Chapter One
Scott should be embarrassed, probably, that he gives off sad, lonely loser vibes to the extent that his coworker insists he third-wheel a date with his girlfriend.
“Come on, man. It’s a comedy show. And, no offense, but we’ve worked together for years and I’ve seen you laugh, like, twice.”
With anyone else, Scott could use his job as a defense—why else did he suffer the grueling hours and relentless stress of being a third-year ER resident if not to have an ironclad excuse to get out of social plans?
But obviously it wouldn’t work in this case, because Jason does the same thing Scott does and somehow manages to have a whole life outside the hospital.
He’s even in a running club, apparently, which Scott learns over the first of two “complimentary” drinks that come with his ticket to tonight’s stand-up act.
“You’ve never been to the Annoyance before?” Jason’s girlfriend, Emily, shakes her head, because right before this, Scott revealed that he’s actually from Chicago. One of the lucky few who managed to match in his own hometown.
Scott winces. He knows it’s a tragedy. Chicago has a great—legendary—comedy scene. He just . . . doesn’t really have time . . . to enjoy things. Wait. Fuck. That can’t be right.
He’s wanted to be a doctor since he was seven years old and his baby sister, Beth, was diagnosed with leukemia. She’s been in remission for fifteen years now, but Scott will never forget going with his parents to the children’s hospital to visit her.
At first, he thought the doctors were scary in their masks and bright-white coats. But then one day Dr. Franklin came into the room, showed his parents some charts, and told them Beth could come home. It was the best day of Scott’s life. Still is.
It’s kind of soul crushing to admit that he underestimated how much it would take to get to those few-and-far-between moments when you could wipe the worry off someone’s face, watch them exhale.
Most days, especially lately, it feels like it takes everything.
Every ounce of his energy. Every scrap of optimism he possesses.
It doesn’t help that it’s December. That he wakes up and comes home in the cold, unrelenting dark. He can’t remember the last time he felt the sun on his face.
Scott worries he’s forgetting how to be a normal person. Like his scrubs and lab coat have started wearing him, instead of the other way around.
Speaking of clothes, he tried to dress up for this event and, looking around, clearly overshot it. Jason and Kelly look nice, but they’re both wearing sneakers.
Scott’s stupid oxfords keep sticking to the floor in front of the club’s makeshift bar. He’s not even sure what the sticky substance is. Beer, he hopes. It’s too dark in here to tell.
He squints, trying to figure out how many folding chairs are set up. Fifty, maybe? He spends so much of his time under harsh fluorescents, his retinas can’t figure out what’s going on.
The stage is raised, but there’s no curtain. A standing microphone waits in the center. Scott doesn’t even know who the act is, he realizes. Not that he’s up on the scene—clearly.
“So, what are your plans for Christmas?” Emily says, making another valiant attempt at conversation as she leans against her boyfriend with an easy intimacy that makes something in Scott’s gut go tight with a faint, distant sort of sadness.
It’s not that Scott is touch starved. He touches people for twelve hours a day, four days a week. But those people are hurt or sick or, when he can’t help it, dying. It’s been a long time since he touched someone without thinking, just because it feels good.
“I’m working Christmas Eve,” he answers with an exaggerated grimace to beat them to the punch of feeling sorry for him.
Honestly, he volunteered. Kelly and Marshawn both have kids, and Derek has to fly over twenty-four hours to see his parents in Australia.
Scott’s folks live forty minutes out in the suburbs; he sees them once a week for Sunday dinner.
And besides, his two youngest siblings will be in from out of town with their spouses and children.
Both Scott’s former bedroom and the couch in the den are already spoken for. He’ll see everyone on the twenty-fifth.
“Ugh. Sorry, man,” Jason says. “I did Thanksgiving this year.”
Scott appreciates that Jason can genuinely empathize, but they’ve inadvertently stumbled into another conversation killer. He searches for a few seconds for something to say to turn things around, and when he comes up empty, Scott asks where the bathroom is instead.
Jason takes pity on him and jerks a thumb toward a hallway in the back.
The problem is, there are three doors back here, and none of them are marked. This seems like a safety hazard and/or building code violation, but Scott doesn’t wanna be that guy the first time anyone takes him out in forever. He tries the first door on a whim and gets a face full of frigid air.
“Oh, sorry,” he says reflexively to the woman sitting on the curb with her back to him. She’s wearing one of those big puffer coats that remind him of marshmallows.
Scott’s about to duck out the way he came when he notices her breathing.
Rapid. Shallow in a way that, in his experience, often precedes a panic attack.
The woman raises her head. Her auburn curls are a mess from where she had her fingers in them.
“Are you okay?” Scott asks, because he can’t shut the doctor thing off, even if he wanted to.
“I’m fine. Just getting some air.” She gives him a faint forced smile and then turns back around.
He hears her harness her breathing, inhaling slowly through her nose, holding her breath for the same count, and then exhaling through her mouth for—one, two, three, four.
Box breathing.
So, not her first panic attack, then.
Scott decides to linger for a moment, even though it’s freezing out here, to make sure she’s through the worst of it. But he keeps his distance, pressing his back against the cold brick wall so she won’t feel crowded.
She swivels again, sees he’s staying, and cranes her neck a little to look at him.
“It’s just . . .”
“Yes?”
He notes, fleetingly, that she’s beautiful—big brown eyes with long sooty lashes and high cheekbones stained pink with cold—but the thought doesn’t gain much purchase in his brain because he’s still worried, wondering if she’s managed to head off the panic attack entirely.
The woman brings her thumbnail to her mouth and bites down.
“Do you ever question, like, all of your life choices?”
Scott looks down—what, is it written on him somewhere?
He’s never had a stranger ask him something so big, so directly.
“Yes,” he says, the confession fast and satisfying. Then, feeling self-conscious, he adds, “On occasion.”
“Really?” The woman narrows her eyes like she doesn’t believe him. “You look like someone who’s got it pretty together.”
“What makes you say that?” Despite himself, Scott’s flattered. This is why Beth is always calling him a try-hard.
The stranger tilts her head, studying him.
“Might be the chinos.”
Scott can’t help it: He laughs. The sound ricochets across the vacant alley in front of them, where a plastic reindeer sticks out of a trash can, its red nose flickering at increasing longer intervals—no doubt a battery pack on its last legs.
And maybe Jason was right: It does sort of feel like he’s cleaning out cobwebs from around his ribs.
From anyone else, a comment like that might make him feel a little insulted. But there’s something about this woman, about the way she says it, that comes off more thoughtful than judgmental.
“I think the end of the calendar year makes everyone at least a little reflective, by default,” he offers.
“That’s probably it.” She nods. “Plus, Christmas is inherently melancholy.”
“Is it?” Scott stomps his feet a little, trying to keep up the blood flow to his legs. Are they talking about the same holiday?
“Well, not entirely, obviously. There are lots of nice parts. You’ve got the decorations, and the music”—she counts on her fingers, the impact dimmed by a pair of sage green mittens—“all the treats. Some presents, if you’re lucky.
But the stakes are too high. There’s so much potential for disappointment. For plans to fall apart.”
“The ER is always hell around the holidays,” Scott admits.
“Yes,” she says, slapping her thigh emphatically. “I read that somewhere too.”
He smiles. Her breathing’s returned to a normal, healthy rhythm.
“That’s why you need a crush.”
“Excuse me?” Scott leans forward, not sure he heard her correctly.
“Oh.” She tucks her hair behind her ears, looking away. “It’s just a working theory.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
“Yeah?” Her eyes return to his, her smile hesitant, a question.
Scott pushes off the wall, dropping to sit next to her. “Please. I gotta know.”
“Okay,” she starts, emboldened by his proximity. “You know how Christmas is the worst time of year to be single?”
“What about Valentine’s Day?”
“No,” she says firmly. “A common misconception. But Valentine’s Day is rife with meet-cute potential. Positively brimming. Everywhere you go, you could run into the future love of your life. Bakery? Florist? Pottery studio? Oooh, at the bus stop, caught together in the rain?”
She does a little chef’s kiss gesture.
Scott is completely, helplessly, charmed.
“But if you’re single on Christmas? Forget about it.
” She throws up her hands, narrowly avoids whacking him in the nose.
“A meet-cute is not happening for you. Everything’s closed!
Everyone already has plans. You gotta hold out for New Year’s Eve.
Even the apps are quiet. A crush is your only lifeline. ”
“You make a very compelling argument.”
“Thank you.” She tilts her chin up—happy, he thinks.
“I’ve got my own working theory.” It’s not something he’d normally share. But Scott’s enjoying this conversation too much to let it end.
“You do?” She keeps looking at him like that, like he’s not what she expects.
He likes surprising her. And, it turns out, himself.
“I’m ignoring Christmas. Treating it like any other day. No expectations; no disappointment.”
“I see the logic,” the woman concedes, but it’s clear from her frown, she’s not as easily converted as he was. “It’s still tempting, though, isn’t it?”
She turns toward him, and Scott no longer has any reason to ignore how lovely she is. Now it’s his own breathing he’s worried about.
“Imagine waking up on Christmas morning to exactly what you want.”
Scott shakes his head, fuzzy. From the cold, he’s sure.
“What if I don’t know what I want?”
The admission feels bigger than the holiday, or the end of the year. He’s saying out loud, for the first time, that he’s almost accomplished the goal he’s been chasing his whole life—becoming an attending physician—and he has no idea what he’s going to do once he gets there.
“You do,” the mystery woman says with a confidence that brooks no argument. “You just gotta be honest with yourself. It’ll come to you.”
Scott wants to ask her for her name. If she’s here with someone. He wants to ask her what she wants for Christmas.
But someone opens the door behind them; the bang as a gust of wind blows it against the side of the building startles them both.
Scott didn’t realize how close they’d leaned toward one another. As he sits back, the cold hits him all over again, and his teeth start to chatter.
“Piper?” the woman with a headset at the door says. “You’re on in five, babe.”
“Whatever it is,” his stranger—Piper—says, low in his ear, her hand on his shoulder as she moves to stand, “I hope you get it.”
And then she’s ducking into the dark as an announcement comes, tinny, through the speakers, asking the audience to take their seats.
Scott runs into Jason and Emily in the hallway, coming to look for him.
“What happened?” Jason asks after they’ve grabbed a spot in the third row. “You were gone forever.”
“I got lost,” Scott admits.
His heart races the whole way through the opener. And then, there she is, walking out on stage, in a—he swallows—black crop top instead of the puffy coat. The announcer calls out, “Ladies and gentlemen, Piper Sadler,” as Piper waves and takes the mic.
And if Scott hadn’t seen her out back a few minutes ago, her breath short and fast, he would never believe—as she dives into a story about accidentally opening a package meant for her neighbor that turned out to be a sex toy—that she’s ever been nervous in her whole life.