Chapter 2
Someone nudges me.
I rub my eyes, looking up from my chair to find a lanky young scribe standing with a stack of papers in his hand. A snotty-nosed freshman, by the looks of him. He seems to be waiting expectantly for my attention.
“Can I help you?” I ask through my haze, sparing a quick glance at my surroundings—the urgent care clinic.
That’s right. I must have spaced out while waiting for some records to fax.
Good thing that’s virtually impossible to mess up…
But this is exactly why I’m not interacting with the patients right now.
I might be a glutton for punishment, given my endless guilt and sense of failure for deferring my degree, but I’m only going to endanger myself when I’m this sleep-deprived.
As long as I’m here unpaid, the administration won’t make me do anything substantial—which means the patients are safe from my clouded judgment, and I get to keep bolstering my delayed application to med school with little real obligation.
It’s the only way I can feel like less of a failure lately.
“Did you not hear me?” The boy huffs, waving his stack of papers in my direction. “I asked if you could put these into the EMR for me.”
My eyes narrow on his nametag. “Pete. You know I’m shadowing today, right? I’m not here as a scribe. Why would I do work for free that I regularly get paid to do?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t look like you’re busy. Were you asleep?”
Yes—well, no. I wasn’t asleep. But I wasn’t quite awake, either. I don’t think I’ve fully slept since that dream of the angel, and that was Saturday night. It’s… Monday morning now, I think.
Regardless, it’s none of this kid’s business.
“With my eyes open? Seriously?” I give my most convincing scoff. “You need to be typing your own transcriptions. You have to actually do the work to learn something.”
He shifts on his feet. “But what if I misheard something? They talk so fast sometimes, and I haven’t taken Medical Terminology yet, so I don’t know if I wrote down the right words for everything. And isn’t this, like, your third year here? Surely it’d be easy for you.”
Ah, so that’s what this is about. He’s still green. A year ago, I would have been eager to show off my experience and aptitude. Unfortunately for Pete, I don’t have the energy to spare anymore.
“That’s why you’re supposed to use critical thinking.” Something I’m in short supply of lately. “Just go slow and Google anything you’re unsure about. I’ll check it over—” I choke on my next words.
Petey here must have taken what’s left of my sanity, somehow, because I catch a glimpse of something inconceivable in the corner of the room.
The angel from my dream is here.
Even in his unremarkable khaki pants and white button-up shirt, he sticks out like a golden goose in a flock of pigeons.
He might be lacking the glowing, radiant splendor from before, but I swear it’s him.
He’s unmistakable. Which is just… completely impossible.
I’m either transposing faces or outright hallucinating.
At the risk of having my potential schizophrenia outed, I decide to make Pete useful, dropping my voice to a whisper. “Hey, do you see that guy over there?”
“What? The blond one? Yeah, why?”
“Does he look normal to you?”
“Uh… I guess?” The lanky, pimple-faced kid adjusts his glasses, frowning. “He looks pretty healthy to me. Is this a test or something?”
As if he can hear us from across the wide room, the angel man turns to look directly at me, a sly smile on his lips. And his face—it’s the same. It’s exactly the same, and I think my heart might sputter out in shock.
I thought the psychosis would come on gradually. This is anything but gradual. I’m not prepared! If I’m in a full-blown schizophrenic episode, how the fuck am I supposed to know what’s real? Is the scribe real? Am I talking to myself?
“Are you going to help me or not?”
My eyes snap back to the impatient scribe. “I think room five needs you.”
“But—”
“Just go, Peter.”
“My name isn’t—”
I’m already out of my chair and rounding the corner before he can finish his sentence.
I wind through the maze of backroom hallways, moving at a pace that imitates a nurse responding to a medical emergency. With the scrubs I’m dressed in, it passes for normal hospital behavior, letting me reach a secluded bathroom in record time.
I lock the door behind me, rushing for the sink. Cold water on my face—that’ll help. But my hand is trembling as I reach for the faucet, my balance unsteady. I put my hands on the counter, lean in to support myself, and stare at the reflection I’ve been avoiding.
Jackie was right. I look like shit.
My skin is as white as a corpse, the dark circles under my eyes so prominent that it looks like I was repeatedly punched in the face. I didn’t brush my hair before putting it up, and now I have dark, frizzy pieces all over the place. Even my hazel eyes are so dilated, they’re nearly all black.
No wonder my shitty-ass friends assumed I’m on drugs. I could pass for an addict. It’s a miracle I was even let into the hospital without being questioned.
Shhh.
Use your brain, Kae. Let’s think this through.
“I could have, uh, subconsciously seen him around the hospital. Before the dream.” I force my shaking hand to turn the water faucet on. “Not that he has the kind of face I’d forget—” Splash, splash. “But, you know. It’s theoretically possible.”
Because what isn’t possible is dreaming of a real person without ever seeing them. This is just the dreaded psychosis. I’m moving on to the next stage of the insomnia’s slow efforts to kill me.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
And it’s entirely too hot in here, and the lights are too bright, and my head is pounding, and—oh. I’m hyperventilating. I need to stop that.
Breathe in…
Count to five…
Breathe out…
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
It takes several tries before the storm in my mind becomes a more manageable wind. Finally, I back away from my hunched position over the sink, muttering some solid self-hatred over my life circumstances: “What a lovely day for a panic attack.”
It’s been quite a while since I had to use that calming technique. Even after all this time, I can still remember my mom’s voice, picture her gentle face, teaching me how to do it. I wonder if she would even recognize me like this. I hardly recognize myself.
Her death changed me in irrevocable ways.
Some of it for the better, like my drive to help people.
To heal. To become a doctor and fight for my patients—even if their health insurance would deny coverage for life-saving treatment.
Even if a money-making algorithm would try to overrule my knowledge as a physician and create a delay in care that would put my patients too far into multi-system organ failure to recover from…
Or maybe I’ve only been changed for the worse.
In my darkest moments, I worry that I may never become a better person than this.
I think I might always be bitter, distrustful, and pessimistic.
Despite how hard I’ve tried not to dwell on the past, my deepest-held motivations still only seem to stem from my undying need to evolve and grow as a person—and that’s never felt more unreachable than it has been this year.
I’ve become far too accustomed to plastering on a brave face, and now, my careful facade is cracking under the pressure.
‘Fake it until you make it,’ people always say. At this rate, I’ll be doing that until the day I die. I’m starting to think that my only alternative is to let the cracks send me crumbling into a million pieces, far beyond any hope of repair.
Fine. Let it reveal my rotten core. Feed me to the crows.
I don’t care anymore.
I don’t know what ‘making it’ looks like, but I do know it isn’t this. It can’t be. I have to believe it’s something less pathetic than whatever husk of a life I’m existing in now. I have to hope there’s a way I’ll finally hit rock bottom before I make my comeback.
Preferably soon.
With one last deep breath, I straighten my spine and exit my temporary sanctuary. Walking through the hallways at a relaxed pace, I take my time to recollect myself, focusing on my breathing.
The urgent care clinic isn’t my favorite specialty to shadow, so I’m not particularly thrilled at the thought of going back. By the time I’m standing outside the clinic’s waiting room doors, I’m debating going in at all.
Is waiting around for outdated office technology really any better than bedrotting at home? I’m not learning a damn thing here. Maybe Dr. Johnson is working in the ER tonight, or someone else could be convinced—
“Are you done hiding from me?” A melodic, masculine voice comes from behind me, sounding far too close to be speaking to anyone other than me.
A stone sinks in my stomach with a terrifying sense of knowing. I have to force myself to turn around, even if it feels like I’m dragging my nails on a chalkboard.
When I see him standing there, right in front of me, my heart clenches in painful confirmation. I freeze, locking up like a deer in headlights.
He stands a few inches taller than me, leaning up against the wall with an expression of idle curiosity. His face—that face—is chiseled, perfectly shaved, and flawless. Golden blond hair grows from dark roots, neatly kept off his forehead and gathering in curls beneath his ears.
His eyes are the most commanding part of his appearance, though. They’re the brightest shade of amber gold. Like a cat, or a wolf, or something somewhere between. Certainly not a natural color for a human. Nobody has eyes that brilliant. Especially under these dull fluorescent lights.
“Do I know you?” My voice comes out shaky, almost afraid.
“You tell me,” he answers in a hum. “You almost seem to recognize me. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it’d certainly make the introductions easier, which would be nice. I’ve already wasted too much time looking for you.”