I nod, wash my hands for the third time, and feel absolutely nothing about the compliment because I was just doing the obvious thing.
Aarthi finds me restocking the supply cart twenty minutes later. "You were a machine in there," she says, leaning against the counter with a coffee cup that says WORLD'S OKAYEST DOCTOR, which she claims she bought to annoy her parents. “Was that your first spleen situation?”
"I just handed them blood."
"You handed them blood at the exact right speed with zero hesitation while a teenager was dying. That's not nothing, Ella."
I shrug, because I don't know what to do with praise that contradicts the running narrative in my head. The narrative says I'm the one who graduated late, the one who can't test, the one whose biggest accomplishment is being related to a hockey player. The narrative is very loud.
McKenzie appears with a coffee from the vending machine. "Y'all. I need to decompress. That child's mama is in the waiting room, and I almost lost it."
We huddle by the supply cart, three new hires in identical scrubs, drinking terrible coffee in the fluorescent purgatory of Mercy Hospital's emergency department. McKenzie tells us about her first code back in Louisville—she cried in the bathroom for twenty minutes, and when she came out, her preceptor handed her a biscuit and said, "Now do it again."
Aarthi tells us her mother called during her lunch break yesterday to remind her that her cousin Priya had just been accepted to Johns Hopkins Medical School.
"My brother's face is on the vending machine," I offer, and they both stare at me.
"I'm sorry, what?" McKenzie turns to look at the vending machine in question, where Jason's face is indeed grinning from a beef jerky advertisement plastered to the side panel. "Oh, my GOD. That's Rookie from the Fury? Rookie is your BROTHER?"
"Unfortunately."
Aarthi snorts. "So that's why Susan called you Baby Rookie on your first day."
"I will pay you both actual money to never call me that."
"How much money?" Aarthi asks. "Because my student loans would like a word."
This is nice. This is something I haven't had in a long time—maybe ever. Friends who see me as Ella, not as Jason's tagalong. They know I'm good in a trauma bay, they know I drink my coffee black, and they know I have student loans that match theirs. For the first time since arriving in Pittsburgh, I feel like a person instead of an appendage.
Around four, the ER hits a lull that Susan says is unusual. McKenzie is charting. Aarthi is restocking. I pull out my phone and open the NCLEX practice app, figuring I can squeeze in a quiz while things are quiet.
The first question is about fluid resuscitation in hemorrhagic shock.
I literally just did this. I just did this with my hands, in real time, on a real human being who is currently alive because of the blood I pushed into his veins.
The question asks me to identify the correct order of interventions from a list of four options. I read them. I read them again. The words blur and rearrange themselves. Option B and Option C look identical to me. I know—I KNOW—the answer, but the way it's written on the screen doesn't match the way it lives in my brain, and I second-guess myself, change my answer, and get it wrong.
I try fifteen more questions. I get nine of them wrong.
The app cheerfully informs me that my score falls below the passing threshold and suggests I "review foundational concepts." I close the app and shove my phone in my pocket and stand there for a moment in the hallway where, a few hours ago, I helped save a life.
I can do the work. I just can't pass the test about the work.
The rest of my shift passes in the blur of a busy ER. I help with a dislocated shoulder, two lacerations, and a woman having a panic attack who just needs someone to sit with her and breathe.
That’s an easy one for me. I hang with her and complain about my brother, and she laughs at my jokes. But I don’t think there’s a multiple-choice question about this bedside manner.
I clock out at seven, change in the locker room, and think about my route home. It’s a two-mile walk or a 40-minute bus ride with multiple transfers.
The January sky is gray-black and heavy, so I decide to split the difference and walk to the 67 stop, boarding a bus that smells like wet wool and old piss.
I lean my head against the window, watching Pittsburgh scroll past, and feel the exhaustion settling into my bones like concrete.
When I let myself into the apartment, it's quiet. I glance to the left and see Jason's door is closed, which means he's either asleep or not here. I can’t remember if they had a game today. The living room is dim, lit only by the television, playing a low-volume sports highlight show. There’s no head sticking up above the back of the couch, but as I step further into the room I see Bernard is lying there.
He's in sweatpants and a T-shirt that strains across his chest, with an ice pack balanced on his hip. He looks up when I come in and makes a face that might be a smile if it weren't laced with residual mortification.
"Hey," he says carefully.
