We've been on five Dates. Four and a half, if you count the one that got cut short when his station called him in. We've had one kiss that might have been an accident and one that definitely wasn't but that neither of us mentioned afterward. He remembers the name of the pastry shop I mentioned once in a text message. I know he's terrified of needles, which is hilarious for a firefighter, but I've never said that to his face because I'm not sure we're at the stage where I'm allowed to find his fears endearing out loud.
We have not had the talk. We have not defined anything. We are not officiallyanything.
But I've been sitting in this corridor since before midnight. I unlocked his phone with a password he gave me while his eyes were crossing from painkillers. I called his mother. I filled out his intake forms with whatever I could remember and made up the rest and hoped nobody would check.
I've done everything a girlfriend would do. I've just never been called one.
The nurse is waiting.
And here's the thing about 5:47 in the morning in a hospital hallway: you don't have the energy for nuance. You don't have the bandwidth to explainwell, we've been seeing each other for a few weeks and we haven't really defined—because she doesn't care. She needs a checkbox. She needs someone to call if something changes. She needs a warm body to sign a form.
"Yes," I say. "I'm his girlfriend."
The word comes out like I've said it before. Like it's a fact, not a guess.
The nurse nods, writes something down, and walks away.
I sit back down. The chair doesn't feel any different. The light is still flickering. Sophie's messages are still glowing on my phone at eight percent.
But something has shifted. Something I don't have the energy to name.
I just told a stranger something that has never been true between us out loud.
And the worst part — the part that's going to keep me up all the nights I'm not already up — is that it didn't feel like a lie.
My phone buzzes.Seven percent.
Sophie (3:12 AM): I called his insurance company. Or I think I did. I might have called a pizza place. I was crying. Nora I'm literally the worst human being
Sophie (3:14 AM): DID THE DOCTOR COME BACK
Sophie (3:15 AM): I'm going to send him flowers. What flowers do you send a man you put in the hospital? NOT FUNERAL FLOWERS. Like get-well flowers. Do those exist for this situation
Sophie (3:47 AM): I found a basket on Amazon with 47 snack items. I'm buying it. Don't try to stop me.
I almost smile. Almost. My face remembers the shape but can't quite commit.
I should text her back. I should tell her he's stable, that they've done the imaging and he's been moved to a bed — at least that's what the last nurse said, two hours ago, or was it three — that the fracture is bad enough to need surgery but they won't schedule it until the swelling goes down, thateverything down there is fine, Sophie, before you ask, because I know you're going to ask.
I should tell her I just told someone I'm his girlfriend.
I don't type any of this.
Partly because my phone is dying. Partly because saying it once was already too much. Partly because Sophie would call me immediately and I'd have to explain it in words, and right now words are a resource I've run out of, along with composure, caffeine, and whatever muscle in your back is responsible for sitting upright.
And the thing is — the nurse just now wasn't the first time.
Hours ago, on the phone with Maman Morin — Ethan's mother. You live in Montreal long enough, you stop noticing which language you're in. Conversations switch tracks mid-sentence; half the time nobody registers it happened. Ethan's mother is Québécoise — her English is good, the easy kind that comes from forty years in a bilingual city, but French is where she lives. Where she thinks. Where she prays, probably. And when I called her at one in the morning to tell her that her son was in a hospital bed with a fractured pelvis, her English didn't just slip — it left the building. I could hear it happen: the first few words in English, automatic, polite — and then the crack, and then French pouring through it, fast and raw and scared. So I followed her there. Stumbling through my own French becauseher fear deserved a language she didn't have to translate, and because at 1 AM with your hands shaking, you meet people where they are, not where's convenient. She'd asked me who I was.
And I'd said it without thinking.Sa copine.No pause. No hesitation. She was crying and I was crying and there was no room for nuance, so the word just fell out of me like a reflex, how you sayit's finewhen someone bumps into you on the métro.
That was the first time. And it barely registered.
But the nurse — the nurse was different. The nurse was a clipboard and a blank and a quiet hallway and three full seconds where I could have saidfriendorI don't knoworit's complicated. Three seconds where I had every opportunity to tell the truth.
And I saidgirlfriendanyway. Slower. Clearer. Like I meant it.
The second time wasn't easier. It wasrealer.
