Chapter 5 Photo Exchange
Chapter five
Photo Exchange
Lena
Sending a stranger photos was insane. I did it anyway.
It's 8:47 AM on a Saturday, and I'm standing in the pharmacy aisle of CVS like I'm casing the joint. My basket contains the breakfast of champions: three Monster energy drinks, medical tape, tampons, and—after a solid minute of what I'm generously calling "deliberation"—a morning-after pill.
Just in case.
Future Lena might thank me. Current Lena is having a moment. The kind where you catch your reflection in the security mirror and think, "Oh good, we're really doing this. This is who we are now."
The pharmacist doesn't even blink. We've developed a silent understanding ever since my Xanax refill coincided with board certification season. She rings me up with the efficiency of someone who's seen worse life choices before her morning coffee.
My phone vibrates as I exit into Phoenix's idea of morning—already 92 degrees because this city is an affront to human habitation and we all just pretend that's fine.
Wrong Number: Good morning, angel.
I nearly drop my bag. Right. Him. The guy I've mentally filed under "Terrible Life Choice #47" even though my phone still shows Wrong Number. What would I even save him as? "Do Not Resuscitate"? "That Thing My Therapist Doesn't Know About Yet"?
It's barely morning. Also, you don't know me well enough to call me angel.
Wrong Number: You're right. Angels don't text strangers at 3 AM.
Well, fuck. Got me there.
I'm halfway into my car when the next message arrives. A photo that makes me forget basic motor functions. His hands. Just hands, but Christ. Tattooed knuckles—SINS and RAGE barely visible—scars mapping out a history of violence, wrapped around a knife like it's an extension of his body.
It's not the knife that gets me. It's the contradiction: those damaged hands holding the blade so gently, like violence can be tender if you know how to control it.
My brain splits into two unhelpful voices: Medical Voice: "Those are healed boxer's fractures. Defensive scarring. This man has been in multiple altercations." Horny Disaster Voice: "Those hands could absolutely ruin us, and we'd thank him."
Wrong Number: Your turn.
Delete it, Lena. Delete his number. Block him. Go to work. Save lives. Be normal.
Instead, I stare at my hands. Short nails, that scar from first-year anatomy lab when I learned scalpels don't care about enthusiasm, slight tremor from caffeine dependency that started in med school and never left.
These hands held a human heart six hours ago. Literally held someone's life.
Twenty minutes later, I'm in the hospital parking garage pulling purple nitrile gloves from my bag—size 6.
5, powder-free, because even my bad decisions have standards.
I take seventeen photos before I get one that doesn't look like I'm advertising a medical supply company.
Natural light through the windshield, hands positioned like I'm about to intubate someone instead of what I'm actually doing, which is losing my entire mind.
[Attached photo]
Your hands destroy. Mine try to fix what yours break.
The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again like he's typing and deleting, typing and deleting.
Wrong Number: Your hands are art. Mine are weapons.
They're just hands.
Wrong Number: No. They're not.
Something about him arguing with me through text makes my thighs clench. This is mortifying. I'm a trauma-trained nurse, not a teenager with a crush.
Wrong Number: Your hands would disappear in mine.
I shift in my seat, suddenly aware of every nerve ending, every breath, every terrible decision that led me to this moment in a parking garage, turned on by a stranger's texts about hands.
Wrong Number: Show me more.
I have to go to work.
Wrong Number: Tonight then. After your shift. I want to see what those hands look like when they're not saving lives.
Twelve hours later, I'm hiding in Supply Closet B (the good one, with the lock that actually works) like a coward.
Today's trauma lineup included: GSW to the chest (saved him), motorcycle vs guardrail (didn't save her, she was gone before they even got her off the pavement), and my personal favorite—a gentleman who "fell" onto a Buzz Lightyear action figure that somehow ended up in his rectum, to infinity and beyond.
My phone has been burning a hole in my scrub pocket all day. Fourteen messages from Wrong Number.
I open them like I'm defusing a bomb.
Photos. His hands doing mundane things that have no business being this attractive. Holding a coffee mug. Working on motorcycle parts. Wrapped in boxing tape, knuckles slightly swollen.
The last one—Christ. His hand against a shower wall, water running down scarred skin, and I'm having thoughts that would get me fired if anyone could read my mind.
Wrong Number: Thinking about your hands.
My pelvic floor clenches involuntarily. Great. Now I need to add "pelvic floor dysfunction from sexting" to my list of problems.
I'm at work.
Wrong Number: I know. Love that you're sexting me between saving lives.
This isn't sexting.
Wrong Number: Isn't it?
It absolutely is. I'm sexting a stranger whose name I don't know while hiding in a supply closet that smells like disinfectant and broken dreams. This is a new low. Or high? The jury's out.
Wrong Number: I want to hear you come. Tonight. Call me.
The door rattles and I hear Nancy's voice. "Incoming trauma, ETA 3 minutes."
"Coming!" I shout, then immediately regret my word choice.
That's not happening.
Wrong Number: We'll see, angel.
1 AM. Home. Staring at my phone like it contains nuclear launch codes.
I've showered twice—once to get the hospital off, once because I'm stalling. José sits on my nightstand, purple silicone gleaming under the lamp I'm pretending I need on for "reading."
Three glasses of wine haven't made this decision any clearer. They have, however, made me brave enough to take another photo.
My hand wrapped around José's base, chipped purple nail polish visible because when do I have time for self-care? The angle hides most of him but implies everything.
I stare at the photo for five minutes. Delete it. Take another. Delete that. Take the original again.
This is insane, says Rational Lena. When has sanity ever made us happy? asks Chaos Lena. We're going to end up on Dateline, Rational Lena warns. At least we'll be memorable, Chaos Lena counters.
I hit send before Rational Lena can form a rebuttal.
Your turn to imagine.
The response is immediate.
Wrong Number: Jesus fucking Christ.
Wrong Number: Call me.
Wrong Number: Please.
It's the please that does it. The please that makes me think maybe he's as lost in this insanity as I am.
My finger hovers over the call button. Once I hear his voice, there's no going back.
Voices stick. Voices haunt you during surgery, during showers, during the quiet moments when your brain decides to replay every bad decision you've ever made.
But my finger presses down anyway, because apparently, I'm committed to this particular form of self-destruction.
One ring. Two.
"Fuck," he says instead of hello, and his voice—
His voice sounds like gravel soaked in whiskey, like he's been yelling or smoking or both, like every bad decision I've ever wanted to make condensed into a single word.
"Hi," I say, because I'm articulate like that.
"Hi."
Silence stretches between us. Not comfortable, not uncomfortable, just... charged. Like the moment before defibrillation when everyone steps back and waits for the shock.
"This is—" I start.
"Insane?" he finishes.
"I was going to say inadvisable."
"That too."
More silence. I can hear him breathing, can hear what sounds like tools clinking in the background.
"Are you in a garage?" I ask.
"Are you in bed?"
"I asked first." I play with the material of my comforter.
"Yeah, garage. You?"
"Bed."
"With José?"
I laugh—actually laugh—and it surprises us both.
"José's on the nightstand. We're taking things slow."
"Respectful. I like it."
God, his voice. It's doing things to me that should be illegal.
"Tell me something true," I say, borrowing his game from earlier texts.
"That's dangerous, angel."
"I sent you a photo of my vibrator. We passed dangerous six exits ago."
He laughs, and it's rusty, like he doesn't do it often.
"Fair." A pause. Tools moving. "My sister died two years ago. OD'd on fentanyl-laced coke."
The words hit like blunt force trauma. No preparation, no warning, just impact.
"I'm sorry," I say, and mean it. You learn to tell the difference between sorry as a social nicety and sorry as in I understand this specific genre of pain.
"I found her," he continues, voice flat. "Blue lips, foam around her mouth, already cold. Did CPR anyway. Broke three of her ribs trying to bring her back."
"That's—" Normal, I want to say. That's what happens. That's what we tell families. We did everything we could. The broken ribs mean we tried. But he doesn't need medical validation. He needs—I don't know what he needs.
"What was her name?"
"Emma. She was a kindergarten teacher."
“She sounds lovely."
"She was five years younger than me and infinitely better."
We sit with that for a moment. I hear him moving, maybe pacing.
"Your turn," he says. "Something true."
I close my eyes, sink deeper into my pillows that definitely need washing.
"I haven't been able to come without a vibrator in two years," I say, because apparently wine makes me confessional. "Not since my ex told me I was too much work."
"Your ex was a fucking idiot."
"Emergency trauma nurse, actually."
He huffs. "Same thing."
Another laugh escapes. Who is this person I become at 1 AM with strangers?
"What else?" he asks, and his voice has dropped lower, rougher.
“What else, what?"
"What else is true?"
This is dangerous territory. This is where smart people hang up.
"I've been thinking about your hands all day," I admit. "During surgery. During rounds. I was suturing a lac and wondering what your knuckles would feel like against my mouth."
"Fuck." The word comes out strained. "You can't just—"
"What?” I cut him off. “Tell the truth? You asked."
"I didn't expect—"
"What did you expect?"
Silence. Then, "Not you. Never someone like you."
"Someone like me?"
"Smart. Funny. Saves lives while I—" He stops.
"While you what?" I press.
"Doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
More tool sounds. Aggressive now.
"I hurt people," he says finally. "It's what I do. What I'm good at. And here you are, patching up the kind of damage I cause, texting me between traumas like we're not complete opposites."
"Maybe that's why this works."
"This doesn't work. This is insane."
"And yet you called."
"And yet you answered."
We breathe together for a moment, two strangers connected by nothing but bad decisions and electronic signals.
"I should go," I say, not moving.
"You should," he agrees, not hanging up.
"Same time tomorrow?"
"That's a terrible idea."
"I'm full of those."
"I'm starting to see that."
Another pause. Then, quietly: "What are you wearing?"
I laugh so hard I snort. "Seriously? That's your move?"
"I'm curious."
“Scrub top from three days ago and underwear that says 'Thursday' even though it's Sunday."
"Living dangerously."
"That's me. Rebel without a cause. Or clean laundry."
His laugh is fuller this time, less rusty.
"I should go," I say again.
"You should," he agrees again.
Neither of us hangs up.
"Angel?" The pet name makes my stomach flip.
"Yeah?"
"Same time tomorrow."
It's not a question this time.
"Yeah," I say. "Same time."
I hang up before I can say something stupid like your voice makes me want to abandon my entire life and make terrible decisions or I think I could come just from listening to you read a grocery list.
My phone buzzes immediately.
Wrong Number: For the record, I didn't need to either.
I stare at the message until the words blur, then relabel his contact with the only name that makes sense:
Bad Decision.
Tomorrow can't come fast enough.