Chapter Two
Apparently, taking Scott to that comedy show last week has made Jason secure enough in their friendship to read Scott’s phone over his shoulder as he follows him into the break room.
“My neighbor,” he replies without looking up. Scott doesn’t actually know her name. Not that he’d volunteer it to Jason—who’s a dog with a bone if there ever was one—in any case.
But he feels bad. She moved in next door at the beginning of the year, and he totally missed the window where it would have been casual and courteous to knock and introduce himself.
He feels shitty about it, especially lately, when they’ve been texting with greater frequency.
Her: FYI: the basement washer is down for the count!!
Him: I sprinkled dry ice on the front steps but be careful when you come in, just in case.
It’s nice. Neighborly. Something Scott didn’t know he was missing. He likes having his own space after the squeeze of growing up in a three-bedroom with six people. But he didn’t realize, until 3B showed up, how much his definition of “home” includes these tiny moments of commiseration or care.
“What’s she saying?” The conspiratorial eyebrow raise Jason gives him alerts Scott to the fact that the remnants of a goofy grin linger on his face.
And, well, Scott is in the process of figuring that out. He keeps his phone in his locker during his shift. So he always has to play catch-up with twelve hours of notifications after the fact.
He stares down at the text message on his screen. “I guess she’s been taking care of my plant?”
Their apartment is a converted three-flat in Hyde Park, each of the floors divided into two units that share a hallway with a big bay window next to the stairs.
The window’s wide sill is perfect for growing things, Beth kept telling him, until—presumably because he couldn’t take a hint—she outright gifted him a hearty little snake plant for his birthday in July.
And Beth is right: The little guy does seem remarkably happy soaking in his share of the limited rays of Chicago sunshine from that sill.
Scott enjoys passing it on his way in and out of the apartment. It makes the hallway a little warmer, a little more personal.
Almost immediately upon arrival, 3B had put an undeniable mark on her doorstep. Scott wants to laugh just thinking about her admirable lack of subtlety.
In comparison, the front of Scott’s place looks stark. No welcome mat. No wreath. As cold and impersonal outside as it is inside.
It might be goofy, but he gets a lot of pride out of contributing the plant to their shared hallway. A bright burst of green against the warm red of the exposed brick wall.
He swears whatever small amount of extra oxygen the leaves bring into the air goes straight into his lungs. Sometimes, coming home, it feels like passing that plant is the first deep breath he gets all day.
He’s taken decent care of it. Now that he’s thinking about it, he supposes there might have been a few hectic weeks in early October when the hospital got hit with the start of a particularly brutal flu season, half the staff going down with it in addition to all the patients, when the leaves had started to droop.
Scott vaguely remembers dragging his sore body up the stairs after a double, seeing the little snake plant looking worse for wear and thinking, “Shit, I need to water that. As soon as I get inside I’m going to get a glass and water it.”
But then, inevitably, he got inside, and other demands were screaming louder.
For better or worse, that was how Scott worked, how he lived: serving the most urgent need first.
And the snake plant is patient, quiet. Somewhere along the way he started taking for granted the constant green blur of its presence, that first deep breath at the end of a long, hard day.
But then, this morning, as he locked his door in the cold pitch before the sun rose, Scott looked over and, puzzled, pulled out his phone.
Today, 4:07AM
Scott: This is going to sound weird, but did you by any chance replace my plant?
He hadn’t expected a reply before his shift started at five. He shut his phone in his locker the way he always did.
But now, over twelve hours later, he sees that 3B answered around 8:00 a.m., presumably when she woke up.
Apt 3B: so, good news, that’s actually still your plant. I repotted it because the roots were getting crowded.
It grew? That much? Scott is surprised. Beth did say snake plants were resilient.
He types out a reply while Jason hunts, noisily, through the hodgepodge of contents in the break room fridge. Oh. thanks for doing that. I kinda thought it was dying.
A series of texts come in almost immediately.
Apt 3B: well
Apt 3B: I’ve also been watering it
Apt 3B: for a few months
Shit. Scott doesn’t know what to say. His thumbs hover over the phone.
Apparently, 3B interprets his silence as displeasure.
Apt 3B: i’m sorry!! I know it’s not my plant. I got attached to seeing it every day. And it was dying. Like majorly. It’s my fault. I made the rookie mistake of naming it.
Scott finds himself grinning, again, as he types, what’s the name?
Apt 3B: Sal. After my late, great uncle. He had a very distinct white streak in his hair.
Scott barks a laugh. He can imagine the resemblance.
“So, are you gonna ask her out?” Jason twists the top off a Gatorade he’s unearthed.
“Ask her out?” The question doesn’t make sense.
“Yeah.” Jason pauses, chugging. “Come on. You clearly like her. You’re blushing.”
“I’m not—it’s hot—I mean, I like her fine.” A normal amount. “But not like that. She’s a senior citizen.” He feels irrationally scandalized by the suggestion.
“No way.” Jason joins him at the table, taking a seat and crossing his leg at the knee. “Really?”
“I mean, I don’t know for sure, I guess. But she’s got this ceramic goose outside her front door, and she makes clothes for it.”
Jason scratches his chin. “What kinda clothes?”
Scott thinks about it. “They seem to be somewhat seasonal in nature?” A raincoat and boots in the spring. A classic white-sheet ghost costume on Halloween. “He’s currently an elf.”
“Okay, yeah.” Jason nods decisively. “That’s giving granny. But maybe she’s a sabertooth.”
“A what?”
“That’s what they call cougars that are sixty-plus.”
Scott tunes out when Jason continues listing various big cats. The suggestion that 3B might be closer to his own age shakes something in him. After all these months, how has he never stopped to consider what she might look like?
Maybe it’s because he deals with different kinds of bodies all day, every day. Bodies that need him urgently. Maybe that’s why it was so easy to enjoy her presence, without form. To know her by her front door and her goose. And the simple pleasure he gets from reading her texts.
When he forces himself to picture her now, he comes up with Ma from The Golden Girls. Cotton-ball-white hair. Coke-bottle glasses. Maybe a velour power suit. Shiny white sneakers.
But what if he’s totally wrong about her age? What if she’s somewhere between twenty-six and forty, which is broadly the range he considers to be appropriate for him, at thirty-two, to date?
It’s not like Scott can just ask “Hey, how old are you?” and have it be normal.
Why does he have a weird feeling that if he knew 3B was, for lack of a better word, “eligible,” he’d be a lot more self-conscious talking to her? Scott already texts her more than any Tinder match in recent memory.
What if, just as an example, she looked like the pretty comedian from the other night?
“Dude,” Jason says emphatically, “what if this woman is the love of your life?”
Scott waves him off. She probably isn’t. Probably.
“Dr. Harrison?” Their charge nurse, Nora, pops her head into the room.
Scott sighs. He already knows exactly how this is going to go.
He says, futilely, anyway, “Nora, I’m done. You know I’m done.”
“You’re done,” she agrees, nodding. “After this one.”
Her closed-mouth smile is consoling, not hopeful; she knows any resistance is a front. Nora saves his ass at least twice a week.
Scott gets to his feet.
“It can’t be more than six stitches,” Nora promises. “She’s a real sweetheart. And she’s been sitting out there for hours.”
“One more,” he agrees, a formality.
As Nora hands him the chart, she adds, “She made me laugh.”
He was already going, but that seals it.