Medical school taught me nothing about bedside manner; I owed it all to my grandmother. She taught me to listen to the things people said, and the things they didn't, and she taught me to trust my judgment. I probably owed the profound sense of failure that I experienced each time I lost a patient to her as well. She didn't believe in giving up hope, even on the hopeless, and she had no problem cursing all the gods she could name anytime someone passed before their time.
She would've hated the way my Christmas Eve was going. The ER received six critical patients from a highway rollover, four young children and their parents. Two of the kids died at the scene; the parents died in surgery. I treated the other two for concussions, and kept a crew of interns with them until their grandparents arrived.
It didn't matter that I'd been living in hospitals for years now, I'd never get used to telling people that their loved ones were gone. It wasn't going to get easier for me, and though it tore me apart every time, it was better than growing immune to it all. If ever there was a day when losing patients didn't knock me in the gut, I was doing something wrong.
By the time I reached Andy and Patrick's apartment in the North End, I was drained. I wanted to tell Erin every last thing about my day, including an update on the secret affair my downstairs neighbor, the gastrointestinal surgeon, was having with one of her residents. It was like a telenovela, unfolding right before my eyes. But Erin was off the grid and I was alone.
I drifted through the evening, mindlessly talking about this spring's city marathon, sports, the weather. It was good to be with friends, and even better to have somewhere to be when the quiet interior of my apartment would be altogether too empty, but it was also difficult to keep up the cheerful ruse.
And I was still bitter. I was angry at the world for putting the perfect woman in front of me at the most imperfect time, and I was angry with myself for not finding a solution to it all. Sometimes I looked at Patrick and wondered how he was so damn lucky. The love of his life was his apprentice, a woman who worked with him all day and shared a bed with him every night. I couldn't imagine getting that much time with Erin, but that didn't shut down any of my envy.
Later that night, Shannon and I started walking home, both of us traveling in the same direction. But instead of our homes, we ended up in the saddest, loneliest bar in town. I didn't know which ghost was haunting her shadows, but she looked about as terrible as I felt. So we tucked ourselves into the bar, sipped whiskey, and listened to the greatest hits of Journey and REO Speedwagon.
Totally, completely bitter.
I glanced into my glass. It was mostly full. We hadn't been drinking heavily, but the atmosphere seemed to make every minute feel long and drowsy.
Shannon turned to me, her eyes hooded as if she was somewhere between comfortably intoxicated and asleep. "Where's Erin these days?"
I laughed into my drink, and even that sounded bitter. Of course she'd ask. I was willing to bet that Shannon had been dying to ask about Erin since Matt's wedding.
"She's not here," I said. I was being obtuse, and I didn't care. "That's all I can say for sure."
"Consider it a gift," she said, leaning toward me as she spoke. "She's too young for you anyway."
I'd been waiting for it all night. Just fucking waiting so that I could throw it right back at someone. I wanted to call them all out over their absurd attitude toward Erin, and remind them they'd committed their share of crimes, too.
"That's a fucking miserable thing to say," I murmured. "And the thing about age is that it stops mattering around the time you hit twenty-three or twenty-four. Definitely when you hit twenty-five." Fuck it. I wasn't due back at the hospital until tomorrow night, and some dreamless whiskey sleep might help. I downed the amber liquid and signaled for another. "It's also my position that Erin knows no age. The eight years between us are—" I held out my hands as if I could gather all the beautiful, brilliant pieces of Erin and scoop them up and make sense of them. "They're nothing. She's lived more lives than I have, and she knows more of the earth than I do, and—"
Shannon grabbed my wrist, a pained look on her face. "If this is where you tell me how she's captured your heart, I'll need to say goodnight and walk out the door because I cannot handle that right now."
I was ready to take her to task over the mountain of bullshit between her and Erin, and demand that she do something about it, but I also knew that crossed all of Erin's lines. She required choice and autonomy, and hated being boxed in. She was the only one who could dismantle this mess.
"That's not quite how it went down," I said, laughing. "No, but I'd like to point out that you've been operating under the assumption you know what happened with me and Erin that night, and believe me when I tell you that you're wrong."
Shannon glared at me for a long moment, making no mistake about her disdain for me right now. "Right, so you had your hand under her dress because…what? Checking for ticks? Trying to find the 'mute' button?"
I didn't understand her hostility at first, but I started to see her reaction as protectiveness. The inquiry about Erin's whereabouts, the sharp comment about her age, it was all in the vein of parental interrogation. Erin wasn't the out-of-line little sister in this scenario, and that was a small victory. I'd rather be the cradle robber than watch my wife take any more hits.
I folded my arms on the bar and leaned forward, glancing at her when the bartender refilled our drinks. "It's not what you think," I said, shooting for a peaceful tone.
Shaking her head, she said, "I don't think I want to hear any more of this. Not tonight."
"Good," I said, tipping back my drink. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."
Chapter Sixteen
Nick
To: Erin Walsh
From: Nick Acevedo
Date: December 25
Subject: Confession
Confession: I fucking miss you. All of you. More than the words "I miss you" can even express.
