I turned to leave, but he stopped me.
“Connor?”
I looked back.
“Thank you,” he said, softer this time. “Really. I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me anything yet,” I said, smiling.
His eyes met mine for a second, then slipped away. I’ve noticed he does that—breaks eye contact when he’s nervous. Looks at your chin. Your shoulder. The space just above your head. Anywhere but directly at you.
“Yes, I do.”
“No problem,” I said.
What I didn’t say—what I kept to myself as I walked back to my apartment—was that this version of Noah didn’t quite line up with the one I thought I knew.
The shyness. The over-preparing. The way he apologizes for things that don’t need apologizing. I’d suspected some of it from the glimpses I’d caught over the years. But I hadn’t seen the pain before. The quiet hurt in his eyes that he tries so hard to hide.
Seeing it caught me off guard. It made me want to understand it. To ease it, maybe. To see what he looks like when he isn’t wound so tight.
That’s not why I agreed to play his boyfriend, though.
The real reason has nothing to do with Noah. It has everything to do with Mr. James Harrington in Room 412 at St. Vincent Hospital.
Eighty-eight years old. Congestive heart failure complicated by COPD. He’d been my patient for six months. I adjusted his medications weekly, monitored his labs, tweaked his oxygen settings when needed. Managed what could be managed. It bought time and kept things stable for a while, but it was never going to reverse anything.
He didn’t have any family left. Just stories. Stories about his childhood, the war, his sister who died from leukemia, and a woman he almost married but didn’t. He called every nurse and doctor “sweetheart,” regardless of gender, and somehow made it sound affectionate instead of patronizing.
He died on Sunday night. It wasn’t unexpected. Just the quiet end of something that had been tapering off for a while.
Still, it hit me harder than I thought it would.
When I got home after that shift, I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling for hours. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even turn on my computer.
The next morning, Dr. Patel found me in the break room, staring at a patient chart long after I’d finished reading it.
She took one look at me and said, “When was the last time you took a day off, O’Reilly?”
I couldn’t remember.
“You’ve got vacation days piling up,” she continued, not waiting for my answer. “Take a week. Starting Thursday. That’s not a suggestion.”
I tried to argue. Pointed out we were already short-staffed. Said I was fine.
“Connor,” she said, using my first name, which she only does when she’s annoyed with me, “you need a break before you break. Go home. Rest. And stop pissing me off.”
So I found myself with seven unexpected days off and nowhere to go but my apartment.
Traveling wasn’t an option. When I’m sightseeing or wandering around somewhere new, there’s nothing to drown out my thoughts. At work, or with a game running, or a show playing in the background, they stay manageable. But walking through a city with nothing but time? That’s when they get loud.
And it’s an even worse idea to travel with them when I’ve just lost a patient.
I decided I’d stay home and play games instead. I had one more shift to get through, and then a full week to catch up on everything sitting untouched in my Steam library.
Not exactly rest. But it would keep me occupied.
And then Noah knocked on my door at 2:37 a.m., clearly drunk, with a ridiculous proposal.
