Chapter 1 #2
I check my assignment board and start making rounds.
Mrs. Singh in bed three is waiting for discharge paperwork after her chest pain turned out to be heartburn.
She's embarrassed about coming in, keeps apologizing for wasting everyone's time.
Her hands are clutched together in her lap, knuckles white, like she's bracing for someone to scold her.
"You did the right thing," I tell her, checking her vitals one more time. "Chest pain isn't something to ignore. Better safe than sorry."
"My daughter said the same thing. She's the one who drove me here."
"Smart daughter. And smart mom for listening to her."
Mrs. Singh smiles at that, and some of the tension leaves her shoulders.
Her hands loosen. Such a small thing — telling someone they're not a burden.
But it matters. People come to the ER scared and vulnerable and convinced they're being dramatic, and sometimes the most important thing I do all night is say you were right to come in.
Mr. Sanchez in bed five needs his blood pressure medication adjusted. He's been coming in every few weeks, trying to get his numbers under control. Today he looks frustrated — arms crossed, jaw tight, the posture of a man who is done with this whole process.
"I've been taking the pills exactly like you said," he tells me. "But it's still too high."
"Sometimes it takes a while to find the right combination," I say, taking his blood pressure again.
158 over 94. Not great. "Dr. Cervantes might want to try a different medication.
" I want to tell him to follow up with his family doctor, but he doesn't have one.
We're the only consistent care he gets, which is its own kind of heartbreaking.
So I spend a little more time than usual.
Go over his diet. Ask about stress. Listen to him talk about his grandson's soccer games.
"I hate taking pills," he grumbles. "Never had to take anything before I turned fifty."
"Getting older is a pain in the butt sometimes."
He laughs. "You can say that again."
The spider guy is in bed seven, and I brace myself, but he's actually pretty sweet once I assure him that swallowed spiders don't typically survive stomach acid. He's about my age, maybe a little younger, and he's so mortified that his ears are red.
"I know it sounds crazy," he says. "But I felt it crawling on my lip when I was half asleep, and I must have swallowed it when I tried to brush it away."
"It doesn't sound crazy," I say, while internally my entire body is screaming. Spiders. On lips. While sleeping. I may never sleep again. I may tape my mouth shut. Wait — do spiders crawl in people's noses? I don't want to know the answer. I absolutely do not want to know the answer.
Focus, Laine. Professional. You are a professional.
"You were worried about your health, so you came in. That's what we're here for."
"My girlfriend thinks I'm losing it."
"Did you tell her about the spider?"
"Yeah. She laughed at me."
I want to say several things about that. None of them are in my job description. So I just nod. "Well, Dr. Cervantes will take a look and make sure everything's fine."
"Thanks. You're really nice."
Spider guy thinks I'm nice. That's going on my tombstone. Here lies Laine Mitchell. She was really nice about the spider thing.
By my 11 PM break, I've settled into the rhythm of the night.
Check vitals. Distribute meds. Reassure worried families.
Help with procedures. There's a pace to it — not frantic, not calm.
Just steady enough to lull you before it tries to drown you.
I've learned to live in that current. To trust it. Or at least not fight it.
I'm eating a sandwich in the break room — turkey and swiss, because I have made exactly one good life decision today and it was packing lunch instead of gambling on whatever petrified granola bar the vending machine feels like spitting out — when my phone buzzes.
Bethany
We're bar hopping all night - want to meet up for breakfast and mimosas when you get off? The whole crew will be there!
I stare at the message.
Six months ago, I would've said yes without thinking.
Gone out, danced until my feet bled, maybe met some guy who'd be interesting for three weeks before I bounced to the next city.
When Bethany and I worked together in Thailand, we were out constantly.
Rooftop bars. Beach parties. She'd drag me and I'd let her because that's what you do when you're a travel nurse in a beautiful country — you travel, you nurse, you party.
But I signed up for an early volunteer shift tomorrow.
And drinks here cost more than my dignity, which is saying something because that's already pretty cheap.
Besides, I'm getting to the good part in my book.
The hero just made this big stupid grand gesture and if I don't find out whether the heroine takes him back, it's going to eat at me all night.
So what — I'm choosing a fictional love life over a real social life? This is who I am now?
It makes me feel like a crappy friend. Choosing my couch and a paperback over actual human interaction with someone who actually likes me. But not crappy enough to actually go.
Rain check? I'm beat.
You're getting old
Maybe. Or maybe I just don't want to be hungover tomorrow. I've done the party thing. I've done it on four continents. And it's getting so old.
I'm getting old.
"Everything okay?" Joyce asks, sitting down across from me with her salad.
"Yeah, just Bethany wanting to go out tonight."
"And you're not going?"
"I'm tired. And I've got plans tomorrow morning."
She raises an eyebrow. "You act like you and Bethany are quite close, but you don't seem to have much in common."
"We used to have more in common. Or maybe I just used to be more like her." I peel the crust off my sandwich because I am, apparently, still eight years old. "More restless. Like I was always waiting for the next big thing."
"And now?"
"Now the next big thing sounds tiring."
Joyce nods like she understands completely. "That's called growing up, honey. Welcome to the club."
"Is there a card? A welcome packet? Some kind of orientation?"
"There's lower back pain and a preference for going to bed before ten. That's the whole packet."
"Sold."
She smiles. Joyce doesn't give much away, but when she does, it counts.
She's been charge nurse longer than I've been a nurse, period.
She's survived hospital politics, staffing shortages, and — according to legend — one administrator who tried to cut the break room coffee budget and was never heard from again.
I want to be her when I grow up. I keep thinking that. Maybe that's the point — I'm still figuring out what grown up looks like for me, and she's the closest template I've found.
Is it weird that I'm thirty-two and still sometimes look around for an adult in the room?
The hour after midnight brings a steady stream.
A kid who fell off his bunk bed and needs stitches.
He's being incredibly brave, which means he's trying not to cry, which makes me want to cry.
Great. Super professional. An elderly woman with pneumonia who keeps calling me "dear" and apologizing for the trouble.
A construction worker with a possible broken wrist who asks me three times if he can still work tomorrow.
Sir, your hand is the color of an eggplant. No.
Nothing dramatic. Nothing catastrophic. Just people who need help at an hour when most of the world is sleeping. I like that about the night shift. There's an intimacy to it. Patients are more honest at 2 AM. The walls come down. Nobody's performing.
I'm drawing blood from a patient when one of the other nurses mentions a festival downtown.
"What kind of festival?" I ask.
"Some kind of music thing. Started yesterday, goes through the weekend."
Great. Festival weekends. Drunk people making decisions that would embarrass a toddler.
"Are we expecting anything unusual this weekend?" I ask.
"Not that I know of. Why?"
"Just a feeling."
Joyce gives me the look. The you're-being-paranoid look. And maybe I am. Wouldn't be the first time.
But here's the thing. I learned early to pay attention to that feeling.
The one that prickles at the base of your skull right before a shift goes sideways.
I felt it in the Philippines twenty minutes before a bus crash brought in fourteen patients.
Felt it in Montana the night of that ice storm that turned the ER into a revolving door.
So am I paranoid? Sure. But paranoid people live longer.
Probably.
Tonight, though, my instincts are wrong. Nothing dramatic happens. No bus crashes, no ice storms, no festival casualties. Just a steady, manageable stream of people who need help.
False alarm. You're not psychic, Mitchell. You're just anxious.
Shift's almost over. I'm restocking supply carts, shoving gauze packs into slots like it requires any brain power at all, which means my brain goes exactly where I don't want it to go.
My parents.
They've never questioned their calling. Not once. Never paused, never pivoted, never woken up one morning and thought what if I tried something completely different? They found their purpose early, grabbed it with both hands, and just... held on. White-knuckled it through decades.
I used to think that made them lucky.
Now I'm not so sure. They've seen more of the world than almost anyone I know, but always through the same lens.
What needs to be built. Who needs help. Where God is pointing them next.
They've held so many strangers, loved so many communities.
But they've never just lived somewhere. Never had anything permanent. Never just stayed.
So maybe that's what I'm doing. Learning to stay. Learning what it feels like to have a place instead of a posting.
Or maybe I'm just tired and should go home before I get weepy over a supply cart.
I'm grabbing my things when Dr. Cervantes stops by.
Mid-fifties, gray hair permanently escaping in three directions, scrubs wrinkled like he slept in them.
Which, honestly, he might have. The man runs on coffee fumes and sheer stubbornness — you can see it in the way he carries himself, like he's perpetually five minutes behind and has made peace with that.
But his eyes are kind. He notices things.
Knows his nurses' names, asks about their weekends, actually listens to the answers.
Which is either genuinely good or deeply suspicious. I haven't decided yet.
"Good work tonight, Laine. You've got a good instinct for patient care."
Don't blush. You're a professional. Professionals don't blush at compliments.
"Thank you."
"We're lucky to have you. You're good with people — you make them feel comfortable."
I am blushing. Cool. Very professional. "Thank you. You guys make it easy to do my best. Everyone here is so great."
He smiles. A real one, eyes crinkling, teeth showing. "Yes. We do have a great team, don't we?"
"We do! See you tomorrow."
"Nice and late." We both laugh, because night shift humor is its own language.
You start your day when the rest of the world's brushing their teeth and crawling into bed.
You eat dinner at midnight. You watch the sunrise from a parking lot like some kind of vampire who forgot to go inside. It's weird. But it's my kind of weird.
The early morning air hits me when I walk out, and I stop. Just for a second.
The mountains are there. They're always there — that's sort of the whole point of mountains — but I still catch myself staring like an idiot. Peaks going pink and gold, the sky barely committing to blue yet. Three months and this still gets me.
These mountains, though. I'm going to learn their names. Every single peak. I'm going to be the person who corners someone at a party and won't shut up about elevation gains.
Big plans, Mitchell. Real ambitious. Learning mountain names. Watch out, world.
My apartment is ten minutes from the hospital. Nothing special. Beige walls, adequate parking, a pool that allegedly works in summer but currently looks like it's culturing something for the CDC. Two bedrooms. Small balcony. And I've done something I've never done before.
I decorated.
Not just the basics. Not just a bed and a towel and a suitcase shoved in the corner like I might bolt in the middle of the night.
I bought throw pillows. Plural. I bought plants.
There's a fiddle leaf fig by the window that I check on every morning like it's a patient in the ICU.
I talk to it. I'm not proud of that, but I'm not going to stop either.
You're still alive. Good job. We're both doing great.
I heat up the pasta I made two days ago and have been eating for every meal since, and settle onto my couch with my book.
The heroine is a travel writer who's afraid of commitment.
The hero is a small-town guy who's never left home.
I know how it ends. I always know how it ends.
I actually checked — flipped to the last chapter before I started reading, because I refuse to invest two hundred pages of emotional energy into a couple that doesn't make it.
Life has enough uncertainty. I have to have a happily ever after.
That probably says something about me. I'm choosing not to examine it.
Right now, the hero just showed up at the airport with a handwritten letter and I am invested. Like, embarrassingly invested. Talking-to-the-book invested.
"Just read it," I say to the page. "Stop being dramatic and read the letter."
She reads the letter.
"Oh. Oh, that's good. That's really good. You don't deserve him but I'm rooting for you anyway."
This is what my Friday night looks like. Alone on a couch, talking to fictional people, eating two-day-old pasta in my underwear.
And honestly?
I'm tickled frickin' pink about it.