“He doesn’t expect…” Noah pauses and takes a breath. “It’s not that. I just know I’ve disappointed him. And I don’t know how to talk about that.”
“Which is why you aren’t in Italy with your family,” I continue. “You’re avoiding your dad?”
He lets out a little chuckle. “Perceptive.”
It says something significant that Noah was so quick to defend his father. I’ve never met any of the Hawthornes in person, but I’m getting the sense they are incredibly family-oriented. It’s hard to imagine a dad being hard on his son for reacting the way Noah did. If I had to guess, this is a problem that exists largely in Noah’s own mind.
He’s being harder on himself than anyone else is. That’s something I recognize because I do the same thing.
“So what happened after?” I ask. “Did you quit, or…”
“Not quite,” he says. “Though I did try. I was ready to walk out of the hospital and never go back, but my boss put me on leave instead. On paper, it’s a six-week leave of absence on account of my mental health. But I believe my boss’s exact words were to go ‘find some balance and touch grass.’”
“I mean, you came to the right place then.”
“Yeah. But my six weeks are almost up.”
I bite my lip. “What will you do then?”
“No clue.”
“But you miss it,” I say. “You already said that. You miss being a doctor.”
He picks up his glass and drinks the last of his wine, then leans back in his chair. “I do miss it.”
“Then why not go back?”
He meets my gaze, a question clear in his expression.
“If you love it and you miss it, what’s holding you back?”
“I’m holding me back,” he says, a slight edge to his tone. “I’m still the same man. The same doctor. And whenever I think about going back, I’m filled with this sense of…I don’t know. Dread feels like too big a word. But…”
“You’re worried it will happen again?” I ask.
“It could,” he says. “What do I do if it does?”
“But you already said you recognized what you were doing wrong. Working too much. Spending too much time at the hospital. If you start fresh, build some better habits, maybe talk to a therapist on a regular basis.” I shift in my seat, pulling the blanket up a little higher. “Noah, you can’t be the only doctor who’s ever dealt with this. It isn’t supposed to be easy. And you shouldn’t be expected to lose your humanity so that it is.”
“I can’t talk to a therapist,” he says, breathing out a frustrated sigh. “A therapist will make me…talk.I’m not…good at talking.”
My heart squeezes. “You’re doing okay right now.”
“This is different,” he says. “You’re easy to talk to because you aren’t filling the silence. You’re giving me time to figure out what I want to say.”
He says the words so casually, he can’t recognize how much they impact me, but they hit me right in the gut, triggering a deep sense of longing.
I want to be the person he can talk to. The person hechoosesto talk to.
“I can talk about the reversible causes of cardiac arrest all day long,” Noah says. “But you want to talk about my feelings? I hope you aren’t in a hurry because it may take a while.”
“I don’t think you’re alone in that way,” I say. “But I do think it’s something that gets easier with practice. It has for me. I talk to my therapist twice a month like clockwork. And it’s a lot easier now than it was at first.”
He stares into the fire for a long moment before he asks, “You have a therapist?”
“Her name is Gretchen,” I say. “And I wouldn’t have finished nursing school without her. Or made it through my last breakup. But also, we talk when things are good too. Sometimes, I even find that more helpful. Because then she can be like, ‘hey look, you see all the things you’re doing to take care of yourself? Notice the patterns.’”
Noah’s face is contemplative, so I wait, remembering what he said about needing time to find the right words. Eventually, he looks up and says, “I think the thing that baffles me the most is that I’m not an angry person. I don’t really yell or get mad. But that day, something in me just snapped.”
