“I have a barbecue pulled pork sandwich, a BLT, and a philly cheesesteak, which one do you want first?”
“I’ll take whatever you don’t want.”
She carefully unwraps the wax paper that covers the cheesesteak, leaving just enough that I can hold onto it without making a mess. She hands it over, and I take my first bite, moaning as I do. “Thank you for this, sweetheart. I was starving.”
She opens the wax paper covering the BLT, balancing the sandwich on the top of her leg as she carefully rearranges the tomatoes so they don’t fall out. She’s quiet, pulling the corner of her quivering lip between her teeth, and I can almost predict what she’s thinking.
“Don’t you dare say it,” I tell her before taking another large bite of my sandwich.
Her head twists to face me, and it’s then I see it, the guilt. “But…” she starts, and I shake my head.
“Don’t you dare apologize to me because I forgot my lunch.”
She giggles, just a little, but I can see the tension in her shoulders start to fade. “When you say it that way, it sounds foolish.”
“It would be foolish,” I tell her. My hands are busy with my sandwich and the steering wheel, so I lean down and kiss her shoulder for good measure.
“But if you weren’t interrupted by my neurotic arrival, you wouldn’t have forgotten it at home. And if you weren’t running late because I delayed you, you wouldn’t be working this late. I was sleeping all day in your bed while you were out here starving.”
I shrug a shoulder, finishing off the last of my sandwich in one large bite and crinkling the wax paper with one hand. “Maybe, but if this morning went as planned for me … say you went home and had a panic attack and you were all alone, and I found out about it later … I’d feel awful. Or if you went to my house and I was already gone and you had one in the middle of my driveway.” I shake my head as if to shake away the thought. “And right now, with food in my stomach and you on my lap wearing this thin dress, I’m pretty fucking thankful that I forgot my lunch at home.”
She laughs for real now, a full-bodied, shoulder-shimmying laugh that has her head tilted back. I take that opportunity to kiss the side of her neck, and she squeals under my touch.
“Another sandwich, big boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She takes the ball of wax paper from my hand and tosses it into her bag. She then grabs the pulled pork sandwich, opening it up for me just as she did before.
We ride the next few minutes in silence, both of us eating our respective sandwiches. And when she finishes hers, she takes a drink from her water bottle, and then starts talking. “I got called into a meeting during my lunch break yesterday.” She launches into a story about a meeting with a few fancy-ass people at the hospital and tells me they want her to speak at a fundraiser in a few weeks.
“Do you like speaking in public?”
Holly shrugs one shoulder. “Not really. I get too anxious, even if it’s something I enjoy. I do think the money would be well spent at some of these smaller clinics, like right in town.”
I nod at that, and she stares at the label of her water bottle for a minute before twisting her head to look past my shoulder at the baler unloading a round bale.
“But…” I prompt, and her gaze flicks back to me.
“But it feels like they’re making a show of it. When I had my little episode, it wasn’t on the news or anything, but there was … gossip.”
I grind my molars so hard together I think I might crack a tooth. Small-town gossip has always been a thing, but I’ve been able to keep my head down and avoid it most of my life. A hospital is like a miniature small town, there are affairs and lies, and I’m sure an event like she had was made out to be some extravagant scandal. I couldn’t imagine my worst experience, something I considered a breaking point in my life, to be talked about. Whispered about over coffee by people who likely don’t even know her.
“In a way, I get why they asked, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel genuine.”
“Then I don’t think you should do it,” I tell her firmly. “If you decide you want to because you truly want to, that’s one thing. But you don’t need to agree to shit just to make them feel better.”
Tears well in her eyes, and I reach a hand up, tapping her chin so she can look at me. “I’m sorry if that came out rude, honey. I didn’t mean it that way, I—”
She waves both hands in front of her face, bringing them up to swipe the welling tears away with the backof her fingers. “It’s not that. It’s … .ahh…” She swipes the tears again, then dries her hands on her dress. “After I went back to my shift, I had this patient.” She begins to tell me about a sweet old man who she had as a patient. One that lived around here and had fallen through the cracks of healthcare. And then she tells me about the car accident, the teenage girl who was all alone, and as her story ends with her sitting in the goddamn morgue crying with her patient, my dinner sits in a stone ball in my stomach. Then she tells me about the near panic attack, about crying so hard she almost got in a head-on collision, and my dinner threatens to make a reappearance.
“Fuck, Holly…” I trail off, momentarily speechless. She starts to apologize for telling me about it, but I place a gentle hand over her mouth.
“I’m gonna say something, and I need you to listen to me, okay?”
She nods, and I move my hand, letting it slide down her puffy lips.
“You are the most remarkable woman I have ever met. You are smart,God, you’re incredibly smart, and your heart is so big and beautiful, I admire it. I know it broke your heart to lose him, but I’ll bet he is looking down at you, thankful that there was someone who cared about him that much. I'm not a doctor, not even gonna pretendI know much about it. But I think no matter if he was at home or at the hospital with a different doctor caring for him, his outcome would have been the same, right?" She nods at that. "And that little girl, I’ll bet you made the scariest situation in her life a little better just by being there.”
