I turn off the lamp and go downstairs and Rosie is still on the sofa and she hands me a beer without looking up from the TV. I sit down and I don't think about Savannah for the rest of the night.
Much.
CHAPTER 6
Savannah
Ten Years After Leaving Town
"Jesus, not another night shift."
I say it to nobody in particular. There's nobody to say it to at eleven forty-five on a Thursday night except the intake desk and the flickering strip light above bay three that maintenance has been promising to fix for six weeks.
I've always wanted to be a doctor. My whole life, that was the plan, the thing I was working toward, and I don't regret a minute of the training or the med school or the residency. But after six years in this ER, I'm kind of sick of it. Not the medicine. The medicine I still love. Just the particular grind of it, the hours that swallow everything else, the way I go home some mornings and can't remember the last time I did something that had nothing to do with saving someone else's life.
I didn't go into this to have no life of my own.
"I know," Luke says, appearing at my elbow with two coffees. He hands one over without me asking and leans on the counter nextto me. "It's supposed to be quiet at night but we both know that's not what happens around here."
Luke has been working beside me for six years. We tried dating once about three years in, realized within about two weeks that we were a spectacular mismatch romantically and a very good match as friends, and adjusted accordingly. He is the person I call when something goes wrong and the person I eat takeout with on the couch when nothing is going wrong at all, and I love him in the uncomplicated way you love someone who has never once let you down.
"I'm thinking of going home," I say, still not looking at him.
"What do you mean? You've only started your shift."
"No." I wrap both hands around the coffee cup. "I mean home. My actual home town. My parents are getting older and I've always said I'd open a practice there eventually. I think eventually might be now."
He's quiet for a second. I can feel him processing this the way Luke processes things, methodically, not jumping to a reaction. "You want to go from extremely busy ER to running a practice? Savannah, it'll be too quiet. You'll want the high that you get here and you won't have it."
"I know. But I feel like I've done enough of this particular kind of medicine. My parents always wanted me to open there. Not that they're pressuring me, they've never pushed, but it was something I always said I would do and I think if I don't do it now I'm going to be here in another six years saying the same thing."
"Wow." He looks at me properly. "You've really thought about this. Why didn't you say anything?"
"I'm saying something now. My mind's not fully made up but I wanted to know what you think." I finally turn to face him.
"I'll miss you." He says it straight out, no hedging. "You're my best friend." He reaches out and touches my hand.
"Do you want to come with me? We could do it together."
I look up at him and I know the answer before he gives it. I can see it in his face, the way it goes soft with a look that's fond and regretful at the same time. Luke and the ER are the same thing. You couldn't separate them with a crowbar.
Before he can answer, pandemonium breaks out. The doors burst open and the next several hours cease to exist in any form I can narrate.
"Looks like you were saved by the patients," I say when the first wave hits, and we split for our respective bays and that's the conversation over for now.
"Oh my god.Thank god for that coffee."
Road traffic accident. Multiple casualties. Two of them died and there was nothing either of us could have done differently and I know that and I still feel it in my sternum the way I always feel it, the particular weight of a life that came through your hands and left anyway.
That's the part they don't tell you about in med school. You get used to it, but getting used to it doesn't mean it stops landing.
"You'd miss this," Luke says, walking past me into the next bay. "You love the adrenaline."
He's not wrong. I do love it. That's the complicated part.
It's another three hours before we're done. We drive home in silence, both too wrung out to talk, and when we get back to the apartment I drop onto the sofa and look at the ceiling and Luke drops into the armchair and does the same.
"You don't have to come with me," I say. "I meant it when I asked but I know what your answer is and I'm not upset about it."