41. Lance
Lance
On my last shift, the San Diego Medical Center Emergency Department throws me a send-off that is, by any reasonable standard, excessive.
Nate orders a cake from the place on Fletcher Parkway that does custom frosting, and someone’s written Don’t die in Seattle across it in blue icing. Dr. Fernandez gives a short speech that’s deeply kind, only slightly undermined by the fact she’s fighting tears by the end of it.
People from other shifts show up too, even ones not meant to be on, which tells me Nate has made this a bigger deal than he’s pretending.
After shift, I tell Charlie about George.
She doesn’t look at me for a full minute. She holds the silence long enough for it to sting. I’m the traitor who stole her man after all. After a while, she lets it go, because it’s my last day and she’s not going to hold it against me.
She doesn’t interrupt. Somewhere in the middle, she figures out it isn’t just another story, that it actually hurt me, and it’s part of why I’m leaving.
She pulls me into a hug like that settles something. Says I’m an idiot for it, and then—because it’s Charlie—calls George one too, and says we don’t like him anymore.
I change out of my navy-blue SDMC scrubs for the last time.
Marcus’s three-bedroom apartment sits on the fourteenth floor of a sleek building on Capitol Hill, with wall-to-wall windows overlooking the Sound. The place looks like it was staged for a lifestyle magazine spread. Everything is perfectly placed, spotless.
The art is actually decent. The kitchen is painfully immaculate. And the cream linen couch? Pristine, perfectly angled toward the TV. Clearly never had a grown man pass out on it with a warm beer sweating rings onto the coffee table.
That couch offends me on a spiritual level.
I drop my bag in the guest room. Nice view, sure. Fresh towels folded like origami, blank walls, zero personality. It looks less like a bedroom and more like a high-end furniture catalog had a baby with a hostage negotiation room. And this is where I’ll be sleeping.
I stand there for a minute, taking it all in. It feels like stepping back into a life that used to be mine. Except now we don’t fit each other anymore.
I’m getting my own place soon.
The kid in bed four has been negotiating his way out of a blood draw for the past twenty minutes. He’s seven, with wide eyes and a stubborn tilt to his chin that tells me he’s done this dance before and got emotionally scarred for life. His mother sits beside him looking exhausted but patient.
Eastside Family Urgent Care doesn’t look like much from the outside. Strip-mall unit wedged between a dry cleaner and a sandwich shop, blue lettering on glass doors, a waiting room with eight chairs and a fish tank nobody ever remembers to clean.
Inside, it’s four exam rooms, curtains instead of partitions, a single nurses’ station where Renee runs the front desk, answers phones, restocks supplies, and somehow keeps everything moving like she’s got extra hours nobody else was issued.
It’s a five-minute walk from Hearthside. That’s why I took it. Meant to be temporary. A handful of shifts here and there.
I pull up a stool and sit at his level so I’m not looming. “This needle is smaller than a mosquito bite,” I say. “Mosquitoes bite you all summer without asking. I at least give you a heads-up.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Mosquitoes don’t tell you first either.”
“True,” I tell him. “But they don’t try to bribe you with stickers or candy afterward.”
He studies me like I might be trying to trick him. “Will it hurt?”
“Yes,” I say. “For about two seconds. Then it’s done, and you can tell everyone at school you barely flinched.”
He thinks it over, biting the inside of his cheek, and then, with the resigned dignity of someone making a decision under protest, he holds out his arm.
I take the blood, talking to him the whole time about superheroes and video games so he doesn’t fixate on the needle. His mother watches over his shoulder, mouthing thank you at me. He glances at her once, nods, and tries to look brave.
The rest of the shift passes in its usual rhythm.
The place hums with muted machines, distant laughter and cries, and the occasional squeak of sneakers on linoleum.
I’m in maroon scrubs, and just putting them on reminds me of George.
I force myself to focus on the work, though my ribs ache like I’ve been holding my breath too long.
That part of my life is officially dead. It feels dramatic as hell, but unfortunately accurate.
I go home after my shift. Most nights I work on the fundraiser. Marcus sometimes invites me out to meet up with the old circle for drinks, and I go even though I don’t feel like it. I don’t think I’m any fun to be around anymore. For how long? Who the fuck knows.
I’ve heard enough from patients and friends talking about heartbreaks to know this is the part where they say they lose their appetite, that nothing tastes right anymore, and that they can’t keep anything down. I always thought that was too dramatic.
Turns out it’s not.
Half the time I stare at food until it goes lukewarm because my brain keeps pulling up memories I didn’t ask for.
I haven’t had a decent night of sleep since I left San Diego.
Some nights, I lie there staring at the ceiling until morning, or I end up fucking crying myself to sleep.
And sometimes, I wake up with my chest hurting so bad I have to sit on the bed and remind myself I’m not fucking dying, just heartbroken.
Like some poor bastard in a country song.
But of course, I’m Lance, and bouncing back is what I do. I don’t let things stick. I don’t drag shit out. I’ll give it a few more days and I’ll be fine. I always am.
That’s what I’ve been telling myself for many weeks now. What a load of bullshit.
This is the part that really gets under my skin. Missing someone should be manageable. People move. Friends leave. Long-distance relationships exist. Humanity somehow survives airports every day.
What I was not ready for were the small things that keep creeping in like they won’t let go.
The smell of the parking garage at the clinic on cold mornings, that mix of oil and concrete that gets on me before I even have coffee.
A certain make of truck in Seattle traffic showing up often enough that it feels like every other car on the road has turned into it.
I can’t even pick up a fucking takeout menu without hesitating like an idiot.
None of them should matter. They’re all small, forgettable shit. I stick with being pissed off because it’s the only part I can get a handle on. Irritation has edges. The rest of it doesn’t give me anything to work with.
But sometimes, I’m not even mad. I’ll just be doing something completely normal and suddenly realize I’m one second away from crying in public like a middle-aged man going through a messy divorce.
I’m done with this guy. The old me had his shit together and was fun to be around. This new one is tired and annoying, and I’m stuck with him.