“Eh, well. I don’t know, exactly.” Deborah pointed to herself. “You see me. Mexican-American. I was raised Catholic. In Texas.” Walking over to one of the tables, she leaned back on it. “So my whole childhood, I spent being terrified of hell. And deeply, deeply afraid the Virgin Mary was watching me commit a multitude of sins I didn’t know about and telling her son about them.”
“Oh.” Hayley had been raised in a fairly casually Methodist household by a pair of methodical-minded high school teachers in Sacramento. Her mother taught English, her father Biology. Church was mostly a social occasion for them. She racked her mind for what she knew of Catholicism, which wasn’t much. “Did you go to confession?”
“Yeah, after my First Communion … you know a lot about Catholicism?” When Hayley shook her head, Deborah nodded. “Communion means I did the whole bread and grape juice thing, body and blood of Christ and all. Then I started Confession, and man.” She chuckled. “I Confessedeverything. My priest was sick of me. Thinking about smacking my little sister with a Barbie when she took my favorite doll dress? Confession. Stepping on a crack on purpose because I was mad at my mama? Confession. Hugged the family dog too hard and made him yelp? Confession.”
“Oh, wow.” Hayley couldn’t imagine being that devout about anything.
Deborah seemed to see what she was thinking. “I wasn’t particularly religious, like I said, I was just terrified of hell. I figured if I was sorry about every little tiny bad thing I ever did, I’d be okay.”
This was fascinating. “Do you still go to church, then? Still believe in hell?”
“No, and… I don’t know.” Deborah tilted her head back, her messy bun flopping backwards as she thought. “Things got complicated when I realized I was a lesbian. Even if you don’t know alotabout the Catholic Church, you probably know they have opinions onthat.”
“True, I do know that.” Hayley nodded.
“My mama was mostly all right with the lesbian thing… she’s gotten better in recent years. But she still struggles to reconcile it with her faith in the Church. I think that’ll always be a thing for her. For me…” She rolled her head and stretched her neck. “Science is a big deal for me. Obviously.” She gestured to her white lab coat and offered Hayley a lopsided grin. “There’s a lot I still love about the Church, though. Like the smell of incense is still an important sensory memory, right? But the Church…” Deborah sighed. “It doesn’t really love me, I guess. And they really hammered the gay sin thing home when I was young and impressionable. So, logically I think, of course there’s no hell. But emotionally, the threat of it is still there, and by all the Church tenets, I’m going to it. So…” She wobbled a hand. “I do, and also I don’t, believe in the afterlife.”
“Wow.” This was a lot to digest. They’d never had a real conversation before, really, let alone one as deep as this was turning out to be. “That’s fascinating. I don’t… I don’t really believe in hell. Or heaven. We weren’t religious in my house. But maybe Ernest did. That wasn’t something we talked about.” Hayley thought back over the conversations they’d had. “I just know he missed his wife. He talked about her a lot. So maybe if there is an afterlife, yeah. Maybe they’re together again.” It was somehow a comforting thought.
Silence fell between them again, but it wasn’t a weird and awkward silence. Hayley felt comfortable continuing to cleanherself up while Deborah leaned against the table, seemingly deep in thought.
The loss of Ernest still stung, and she knew it would for a while. But this conversation with her absolute professional nemesis had been oddly helpful.
There was a mirror and sink over in the corner of the derm lounge, with a few skincare products and a stack of clean white washcloths in a little basket. Hayley walked over and soaked a cloth in cold water and placed it over her swollen eyes.
Footsteps behind her made her jump and spin around, yanking the cloth off of her face just a moment later. “Sorry,” Deborah said. “I’m gonna go hole myself back up in my pod and finish my lunch. But I wanted to make sure you were actually okay before I did.”
Hayley clutched the washcloth to her chest and told her racing heart to slow down. Then she remembered the cloth was wet, and it was soaking her scrub top through.
Deborah was standing close. She reached forward and gently took the cloth out of Hayley’s hand. “You’ve got a little…” With a finger, she tilted Hayley’s chin up and brushed carefully under her eyes with the wet cloth. She was concentrating hard.
Hayley held her breath. The feel of Deborah’s hand on her chin, the focus in her eyes as she wiped away at whatever was on Hayley’s face, the growing tension she felt unfurling in her stomach, she didn’t know what to do with any of this.
The only sound in the room was the two of them breathing, and it slowly synced into one sound. Deborah set the cloth aside but didn’t release her hold on Hayley’s chin. Their eyes locked.
Kiss me, Hayley was surprised to find herself thinking.Do it. Do it!
Deborah’s head moved down, ever so slightly.
Do it…
The door to the lounge opened, hinges creaking as a pair of nurses entered the room, chattering brightly as they carried their boxes of spaghetti over to one of the tables. Deborah leaped back so fast, she was almost a human blur. In the next instant, she’d walked briskly back to the reflection pod her lunch was in and pulled the glass door shut behind her.
Hayley stood frozen, blinking, trying to process what the last twenty minutes had been. It didn’t take long for her to realize it was hopeless. She managed to take one step forward, thinking she’d go yank open the door of the pod Deborah was in. But then she stopped.No. Bad idea.
She didn’t know what was going on with Deborah, or between them, or if shewantedsomething to be going on between them, and it was all too much to unpack while she was grappling with the fresh sorrow of a patient loss. But she did know that after Deborah had been so vulnerable with her about her religious beliefs, she should honor the clear signal that the closed door was.
And, she realized, she should go find a clean, dry scrub top. The cold wet spot on her chest was spreading and increasingly uncomfortable.
With one last glance at the firmly closed pod, Hayley shook her head and left the Derm lounge.
4
DEBORAH
Inside of Deb’s office, it was quiet. Still. Only the sound of her breathing.
Outside, through the glass, she could see the ER was a maelstrom, doctors and nurses running around, gurneys being pushed back and forth by orderlies. She could hear a hurricane of conversations, of panicked questions and barked orders.
