet calls after me. “Class isn’t over.”
I don’t even turn to look. I can’t, because there are tears spilling over now, tracking down my face.
When I step into the elevator, it’s already impossible to remember why I wanted any of this in the first place. Not only is nursing school hard, but sad things wait for me when it’s over. Everyone I left behind on the ward is better prepared than I am. None of them are escaping the building like me.
As I often do
, I take the subway to my brother’s apartment. That’s my refuge. When Violet’s lip curls once too often, I hide in the waterfront condo at dinnertime.
On the train, I open my nursing textbook in my face and hide behind it until the tears stop.
That poor kid, knitting her brother a hat in October, in case she doesn’t make it to December.
Why?
13 Crankiness Makes Sense
Jess
Jamie isn’t home from work yet, but I let myself into the apartment with the spare key they gave me. He told me via text to get dinner started if I felt like it, and although I don’t feel like it, I do it anyway. He and Wes are nice enough to let me come over and eat their food every other night, so I might as well contribute in any way I can.
Not having money sucks. My bank account is like a horror movie—I can’t check the balance without screaming. The student loans I took out allow me a certain amount for living expenses, but I’m being extra stingy with those funds, buying only the bare necessities.
I had a friend in college who had a ton of cash left over from her loan (because she couldn’t be bothered to buy any textbooks) and she blew it on manicures and hair appointments. We all kept telling her it wasn’t free money and that loans need to be repaid. She didn’t listen, and now she’s paying the price in the form of insanely high interest rates. I, on the other hand, am going to be smart about this. There’s no such thing as free money. Anything extra, I’m keeping in my savings account and using to pay the sharks back.
Though I suppose buying groceries for Jamie and Wes every now and then would probably make me less of a dick for eating all their food.
I’m chopping up a green pepper at the counter when the front door creaks open. “In here!” I call out. “How do you feel about fajitas?”
“I feel awesome about fajitas!”
I freeze mid-chop. That’s not Jamie’s voice. Or Wes’s. Nope, it’s—