I went straight to look at her wall. Her first picture was of her with a gray cat on her lap. He was rubbing his head affectionately on her chin. The caption said “my new roommate.” That must be Cooter.
Farther down the timeline there were a few pictures at a wedding. She was in a black dress, posing with the beaming bride, a redhead.
There were some nature pictures. A trail with light green leaves on the trees. A selfie in front of Minnehaha Falls. She was wearing sunglasses and a gray baseball hat in that one. She liked to hike, like me. There were a lot of pictures in the woods, camping. Superior Hiking Trail.
There was one of her in a bathing suit in a pool. I looked at this one longer than I probably should have. She had a nice figure. It was hard to tell under the scrubs, but she did. She was a very attractive woman.
There was a shot of her in a blue ballgown, like she was headed to an event, seven months ago. She looked beautiful.
As I scrolled down, I spotted a picture of her with her brother from two years ago. The difference was stark. The before-and-after of his illness. He was tan and fit. She looked happier too. She was wearing a wedding ring in this one.
She was married before? Maybe this is what she meant about the last year being hard.
If I didn’t know the situation with Benny, I might not have noticed the weariness in her now. She was beautiful then and she was beautiful today. But I could see the toll it had all taken.
I got a notification that she’d liked one of my pictures. Then another one that there was a comment. I tapped on it. It was my last picture of Lieutenant Dan. She’d written “he’s so cute! ??” I smiled.
Maybe she’d like to meet him. I thought about asking her if she’d like to go to the dog park with me after work one day. I could DM her.
We could message back and forth. Right now. I wanted to.
It was hard to have a running conversation via letters. It took too long. Even on days when we passed three or four notes, I had to wait all day to get a written response to just one question. And then on our days off, there were no notes at all.
The days where there were no notes felt particularly long.
But what to say? What message would I send? “Hey”? I couldn’t send Hey. It had to be something smart. Or funny. Not Hey.
A notification popped up. I had a message. From Briana.
My heart lurched. I hurried to click on it.
Briana: Hey
My mind started to race. What should I reply? Hey too? Maybe I should ask an open-ended question. That way she’d have to respond so it wouldn’t just be Hey Hey and then nothing.
Another message popped up.
Briana: What r u doing?
Panicking???
I stood and started to pace. I typed into the message bar.
Me: Not much. At my cabin this weekend. You?
I read it over five times before deciding it was good. I changed You to U and then back again. I hit Send and stared at the screen.
No new message came through.
I waited a few minutes. Then I decided to go back to her wall, just to have something to do. But when I got there, I saw a red #1 on the message arrow telling me there was a DM. I went to tap it, but there was nothing there.
Shit. It was the Wi-Fi. My messages weren’t loading. Noooooo.
The cabin had crappy internet. Crappy cell service too. In fact, this was one of the reasons I came up here this weekend, to have plausible deniability when my family couldn’t get in touch to interrogate me. I knew if I’d stayed home, they would have shown up to corner me, so I fled up north. Only now my plan was backfiring because the only person I actually wanted to be able to talk to couldn’t get through.
There were times when I couldn’t get Instagram to load for hours. My cell phone had only one bar unless I went over to the little cabin-themed restaurant down the street to get a signal.
I was going over to the little cabin-themed restaurant down the street to get a signal.
I pulled on my shirt, grabbed my coat and wallet and Lieutenant Dan’s leash. I clipped it to his collar faster than I’ve ever moved in my life and then started running with him the quarter mile to the restaurant. As soon as I made it to their patio, their Wi-Fi connected to my phone and her message pinged.
Briana: Nothing. So bored.
I stood there, panting.
A server nodded to an empty table and I realized how I looked—sweaty and out of breath, like I went jogging in my jacket and work boots.
The server set a menu on the table and I took a seat and stared at the screen wondering what I should reply. But before I got the chance to, she sent another message.
Briana: Can I just call u?
She wanted to talk? On the phone?
I raked my hand through my hair. I did want to talk to her. But this didn’t really give me the time to change mental gears and get used to the idea that it was happening right now. I didn’t really do spontaneity, especially in social situations.
But I did want to talk to her…I wanted to talk to her a lot.
Me: Sure.
I typed in my phone number.
My cell rang immediately. I picked up on the first ring, and then kicked myself for looking so eager.
“Hey,” she said brightly.
This was the first word she’d spoken to me in person since the day over a week ago when she’d told me what cupcakes to bring.
“Hey,” I said back.
“Sorry, it’s just typing takes so long. Better just to talk to you,” she said.
“Yeah. No problem.”
“Okay, so I have to ask,” she said. “And I need you to be super honest. Are you sending me all the butt stuff?”
I choked out a laugh. “What?”
“I have gotten all of the weird butt-stuff patients this week. A zucchini, a headless Barbie, an antique candlestick—and the guy asked me to be careful pulling it out because it was his mother’s—are you sending me these? Do you have an arrangement with the charge nurses?”
I shook my head with a chuckle. “No. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ve gotten all the drunk frat boys this week. One pulled out his IV and stripped naked and took off and I had to tackle him before he escaped. Do you have an arrangement with the charge nurses?”
“Of course. But I’m not sending you all the naked drunk frat boys. I’m only sending you the runners.”
I laughed so loud the waitress looked over at me.
“The last drunk frat boy I got thought he was in a drive-through,” she said. “I had to be all like, ‘Sir! This isn’t an Arby’s!’”
I had to pinch tears from my eyes. God, she was funny.
“Every day is a full moon around here,” she said. “Was it this busy at Memorial West?”
I shook my head. “No, not this bad. But then they weren’t a level-one trauma center, so…”
“Yeah, it keeps us from getting bored for sure. Do you like it better?”
I nodded. “I think I do. Never a dull moment.”
She sounded like she was stretching. “Why’d you pick emergency medicine? I’d think it would be a hard specialty with your anxiety.”