The memory hit me like another blow. Lisa Harris, sitting in that hospital bed, looking at me with desperate hope when I'd promised her safety. And weeks later, she was dead because I couldn't save her. Because I'd been naive enough to think that good intentions and proper protocol could protect someone from a system designed to fail them.
I was poison. Everything I touched turned to ash. Every person who trusted me ended up worse for it.
The tears came harder now, silent and devastating. I pulled my knees to my chest and let them come, let the grief and guilt and self-loathing wash over me in waves. There was no fighting it, no controlling it. This was what I deserved — to be alone on my kitchen floor, choking on the wreckage of everything I'd tried to protect.
My phone rang, cutting through the silence. My mother's ringtone — "Sweet Caroline," because she'd insisted on it after a particularly wine-soaked family barbecue. For a moment, I considered letting it go to voicemail. But something desperate in me reached for the phone, needing to hear a voice that still loved me, even if I didn't deserve it.
"Hi, Mom," I managed, my voice hoarse and broken.
"Jimmy? Honey, what's wrong?" Her maternal radar had always been flawless. One word from me and she could diagnose everything from a bad day to a broken heart.
"I messed up, Mom," I said, fresh tears starting. "Really bad."
"What happened? Are you hurt? Do you need me to come up there?"
The concern in her voice almost broke me all over again. Here was unconditional love, offered without question or judgment, and I couldn't even explain why I didn't deserve it.
"No, I just... I hurt someone. Someone really important to me. And I can't fix it."
"Oh, sweetheart." Her voice was soft, full of the kind of motherly comfort that had gotten me through skinned knees and broken friendships and every other crisis of my life. "What did you do?"
I tried to find the words to explain, but how could I tell her about the letter without admitting how completely I'd failed to understand the woman I claimed to love? How could I explain that I'd destroyed Izzy's career with good intentions?
"I tried to help her," I said finally. "I thought I was helping, but I just made everything worse. She was right to leave me. I'm not... I'm not good enough for her."
"James Daniel Dalton," my mother said, her voice taking on the firm tone she'd used when I was a child and needed correction. "That is not the son I raised talking. The son I raised doesn't give up on people he loves."
"But what if I'm the problem, Mom? What if I'm the one who hurts everyone I try to help?"
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. When she spoke again, her voice was gentler. "Honey, loving someone means risking hurt. It means making mistakes and learning from them. If this girl is worth fighting for — "
"She is," I said without hesitation. "She's the strongest, most incredible person I've ever met."
"Then you fight for her. You figure out how to be the man she deserves. But giving up? That's not love, baby. That's fear."
We talked for a few more minutes, her voice a lifeline in the darkness of my apartment. But when I hung up, the silence rushed back in, heavier than before. She was wrong. This wasn't about fear — it was about facing the truth. I wasn't the man Izzy deserved. I'd proven that spectacularly.
The best thing I could do for her was stay away. Let her find someone who wouldn't destroy her career with misguided love letters. Someone who could protect her instead of failing her at every turn.
I went back to work the next day and threw myself into the job with the kind of desperate focus that felt like drowning in reverse. If I couldn't be the man Izzy needed, if I couldn't save the patients who trusted me, then I'd be perfect at everything else. I'd be the most competent, most careful, most thorough nurse Metro General had ever seen.
I picked up extra shifts. Covered for colleagues who needed time off. Stayed late to double-check charts and triple-check medication calculations. The easy smile I'd worn for years disappeared, replaced by a professional mask that never slipped. The cookies stopped appearing in the break room. The birthday celebrations I'd organized became someone else's responsibility.
I became a ghost of myself — technically flawless but completely hollow.
My first patient of the night was Harold, my frequent flyer who usually came in convinced his anxiety symptoms were heart attacks. In the past, I'd spend time with him, talking him through his fears with gentle humor and patience. Tonight, I ran through his assessment with mechanical efficiency.
"Mr. Brennan, your EKG is normal, your troponins arenegative, and your vital signs are stable," I said, not meeting his eyes as I updated his chart. "Dr. Ward will be in shortly to discuss discharge."
"Jimmy?" Harold looked confused, maybe a little hurt. "Don't you want to know what I was watching when it started? You always ask about that."
"The important thing is that your cardiac workup is normal," I replied, already moving toward the door. "Is there anything else you need right now?"
Harold shook his head, but I could see the disappointment in his eyes. In the past, our conversations had been the highlight of his visits — someone who listened without judgment, who treated his anxiety as real without feeding into it. Now I was just another nurse going through the motions.
"Mr. Patton, I need to check your pain level one more time," I said to the patient in Room 7, a construction worker who'd fallen from a scaffold. I'd already assessed him twice in the past hour, but the gnawing fear that I'd missed something wouldn't let me rest.
"I told you, it's a six," he said, looking at me with mild concern. "You feeling alright? You've asked me that three times."
