Chapter 40
MAYA
Ithrow up in the hospital bathroom before my shift starts, gripping the cool porcelain like it's the only solid thing in the world.
First day back. Different hospital, different city, different everything. Hartford General instead of Pinewood Memorial. New scrubs, new badge, new coworkers who don't care what happened to me. Who just sees me as a person, not my trauma.
It's a fresh start.
Except my hands won't stop shaking.
I stare at myself in the mirror. Dark circles despite sleeping well, exhaustion written across my face, the pendant visible above my scrub collar, catching the fluorescent light.
Jackson wanted to come with me this morning, offered to walk me in, wait in the cafeteria, anything I needed.
I told him no. This is something I need to do alone, something I need to prove to myself.
"You've got this," I tell my reflection.
My reflection doesn't look convinced.
The pediatric ward is on the third floor, and I take the stairs because the elevator feels too confining, too much like the supply closet where Carson...
No. I'm not thinking about that. Not today.
Charge nurse Rachel meets me at the nurses' station, looking up from a stack of charts with efficient eyes. She's older, competent-looking, the kind of nurse who's seen everything twice and still shows up every shift without complaint.
"Maya Rivera?" she asks.
"Yes."
"Welcome to Hartford Gen. I'll show you around, introduce you to the team, and get you oriented." She hands me a tablet, warm from her grip. "We run electronic charting here. Are you familiar with EPIC?"
"Yeah. I used it at my last hospital."
"Good, that makes the transition easier." She starts walking, and I follow, trying to memorize the layout even though my brain feels like static. "We've got twelve beds, a mix of medical and surgical. Today you'll shadow Kristin. She's been here five years, knows the floor inside out."
Kristin's young, black hair, and is friendly in that genuine way that makes you trust her immediately.
She walks me through the layout with easy confidence, explains protocols and shift changes, and where they hide the good coffee, introduces me to doctors and other nurses whose names I immediately forget because my brain is screaming at me to run.
"First patient," Kristin says, stopping outside room 304 and pulling up the chart on her tablet. "Mia Lane, six years old, was admitted yesterday with pneumonia. Responsive to antibiotics, oxygen sats are improving. Pretty straightforward case."
Six years old.
Lily was six years old.
My hands start shaking again, and I shove them in my pockets, fingers curling into fists.
"You okay?" Kristin asks, and there's concern in her voice.
"Fine. Just nervous."
"First day jitters. Totally normal." She pushes open the door with her hip. "Let's go meet Mia."
She's in bed with an oxygen cannula in her nose and a tablet in her hands, playing some cartoon with bright colors and loud music.
Her mother sits beside her in the visitor's chair, looking exhausted in that way only hospital parents do.
The kind of tiredness that comes from days of worry and uncomfortable chairs and bad cafeteria coffee.
"Hi Mia," Kristin says cheerfully, checking the IV bag hanging beside the bed. "I'm Kristin, and this is Maya. We're going to be taking care of you today."
Mia looks up and assesses us with serious dark eyes. "Okay."
I approach the bed and check the monitors automatically, falling into rhythms I learned years ago. Oxygen sats at ninety-four percent, good for pneumonia. Heart rate is normal. Respiratory rate elevated but not alarming, nothing that sets off warning bells.
"How are you feeling?" I ask Mia, keeping my voice gentle.
"Tired. My chest hurts."
"That's the pneumonia, your lungs are working hard to fight the infection. The medicine is helping your body do that. You should start feeling better soon."
"When can I go home?"
"Maybe in a couple of days, if you keep getting better like this."
Mia nods, seemingly satisfied with that answer, and goes back to her tablet.
We leave the room, and Kristin walks me through Mia's chart. Antibiotic schedule, vital checks, when she last ate, any allergies, or special considerations. It's thorough and organized, everything color-coded and flagged, better than the system at Pinewood.
"Think you can handle her assessments today?" Kristin asks.
"Yeah. I've got it."
The morning passes in a blur of tasks, each one grounding me more firmly in the present.
Medication distribution, vital checks, charting, talking to worried parents, and reassuring kids who hate needles.
My hands steady as I fall into familiar rhythms, muscle memory taking over where my anxious brain can't quite keep up.
This is what I know. What I'm good at. What Carson couldn't take from me, no matter how hard he tried.
Around noon, I'm checking Mia's oxygen levels when I notice something.
Her breathing pattern's changed. It's shallow and quick, her neck and shoulders moving with each breath like she's working too hard just to get air.
The monitor says ninety-two percent, which should be okay, but something's off.
She's struggling in a way that makes my instincts scream.
I press the stethoscope to her back, listening carefully. The left lower lobe sounds diminished, almost absent. The right side is clear.
Shit.
"Mia, does it hurt more when you take a deep breath?" I ask, keeping my voice calm even though adrenaline is spiking through me.
"Yeah."
I check her temp. 101.3, fever's climbing despite antibiotics, despite everything we're pumping into her system.
Pleural effusion. Fluid is building in her lung cavity, compressing the tissue, making it harder to breathe. The antibiotics aren't enough; we need to drain it before she goes septic.
I find Kristin at the nurses' station, reviewing labs. "I think Mia's developing an effusion around her left lung.”
She looks up sharply. "You sure?"
"Left lower lobe sounds are diminished, respiratory effort's increased, she's using accessory muscles, and her fever's climbing. She needs imaging and probably a thoracentesis."
Kristin doesn't question me, just comes with me to reassess. She listens to Mia's lungs with her own stethoscope, checks the vitals again, and reviews the overnight notes.
"I'll page the attending," she says.
Dr. Moor arrives fifteen minutes later, an older guy with grey at the temples. He examines Mia with gentle hands, asks her questions in a soft voice, and orders a chest X-ray stat.
"Good catch," he tells me after, while we're waiting for transport to take Mia down to radiology. "We would've found it eventually, but you caught it early. Could've gone septic if we'd waited another few hours."
The X-ray confirms it within the hour: a moderate pleural effusion, visible as a hazy opacity along the lower lung field.
That afternoon, Dr. Moor performs a thoracentesis, draining about two hundred milliliters of cloudy fluid, which is sent to the lab for culture.
Suspecting infection, he broadens Mia's antibiotics and inserts a chest tube for continued drainage.
By evening, Mia's breathing is easier, oxygen stats climbing back up to ninety-six percent. Her mother is crying with relief, thanking everyone who walks past.
"Thank you," she tells me specifically, grabbing my hand with both of hers. "The doctor said you noticed something was wrong before it got bad."
"Just doing my job."
But it feels like more than that. It feels like proof that I can still do this, that Carson didn't break something fundamental inside me. That losing Lily didn't destroy the nurse I worked so hard to become.
My shift ends at 7 p.m., and I change out of scrubs in the locker room, exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure. My phone has three texts from Jackson, each one time-stamped hours apart:
How's it going? You okay? I'm in the parking lot when you're ready.
I find him leaning against his truck, still in practice gear with his hair damp from the post-practice shower. He straightens when he sees me, searching my face for clues about how the day went.
"How was it?" he asks.
I burst into tears.
He's here immediately, arms around me, holding me while I sob into his chest.
"Bad?" he asks quietly, one hand stroking my hair.
"No. Good. I did it, Jackson. I'm back, I'm actually back."
"Of course you did. You're brilliant."
"I was so scared. Walking in this morning, I was terrified I'd freeze, that I'd see Lily in every patient, that I'd..." I stop, wipe my eyes with shaking hands. "But I didn't. I did my job. I was a nurse again."
He kisses my forehead, both temples, and my nose, with gentle, reverent touches. "I'm so proud of you."
"I'm proud of myself, too."
We stand in the parking lot holding each other while hospital staff filter past, heading home after their own shifts. Nobody stares. Nobody cares.
"You hungry?" Jackson asks after a while.
"Starving."
"Let's go celebrate. An actual restaurant, not takeout from the place down the street."
"Are we going public?"
"We've been public since Emma found the pendant, but this is just..." He grins, boyish and pleased. "...a real date. In public. Like normal people."
"We're not normal people."
"No. But we can pretend for a night."
He takes me to an Italian place downtown, the kind with white tablecloths and candles and an actual wine list instead of just red or white.
We order pasta and wine, and the waiter doesn't recognize Jackson, which seems to please him.
We talk about my shift, his practice, Sofia's improving sleep schedule, and Max's continued disdain for the baby who invaded his territory.
"Are you coming to the game on Thursday?" Jackson asks, twirling linguine around his fork.