She studies me intently. Hesitates. Then lowers her lids. ‘We should continue.’
‘Yeah… sure…,’ I force out, confused by everything she’s still doing to me, even though she’s no longer anywhere near me.
Just like before, she’s now sitting on the examination couch, pretending to check her notes. Mindlessly, I open the door of the base cabinet and pull out the resuscitation bags.
I count them. Several times. Still, I have no idea how many there are. ‘Ambu bags, adult size: three.’
Nyla clears her throat. ‘Earlier I wrote down two.’
I glance up at her briefly. The pen between her fingers trembles. ‘Then two,’ I say, disoriented, and put the resuscitation bags back into the compartment.
Chapter Nineteen
NYLA
Four more hours until I see Jaden again. Today he’ll be with me in the ER for my entire shift. He’ll be by my side the whole time.
The whole time.
Will he sense how tightly wound I am? Will he try to distract me from the thing that dominates my thoughts just as much as the memory of our almost-kiss in the ambulance yesterday?
‘What do you think of this?’ June holds a photograph of New York at night right in front of my nose. ‘That would look good above my bed, wouldn’t it?’
When I promised June last night that I’d go shopping with her today, I’d hoped it would distract me from the carousel in my head. Now we’ve been roaming around the furniture store for an hour and I can barely manage to concentrate.
‘Nyla?’ June’s blue eyes look at me brightly, her blonde hair falling into her face.
Once again I do my best at least to forget what almost happened yesterday. It’s silly anyway to brood over what it means, what I feel or what he does.
At the very least I don’t want to think about Jaden anymore, because erasing the other thing that rules me from my mind isimpossible: the blood they’re taking from me today will decide my future tomorrow.
Oh God, I just hope everything is all right.
‘Hey.’ My roommate nudges me gently and lifts the picture a little higher. ‘I thought this would look nice above my bed.’
I study the photo. ‘It’s pretty, but maybe a bit too dark,’ I reply, look around for an alternative picture and promptly land on a moody image of a couple kissing in the rain.
‘This one’s better, don’t you think?’
Out of the corner of my eye I see June pointing at the picture I’m staring at because I don’t have the willpower to stop. ‘No.’
‘Is something wrong?’ My friend steps between the picture and me. ‘You were kind of weird last night …’
That’s possible. When I was cooking with June and she told me about this patient who is turning her life upside down more than she ever could have imagined, I was briefly distracted. But it didn’t last long.
‘Yeah,’ I admit.
Her hands touch my shoulders. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s a lot piling up right now.’ Jaden, the fear of getting sick again, the worry that I’m a bad doctor.
She steers me toward one of the sofas. ‘Is it about the follow-up exam?’
The exam that, thanks to Jaden, I even managed to forget for a moment yesterday. I forgot everything.
Just us.
Just here.
