"Are you going to tell me about the agency or not, Bill."
"All right, all right. You're so touchy tonight. Are you on your period?"
"Bill!" I exclaim. Completely exasperated with him in the all of forty minutes we've been in each other's company.
"Fine. My sister Stephanie is the one with the agency. She's been a nurse for over thirty-five years and opened the agency about twelve years ago. A lot of good nurses have come through there."
"Your older sister, right?"
"Yeah, the one who lives in Merion with my oldest nephew, Josiah. The one who plays soccer."
"Yes, I remember you talking about them. I really like that an experienced nurse owns the agency and not just an administrative person."
"Right, well she has a lot of solid relationships with human resource departments at every hospital within a fifty mile radius of Philly. Thanks to me of course."
"Of course." I roll my eyes.
"So, she should be able to find you a good assignment. I'll actually see her over the weekend at a family thing. I'll mention to her that you're looking. Where are you thinking about going?"
"Maybe out west or even down south. I just kind of want to stretch my legs. Get out of the metro area for a while and see what's out there."
"You've never lived outside of Philly, right?"
Yet another subtle jab.
He's on a roll tonight.
"You know that I haven't, Bill. I went to U Penn straight after high school and then started working at Memorial three weeks after graduation."
I take another forceful bite of my pasta and eat it with angry swallows.
"Would it be a little inappropriate to say that I hope things don't work out for you? I mean I'd hate to see you go."
"Yes, Bill, that would be totally inappropriate to say and selfish as hell."
His phone vibrates on top of the table. Disrupting our conversation. Thank God.
"Sorry about this. I'm on call."
"No problem. Take it."
I'm used to it. Bill is always on call. Even when he was off shift and hanging out with me, his mind was always at the hospital.
"Dammit, I've got to go. Some guy just came in with a steel rod in his chest. Punctured his heart."
"Not a problem. Sounds like your type of case."
"Actually, I think it may be kind of a problem. It took me a month to even get you to talk to me again, and now I have to go. I'm afraid that you won't talk to me for another month now that you've gotten what you wanted out of me."
"What are you talking about. I'm just following the rules that you laid out between us. No personal chitchat in the workplace. No exposing our relationship to coworkers. Etcetera, etcetera."
"It was the professional thing to do. We'd have been such a cliché if everyone knew. The doctor and the nurse having a thing," he says while he obnoxiously snaps to grab the attention of our server.
Athingis just about all it was between us. It wasn't even worth mentioning to my coworkers, but that's not the point. He was keeping our relationship hidden like it was some dirty little secret. The jerk.
"I'll text you my sister's information later, and give her a heads up to expect your call."
The server still hasn't come to our table, so he dramatically drops several twenty-dollar bills on the table to cover the bill as if it's some grand gesture.
