Page 81 of The Ripple Effect

Outwardly, the building is unremarkable: a one-story seventies concrete box that immediately makes your eyes want to move on. The architects didn’t concern themselves with aesthetics, choosing instead to clamp the heat and ventilation pipes to the side of the emergency department like tubes and wires connected to a patient.

Inside the sliding glass doors, it’s a punch of industrial light and noise. On long night shifts, the soundscape made me feel like the hospital was a huge ship traversing the ocean of night: the ever-present hum of the high-volume air exchangers, the electric whir of diagnostic machines, the palpable vibration from loaded stretchers rolling across metal connecting strips in the linoleum.

This place is eerily the same, yet different. Or maybe it’s me who’s changed.

Physically, I’m not injured that badly. My arm hurts like a motherfucker, and I need irrigation and stitches. But I’ll heal.

Emotionally, though… it’s not the shape I’d rather be in when I run into god knows which ex-colleague in the middle of the night. Not exactly one of the triumphant comeuppance fantasies I conjured on those midnights I lay awake, too steeped in injustice to sleep.

I held my head high on the way out of this place, fueled by the fury of being right and losing anyway. Can I do the same tonight, now that I understand how goddamn sad I was then? Not to mention how sad I am now. In all probability, I’ve lost my business, my secrets, my last best chance to stay near my friend.

And Lyle.

I recognize the burning feeling in my stomach when I think about him, because I used to feel it all the time when I worked here. It’s the sensation of knowing something’s wrong and wanting to ignore it. Wanting the fantasy so badly I’m willing to overlook what’s real. For an entire year, I told myself he and I were wrong for each other. What if I was right?

At the triage desk sits a nurse I don’t know. His face looks tired for someone so young, brown skin pasty under the fluorescent lights. He straps the blood pressure cuff on my uninjured arm with efficient movements, empathetic in the measured way I recognize so well. He’s learned not to spend all his kindness too early in the shift.

I give him a sanitized version of what happened and don’t tell him I used to work here.

He gloves up, then peels back the edge of my damp, pink-tinged dressing to check out what’s underneath. “There might be a wait to see the doctor.”

“I understand. Could I have some acetaminophen for the pain?”

He cocks his head at the generic drug name. “Are you a health care provider?”

I take a breath, fail to find the right words, and let it out with a defeated huff. “I don’t know.”

His eyes narrow. “Did you hit your head?”

“No, sorry, no head trauma. I meant that Iwasa doctor. Before. I left medicine after…”

“After,” he says, expression softening, and I don’t correct his impression that I’m referring to the pandemic. “I’m sure you’re missed.”

I nod, throat tight, imagining a world where this could be true.

“There you are.” Sloane appears with two take-out cups from the all-night Tim Hortons in the hospital lobby. She hands me the one with a tea bag tag dangling from under its lid. “I’ve never seen you drink coffee, but if you want to make an exception for exceptional circumstances, I also bought something called a double double…?” Sloane looks dubiously at the second cup.

“It’s good. It’ll make you happy,” I reassure her, wishing real happiness was something that came in a cup.

She takes a sip. “Accurate.”

The nurse frowns at Sloane. “Do I know you?”

With dirt smeared across one cheek, a stained shirt, and third-day hair, she looks a lot like she does in theNighthawketrailer. “I’m friends with someone who used to work here. Maybe we’ve met?” She’s a good actor; his face smooths out. “Where do we wait?”

I get a cubicle not far from the triage station. Sloane helps me up onto the crinkly plastic mattress of the stretcher, where a different nurse cuts off my shirt, then slides on a patient gown, taking care with my injured arm. Once she’s gone, Sloane kicksup the footrests of the wheelchair I rode here in, collapsing it with fight-sequence efficiency.

“You’re a pro with that.”

She smiles grimly. “Lots of practice.”

We wait in silence. It’s hard to keep up light conversation in the emergency room. Even if I weren’t distracted by the throbbing in my arm, my brain wants to go back and pick at everything that happened.

IfI’d been warmer to Petra, things might have turned out differently.IfI’d pushed harder to get Lyle to believe me.IfI hadn’t put off calling Sharon.IfI’d bailed out on the Love Boat at the first sign of trouble, instead of calling Sloane and faking the engagement and walking deeper into the quicksand with every step.

If I hadn’t frozen when Lyle needed just one person on his side. If he hadn’t left at the moment I needed him most.

If I weren’t in love with him now.

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