The thing about weddings and goodbyes is they always act like they’re simple, then end up being bigger than anyone planned. It’s like you’re supposed to just pack up more than a week’s worth of everything that happened and leave it neatly at the door.
I’m truly happy to be part of it though. Meeting new people, keeping my old ones close, watching everyone collide for a fewdays and somehow come out the other side still standing. It’s a privilege, even if I’ll be paying for it tomorrow with a twelve-hour shift and no sleep.
So I do my goodbyes the way I always do, quick and loud enough to mean it. I hug my friends and give Adrian a brief look, a nod for what he’s done for the group in the short time I’ve known him. I then step out of it before anyone gets sentimental enough to ruin a perfectly good ending.
George and I walk to the truck.
His Ford F-150 is light faded blue. The bench seat is worn in just right. I climb into the passenger side and it feels familiar, like it always does.
George starts the engine, flips on the stereo without a word. Incubus’ “Drive” settles in through the speakers, low under the road noise. He pulls out of the car park and we hit the Pacific Coast Highway heading south, the ocean stretching out wide and blue on our left.
We drive in silence for a while. It’s not awkward. We’ve always been good at that, sharing space without needing to force words into it.
“So,” I finally say, gesturing at the road ahead. “We’re really just gonna…drive like nothing happened?”
“Mm-mm,” he responds, eyes on the highway.
I snort. “Real talkative today, G. You save all your words for when you’re grunting in the gym?”
George’s mouth twitches, not quite a smile, but close enough. “You talk enough for both of us. Always have.”
“Someone has to,” I say, opening a bag of peanuts I find in the center console. “Otherwise we’d sit here like two assholes listening to your sad-man guitar playlist.”
He glances sideways, one brow raised. “You’ve been singing along all the time whenever we go on road trips. Always been off-key.”
I give him a disbelieving laugh. “Fuck you.”
The song changes to New Radicals’ ‘Someday We’ll Know’. I start singing like I’ve been training for this moment my whole life—full volume, windows-down energy, my voice nothing short of magnificent.
George exhales through his nose. The steering wheel gets a slightly firmer grip.
The Pacific Coast rolls by, Santa Barbara fading behind us, with San Diego somewhere ahead.
The question from this morning hasn’t really gone away. Neither of us goes near it.
Two months later, I still haven’t picked it up.
But my body has started answering it anyway.
3
Lance
Two months later
The thing about working in an emergency department is that you don’t get to choose when disaster decides to strike. You can’t pencil in traumas between two and four on a Wednesday or politely ask cardiac arrests to hold off until after lunch. The ED runs on its own clock, driven by constant rush of adrenaline, bad coffee, and people hitting their limits the hard way. That’s exactly why I like it.
I push through the double doors of San Diego Medical Center at 2:30 PM, thirty minutes early for my three-to-eleven shift because being late in the ED means stepping into a fight halfway through and hoping you can catch up. The familiar smell hits me immediately—industrial cleaner trying and failing to mask the underlying scent of blood, vomit, and the stale weight of a room of people who’ve been sick and scared all day.
Most people would find it nauseating. I find it weirdly comforting, the vibe of a place where things actually get done.
The main floor sprawls out in front of me. Twelve bays sit in a horseshoe around the central nurses’ station, each sectionedoff by royal blue curtains that give the illusion of privacy while letting everything carry from one bay to the next. Monitors beep in competing rhythms, a constant noise that would wear most people down but that I read without thinking. Heart rates, oxygen saturation, blood pressure, all feeding live data without a pause.
I head straight for the locker room, strip out of my jeans and t-shirt, pull on the navy-blue scrubs that mark me as nursing staff. I clip my ID and tie my gray Nikes tight. I grab my stethoscope from my locker and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the inside of the door. Sandy blond hair, messy and stubborn. Clean-shaven, pale skin, the faint dusting of freckles across my nose that no amount of sun manages to darken into anything more useful. My blue-gray eyes look tired despite six hours of sleep last night, which counts as a luxury by nursing standards.
I’ve built some real muscle over the past few years, finally started eating like an adult, started dragging myself to the gym with some consistency. It’s not enough to turn heads, but the shoulders actually fill out the scrub top now. Small mercies. At five eleven with a straight-backed, ready-for-shift posture, I pass for more put-together than I feel.
“Lance, you’re early.” Nate’s voice carries across the ED floor before I’ve made it to the nurses’ station. He’s in his usual spot, the charge nurse’s throne that gives him a clear view of all bays plus the trauma rooms in the back. Graying temples, dry humor, the particular economy of movement that comes from twenty-five years of watching every possible way a human body can fail.
