3. A Heart On His Sleeve
Chapter three
A Heart On His Sleeve
Edward
Several hours later…
“Well, you look like shit.”
“Stan! Come on, man. He’s having a shit day.” I elbow Stanley in the side for his commentary. I get that he’s not even aware of what’s probably taken place (judging from the look on Drake’s face) but that doesn’t mean he has to be a dick about it.
“What!? He does!”
I grab him by the front of his shirt and force him into the nearest chair in the lounge we’re in. We just happened to have a break in our schedules at roughly the same time before we each went back to finishing our shifts. No better way to spend it than with friends who understand us the most.
He clams up when he sees the look on my face, stricken silent with fear. He knows that he’s overstepped a boundary.
Drake slumps into the nearest chair and buries his face in his hands. I honestly don’t know why he keeps working in critical care, especially if he’s going to keep having days like this.
When’s the last time he had a vacation?
“Look, I can go down there and tell them you’re taking the rest of the evening off,” I whisper to him after I sit beside him. “You could use the break.”
Drake doesn’t answer. I hate when he gets like this because I have no idea what’s going through his mind so I have no idea what is the right thing to say. It also makes him unpredictable, capable of blowing up at any second and turning Stan and me into collateral damage.
“I don’t know what to do with my life anymore,” he finally says as he drags his hands down his face. “I don’t even know if I want to keep working here.”
His words empty the room of all the air and everything goes dead silent. Not even Stanley is smirking anymore.
Yeah, I bet he feels like shit now, doesn’t he?
“It was just a bad day, Drake. Don’t start making decisions that you’re going to regret tomorrow.”
I’ve had days like that too, where I question whether I’m really making a difference, if I’m actually helping anyone. The self-doubt creeps up without warning and threatens to smother me. Staying afloat is pretty hard when you don’t have a support structure outside of the hospital to help you out.
“No, I’m serious.” Drake stands from his chair and slaps his hands on the armrests. “Why the fuck am I here if the people I’m supposed to be helping keep dying!?”
Stanley shoots a look over his shoulder and rushes over to the door to close it. This isn’t the kind of conversation that should escape these four walls. Drake could get wrapped up in legal tape if anyone were to overhear him.
“I had to look that woman dead in the eye and tell her the person she cared about is dead. And despite the years of medical school and training, there was nothing I could have done to save him. She...” Drake’s shoulders sag with a heavy sigh.
“She looked like she was going to crumble and blow away in the wind when I told her. He... that guy, it seemed like he was the only thing, the only person she’d been holding onto to keep her from sinking. Now who does she have?”
Uh oh...
“Not this again...” Stanley mutters from the other side of the room. Not the best time, but at least he was thinking the same thing I was.
“What do you mean ‘not this again’?” Drake snaps, his tone suddenly turning bitter and suspicious.
Stanley rolls his eyes and leans against the fridge covered in various notes and magnets. That thing’s been here since before I started my residency. It’s a wonder it’s still running.
“You do this every time you see a pretty face after you lose someone. You want to make it better for them and take away their pain, but it always ends the same way. To be honest, I think you do it to just mask your own hurt.”
“Stan.” I can already see where this conversation is going, and it’s nowhere good.
“Fuck you.”
“Drake...” It's already getting out of hand. How am I going to rope this back in?
“No, Ed, let him say his piece. Let him get it all out before it smothers him to death.”
“Stan, you’re not helping!” I try to shove him out of the room, but he manages to slip out of my grasp.
“I didn’t know I was supposed to be. Drake comes in here all mopey, first about his job, then about some woman he doesn’t know, and I’m supposed to congratulate him?”
I drag a hand down my face. Although he isn’t making this easy, he’s not wrong. This bad habit of Drake’s is starting to put a damper on our friendship.
“He’s not wrong, though. You remember Julie? Victoria? Jessie?” I could list off more names, but that would take another hour or two.
Drake’s gaze shifts to his lap as he picks at an invisible thread.
“What about them?” he asks. I’m half-tempted to punch him in the head for feigning ignorance.
“Every single one of those relationships ended in a disaster.” How could he forget how bad they were?
“They were all nice!”
“Drake, every time one of them broke up with you, you couldn’t function for two days.”
Drake huffs and furrows his brows together. He knows that I’m right, but he’s too full of pride to say so.
“He’s right, you know,” Stan chimes in. “Don’t you think it’s about time you looked into the dating pool outside of the hospital?”
“Because I have the time to go out and mingle?” he asks. “The only time I get to myself is sleeping, shitting, and eating, and even then, that’s not really me time... What do you guys have against me, anyway?”
“We don’t have anything against you, Drake. It’s just that... it’s becoming a bad habit of yours, falling for a new girl every time someone close to her dies. You feel like you have to fix everything but that’s not your job description," I continue.
“Are you done teasing me now? Can you guys just leave me alone?”
“Why? So you can go back to drafting some plan to get that woman into your bed?” Stan says, his tone less cheerful than earlier. Drake wheels around and stares right at him. I can already feel the air growing thick with tension.
“That’s enough, Stan.” I think he's going a little too far.
“Is it? Because as soon as we both leave the room, he’s going to keep on scheming in that little brain of his.”
Drake stands from his seat and approaches Stan, his hands balled into fists at his side.
This is going to end badly.