23. Annette
Chapter twenty-three
Annette
The Letter
I pass by one of the mirrors in the rehab gym and see a very happy me looking back.
It’s a wonderfully ordinary day. Three months ago, I would have been concentrating on keeping up.
Today, I finally feel like I belong. I finish updating a patient's chart before slipping it into the rack.
"Annette."
I turn and squint at Mrs. Alvarez who is standing beside the front desk waving her hand in the air.
"You forgot your pen."
I feel for it and sure enough, it's no longer tucked into its usual spot behind my ear.
I laugh as I walk over to retrieve it. "I didn't even know it was gone. Thanks."
She studies me for a second longer than necessary before handing over the chart.
"You're smiling again."
"What?"
"You've been smiling all morning."
"I have not."
She raises one eyebrow. "You smiled while changing stretcher linens."
"I was thinking."
"You smiled while organizing the supply cabinet."
"It was alphabetized."
"It always is."
I can't help laughing. "Maybe I appreciate organization."
"Maybe."
She closes the chart. "Or maybe something else is making my favorite intern unusually cheerful."
Heat creeps into my cheeks. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Hmm."
She nods once, clearly unconvinced. "I've been working with physical therapists, occupational therapists, and sports med interns for almost thirty years." She starts walking toward the nurses' station. "I've learned to recognize that smile."
"What smile?"
"The goofy one people get when someone special keeps wandering into their thoughts."
I nearly miss a step. Fortunately, she doesn't look back.
By the time I reach the station, she's already speaking with another therapist as though she hasn't just dismantled my composure with one sentence. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. I am not smiling because of Jamie Walker.
...Probably.
I log into another patient file, determined to think about literally anything else. Instead, my mind wanders.
Jamie arguing that resistance bands were clearly designed by sadists…
Jamie pretending not to notice when I switched his terrible coffee for something drinkable…
Jamie laughing so hard telling me about Liam's latest prank…
Without warning, I smile again. "Oh, dear," I mutter under my breath.
Mrs. Alvarez doesn't even look up from across the station.
"I heard that."
"I wasn't talking to you."
"No."
A tiny smile touches her lips. "I suspect you weren't."
The morning passes in a blur of evaluations and follow-up appointments.
A high-school soccer player is recovering from ACL surgery.
A retired teacher is determined to walk without a cane before her granddaughter's wedding.
A construction worker who is convinced he can return to work two weeks ahead of schedule.
Different injuries. Same lesson.
Healing cannot be rushed.
By noon I finally have a moment to breathe.
I carry my lunch into the little staff lounge, grateful for ten uninterrupted minutes.
The microwave hums quietly while I finger through the staff mailboxes and find mine.
It has the usual stuff: this month’s hospital newsletter, a general parking reminder, notice of an upcoming volunteer appreciation dinner. Nothing urgent.
I almost miss the large white envelope buried underneath all the fliers and notices. I had forgotten that this would soon be here.
Hawthorne University School of Medicine
Office of Clinical Education
Riverton ….
My smile disappears as I open and read.
Clinical Placement Assignment
Congratulations, your final advanced clinical rotation has been assigned.
Northwest Regional Medical Center
Boise, Idaho
Rotation begins Monday, March 16.
Mandatory orientation Sunday evening prior.
Housing assignment attached.
Travel itinerary to follow.
Expected duration: Eight weeks.
I read it once, then again.
My eyes return to the same words.
Boise, Idaho.
Somehow, they still don't make sense.
I check the recipient name. Mine.
The student number. Mine.
The attachment. Mine.
This isn't a mistake.
Someone asks a question across the room, someone else laughs. The microwave beeps cheerfully beside me. Life keeps moving exactly as it should.
Mine doesn't.
Eight weeks.
Nearly two thousand miles away.
In ten days.
A strange numbness settles over me. Not panic. Not even sadness.
Just...
stillness.
The kind that arrives after hearing news too large to fit inside a single heartbeat.
The microwave beeps again but I don't move.
The lounge door opens behind me and Mrs. Alvarez steps inside carrying her lunch bag.
She stops almost immediately.
"Annette?"
I look up. "I got my final rotation."
She smiles.
"Oh, that's wonderful."
I try to smile back but it won't quite happen.
Her expression changes instantly. "Where?"
I swallow. "Idaho."
The single word hangs between us. She doesn't say anything for several seconds. She doesn't need to. She already understands that my silence isn't about geography. It's about someone waiting in a cabin beside a thawing lake.
Finally, very quietly, she asks, "When do you leave?"
I look back down at the letter. "Ten days." The words barely sound like my own, and for the first time since opening the envelope, I realize exactly how little ten days really is.
My phone is already in my hand before I realize I've dialed. There's only one person I want to talk to right now. Keisha answers on the second ring.
"Hey.”
Keisha hears the silence almost immediately.
"...Annette?"
I lower myself onto one of the benches outside the rehabilitation entrance. Staff hurry past carrying coffees and clipboards while an ambulance backs into the emergency bay across the parking lot.
Everything keeps moving. I feel strangely stuck.
"I got my placement."
"And?"
"It's Boise."
Silence. Not the awkward kind. The processing kind.
Finally...
"Boise, Idaho? When?"
"Ten days."
Another pause. Then, softly...
"That's a really good program."
"I know."
"It'll look amazing on your résumé."
"I know."
"It's one of the strongest sports rehabilitation rotations in the country."
"I know."
Each answer comes out a little flatter than the last. Keisha sighs. "You're making it very difficult to be excited for you."
"I was excited."
"Were?"
"This morning. Before I got this envelope."
I stare across the parking lot watching a father help his little girl climb out of the car. She can't be more than five. He adjusts her backpack before taking the hand that’s not in a cast.
"I forgot I had something here."
Keisha doesn't answer right away. She doesn't have to ask what I mean. She already knows.
Finally...
"Have you told Jamie?"
"No."
"Are you going to?"
"I have to."
"When?"
"I don't know."
Another long silence stretches between us.
Then Keisha asks the one question I wasn't prepared for.
"What are you hoping he'll say?"
I close my eyes. "I don't know."
"Annette."
"Honest, I don't."
She lets that sit for a moment. "I think you do."
My fingers tighten around the phone. "I don't want him making decisions because of me."
"You don't get to decide how he makes his decisions."
"I know."
"No..." Her voice softens. "I don't think you do."
"I've listened about the two of you for months."
I let out a tired laugh. "That's unsettling."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
"You've spent all this time teaching Jamie that accepting help doesn't make him weak."
"I know."
"And now you're trying to decide his future for him."
The words land harder than I expect. "I'm not deciding his future."
"Aren't you?"
I don't answer. Because maybe I am.
Keisha continues gently. "If he asks you to stay..."
"I won't."
"If he tells you to go..." "I'll wonder if he's pretending to be okay."
"If he says he'll wait..." "I'll spend two months feeling guilty."
"And if he says he loves you, Annette?"
My heart forgets how to beat.
"I..."
The word won't come because I don't have an answer.
Keisha sighs quietly.
"I wish I could tell you what to do."
"So do I."
"But I can't."
"No."
"I can only tell you one thing."
I wait.
"Whatever happens, ...don't make the decision without giving him the chance to make one too."
We say goodbye a few minutes later and I slip the phone back into my pocket.
Somehow...
I feel even less certain than I did before I called.
Of course, I should drive. Instead...
I leave my car in the lot and start walking. The February air bites pleasantly at my cheeks as I leave the hospital behind.
Without really deciding to, I take the longer route. Past the coffee shop. The owner waves through the front window, and I wave back automatically.
Jamie had insisted they served the best cinnamon rolls in Frostholm. He was wrong. The coffee is better than the pastries.
I smile despite myself.
Halfway down the block I pass the little bookstore where we'd hidden from the rain one afternoon after therapy. He'd spent twenty minutes pretending not to buy a children's hockey book because he thought Noah at the foundation might like it.
He bought two. One for Noah. One because "the illustrations were surprisingly educational."
Liar.
He simply liked the story.
A gust of wind sends loose snow skittering across the sidewalk. I pull my scarf a little tighter and keep walking.
Every corner seems to hold another memory.
The corner café where we'd sat drinking coffee.
The bench where he'd folded a paper airplane from a napkin just because he thought hospitals needed more flying objects.
The sporting goods store where he'd somehow talked me into trying on hockey gloves. I had looked ridiculous.
He'd laughed until tears filled his eyes. The memory makes me laugh now.
Then my laughter fades. Because in ten days, all of this becomes memory…
The realization stops me in the middle of the sidewalk.
Not the coffee.
Not the park.
Not even the city.
Him.
Jamie.
The man who somehow worked his way into every ordinary part of my life without me noticing when it happened.
I look across the lake shimmering beneath the afternoon sun. For months I'd been telling myself that my internship would end. That this was temporary. Professional. Safe.