Page 10 of The Strawberry Field
I try to name the feeling. Numbness? Emptiness?
No—this is something different.
Maybe not a feeling at all. Maybe the absence of feeling.
I try to remember what used to fill me. What gave me purpose. What made me feel full.
Hope.
Yes—there was hope.
Hope for healing. Hope that when someone walks into the ER, I might be the person who could help set things right. That no matter how terrifying their detour, we could patch them up, stabilize them, and send them back out into the world to pick up where they left off.
Back then, I believed in that version of normal.
But does that word even apply anymore?
Can there be normal again?
In the rational part of my mind, I know the world will eventually find its rhythm again. Humanity has weathered worse and gone on. Wars. Famine. Disease outbreaks. People will return to their lives. Children will go to school. Restaurants will reopen. The virus will shrink into something we can manage instead of something managing us.
Probably.
But I don’t know if I’ll be part of that world.
Will I go back? Will I return to the hospital, put the scrubs back on, walk through those doors with the same resolve I once carried?
I want to say yes.
But deep down, I know the truth. The ache of the ER lives in my bones, but the fire that once fed it is gone.
No. I won’t go back.
The realization lands quietly, like a final puzzle piece sliding into place. I open my eyes and stare at the shimmering waves of the lake. The sunlight reflects hard off the surface, glinting like a spotlight on this moment of clarity.
I can’t go back.
That version of me—the one who thrived in crisis, who believed in her tools, her training, her willpower—she’s gone.
I don’t know when exactly I lost her.
But I did.
Maybe it was the day I stood outside Michael’s ICU room and realized once and for all that I was powerless. Maybe it was the night I walked out of the hospital and didn’t go back. Or it could have been slower than that—a quiet crumbling over weeks on end, a soul ground down grain by grain.
Whatever the moment was, I missed it.
And now I’m left with what remains.
A shell. Brittle. Fragile.
One sharp breath away from snapping in two.
Jake’s face flashes through my mind, standing beside my car, his voice soft, eyes filled with sympathy. The memory carries the faint scent of gasoline and sunlight, the sound of wind off the lake mixing with his low, steady tone. That look alone nearly shattered me.
Because with Jake came something else.Not just kindness.But memory. The part of my past I’ve worked for years to bury.
And Tommy. My brother. Whose death I couldn’t process. The one no one talked about after it happened. Jake was there for all of it, and seeing him brought it roaring back.
