“That was him, wasn’t it?” Penelope asked as soon as I returned to the break room.

Evidently me hiding out into the bathroom to talk to Jake hadn’t worked.

“I told you,” I said. “I don’t really-”

“Want to talk about it, I know,” Penelope said. “You’re too torn in your feelings and confused and nervous and scared.”

She flopped herself down into a chair and tore off a bite of Mars bar. “Which is totally understandable, by the way.”

As I sat down across from her, she sighed. “I still can’t get over that I set you up with a potential date rapist.”

“What that asshole did was not your fault,” I assure her.

“Yeah,” Penelope scoffed. “But I still feel horrible that I was the one to set you up with him.”

“It’s ok,” I said, biting into the muffin I’d gotten from the coffee shop downstairs. “You didn’t know.”

Penelope’s horrible instincts when it came to men were notorious, probably because she was so focused on having fun that she didn’t bother to look deeper. One time, it had taken her several months to find out that not only did the man she was dating have a wife, but he’d been wearing a wedding band the whole time.

What I’d been thinking allowing her to set me up in the first place was beyond me. I had simply wanted to get her off my back and had caved in a weak moment.

“So, tell me again,” Penelope prompted.

“You were right,” I admitted. “I liked the boxing match. And seeing Jake and Owen like that-”

“Awakened your loins from their slumber?” she finished.

When my incredulous look found Penelope’s, we cracked up.

“Exactly, Grandma Penelope,” I joked. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“Seriously though,” Penelope continued. “Seeing as there’s two of them and you’re torn about who to choose… mind helping a girl out?”

“What, you mean set you up with one?”

Penelope nodded. “That Miami guy I told you about ended up hooking up with his cousin again.”

“Ew,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “Ew is right. I’m seriously considering getting another cat.”

“Penelope,” I counselled her. “Do you really want to be a stereotype?”

Lately, Penelope’s way of dealing with her romantic upsets was to buy another cat. Right now, she was ‘only’ at six.

“Set me up with the hot twin you don’t want then,” Penelope said petulantly. “Or let’s go to Paris!”

“As overdue as I am for a trip, I don’t have my dad financing them,” I reminded her. “And I am still paying off school. As for the twins, I don’t know who I like yet.”

“But you’re going on a date with Jake, right.? So just invite me and Owen too.”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you at least think about it?” she practically begged.

“Fine, I’ll think about it.”

“Hyacinth,” Viola said sharply, sticking her head into the break room. “Aren’t you due back on the floor?”

“Oh yeah, sorry.” I glanced at the clock, noting that indeed the minute hand was one tick away from the time I should’ve been done.

“Well, chop chop. You’ve had enough time to gossip,” she snipped.

“Cin works harder than anyone here Viola and you know it,” Penelope declared. “So shove it.”

Viola hovered in the doorway, her face working with the impossibility of her dilemma. She couldn’t directly talk back to Penelope, whose father was the hospital’s largest financial donor, but she couldn’t just take being talked back to like that lying down.

Finally, she decided on storming off, while Penelope and I dissolved into giggles.

“You’re terrible,” I told her. “She’s going to schedule you for Saturday nights for weeks.”

“Just let her try,” Penelope said with a wave. “Anyway, she is a bitch to you when you’re the hardest-working one here, it drives me nuts.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling.

“Now get back to work!” she joked.

The rest of my shift was a blur of patients. Some suturing, some tests, lots of recording. By the time I was finished, I was about ready to collapse in bed, although sleep didn’t come so easily. The question gnawed at me, growing with my sleeplessness: Who to choose – Owen or Jake?