SNIPPET

BIZ — NOW

I rush into the elevator as the doors start to close, shooting a brief nod to the guy scrolling his phone against the back wall. I don’t think he sees me. His head is bowed, face partially obscured by a red Phillies cap. He wears royal blue scrubs, the color for nurses, but I don’t recognize him. I sneak a glance at his ID badge as I hit the button for the twenty-second floor. It’s flipped the wrong way. Instead of his face, name, and role, it shows the colorful overhead code cheat sheet.

Something about him screams first day, and I fight the urge to ask him about it. With his body language so closed off, I decide it isn’t a battle I want to fight this morning. After all, I’ll have to spend the next twelve hours making small talk with my patients and their families. I should cherish the silence while I have it.

The doors slide closed and I shake myself back into game mode. I worked yesterday—which normally means you get your same patients back—and my patients were a heavy load. That’s nurse-speak for “the nicest of them spit on me and called me a bitch as I cleaned her poop off my shoes.”

I mentally run through my plan for the next hour: who needs their blood sugar taken so they can get insulin before breakfast, whose family members are going to call me for updates, who has a procedure scheduled. I was late with room six’s multivitamin yesterday and he berated me for thirty minutes, so I decide to see him right after shift report.

Then, the elevator creaks tellingly.

Damn. There goes the morning. I whip out my phone and start an ‘I’m in the elevator’ text my charge nurse, Danielle. I lower myself to the floor just before the lights flicker out.

“What’s… happening?” my elevator buddy asks, voice cracking with concern.

“So you are new,” I declare, pleased with my powers of observation. During my short glimpse of him, he didn’t give me fresh-out-of-nursing-school vibes, but anybody who’s worked at Murcy-Meritt Medical Center for more than ten seconds knows about the elevators.

Voice defensive, he says, “Just started. I’m a traveler.”

Ah, that explains it. Travel nurses are temporary workers, contracted for a few months at a time under the false assumption that the hospital will have hired more employees by the time they leave. In reality, it’s a never-ending cycle. Exceptionally paid bandages on healthcare’s gaping head wound. Some nurses resent them for making four times what permanent staff make for the exact same job, but I hold no ill will. I’m just happy to have help on my chronically understaffed floor.

I tilt my head to the side and explain, “You know how epileptics can have auras before seizures? Well, Triple-M-C elevators have an aura right before they—” With perfect timing, the lights go out and the elevator jolts to a halt. The stranger loses his footing for a second, his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum. “Do that,” I finish.

The weak red emergency lights come on, barely illuminating the outline of the guy’s jaw. “I thought this hospital was supposed to be nice.”

“It is. We just have an elevator problem.” I pat the floor. “You should sit. It’ll be a while.”

He slides down beside me, his silhouette drawing a messenger bag onto its lap. “So, they spent two million dollars on that brand new atrium the nurse educator spent ten minutes talking about during orientation instead of fixing the elevators?”

Pulling my phone out of my backpack, I answer, “Oh, not the elevators. Just the staff elevators. They fixed the visitor and patient ones years ago.” I gesture my phone at him. “You should call your floor. This is gonna be a while. Do you have their number?”

His head thumps back against the metal wall. “Jesus.”

“Where are you working?” I ask, as if I didn’t already see that he’d hit the button for 17, the pediatric intensive care unit.

“PICU,” he answers, like I knew he would.

I almost tell him that my best friend is a PICU nurse, that I know it’s rough, that I don’t have the strength to take care of dying children and still come to work with a smile on my face for the ones that are still alive. But it’s not entirely true. My best friend was a PICU nurse—last time we spoke, anyway. Ten years ago.

Lots of things change in that time. They have for me.

Instead, I say, “A PICU traveler. Brave man.”

“That’s what my mommy says,” he quips back, surprising me into a laugh.

Such a peds sense of humor, a joke to calm the scared kid and the stressed parents. In that moment, I know this guy is good at his job, and I admire all the things he can convey— humor, competence, warmth, personality— in a single sentence.

It’s what I strive for with my patients, but not always a goal I achieve. My wit isn’t that quick.

“Is this your first time in Philly?” I ask the dim red glow of the ceiling.

“Nope, born and raised. Go birds.”

“Go birds,” I respond mechanically. “Welcome home.”

The noise he makes is uninterpretable, a half-grunt, half-chuckle that could be good or bad. “What about you?” he asks, before I can investigate the meaning of his sound. “You been here a while?”

I nod, knowing he can at least see the movement of my head, if he can’t see the conflicted smile on face. “Always. Never left.” A fact I feel more uneasy about with every passing day.

He hums, another unreadable sound. I wonder if seeing his face would clear up his vague responses, or if he’s just as enigmatic with the lights on. “Where are you at?” The man gestures toward the elevator’s button panel.

“Med-surg,” I say, predicting his sympathetic groan before he even makes it.

The medical-surgical floor has a bad reputation—one that’s earned in some ways, with higher patient-to-nurse ratios, less help, newer staff, and meaner doctors compared to other floors. Hospital nursing is an unforgiving job no matter which floor you’re on, but I’m on this one, and I know how truly unforgiving it can get. I certainly never thought I’d spend six years doing it.

The elevator jerks a tiny bit, startling us both. My gaze flicks from his silhouette to the ceiling, and harsh reality rushes back in. My patients, the night nurse who must be fuming because she was supposed to go home twenty minutes ago, the meds I’ll be behind schedule on.

“I don’t wanna go to work,” I groan, threading my fingers through my hair.

“Me neither.” The cadence of his speech is familiar. Rushed, with a laugh bubbling just below the surface. It reminds me of people I went to school with, old friends who have long-since faded from my life. It’s so Philly.

Even though I’ve never left the city, this guy’s voice makes me homesick for late night Wawa runs and sunny college Saturdays, getting cherry water ice and day drinking on someone’s lawn. Nostalgia rips the air from my lungs.

“Where are you staying while you’re here?” Oh, god. Was that a weird thing to ask? Will he think I’m hitting on him? I open my mouth to explain as much, but he responds first.

“Super close, Passyunk Square area. This enormous walk-up above a bodega.”

The realization hits me almost immediately. This is the nurse. The one whose hard-sided suitcase I spotted through the open bedroom door this morning.

I rack my brain. Didn’t Danielle say the new traveler was a girl? I must’ve just assumed. We don’t get many men on the floors, though I wish we did, to be honest. It would be nice to be able to hand off the creepy old men who make jokes about how hot you are as you insert a catheter up their urethra.

And I was sure they were someone up on my floor. Why would Danielle know a peds nurse?

“What’s the address?” I demand.

He stutters in surprise. “I’m not sure I—”

“I think it’s my place,” I cut him off. “Fancy black suitcase with a red strap?”

Joining in on his laughter is irresistible. The low rumble is like a friend pulling me out onto the dance floor, and I can’t help but give in. We’re both laughing when the lights come on, and we both stop the moment we register what’s happened.

“Biz?”

GILBERT — NOW

At the strangled sound of her name, her face freezes. My face freezes. Hell, my whole body freezes.

It’s her.

The med-surg nurse is Biz. Flirty elevator girl is Biz. ‘You’ll-like-her-she’s-cute-and-has-an-extra-room’ is Biz?

No.

Nope.

I rocket to my feet, pressing my back flat against the wall and inching over to the still-closed elevator doors.

Her eyes track my movements, but she doesn’t stand.

I wonder how fast will my recruiter let me cancel this contract and go anywhere else. Though my first day hasn’t technically started, it would be a huge dick move—not to mention illegal patient abandonment or something—for me to dip right now. I’ll just ride this shift out and call my agency later tonight.

I haven’t unpacked really, so that should be easy. She can keep the rent. The contract certainly pays enough. I wouldn’t have even considered coming back to Philly if the offer wasn’t exorbitantly high. I could get a hotel. Or, even—

“Gilbert,” she whispers.

God. It’s like ice being shot straight through my heart, hearing my name on her lips for the first time in ten years. I don’t know how I didn’t recognize that voice.

“Hi?” I try to say smoothly, but it ends up coming out like a question.

“Hi.”

My gaze lingers on her upturned face. She looks so much the same. Light brown skin, carefully shaped eyebrows arching over honey-colored eyes. Her loose curls are pulled up into a high ponytail, the ringlets that make up her bangs framing her face. I’m staring. I don’t care.

If this is the last time I see Elizabeth Lapindinsky, I’m making it count. I’ll memorize her parted lips, the authoritative way she wears her pink stethoscope slung across her shoulders. The way she tucks her hands into the front pockets of her scrub top. The ID badge clipped onto her breast pocket that reads “Lizzie L., RN, BSN” next to a blurry photo of her smiling tightly.

She looks like an adult.

She is an adult.

Does she think I look like an adult?

I need to get out of this elevator. I will it to move, and then startle when it does.

Thank you, universe. If you were only going to listen to me once, I’m glad it was this time.