Making a face, I walk back into the patient area.
My job here is simple and brutal. When there is only one board-certified ER physician on duty, that person is:
The attending physician, teacher, supervisor, the final authority.
The one legally responsible.
Me.
From the moment I clock in, I am moving. One patient to the next, one crisis to another, barely enough time to breathe, let alone sit. The ER feels louder today, busier, like the universe listened and didn’t even give a minute to think.
When I finally do get a minute, I collapse into a chair behind the counter. My bag with the actual food is all the way across the admin block, so I reach into my coat pocket, find the granola bar I stuffed there earlier, and tear it open with my teeth.
Charlize drops into the chair beside me with a groan. She takes one look at me and clicks her tongue.
“What,” I ask with my mouth full. “I’m hungry.”
“Exactly.” She points at the bar like it personally offended her. “You need a nutritious meal, not that.”
I look at the wrapper. Chocolate chips. Definitely not nutritious. “I didn’t have an appetite this morning.”
She raises a brow. “Why?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “You were married, right?”
Charlize nods. “Twice.”
I blink. “Wait, twice? I know about Bailey, but who was the other?”
She shrugs as she unwraps her own snack. “My high school sweetheart. We tried to beat the odds, but… we grew up and apart.”
Her tone is light, but there is a shadow underneath it. A familiar one.
I hesitate. “Did it get better? The heartbreak?”
She studies me for a moment, eyes softening. “It dulls. It never fully disappears, but it dulls. Why?”
I shrug, picking at the granola bar wrapper. “Patrick and I are…” My throat tightens. “We’re fighting.”
Charlize nods slowly, like she expected that. “Well, Jonathan and I… we didn’t talk. We waited for the other person to magically understand how we felt. A relationship cannot survive like that.”
I sigh. “Patrick did this thing and I… forgave him for it. Only I didn’t. Not really. And now I’m pissed again, and I already said I’d get over it, and I’m just now realizing how stupid that was.”
Charlize raises a brow. “I can guess what he did. But listen. Don’t pretend something is fine just because pretending is easier. Relationships that are easy don’t last long.”
I swallow hard. “He’s… he’s a good husband. And a good dad. Closed off, yes, but not cruel. Not absent. And I don’t want to blow up our marriage over one mistake.”
She asks quietly, “Is this mistake big?”
“Very.”
She shrugs, calm as ever. “Then you are not ruining anything, Lore. You are dealing with it.”
I open my mouth to ask her how I am supposed to do that. But before I can say a word, one of the monitors behind us beeps sharply.
Charlize is already pushing herself up. I toss the granola wrapper into the trash.
Work calls. Patrick goes back on the mental back burner where he has lived all day.
