Ella
The sub shop is warm and smells like bread and pickles, and the fluorescent lights buzz overhead at a frequency that matches the static in my brain. A teenager behind the counter watches me sit alone in a booth for forty minutes and probably wonders if I'm having a breakdown.
I probably am.
I’m definitely running through scenarios while staring off into space, calculating life options.
If I failed the NCLEX, my provisional hire at Mercy is done-zo. No job. No paycheck. No apartment fund. No reason to stay in Pittsburgh.
If I passed, I have a career. But I also have a brother who won't speak to me and a man I can't be with and a life that just detonated in a parking lot outside this very establishment.
I eat the pickle, toss the sandwich, and leave the sub shop. I hop on the bus back to my brother’s condo, leaning my head against the cold window and watching Pittsburgh slide past in the growing dusk.
The place is dark when I let myself in. Jason's door is closed. Music thumps behind it — not the victory playlist he blasts after wins. Something heavier. Angrier. He's not coming out any time soon.
The couch is empty. Bernard's blanket is folded neatly on the arm. His pillow is stacked on top. The living room looks the way it did before I moved in, before he started sleeping here so I could have his bed.
I check my phone, and there’s nothing. Nothing from Bernard. Nothing from Jason. The last text in my inbox is from McKenzie, three hours ago, wondering how the test went.
I can't answer that. I don't know how the test went. I don't know how anything went.
I slide into Bernard’s bed, and my mind spins. My body heats and cools at the memory of the test shutting off after 88 questions, of my relief at seeing Bernard in the parking lot after, of my anguish when Jason found out what’s been going on.
Honestly, it was well past time to put words to what’s been going on with Bernard Houser. What started as a checklist item for me, a need to enter a relationship with experience, the way my externship was meant to prepare me for a real nursing job … shifted into something I never imagined.
Every stolen moment with Bernard felt sparkly, soothing, exhilarating. Way more satisfying than sliding into instinct mode with a trauma victim. Bernard might just be my person.
Except that’s gone to shit.
I sleep fitfully, well past my usual wake-up time. I can tell the apartment is empty. Jason must have gone to practice, or else just left me here to wallow in misery.
My phone rings, but I let it go to voicemail because I can't produce human speech right now. I do hoist myself out of bed and splash water on my face, chugging some liquid right from the faucet before dabbing myself dry on a towel that smells like Bernard’s body wash.
A voicemail notification pops up on my phone, and I press play on the message, letting it echo off the bathroom tile.
"Ella, it's Susan. I need you to come in tomorrow morning before your shift. There's a meeting with me and the nurse manager about your position. It's important." A pause. "Call me back when you get this."
She hangs up. No "honey." No warmth. Just a summons.
I set the phone down and stare at myself in the mirror.
The nurse manager doesn't meet with externs to debrief on boards. No, this vague meeting summons is about next steps. And Susan's tone on that voicemail didn't sound like someone delivering good news.
I failed.
The certainty settles into my body like the chilled water in Jason’s tap. I failed the NCLEX, and the hospital knows, and tomorrow they're going to sit me down and tell me my provisional hire is over, and I need to move on.
I walk back out into a bedroom that smells like both of us, that has my clothes in the closet and my shoes on the floor and his body wash in the bathroom and the ghost of every night we spent tangled together in those sheets.
Not for long. I know I can’t face Susan, can’t sit there and keep my composure while they tell me everything I worked for was wasted.
I pull my suitcase out from under the bed and re-pack it methodically.
The drawer Bernard cleared for me empties in minutes. The closet hangers swing bare, and the space Bernard made looks exactly the way it did the day he opened it — empty, waiting for someone who might stay.
I set the suitcase by the door and sit on the edge of the bed.
I should call Aarthi and McKenzie. I’d want to know if they were leaving. But I honestly can’t handle my emotions to listen to their words right now, either, so I chicken out and send them a text instead.
Heading home for a while. Things got complicated.
McKenzie responds in seconds:
What?? Are you ok??
Aarthi
What happened? Do you need us to come over?
Me
I'm ok. Just some family stuff. I'll explain later.
I lock the phone before they can respond and look around the room.
The bed is made because I make it every morning, a habit from childhood when my room had to be presentable for Jason's teammates who'd come over after practice and dump their coats on my bed. A bed I’m about to sleep in again, tail between my legs.
Every bit the failure my family always thought I was.
At least I’m not a virgin anymore.
In the living room, I grab Jason's laptop from the counter and navigate to an airline site, where I find decent one-way airfare from Pittsburgh to Minneapolis.
I stare at the booking page. The cursor blinks in the payment field. There’s enough in my account to either pay my student loan bill or buy this ticket, and I’m honestly not sure which is the least responsible option.
I have got to get out of my head, find some clarity. Figure shit out.
An idea slides into place, and I know where I need to go to get one last whiff of power before I fly off to face my shitty music. Towing my suitcase behind me, I grab a bus and head for the silks studio.
It’s open hours this morning, and there are just a few women practicing inversions when I arrive a half hour later. I wedge my bag against the shoe cubbies, kick off my Chucks, and find a length of purple fabric.
I grip the material and my palms sting, my arms burn. But I find the foot lock and hold it, suspended, three feet off the ground, then four. I lean back, extend my free leg, and arch my neck the way Jules taught me, and I feel my body do a thing it knows how to do — hold itself up.
I climb higher. My muscles shake, but they hold.
The fabric bites my hands, and my foot aches, but I don't come down.
I hang there in the purple silk in an almost-empty studio, and I feel the weight of this entire week pressing on me from every direction — the test, the voicemail, the parking lot, Bernard's blood on my thumb, Jason's face, the suitcase.
I don't cry. I just hold on.
My body knows things my brain hasn't caught up to yet. My body knows how to grip when everything is slipping. My body knows how to stay suspended when there's nothing solid underneath.
I might lose my job. I might fly home. Tomorrow, everything I built here might crumble.
But right now I'm in the air, and the fabric is holding, and I'm not falling yet.