McKenzie materializes — she has a sixth sense for gossip, the way I apparently have one for dropping blood pressure. "Who are we talking about? Is it a man? Please tell me it's a man. I need to live vicariously through someone because my love life is an abandoned parking lot."
I shove my phone deep in my scrub shirt pocket. “It's nobody. It's just a friend."
"A friend," Aarthi repeats, in the same tone she uses when a patient says they only had 'one or two drinks.' "Does this friend have a name?"
"Does this friend have a juicy butt?” McKenzie adds.
"I'm not discussing this."
"She's discussing this," Aarthi says to McKenzie. "Give her thirty seconds."
I last twelve. "He's … someone I know from back home. He lives in Pittsburgh. We've been texting each other."
"Texting what?" McKenzie's eyes are enormous.
"Medical trivia, mostly."
They both stare at me. Aarthi puts her hand on my forehead like she's checking for a fever. "Honey. That's foreplay for you?”
I swat her hand away, but I'm smiling, and they see it, and suddenly the three of us are huddled at the nurses' station giggling like we're at a sleepover instead of a trauma center.
"We should hang out," McKenzie says. "Outside of this fluorescent nightmare. Like actual human women who do things that aren't work."
Aarthi claps her hands. “I saw a flyer for an aerial silks class in Lawrenceville," she offers. "It's like circus stuff, but you hang from fabric and feel powerful. My cousin does it in New York and says it changed her life."
"I'm in," I say, before I can overthink it.
The three of us look at each other, and McKenzie grins. “Send us the details?”
“Yes! I love this.”
The rest of the shift moves faster after that. I have friends. I have a plan. I have a thing that's mine, not Jason's, not hockey-adjacent, not something I'm doing in the margins of someone else's schedule. For the first time in my life, I'm choosing an activity because it sounds fun and I want to try it.
I take the cab home and text Bernard about it.
I'm trying circus school this weekend with my nurse friends.
Bernard
Like clowns?
Me
No. Like silks. You hang from long pieces of fabric and do acrobatic things.
Bernard
That sounds terrifying.
Me
Because hockey is so peaceful
Bernard
Touché
I've had three glorious days of solo living, and I’m spoiled. I wear what I want, eat what I want, and study whenever the spirit moves me.
