“As If We Never Said Goodbye”
Camille
Saturday morning had not yet dawned, but a certain relaxed and freshly showered man was climbing back between my sheets, wearing nothing but the smile I’d put on his face last night. I returned the smile sleepily and rubbed my eyes. “Where ya been so early?”
He bent to kiss me lazily. “Long run this morning. I’ve been waking up early all week.” He looked away to the window where the sun had yet to begin lighting the sky. “Shouldn’t be surprised, I guess. My brain’s been in overdrive.” He looked back at me, again smiling easily. “I’ve got a lot on my mind, angel, but not all of it’s bad. In fact, some of it’s very, very good.” He allowed his naked body to slide all the way down and wrapped himself around me.
It felt like the very definition of luxury, having Nathan’s hard body next to mine in bed and the whole day ahead of us. We engaged in a good, old-fashioned make-out session, the kind you have in the backseat in high school. Well, the kind you have in high school if your boyfriend’s six foot three, growls when he kisses you, and knows your pussy like the back of his hand. Oh, and talks dirty in your ear, threatening to tie you up and torture you with his tongue, while he expertly fingers you until you come, panting and grasping his hair.
So, nothing like high school.
I burrowed into his chest, pulse still racing, drinking in the unabashed maleness that was Nathan. He continued to stroke me gently, cupping my still-pulsing sex, whispering affectionately into my ear. I loved that he attended me this way after I came, seeming to sense that I needed to ease back onto terra firma gradually after he’d hurled me into the stratosphere. His erection strained against my thigh, and I reached for him. But he brought my hand instead to his lips, kissing it lightly. “Later on, angel. We have all day. And all night.”
We laid our heads down on the pillows, facing each other. Silent, enjoying beginning the day together. “I love you, Nathan Morgan.” It was as natural as breathing. To love him and to tell him so.
His eyes were intense. “And I love you, Camille Elizabeth.” His knuckles skimmed my ribcage. His eyebrows shot up, and he popped up to one elbow, flipping the covers off my naked torso. “Hey. I just remembered…” He leaned over to study the script decorating my ribcage. “I keep meaning to ask about this, but every time I see it, we’re already involved in…something more interesting than conversation.” His naughty grin was so engaging. “Mmmm…I’m going to guess Latin?”
“Correct. Two points to the gentleman.” I grabbed his hand and rolled onto my back. “Stop it, Nathan…it tickles.” He threatened to attack for just a minute but thought better of it, lying back against the pillows again. I loved looking at him like this, arms behind his head in the classic alpha male pose.
“So, Latin. What does it mean? My lone year of high school Latin is failing me, as dead languages often do.”
I snuggled back in. “It’s a pretty lengthy story, but it’s probably the last piece of the Amos story you haven’t heard.” His arm gathered me closer. “This is as good a time as any, I think.” It was becoming less difficult to talk about Amos as I allowed myself to remember and mull the details of our too-brief life together. There had been a few occasions over the past couple of weeks when I’d allowed myself the bittersweet comfort of musing the details of his tiny toes, how sweet his little baby head smelled. Even the way it felt when he’d tumbled around inside me. Before now, it felt too perilous, emotionally, to let my thoughts meander along those lines. Talking to Nathan about him was a balm that was somehow healing me, bit by bit.
“After Amos died, I had another surgical recovery, the second one in six months. This one was a C-section, and Luckie was right beside me. Again. I suppose it was as difficult as those things normally are, but I have almost no memory of it. The doctor wanted me to stay home for eight weeks minimum, but I couldn’t do it. Physically, I healed quickly. Emotionally, I was gutted. Done. I went to the therapist recommended by my OB. And she was so good, so dedicated, but I just didn’t have anything to offer of myself. All I could think about was getting back to work. Getting busy and exhausting myself so I could sleep at night.
“I convinced myself that I was ‘getting back on the horse.’ It felt like the only step I could take right then toward normalcy was to go back to the hospital and my friends, because my friends are essentially the only family I have.
“So that’s what I did. Luckie and Viv and the girls circled the wagons and prodded me when I needed it. They protected me and locked the utility room door—where the broken autoclave clanged like a fire engine—when I needed to cry it out without anyone hearing.”
Nate spoke, and his voice was far away. “I remember feeling like I was living outside my body after she died. I couldn’t figure out how the world was still spinning around. Everybody got up every day and had coffee and went to work like everything was normal. I was the opposite of you. I was paralyzed. Couldn’t function.”
I turned to take in his handsome face. “I guess I thought it would get better, a little at a time. That’s how things heal in medicine. It made sense to me, but it didn’t happen. Over the course of a couple of months, I gained the ability to work effectively and maintain a daily routine, but I was emotionally desolate. Losing Amos meant I had lost my chance at love; it was so much devastation in a short period. My heart was in shock.”
This was a heavy emotional burden to unpack. “Maybe we should talk about all of this later, Nate?” I studied his eyes, a little sad now, but he shook his head.
“Camille, we both knew almost from the beginning we’d come into this carrying some heavy loss on our backs. You handled Amos’s death very differently than I handled Eliott’s. If you think you can keep going, I’d like to hear what you have to say. What was the tipping point?”
I was smiling again now, remembering the moment when the truth was clearly illuminated for me. It was reality coming full circle, and it eventually brought love back into my life. I continued the story.
“It wasn’t gradual. And months had passed. I was essentially living in a pit of habit and mediocrity. I worked, took care of Sol and my house, slept a little, and tried to stay busy so I couldn’t think. In fact, the day it happened, I picked up part of a shift for Grace so she could see a friend. I worked extra whenever I could because it contributed to my goal of staying exhausted.” I smiled wryly at him. “That’s one of the questionable advantages of being a nurse. If you want to work too much, it’s encouraged and appreciated. And well compensated.
“It’s not that unusual to get traumas into the ED that bring multiple casualties. Remember how I told you about the nudist family with poison ivy?” He smiled and shook his head; I couldn’t tell him about the ladies group with the GI disturbance—way too disgusting, he’d protested.
“More often, of course, the larger casualties are car accidents.” The levity left his face immediately, but I continued. “And that’s what happened that day. I was covering for Grace, who was splitting a shift, so I didn’t come in until mid-afternoon. The accident victims…” I had to stop and think a moment. “Ahh, I think there were probably about a dozen or so, several of them critical. Probably six or seven were surgical candidates, and that’s a large influx of admissions for any ED. In my absence, Vivvie was running the unit and had everything well in hand. She had everyone triaged when I arrived; I remember complimenting her on her mad organizational skills.” I snickered a little thinking about how I’d teased Viv, but Nate’s face remained somber. I hurried along, thinking that dwelling on our losses must be hard on him.
“Anyway, things were clicking along okay. She had Luckie and Sam and Anna getting everyone stabilized and on the move up to surgery. There were a couple of relatively minor suture jobs that needed attention, so she had them stacked up in this back corner room we all hate. It’s removed from the action and set up like an old-fashioned ward. Curtains separating four beds with no real privacy. We don’t use it unless we have to, but we absolutely did that day. Every flat surface was occupied.
“I had four patients back there: a young boy who needed stitches in his head, a couple of college boys who were more frightened than anything else, and a young woman who had a little bump on the head. Very low-key group, considering what was going on. I set up the boy first and got him done because his parents were already discharged and ready to go. As I was getting him out the door, I read the intakes and figured out that one of the young men needed to go to CT, so that was handled. A few other small tasks, cleaning an abrasion on the other young man, bandaging…this and that.”
I grinned, remembering the woman’s voice. “The young woman—I wish I could remember her name—she needed a CT of the head and neck also because she had bumped her head on the steering wheel. But CT was backed up like a mother, and it’s not first come, first served in the ED. It’s all about the severity of the injury, so people just kept piling in on top of her. I had cleared out the “back corner”—that’s what we all call it—and it was just the two of us in there while I charted and helped with the cleanup all around the unit, doing all kinds of tasks, large and small. She was sitting on the stretcher, smiling and watching me. It was odd, to be honest, because most people who aren’t feeling terrible will be watching television or playing on their phones. But not this girl.” I paused, remembering the tranquil aura that surrounded her. Peaceful. Not at all the sort of vibe people normally exuded when they had just been in an accident. It was strange, really.
“So I was just sitting in the room near her stretcher, working on the endless paperwork, when she interrupted me.” I looked up to find Nate watching me very intently. He seemed even more focused on what I was saying than usual. “She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met even though we didn’t actually know each other, if you know what I’m saying. I mean, I was her nurse, but she talked to me like we somehow knew one another. We’d been in the same room for probably an hour and a half at this point, never exchanging any information except what I needed from her medically. Then, from the clear blue sky, she just blurted out, ‘So, a hot property like you isn’t married?’
“Nathan, my head just popped up, and I looked at her like she had two heads. For over a year at that point, nearly everyone I knew had been carefully editing themselves around me, weighing words for impact. I was the victim of a crime so hideous and a tragedy so heartbreaking, everyone thought I might blow at any moment. Damn, even I thought so sometimes, I guess.”
As my mind raced back, reliving that day, I took in the intensity that had settled on Nate’s features. He didn’t speak, and his eyes didn’t move from my face. He barely breathed as I talked, seemingly very anxious for me to continue with my story.
“I laid my pen down and just stared at her. Gorgeous. She looked like a tiny little fireball. And there was something about her—something about being back in that corner, just the two of us, that made it seem like a safe place to talk. She seemed like a safe place. So I did.”