I knew exactly what he meant. Jimmy had been picking up extra shifts, working himself into the ground with thekind of desperate focus that came from trying to outrun your own thoughts. And from what Jack had told me about his interactions with Izzy's crew, she was doing the same thing — burying herself in work and pushing everyone away.
"They're both too stubborn and too broken to reach out," I said, more to myself than to Jack.
"Someone needs to do something," he said quietly. "They're going to lose each other if this keeps up."
I sat there in our quiet living room, thinking about the two people who'd become so important to both of us. They belonged together. Anyone with eyes could see it. But sometimes the people involved were the last ones to figure it out.
An idea started forming in my mind — the kind of plan that would either bring them back together or backfire spectacularly. But looking at Jack's exhausted face, thinking about Jimmy's hollow smile and Izzy's careful distance, I decided the risk was worth it.
"I need to make a phone call," I said, reaching for my phone.
Jack raised an eyebrow. "At this hour?"
"Trust me," I said, already scrolling through my contacts for a number I hadn't called in months. "Sometimes you have to deploy the secret weapon."
I found Kellen's contact and hit the dial button before I could lose my nerve. The phone rang twice before his familiar gravelly voice answered.
"What."
No greeting, no pleasantries. Just Kellen being Kellen.
"Kellen, it's Sophia." I let my voice warm, shifting into the tone I'd use with an old friend instead of a colleague. "Remember that night back in 2011, when we just had the one big ER bay with only curtains, back when we were still doing paper charting? We had that chest pain in ‘Room’ 7? The guy the doc ordered sublingual nitro for?"
There was a pause, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in his head. "Mmmhmm."
Perfect. He was listening. Now I just had to remind him who he'd helped me become.
"I was so new," I continued, letting the nostalgia creep into my voice. "Three weeks off orientation, and I was convinced I was going to kill someone every shift. Do you remember how I misread that order? 'Nitro sublingual x3' and I gave him all three tablets at once, instead of one tablet every five minutes for fifteen minutes?"
"Yeah," Kellen said quietly.
I closed my eyes, remembering that night with perfect clarity. The patient's blood pressure dropping like a stone, my hands shaking as I realized what I'd done, the absolute terror that I'd just killed someone through sheer incompetence.
"His pressure bottomed out to 70/40," I said. "I thought I was going to watch him die because of my mistake. I was ready to call the code team, call the supervisor, probably call my mother to tell her I was coming home in disgrace."
"Mmmhmm."
"But you just... you stayed calm. Walked me through getting him flat, starting fluids, calling the doc for orders. You didn't panic, didn't make me feel like an idiot. You just fixed it." I paused, remembering the relief when the patient's pressure started climbing back up, when it became clear he was going to be okay. "And then afterward, when I had that complete breakdown in the supply closet..."
I could still picture it: me, sitting on the floor between boxes of gauze and IV flushes, crying so hard I couldn't breathe, thick lines of mucus running down to my chin. I'd been ready to quit nursing right then and there, convinced I wasn't cut out for the responsibility of holding people's lives in my hands.
"You found me in there, snot-crying and hyperventilating," I continued. "Ready to quit nursing forever. And you satdown on that floor with me, used saline wipes to clean my face, and talked me off the ledge."
"Yeah," Kellen said again, but his voice had softened slightly.
I could tell he was remembering, too. The man who'd patiently sat with a terrified new grad, who'd reminded me that everyone made mistakes, that the measure of a nurse wasn't whether you messed up but how you learned from it. The leader who'd seen potential in a scared kid and decided to nurture it instead of crush it.
"You told me that every good nurse has a story like that," I said. "A moment when they realize how much responsibility they're carrying, how thin the line is between helping and hurting. You said the ones who quit after their first big scare were the ones who probably shouldn't have been nurses anyway, but the ones who stayed — who learned and grew and got better — those were the ones who saved lives."
"Mmmhmm."
He was letting me tell the whole story, and I could hear in those quiet affirmations that he knew exactly where this was going. But he was letting me perform this ritual anyway, letting me remind him of the mentor he'd been, the leader who'd shaped not just my career but my entire approach to nursing.
"That's the night I decided I wanted to be the kind of nurse you were," I said. "The kind who stays calm in a crisis, who teaches instead of judges, who sees the person behind the mistake." I took a breath. "That's the night you saved my career, Kellen. And probably my life."
There was a longer pause this time, and when he spoke, his voice carried a weight I recognized. "What do you need, Sophia?"
"It's about Jimmy," I said, my voice shifting from nostalgic to concerned. "He's drowning, Kellen, and I think you're the only one who can pull him out."
