Page 107 of Just Forever

He yawns and looks around the room.

“I think it’s all pretty much done here, too, so we can head home.”

He flicks off the light, so only the one in the foyer is on. The room is dim, bathed in moonlight. Lake starts to move past me, and I step into his path, so he walks right into me.

His grin is wide and happy.

“Hi,” he says.

I smile back and take his hand in mine.

“Dance with me.”

He raises his brows and glances toward the speaker in the corner of the room. It’s been playing a random playlist the whole evening and is now playing some rap song.

“Romantic,” my husband says.

I grin at him, pull my phone out and quickly switch the song. Lake sends me the softest look when “Baby, I’m Yours” starts to play.

I take his hand. He steps so close that we’re plastered together.

My lips are by his ear, and I start to sing softly. He exhales and laughs.

When he kisses me, everything feels about as perfect as it could possibly be.

His soft lips on mine.

His chest against my chest.

The two of us together.

My heart in his hands and his in mine.

And we dance in the faint moonlight in our kitchen.

In the middle of the night.

Just him and me.

Just forever.

LAKE

A FEW YEARS LATER…

The night shiftis a different animal.

It’s four thirty in the morning. Your eyes are heavy. The harsh, fluorescent lights above your head are way too bright. You’re drinking your third coffee simultaneously with your fourth Coke Zero and absently wondering if you might be at a point where you’ve simply become resistant to caffeine. You’re cold because you’re always cold at night. Your body knows it’s not normal to stay up through those hours, and that you should be asleep, so your core temperature drops. It’s like a nudge from your brain.

Hey! Hey, you over there. You should be asleep right now.

Thank you, brain. Solid input, as always.

And I would sleep. Believe me, I really would. Thing is, people are and always have been especially eager to get themselves killed during the night. Once the sun sets, knives, guns, and DUIs come out to play. Where other departments of the hospital have a quiet lull settle over them, save for an occasional spike of adrenaline here and there, the emergency department comes alive under the cover of darkness.

In the twelve hours I spend here during my shift, I see everything. From broken arms to sepsis, from gunshot wounds to strokes to inner ear infections.

It’s unpredictable, but there are also some inevitable events that repeat from day to day and night to night. Several somebodies will yell at you. Somebody will threaten to sue you. Or kill you. Sometimes both at once. I sit on the phone, trying to get patients admitted or listening to somebody yell at me for trying to get a patient admitted. I order tests, get yelled at for ordering tests, then get yelled at for not ordering those same tests sooner.

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