God, she really was beautiful. She had her hair up in a loose ponytail, reading glasses on.
I cleared my throat. “Thank you for getting me. I appreciate it. It means a lot to be included.”
“I told you I was going to.” Then her brows drew down. “You are covered in mosquito bites.”
I looked at my arms. “Yeah. The cabin’s buggy.” Or rather the table on the patio of the restaurant I talked to her at was buggy…
She put a thumb over her shoulder. “So I was going to go visit the sob closet around noon today—”
“Oh. Good to know,” I said. “I’ll schedule my breakdown around two to give you a chance to finish up.”
She laughed. “No. Do you want to meet me? I was just going to have my lunch in there. There’s a new box of paper towels, so we both have a seat now.”
The corner of my lip twitched. “I could eat at noon. You don’t want to eat in the doctors’ lounge, though? Or the cafeteria?”
Not that I wanted to. Frankly, I preferred the supply closet. Most days I ate lunch there or in my truck. I liked the quiet. But it was an odd choice for her.
She shook her head. “The closet’s quiet.”
“The closet is quiet,” I agreed.
She smiled. “Cool. See you at noon.”
She made a finger gun at me and joined a small group of nurses who were waiting for her. I watched her walk down the hall and turn a corner.
Then the panic set in. I obsessed over what to eat for the next four hours.
I didn’t want anything that would stink up the small space. No feta cheese or heavy garlic. We wouldn’t have a table, so nothing that required silverware. Soup was out of the question. I didn’t want anything crunchy since it would be amplified in the tiny room. No apples or chips. I finally decided on a sandwich—no onions and no spinach in case it got stuck in my teeth—with a fruit cup.
It occurred to me that this overthinking was very likely not happening on her end. But I was too self-conscious for this.
Eating was intimate. It took me a long time to truly feel comfortable doing it in front of someone.
It took me a long time to feel comfortable doing a lot of things in front of someone.
At noon I let myself into the supply closet with my food. She was in the same spot as last time, looking at her phone. When she saw me, she peered up and smiled warmly. “Hey.”
She had a Cup Noodles on the floor next to her and she picked it up as I shut the door. “I waited for you to eat,” she said.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said, sitting on the paper-towel box.
She pulled out a plastic utensil and took the cover off her noodles. “So what’d you get?”
“Just a sandwich,” I said, leaving out the part where it took me all day to decide on it.
I unwrapped it on my lap and felt a twinge of dismay as I realized they’d put vinegar on it. I looked up at her to see if she had any reaction to the smell, but she was twisting noodles around her fork and pulling them to her mouth, catching the fallout in the cup—and I realized this woman didn’t care. She didn’t care what she looked like eating and she probably didn’t care what my damn sandwich smelled like either. Hell, the whole room smelled like soup.
I relaxed a little. I had to remember that not everyone overthought everything the way I did.
Wouldn’t it be amazing to live like that? To not carry that burden around with you. To not feel constantly overwhelmed and overstimulated and second-guess every little thing.
It got better the more I got to know people. At Memorial West my anxiety was hardly a problem at all. They were my friends there, my team. I was used to them and comfortable around them.
All things considered, I was comfortable around Briana too, I realized.
Briana made me nervous, but she didn’t make me uncomfortable. That was a big distinction. For me, nervousness usually got better with time. Uncomfortable didn’t.
At least it didn’t with Amy.
Amy never stopped making me uncomfortable. She still did. Mostly because I don’t think she knew me well enough to know how not to.
I took a bite of my sandwich while Briana ate her noodles, and we fell into a silence. But unlike most silences, this one didn’t feel awkward. It was like the pause between our letters. Just a small break in the dialogue.
Briana reached down and picked up a Snapple. “What’s on your socks?” she asked, nodding at my ankles.
I pulled my pant leg up to look. “Elephants.”
“Do you always wear animal socks?”
“I do it for my niece and nephew. They like them.”
“Are you going to see them today?”
I shook my head. “No. But kids like them, so I always wear them to work.”
She smiled. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked, putting the cap back on her drink.
I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “Sure.”
“You said your mom had a kidney transplant?”
I nodded. “She has lupus. Her best friend donated.”
She paused for a moment. “How is she?”
“She’s great. Healthy. Her lupus is managed for the most part.” I peered at her. “How’s your brother?”
She shrugged, looking into her soup cup. “He’s not really thriving on dialysis. I thought by now he’d at least be getting adjusted, but…” She went quiet again. “He’s so depressed I’m beginning to think that his infected catheter was on purpose.”
I blinked at her. “You think he’s suicidal?”
She poked at her soup. “I don’t think he wanted to die so much as he just doesn’t have any interest in living like this anymore.”
I stared at her. I had no idea it was that bad.
She still didn’t look at me. “I think if it had been more gradual, it wouldn’t have hit him so hard. But it all happened so fast. He lost his job because he couldn’t work with his health issues. Then his girlfriend broke up with him a few months into it, which didn’t help.”
I knew this. Gibson had mentioned it. But having it confirmed was upsetting all over again. “Because he was sick?” I asked, incredulous.
She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t know that she left because he was sick, or more that he stopped being the person she knew he once was. He got moody and short with her, self-conscious about his body. He didn’t want to be touched. Maybe he pushed her away. I don’t know.”
Not a good enough reason. I could never leave someone I love when they need me—especially if they were sick.
I studied Briana’s face. She looked so tired when she talked about her brother.
“Any status on a donor?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I have a website for it, and we all have HELP BENNY FIND A KIDNEY. YOU COULD BE THE MATCH! stickers on our cars. But it’s been eight months since I started looking for someone.”
“Do you have any more stickers? I’ll put one on my truck.”
She looked up at me and brightened. “You will?”
“Yes, of course.”
She beamed at me like this tiny thing was everything. “Thank you. And thanks for having lunch with me,” she said.
“Anytime,” I said, meaning it more than I think she knew. “Maybe next time we can do the cafeteria.”