She looked at my face. “You sure?”
I nodded. “I need to recheck the morphine dose on bed three. Can you double-check my math?”
“Of course.”
My hands were shaking too much to trust myself.
That night, driving home at 7:03 a.m. after my shift, I kept replaying it. Ashley’s face at Christmas dinner. The way she’d gone quiet when I announced my date. The way her smile had tightened.
Maybe it was an honest mistake. Maybe she really didn’t remember. Maybe—
No.
I’d seen that look before. When I got into nursing school and she didn’t get into her first choice college. When I bought my first car with my own money and she had to ask dad for help. When I told them about Sam and she realized her timeline was slipping.
Ashley didn’t forget.
Ashley took.
I pulled into my building’s parking lot. Ravenswood. The one-bedroom Sam and I split for 1,650 a month. Modest, small. I sat in my car for 10 minutes, staring at nothing.
Sam was probably already asleep. He’d worked a 48-hour shift at the firehouse. Engine 78.
We crossed paths coming and going. Two people who understood that the work mattered more than the schedule.
I thought about a little girl I’d cared for three years ago. Mia, six years old, leukemia, acute lymphoblastic. She’d come into the PICU in septic shock on a Tuesday night in October 2021.
I remembered one night specifically, 3:47 a.m. Her oxygen saturation dropping: 82, 79, 75. The respiratory therapist was in another code. Two floors down.
I manually bagged Mia for 20 minutes, squeezing air into her lungs, watching the monitor, talking to her even though she was sedated.
“Come on, sweetheart. Stay with me. Your mom needs you. Your dad needs you. I need you to fight.”
Her mother stood beside me, gripping my other hand so hard my fingers went numb.
“Please don’t let her die,” she whispered.
I didn’t.
Mia survived. 11 months of treatment, remission, recovery. Her parents never forgot.
I’d spent my whole life making myself smaller so Ashley could shine brighter, giving up space, giving up attention, giving up the front row at family dinners and holiday photos and birthday celebrations.
This time I was done shrinking.
I got out of the car, went upstairs. Sam was asleep on the couch, still in his CFD T-shirt, remote in his hand. I sat beside him, put my hand on his shoulder.
He woke up, blinked. “Hey, you okay?”
“Ashley booked her wedding on our date,” I said.
He sat up fully awake now. “What?”
“June 14th, our date. She announced it in the group chat.”
