I take out my phone from the front pocket of my hoodie. I pull up my brother’s contact info and shoot him a message.
Margeaux: Tell Zoey that I’ll go to her stupid bachelorette party
Jacky: AWESOME! She’s gonna be soexcited to see you.
I smirk knowing he’s genuinely excited, but my stomach rolls just thinking about being around Zoey Gallagher and all her friends.
Margeaux: If you say so.
Jacky: Seriously, Mags. She’s been asking if you’re coming all week. You’re still my best WO-man at the wedding, right?!
My brother is such a dork. Aside from Jazz, he’s my best friend. I practically tackled him when he asked me to be his best wo-man for their wedding. I hate the idea of marriage, and it makes me want to vomit even more knowing that Jacky is tying himself to Zoey for the rest of his life. But he says he’s happy. Who am I to interfere with his delusions?
Margeaux: You know I’ll always be there for you.
Jacky: GIF from Friends TV show.
I exit out of my conversation with Jacky and pull up Ashleigh’s details. I let her know the details for the bachelorette party and she replied almost instantly with a cheesy party hat emoji. She’ll figure out all my travel details and stuff.
Five minutes doesn’t pass until Zoey messages me with a fucking packing list for her party weekend. Dress codes for each day, a fucking itinerary, and then proceeds to add me to a group text with all her bridesmaids and other “Gally Gals” who are attending next weekend. I feel the basket of fries bubbling to come back up.
I show Jazz the group text that is blowing up my phone with the most trivial bullshit.
“Oh. Please take pictures and notes about all of these- what are they called- Gally Gals?” She tilts her head, fighting back a strong wave of laughter.
“Her last name is Gallagher,” I shrug.
“Well, here’s to a crazy weekend in Paramount with all the GallyGals!” Jazz picks up her vanilla milkshake, and I clank my chocolate one against it.
“Fuck you, bitch.” We both take big swigs of our milkshakes and then share a hiss as brain freezes take over us both.
3
JON
Beep Beep.Beep Beep. Beep Beep.
I silence my pager, looking for which patient needs me. Sammy. It’s about lunch time, and we have a standing lunch meeting every day. Being on call last night has me almost dead on my feet today. A broken hour of sleep will have to be good enough to get me through these next five hours of my shift.
I hustle across the pediatric floor and find Sammy sitting upright in his bed, arms crossed, his chapped lips pushed out in a pout. His blue eyes are a little duller today.He’s not feeling well.
“Hey, Champ. Sorry I’m late for our lunch meeting. Where’s your mom?” I ask, pulling up a chair to the side of his bed. I tug his meal tray closer to him, but he just pushes it away.
“I’m not hungry,” he grumbles, hugging his arms tighter to his chest.
I do my best not to sigh. He’s in a shit situation, and there’s not much more I can do to ease his discomfort.
“Mom went somewhere to cry. You know she hates doing that around me.” He fidgets with the tape around his IV.
Being eight years old and suffering from hypoplastic left heartsyndrome is terrible. Sammy’s too good of a kid to be dealt such a bad hand in life.
“Youdidn’t even bring lunch,” he groans, noticing I don’t have food with me.
I give him a sneaky smile and pull out a protein bar from the pocket of my white doctor’s coat.
His eyes light up just a little bit. This kid smiles for the smallest things. I brought him a new comic the other day and you would think I brought him the moon.
“Anything else?” he asks, trying to peek inside my other pocket. This kid knows me too well. As doctors, we’re not supposed to get too close to our patients, but Sammy has wormed his way into the top spot on my patient list.
