We looked at each other’s lunches, then, without a word, I gave her half of my sub while she scooped half of her tapsilog bowl into the lid of the container and slid it over to me.
“What do you have left out there?” she asked before she bit into the sub.
“My MVA patient—I’m pretty sure her wrist is broken, but they’re waiting on the X-ray results. My lady in bed four has pneumonia, so I’m pretty sure she’s going to be admitted. Abdominal pain that’s waiting for CT. A nosebleed.”
“Ugh,” Marie groaned. “I have a dental pain, chest congestion, a headache, and my guy in bed nine that’s drunk off his ass—I walked into his room, and he smiled at me and said it wasn’t his worst Saturday night, and I was like, sir, it’s 2 p.m. on a Wednesday.”
I huffed out a laugh as I took a bite of tapsilog.
While we sat and ate, I reached across the table to grab the newspaper someone had left behind. I flipped through, skimming the articles. When I turned to the lifestyle section, a photo caught my eye, and I froze mid-chew. I grabbed the paper with both hands, bringing it closer for inspection, and let out a breath.
“Why do you look like you saw a ghost?” Marie asked, raising her eyebrows as she fixed the ponytail of her thick blackhair. I dropped the paper, my mouth hanging open as I met her gaze. Her brow furrowed. “What?”
“It’s Brett…”
It took her a moment to register who I meant. Her eyes fell to the paper, and she snatched it up. She looked at the professionally taken photograph before reading the caption beneath it. “Mallory Noelle Lockhart, daughter of Ray and Mary Lockhart, and Brett James Caldwell, son of John and Vanessa Caldwell, announce their…engagement—what?!” Her eyes snapped back to mine, looking to be just as surprised as I felt.
Brett was my on-again, off-again ex of three years. Things started out normal. Great, even. Then, five months in, we broke up. Two months later, we got back together. Three months later, we broke up, and so on, creating what I realized much too late was a toxic cycle.
One of our biggest issues was Brett’s trouble with wanting tostaycommitted—he was your quintessential playboy. I spent three years hoping he’d change, taking him back time and time again against my better judgment, yet somehow, I was still surprised each time I got burned.
We finally called it quits for good a year ago, and it was most certainly for the best. I didn’t miss him. Truly. I knew I was better off. But seeing that announcement felt like a sudden, cold, sharp sting, catching me off guard and leaving my thoughts spinning.
Marie eyed me. “Hales, are you okay?”
It took me a moment before I let out a casual chuckle. “Pfft, yeah,” I said, waving her off. “Totally. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Marie gestured to the photo. “Uh…well…”
I gave another dismissive wave. “I mean, it is what it is, right? We broke up a year ago, and for a reason. We weren’tgood together. And he found someone worthy of being better for.”
“Uh-uh, no. No, ma’am,” Marie scolded, shaking her finger at me. “We’re not gonna do that, not on my watch. Don’t make it sound like you wereunworthyof being treated right.”
“Well…to be fair, to him, I wasn’t.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t make ityourfault or makehimany less of a piece of shit for it,” she said.
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway.” I stood, wrapping up the remainder of my sub—I’d eaten my portion of the tapsilog—before putting it in the fridge to finish later. “It’s in the past, along with him.”
“Damn straight,” Marie said, packing up her food and tossing it in the fridge before we walked out of the breakroom.
The rest of my shift went by in a blur. When seven o’clock finally hit, I gave report to the nurse coming on, got my things from the employee locker room, and headed out to the parking lot. I climbed into my Jeep, tossed my bags onto the passenger seat, and closed the door. The pockets of my scrubs bunched, and I glanced down to see the contents inside of them spilling out.
“Shit…”
I had this habit of stuffing my pockets with some supplies at the start of my shifts so I had them on hand if and when I needed them. Throughout the day, more would get added, things I grabbed for one of the doctors that they ended up not needing, things I was meant to put back, but got sidetracked and forgot.
I grabbed what was in my pockets, tossed it all into the glove compartment with the stash I’d collected, then paused. My accidental medical supply was growing—gloves, alcohol wipes,gauze, tape, syringes, you name it. Someday I’d return the extras. Today was not that day.
I leaned back against my seat, letting out a breath while soaking up the calm and quiet of the car for a moment. Thankfully, work had been busy enough during my shift that I hadn’t had time to dwell on the thoughts that filled my head after seeing the announcement at lunch. Now, though, in the silence, those thoughts seemed to roar.
For as long as I could remember, I’d always been an unapologetic hopeless romantic. I wanted the fairytale, and I believed wholeheartedly that I would eventually get it. So, I poured my heart and soul into every relationship I had. I ignored red flags because I was the epitome of an “I can fix him” girl; I guess I found something appealing about being the one who made the guy no one ever thought would changewantto. And no matter how many ways those relationships went sideways and wrong, it never deterred me from wanting to try again.
While I didn’t miss Brett, when I saw that announcement, the sting ran deeper than I’d expected. A sudden wave of discontent washed over me—it was like watching someone else reap the benefits of the path I spent three years carving but never got to walk. All those times I convinced myself things would change, all the effort I poured into making it work, the effort I put intohim…it all suddenly felt wasted and hollow.
It wasn’tjustabout him, though. It made me think about all of the failed relationships I had. No matter how much of myself I gave, no matter how much I put up with and purposely overlooked, no matter how high a pedestal I held them on or how hard I loved, it wasneverenough.
My older brother Wes always told me that my heart was too big for my own good, that I cared when I shouldn’t, and that Iwas too eager and too willing to give my heart away. I never agreed with him…but maybe he’d been right all along.
