Lake
LAKE
A FEW YEARS LATER…
The night shift is a different animal.
It’s four thirty in the morning. Your eyes are heavy. The harsh, fluorescent lights above your head are way too bright. You’re drinking your third coffee simultaneously with your fourth Coke Zero and absently wondering if you might be at a point where you’ve simply become resistant to caffeine. You’re cold because you’re always cold at night. Your body knows it’s not normal to stay up through those hours, and that you should be asleep, so your core temperature drops. It’s like a nudge from your brain.
Hey! Hey, you over there. You should be asleep right now.
Thank you, brain. Solid input, as always.
And I would sleep. Believe me, I really would. Thing is, people are and always have been especially eager to get themselves killed during the night. Once the sun sets, knives, guns, and DUIs come out to play. Where other departments of the hospital have a quiet lull settle over them, save for an occasional spike of adrenaline here and there, the emergency department comes alive under the cover of darkness.
In the twelve hours I spend here during my shift, I see everything. From broken arms to sepsis, from gunshot wounds to strokes to inner ear infections.
It’s unpredictable, but there are also some inevitable events that repeat from day to day and night to night. Several somebodies will yell at you. Somebody will threaten to sue you. Or kill you. Sometimes both at once. I sit on the phone, trying to get patients admitted or listening to somebody yell at me for trying to get a patient admitted. I order tests, get yelled at for ordering tests, then get yelled at for not ordering those same tests sooner.
Being a third-year emergency medicine resident is a delight.
That last one wasn’t actually sarcasm.
Somewhere inside me is a masochist who somehow, after all the years in med school and despite everything that is frustrating about working at a hospital, still enjoys this life.
Go figure.
Well, night shift is still pure torture. I’m a morning person by design, always have been, and staying up all night makes me cranky as shit, so by six o’clock in the morning the little enthusiasm there was to begin with has left the building, and I’m running solely on fumes and caffeine. I sit down on the floor in a quiet corner to finally eat the granola bar I’ve been warming in the pocket of my scrubs since last night and send up a quick prayer for a moment of peace and quiet.
I get a minute before I’m up on my feet again because I performed a thoracostomy on a guy a little while ago, and he’s apparently decided to remove the chest tube and is now regretting it on account of, you know, not being able to breathe.
All in all, by the time I stumble out of the hospital into the gray early April New York morning, even the fumes and the caffeine have dissipated, leaving behind only a vague need to contemplate every decision in my life that has brought me to this moment. I’ll feel better once I’ve face-planted into bed and stayed there for a couple of hours, so I repeat that like a mantra to keep myself going.
My subway stop seems an impossible distance away. The few blocks I’ll have to walk might as well be the length of Antarctica.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I’m determined not to look. That way lies trouble. They might call me back in for whatever reason, and then I’ll just stay for another shift. It’s happened before.
I scrunch my nose and tell myself to be strong. Resist the urge to look. Ignore the loud sense of obligation.
The phone comes out.
I smile and my heart picks up speed when I see Ryk’s name on the screen.
Ryk: On your left.
I see his car immediately.
He’s in a no-parking zone, so a second later, I jog toward him and jump into the idling car.
The moment I’m in, he erases the distance between us. His hand goes to the back of my neck, and he’s pulling me on for a deep, earthshattering, love-you-like-there’s-no-tomorrow type of kiss. The kind that makes my toes curl in my sneakers and my chest swell with joy even after all these years. The kind of kiss he’s so proficient at.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” I say, failing to sound disapproving. He came back from an eight-day road trip sometime last night—his longest one this season—and by the time his plane landed, I was already at the hospital.
The Blades have been having the kind of season every hockey fan dreams of for their team, which is a nice change from the last two seasons when they… how do I put this nicely? Fumbled the puck? Miserably. But they picked themselves up and dusted themselves off and are now seriously on fire.
He leans his forehead against mine and smiles at me. “I missed you too fucking much.”
I’m a puddle of gooey feelings and satiated longing.
“Take me home,” I say.
The back terrace might be my favorite part of our house. It takes up most of our backyard, small as it is. Strings of lightbulbs zigzag across the space overhead. There’s a long plank table that fits at least ten people, more if we squeeze together tightly. Neither of us has been blessed with a green thumb or really any inclination to educate ourselves about plants, so we hired a landscaping company to figure out the plants and drop by regularly to make sure they stay alive.
I pad over the hardwood floors of the living area, slide open the glass door that leads to the terrace, and step outside. Ryk is lounging in one of the chairs, his long legs stretched out in front of him, a large cup of coffee on the side table.
It’s late afternoon. We got home earlier, he fucked my brains out in our bed, and then we both conked out.
I go to him and slide my fingers through his hair before I lower my mouth to his and kiss him.
He pulls me down onto his lap, and I wrap my arms around his neck.
“How long have you been up?” I ask.
“Fifteen minutes or so. Not long.” He squeezes my waist and slides his hand under the T-shirt I pulled on before stumbling out of the bedroom. He leans his head back against the headrest and grins at me. “We have the next two days off. Both of us.”
He sounds like he’s describing a miracle, which he might as well be. Our schedules are insane and more often than not, they don’t align very well.
“Are you proposing we go to bed and just stay there for the next forty-eight hours?”
He laughs softly. “We have Kian’s birthday party tomorrow.”
I groan. “Why do you insist on us having friends?”
His eyes shine with laughter. “I’m so sorry. I take all the blame. You should punish me for it later.”
I kiss him again. I miss him so much when he’s on the road, and it hasn’t gotten any easier in the years we’ve been together, but we make it work.
I yawn and lean against him. “Anything else on the schedule?”
“I’m pretty sure your mom has been talking about stopping by this weekend.”
I scratch the side of my nose and blow out a breath. “There’s a fifty-fifty chance she won’t show up.”
I say that more for myself than for Ryker. He knows all about how flighty my mother is, so it’s more of a reminder for me. I don’t expect her to suddenly change, but it helps to say it out loud.
Not that I even need it anymore. My mother is the way she is, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Nor do I really want to. I have a family, so the fact that she chooses not to be a real part of it stopped hurting a long time ago.
Besides, Genevive has pretty much adopted me by now, so she’s there for me just as she is for Ryker.
“I guess we’ll see what Mom does,” I say lightly.
Ryker doesn’t comment.
He’s still not a fan.
“Kian rented out a club to celebrate,” Ryk says, laughing when I make a face.
“Really?”
Ryk hums in reply. “Turns out he’s still young and not a part of an old married couple, so we have to endure for his sake.”
“Emotional extortion. Nice. Fine, I guess we’re going clubbing.”
He laughs again and kisses my shoulder.
There’ll be a lot of people there if I know anything about Kian at all, but these days that doesn’t give me pause. Ryk and I are sort of an open secret. Of course, people know by now. His team. Our friends. Our families.
A lot of people suspect or guess.
There are rumors.
Ryker doesn’t care.
So, I don’t either.
I sometimes get looks when I go to his games, and somebody recognizes me from his Instagram or something. I’ve learned to ignore those.
It’s us and our life, nobody else’s, so we choose carefully who we let into our circle. The rest of the world doesn’t get a seat at our table, and that’s the way we like it.
I wrap my arms tighter around his neck and kiss the corner of his mouth.
“I love you,” I say. “Thanks for marrying me all those years ago.”
He laughs. “I’d do it all over again. Every last second. Testicular cancer and all.”
I tilt my head to the side, a sudden idea flashing into my brain, and before I can even think, I blurt it out.
“Why don’t we?”
“Why don’t we what?” he asks.
I straighten up and look him in the eye.
“Ryker James,” I say, “will you marry me again?”
His mouth drops open for a second, but then comes his smile, as bright as a summer’s day.
“Fuck, yeah, I’ll marry you again.”
He kisses me.
And I kiss him.
My husband.
My love.