Like every sane person, I really hated going to work. I loved my job, it was rewarding and I was good at it, but it was also exhausting and the night shift suuuuuuucked. It sucked when I was a newbie, but it was even worse a dozen years later, having sacrificed myself on the altar of friendship. My best friend, Greg Moore, was the newest doctor on the Trauma Team, so he had to work on the days and shifts that nobody else wanted. Since I loved him like a brother and, more importantly, we worked in sync like few people could, I refused to let him face this crazy time of night alone. Also, when else would I see him, if he worked 7pm–7am and I worked 7am–7pm? So it was light when I slept and dark when I needed to be awake and… Well, I didn’t really have much of a social life before this anyway, so not much had changed.
The E.R. had a moment of calm, so I gave into temptation and opened up Facebook. I blamed John and his stupid food poisoning. After a full day in a puppy pile, I missed the presence of a pet in my daily life.
“Facebook-stalking again?” Greg asked with amusement. I had to admit, it was a little ridiculous, but desperate times called for desperate measures. When I broke up with my ex, he took our cat and I had very little legal recourse. We severed all ties, but I had already been friendly with his new girlfriend, so when she moved in with him… Well, I couldn’t deny Mr. Smithers was adorable, with his expressive ears and that bushy mustache pattern above his lip, so of course she posted a lot of pictures of him and… yeah, I wound up Facebook-stalking my cat, which sounded just as pathetic as it was in real life.
I shrugged and continued to browse until I got to the most recent photo. I showed it to Greg. “Doesn’t this look like a hostage situation? It looks like a hostage situation. We should liberate him in the morning.”
Greg laugh-snorted and his green eyes danced with merriment at the idea of scaling a brick wall to break into the fourth floor apartment. And then there was the other problem. I had no idea where that fourth floor apartment actually was. In fact, I only knew it was the fourth floor because of his girlfriend’s comments one day about lugging an economy-sized bag of kibble up so many flights of stairs. (Didn’t she know that wet food was healthier for a cat’s urinary tract health and that the kibble would get stale a quarter of the way through that bag??? Actually, she did. Because I commented on the photo like a crazy asshole and told her.)
“Maybe Trip can help you. He’d probably be up for something like that,” Greg said. It was true that Trip would probably aid and abet any I-Love-Lucy-style plan I came up with, but it wasn’t really a good idea. Greg caught my grin and asked, “How are things with your new boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I groaned. “We’re just friends. We have to be. You know how I am, and what things were like six months ago. We’d just dive into the deep end and that would be SUCH a bad idea right now. Besides, I’m still furious and I don’t really trust him anymore.”
“So you’re calling it friendship to protect yourself. Good plan. That will totally work.” Greg wasn’t great with sarcasm, but it was heavy-handed enough that I understood he was mocking me. “Have you started actually hanging out with human beings when you’re not here? Like… I don’t know… Trip?”
“Oh my goooooood. We text each other. But when I hang out with anyone other than you, it’s usually Julian since he’s home and awake in the early morning hours.” Greg’s baby brother and I had bonded a few months ago. Despite our nine year age difference, I discovered I really enjoyed his company. Julian was nearly as silly as I could be in my down time, and he was far more mature than most 25-year-olds. “And… maybe Trip sometimes shows up to drop Frankie off to play with Cassius.”
“Sometimes? Or is it every time?” Greg asked pointedly. “You know, Julian’s my brother. We actually talk to each other.”
“I think you mean that you meddlesome Moores place bets on your friends’ love lives and you’re fishing for insider information,” I countered.
“Oh and you’re so superior because you never take part in those bets.”
“Sure I do. And sometimes I even win. Do you remember that? Do you? Do you?” I said, nudging him with my elbow. In December, The Great Gregory Moore had lost his first bet in all his thirty years on this Earth, and I was the one he lost it to. Ha! What we were betting on didn’t matter as much as the fact that I broke his decades-long winning streak. “Chance’s brother was a witness. If you’ve forgotten, I’m sure we can text hi-”
“We got two buses coming in, ETA four minutes,” our Trauma Team Leader barked. By the last word, we were racing to suit up and get briefed.
I climbed out of my car and willed myself to walk the entire distance to my apartment door. I could do this. One foot in front of the other.
I had helped work on that kid for hours, well past the end of the shift. We did our best, but… it wasn’t enough. I knew I was just one nurse and there were a lot of surgeons and doctors and nurses involved, but that didn’t keep me from going through every single moment in my head. Of the pair of us, Greg called all the shots and I assisted and kept him aware of vital signs, etcetera. This was probably harder on him. We ran rough calls every day but it always hurt. Every. Single. Time.
I lifted my head just soon enough to not plow directly into the man at my door. I did, however, trip over his little dog, which prompted John to reach out and steady me. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you inside.”
John took the keys from my hand and opened the door, ushering me into my apartment. I hadn’t returned his texts until a half-hour ago, just to let him know I wasn’t ignoring him. But it had never occurred to me that he and Frankie would just appear like this. I wanted to say something, put some platonic distance between us, but he pulled me into his arms and whatever had been holding me together since I changed out of my scrubs crumbled. I wrapped my arms around his waist and breathed him in. John rubbed circles on my back and wordlessly held me while his pug leaned against my leg.
When the storm passed, John nuzzled the top of my head and said, “Would you like some peanut butter cocoa, or should we just go to bed?”
“That’s an interesting turn of phrase,” I teased, trying to ignore the fact that he remembered my bizarre favorite comfort drink.
“As your friend, of course. I’m wearing my new cuddle clothes and Frankie needs to hug you too. I’m not teaching a class until this afternoon, so I thought we could help you fall asleep.” Greg had his wife to come home to each morning, and I couldn’t deny it felt good to have someone to be with right now. As a friend.
“Ooo. Brand new cuddle clothes,” I teased. Julian had mentioned that he’d bullied John into owning loungewear, but I hadn’t believed it until my face was buried in his extremely soft t-shirt. I stepped back and picked up Frankie, who buried his head under my chin. “I’m exhausted. Let’s skip the cocoa — I think I just need to go to bed. And yes, it would be nice to cuddle. Thank you.”
“Your text sounded… rough. And don’t worry, I already ate a little,” John said as he ushered me into my bedroom.
“I wasn’t worried. This probably sounds horrible, but it hadn’t even occurred to me. I just… assumed you were doing okay,” I told him, thoroughly embarrassed.
“Thank you,” he said, pushing me to sit on the bed and removing my shoes for me, so I could continue to pet his dog. “For forgetting. I like being a person, not a diabetic.”
“Diabetics are people too, you weirdo,” I told him, but I understood. This was why he had wanted to keep his illness a secret. Which was just plain stupid. “I think everyone will mostly forget now that they know. You’re too bizarre for diabetes to be the thing that makes you stand out.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, from a fellow weirdo,” he said, eyes twinkling. John still knelt between my legs, hair a little tousled, and I couldn’t deny just how much I liked having him like this, even if it was just to remove my sneakers.
‘Platonic, platonic, platonic,’ I chanted to myself. Given his current position, a hard-on would be especially difficult to hide.
“Do you need to…?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’ll go wash up,” I said standing up and gathering some clothes from my drawer. “Just… make yourself comfortable?”
I wasn’t completely sure how this went with a friend whom I’d formerly dated, but he was the one who’d originally decided we couldn’t have a relationship, so I'd let him call the shots. I brushed my teeth and changed, and found him and Frankie in my bed, fully clothed and waiting for me. Well, John was clothed. Frankie just wore a collar, but that was as dressed as most dogs ever got, so I gave the pug a pass on his Chippendale’s-like near-nudity.
“John… roll over,” I demanded, realizing I’d be completely lost if we spooned. I pushed John onto his back and curled against his side. Frankie stretched out between my shoulder blades and I knew without looking that his head was on the pillow. He was very proper like that. John pulled the duvet over all three of us and I listened to the reassuring sound of his heart.
“Sorry. I should be calling you Trip now, like everyone else,” I said/asked. He detested the Sherlock jokes, but Dr. Watson had let me call him by his birth name while we were together. So I’d worked hard over the past several months to refer to him as Trip whenever I was unable to avoid talking about him, but it was especially hard to remember to do that when he was in my bed.
“Probably,” he said, pulling me more snugly against him. “But call me John anyway. It makes me feel like Batman.”
“Batman?”
“A secret identity only you know?” he said.
“Superman seems more appropriate,” I argued. “You’re no billionaire.”
“Shut up and snuggle, Robin,” Batman groused.
I slowly began to really relax and, without realizing it, I must have started crying again.
“You know, this is why I talked to you about being a Nurse Practitioner or doctor,” he said. “This is harder on you. Greg goes in and issues orders and all he has to see is a body that needs to be fixed. You’re the one who deals with them directly, who holds their hands and comforts their families. You shouldn’t have to do that. You shouldn’t have to go through this every single day.”
I had wanted to go into medicine since I was a child. I went to UPenn for undergrad, had maintained a 3.9 GPA while there, and could have handled medical school just fine. I even took the MCAT. However, I hated the clinical distance being a doctor would have given me. John knew all that, but I repeated my reasoning just in case he’d forgotten. “I like being there for the patients, helping to keep them sane. I need to be that person.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he muttered. “Someone needs to keep you sane too.”
“Well, today I have you. And I really appreciate it. You’re a good friend.” I kissed his chest to punctuate the statement. Because that’s what friends did — we kissed each other’s chests while lying in bed with them. But now was not the time to put effort into thinking more about friendly boundaries. Batman was here for me even before I knew I needed him, and that was enough.