“Jesus, Deborah.” Hayley couldn’t help the exasperated note in her voice. “What the hell was that? Paige says you’re not sleeping, not eating…”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve coming in hot with a lecture.” Deb pushed herself to sit upright in the hospital bed and glared as she carefully pulled the IV needle from her arm. “We sleep together and then youghostme? What did I do to you? How did I get you so wrong?”
“Ifthat is what I did,” Hayley began, covering up her shame at doing exactly that with a heaping helping of bravado, “and I don’t think it was, then why was your response to debauch yourself into an ER bed?”
“Oh, you flatter yourself if you think you caused this,” Deb scoffed, swinging her legs over the other edge of the bed. “But just for the record, your behavior has beenshit. You’re a coward, Hayley.”
Hayley’s mouth dropped open. “How dare you?”
“Oh,please, drop the offended princess attitude, my God.” Rolling her eyes, Deb bent down to find her sneakers. She sat back down on the bed with them in one hand, and the other pressed to her head. “Ugh.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be trying to do so much right away. You should keep resting.” Hayley shot to her feet and circled around to the other side of the bed, reaching for the sneakers.
To her annoyance, Deb shot her an incredulous look and pulled the sneakers into her chest. “I don’t need your help,” she spat, wrapping her arms tight around her shoes.
“Well, I think you needsomeoneto step in and tell you to get back in bed. You need a little more rest.” Hayley made another fruitless grab for the sneakers. “Oh, come on, grow up!”
“Again, you have alotof nerve!” Deb spun on her bottom to face the other side of the bed and yanked one sneaker on as Hayley scampered back around to try and stop her. “Leave me alone! That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Nothing to do with me.”
“I…” The rest of the sentence stuck in Hayley’s throat like dry cereal. She was as incapable of admitting fault as Deb had often demonstrated herself to be. After a swallow that felt like shoving glass down her throat, she tried again. “I made a mistake. I handled things poorly.”
“You think?” In the time Hayley had taken to gather herself, Deb had pulled her other shoe on and was yanking at the laces with unnecessary roughness. “Imagine! Ghosting someone after an amazing night might be a bad idea. Who would have thought.” Deb slid off the hospital bed and began to stomp towards the door of the room.
Hayley hurried after her, trying to get ahead before Deb could open the door. Unfortunately, she was just a bit too slow. “Damn it,” she swore, picking up her pace as Deb strode through the emergency room department. It was a quiet hour, and she was acutely aware of heads turning to stare at them. “Can you stop?” she hissed, reaching forward to try and grab hold of a coat tail, a shirt sleeve,anything.
Deb did stop and turned around, eyes narrowed. “Oh, is this something you really want to do here, Nurse Milton?”
Gulping, Hayley glanced around. Paige, sitting at the central desk, was staring wide-eyed and slowly shaking her head. “Okay… no…”
“Well, then.” Deb spun on her heel and resumed her angry stalk through and out of the Oakridge emergency room. Unsure of what else to do, and definitely wanting to be away from prying eyes and listening ears, Hayley could only follow along behind her.
They wound up back in Dermatology, quiet in its late-night state, but instead of heading into the lounge there, Deb found the on-call room, a place so neat and clean, it looked virtually unused. With an impatient wave, she gestured Hayley in after her, closed the door behind both of them, and found a chair to wedge under the doorknob. “Nobody’s here this late, but other people know that, so…” Deb shrugged. Her face was impassive. “Anyway. Seemed like you felt like what you have to say is important. Go on.”
As hard as it was, Hayley knew she had to say it. “I’m sorry, Deb.”
Silence. Deb stood there, watching her. Her gaze was steady, and even her hands in her coat pockets were uncharacteristically still.
Hayley, on the other hand, felt like she was going to crawl out of her own skin. The silence stretched on, and eventually it broke her. “I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice faltering on the last syllable, fading into a whisper.
“You said that.” Deb didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow and didn’t elaborate. She simply waited.
After another excruciatingly long moment, Hayley burst. “Say something!”
“What exactly do you feel like I need to say?” Deb cocked her head, looking like a curious bird, a slight smile playing on her lips. “What would you like to hear?”
Hayley opened her mouth and then paused. There was something about the way Deb was looking at her that made her stop to think, to bite back her instinctive response. She wanted to insist that her apology be accepted, since she’d gone to all the trouble of giving it. But she could see that wasn’t the right move. She chose her words carefully. “I would like to hear anything you’d like to tell me.”
She was hoping for an acceptance of her apology so they could move on with a civil conversation, but she was pretty sure by now that that would not be happening. Hayley twisted her hands together and braced herself.
Deb nodded and turned to begin pacing the little room, hands in her coat pockets. “Yeah, all right.” She tilted her head to look up at the ceiling. “Hayley, do you even really know what you’re sorry for?”
“For ghosting you,” Hayley replied, blushing with shame.
“For ghosting me forno good reason.” Deb shook her head and shot her a reproachful look. “I’d have understood maybe if our date night had beenbad, but it wasn’t! We had fun. We had great sex. You gave me no indication that anything was wrong whenyousaidyouwanted to fuckmeagain.” She threw her hands up over her head. “You ran away from me, Hayley. Pushed me aside and ran away. You actively avoided me in a work situation. That’s not just ghosting, that’s shitty behavior.”
Hayley ducked her head. “I…”
“And I would have understood it if we’d had a bad night, but we didn’t.” Deb shook her head, still pacing the room. “I would have understood if this happened when we still disliked each other, but it didn’t. It wasgood, Hayley. Promising, even. And that is not something I say lightly, because I never really say itabout anyone. For it to be aboutyouof all people…” She stopped and spun around, her hands tangled up in her hair. “What the hell, Hayley?”
