~ Nick
I exhale a sigh of relief at her words, while at the same time, try to maintain some level of casual calmness that doesn’t give away how happy I am that she’s staying.
It’s ridiculous that I am this happy. I barely know this girl and I suspect even if I wanted to, she’d somehow make it really fucking hard for me. This girl gives off some serious don’t-mess-with-me vibes that make it obvious there’s some kind of barrier to break down.
And even though I swore I wouldn’t ever do this sort of thing again, I also can’t ignore that. Can’t ignore the pain and loneliness I see in her eyes that mirror the pain and loneliness I force myself to bury. So instead, I grin at her. Open my mouth to ask her something, anything, when she says, “What can I do?”
“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head.
Emma glances around the bar. “Don’t you want some help?”
I shake my head. “Nope. You just need to sit there and talk to me.”
She stares at me, confused. “Talk about what?”
I shrug. “Whatever you want,” I suggest. “Your job, your friends, where you see yourself in five years?”
Emma looks even more confused now and I can’t help but laugh a little. “Okay, let’s start small,” I suggest. “So, Dr Emma…?” I wait, hoping she doesn’t see right through me and my not-so-subtle attempt to find out her full name. Emma swallows hard, as though contemplating what she should say, whether she should give me this much.
“Young,” she eventually says.
I nod. “Dr Emma Young. Alright then, tell me Dr Young, in some alternate universe, if you weren’t an ER doctor, what would you be doing instead?”
Emma lets out a small breath, as though she’s relieved we’re talking about her work and not something personal. She doesn’t realise that this is personal though, that her answer will tell me so much more than she knows. Bartending 101. Lure your customer into talking about something they’re comfortable with and you’d be amazed at the other stuff that leaks out.
I watch as she shrugs. “Don’t know,” she eventually says. “Internal medicine maybe.”
“Internal medicine?” I ask, not really understanding what that means. Knowing also, that she didn’t understand my question.
“It’s like ER medicine, only without the emergencies,” she says.
“Right,” I nod, going with it. “And you like this because?”
She shrugs again and I get the feeling she isn’t actually sure she does like it. That maybe she has no idea what she wants to do. “You get to practice lots of different medicine,” she says. “I like that part of it.”
“Makes sense,” I say. “So when’s the decision need to be made?”
“I don’t know,” she eventually says. “Soon, now.”
“And…?”
She shakes her head, shifting on her seat a little. “And I don’t know what to do,” she says. “And that’s the problem.”
I nod a little as I move to serve a customer, using the time to try and work out how I can ask why without it looking like I’m prying. Eventually I return to her end of the bar, placing another beer in front of her without bothering to ask if she wants one. She eyes the new beer, before lifting her eyes to mine. I shrug, grabbing a beer for myself as though to say it’s okay, because we’re drinking together.
“So,” I eventually say. “What about a different sort of medicine then, something completely different to the ER or internal medicine thing?”
Emma shrugs again, making me wonder if any of it is what she really wants to do.
“Maybe something completely different?” I suggest, nudging her down the path. “Not medicine?”
Her eyes flick to mine giving me a look that I can’t decipher but which still burns right through me. “Have you always wanted to be a bartender?” she asks in a way that I should take offence to.
Actually, that I do take offence to.
“No,” I say, swallowing hard. “But I have always wanted to own my own bar, so you know, mission accomplished,” I add, waving my arm around the room, wondering how the fuck she can ask me something like that.
She knows nothing about me. Nothing about the things I’ve gone through to get this place. To keep it after everything went to shit. She has no idea and it pisses me off that she doesn’t, even though there’s no way she could know any of these things and it’s shit of me to pretend like she should.
Emma nods quickly, as though she realises what she’s done. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
I stare at her, notice the faint flush of embarrassment on her cheeks. I nod, even though she isn’t looking at me and I’m not sure I believe her.
“I wasn’t meaning to imply anything,” she says. “It came out wrong.”
I keep watching her, wondering if I should say something to ease her guilt even though I’m not sure I want to. I don’t care if she thinks me owning this bar isn’t a worthwhile pastime, but I do care that she judges me for it when she has no idea of the full story. But she won’t look at me, eventually lifting her eyes to look anywhere but at me.
“If anything, I envy you,” she continues. “Knowing what you want. Getting what you want,” she adds, as her eyes roam the room now. “You’re lucky.”
I continue to watch her as she surveys my bar, her eyes filled with something that isn’t loneliness anymore but might be a longing instead. It occurs to me that not only does she have no idea what it is she wants to do with her life, but she has no idea how to go about finding it either. And while she might think I’ve gotten everything I’ve always wanted, she doesn’t understand the sacrifices I’ve had to make either. All the things I’ve lost along the way.
I swallow hard, wondering if I should admit how alike we really are, even knowing that’s a can of worms I don’t want to open right now, or ever. “Maybe you need to try something else,” I suggest.
She shakes her head. “Can’t. I’ve worked too hard to get to this point.”
“And?”
She finally looks back at me, her eyes on mine. “And it would be a waste to just give it all up.”
I stare back at her wondering if she really believes that or if she’s just too scared to try. “I don’t think that’s true,” I say, the words floating between us, a memory of a conversation just like this nudging at the back of my brain, reminding me I was in Emma’s shoes once and thought the exact same thing. How easy it would have been to give all this up and walk away. How pissed off she would have been with me if I’d done that.
“And you never know,” I add. “You might find whatever it is you don’t know you’re looking for.”
Emma’s dark eyes continue to stare at me, searching, almost as though she can somehow find the answers in my own eyes. I watch her carefully, wondering if I’ve gone too far, said too much. That she can somehow read all of this experience and memory and torment on my own face.
Or maybe I’ve just hit the nail right on the head, said all the things that no one else has been able to. All the things I never wanted to hear either.
I can’t work it out, but the longer she says nothing, the more uncomfortable I’m starting to feel. She has this way of watching me that makes me feel exposed, as though she doesn’t just understand all the things I’m saying, but she hears all the things I’m not saying too.
“Okay,” I say clearing my throat, knowing I need to get the focus off me before we detour into really dangerous territory. I can forget the insult about being a bartender if we can just get off this topic. “Let’s make a list.”
“A list?” she says, surprised.
I nod. “Yeah,” I say, grabbing a napkin and smoothing it out on the bar in front of her as I pull a pen from behind my ear. “Pros and cons.”
“Of what?” she asks.
I chuckle a little. “ER, internal medicine or something else entirely.”
Emma shakes her head. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“Sure it is,” I say, writing the three options along the top of the napkin and dividing it into three columns. “Right, so ER. Get to practice lots of medicine,” I start. “But lots of bad stuff too,” I add.
Emma watches me as I write down the words, hesitation and apprehension written all over her face because I know she doesn’t want to play this game.
“What else?” I ask, glancing up at her. She shrugs, giving me nothing. “Come on,” I say, smiling in encouragement. “What else do you love about the ER?”
“Saving lives,” she says quickly.
“Right,” I nod. “Definitely a good thing. Anything else?”
She shrugs again. “The people?” she suggests, as though she isn’t sure this counts.
I smile at her. “The people, definitely important,” I say, adding this to the list. “Next?”
Emma stares at the napkin, the words scrawled on it in my barely legible handwriting. “The death,” she says next, her voice flat and detached, just like before. “The death is a bad thing.”
I watch her for a second, wondering if she really wants me to write that down or if maybe she didn’t mean to say it out loud.
“The death,” she repeats, still staring at my hand. “And the failure. The letting people down, failing them.”
“Emma,” I say, putting the pen down.
“Write it down,” she says, gesturing. “We’re making a list, right?”
I watch her, watch the way she refuses to look at me now and I instantly regret suggesting we do this. It’s one thing to joke around about finding something else to do with your life, but it’s quite another thing to rehash all the reasons why. Especially given she’s already had a shit day at work and a shit night afterwards, and now I’m only adding to that. I’m a fucking idiot for suggesting this.
“It’s okay,” I say, picking up the napkin and scrunching it up. “We don’t have to.”
“No,” she says quickly, grabbing my hand.
We both freeze, our eyes on our joined hands, the edges of the napkin peeking through. Her hand feels cold against mine but it still manages to send an unexpected shot of heat up my arm. I watch as she slowly pulls back her fingers, exposing the white knuckles of mine as I grip the napkin. Without saying anything, I unlock my fingers, flatten the napkin on the bar and wait for her to continue.
Emma takes a deep breath. “The long hours too,” she starts, her voice shaking slightly. “And the nights and weekends.”
I finally look up at her and find she’s already watching me, a look on her face that I can’t read. “Where am I putting them?” I ask, the words catching in my throat.
“Both ER and Internal Medicine,” she says.
“Anything else?” I ask, already knowing the cons list for both of these careers is going to be longer and far more painful than the pro list.
“Loss of social life,” she adds. “Never being able to make plans.”
I nod, adding them to both medical careers because I know they apply to both. “Okay then,” I say, desperate to get onto something lighter. “What about no medicine and doing something else entirely?”
She stares at me, says nothing for what feels like forever before she finally says, “The wasted study. The medical degree that will mean nothing.”
I stare back at her, not writing anything down at first. And as I do, I notice for the first time, just how trapped she looks. As though she’s worked all this time for something she so desperately wanted, only to find out that it’s the very thing that’s trapped her in this life of unhappiness. And as much as she might want to change things, she has no idea how to without feeling like she’s giving up. As though she’s throwing away everything she’s worked so hard for.
Emma holds my stare, even as she lifts her beer for a sip. I finally look away; write down the cons in the empty column of the magical alternative career. But then I add some pros to the other side, things I know she would never suggest because I already know she’d never let herself think them. Things like; helping people in some other way that doesn’t mean I lose my own life and using all the things I’ve learnt in different ways. She watches me without saying anything, even as I write the third option, the riskiest one: getting to be happy.
I put the pen down and slide the napkin towards her. She looks at it, reading the words I’ve written. I watch her, watch the way she licks her bottom lip as she does, pulling it into her mouth so she’s biting down on it, as though trying to stop herself from saying anything else. Eventually she picks up the pen, adding love medicine to both the ER and Internal Medicine columns. She then slides it towards me before folding up the napkin and putting it in her purse.
I pick up the pen and slide it into my back pocket, unsure what to say next. How to find a way for her to do the thing she loves so much but also be happy and have a life. Almost as soon as I think this, I realise how much it mirrors my own life. How owning and running my own bar was something that deep down, I always wanted to do. That it was a risk we both took, a risk I thought was going to pay off but one that ultimately had a price I had to pay. A price that meant I didn’t just lose a part of my life, I also lost the part that made me happy.
“So,” Emma eventually says. “What should we talk about now?”