I'm running out of nails to bite.

I haven't stopped fidgeting since Gabe dropped me off at home.

On the bright side, the apartment is sparkling clean.

Maybe I should've spent my time napping while waiting for him to come home—with my 80-hour work week, I need all the rest I can get. But I had this ball of energy inside me, roaring to go.

Exhausted now after getting a ton of housework done, I lay sprawled out on our new sofa. It still emits that new chemical smell that spreads all over our living room. I’d get up and open the windows if I weren’t so tired.

There's one thing I can't get out of my mind.

John Dorian.

The name of the lead character from Scrubs. I can't believe I used that as Gabe's fake name.

I'm a smart girl. I graduated from medical school. I could've come up with a different name. Like… Jim, for example. That's a good, normal, common name. Jim… Carrey?

Okay, I'm bad at this.

But still.

John Dorian?

I work at the hospital. I come across hundreds of names throughout my day. I know doctors’ names, nurses’ names, and patients’ names. I couldn't have just picked one of those?

I could've said Sam West—that’s the pretty young nurse who was sitting just a few feet away from us. But Ray was eyeing her so there was a chance they were going to talk at some point.

Why did I have to go with a fictional character from a famous TV show? What is wrong with me? Do I secretly want to get caught?

I can’t stop worrying.

How much longer is it going to be until Gabe comes home?

At any time, Ray could realize I gave him a fake name. He could be Googling “John Dorian” right now. He could be driving to the hospital… Or he could be there already, roaming the hallways, searching for Gabe.

I hold up my phone and light up the screen.

Nothing.

Is this a bad sign? Ray would’ve called me if he found out, right?

God, I can’t just sit here and do nothing.

I call Mom.

She picks up on the fourth ring. “Hello.”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, honey. Is everything okay?” she asks in a worried voice.

“Yeah,” I lie. “I’m just calling because Ray said you were looking for me.”

She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, but I can hear her breathing through the microphone. “Where are you, honey?”

“I’m, uh, at a… friend’s place.” I curse myself as soon as the words come out of my mouth. Why am I such a bad liar?

“A male friend?”

Damn it. I should’ve known that answer would just lead to more questions.

“Uh… no,” I say. “It’s Karen’s apartment. You’ve met Karen.”

“Oh, I have. She’s a lovely girl,” Mom says.

I can almost hear the grin in her voice. Mom’s mood can swing wildly from one extreme to another. It’s great when she’s suddenly happy, but it goes the other way too sometimes.

“I should’ve told you this earlier, Mom, but I’m looking at apartments downtown. I’m thinking about renting a small one-bedroom for myself. I’ve been sleeping at Karen’s because it’s close to the places I want and the showings are really early.”

I have to resist the urge to pat myself on the back for this lie. I’ve been thinking about how to tell Mom I’m moving out, so I already have a short script in my head of what I want to say.

“Oh.” She sounds disappointed. “You’re moving out?”

“Yeah. I’ll miss you, of course, but all my colleagues are living on their own and I think it’s time for me too.”

“This is what Ray said was going to happen,” Mom says.

My heart starts to race. “What did Ray say?”

Mom has a problem determining what’s important so she has messed-up life priorities. It sometimes shows up during conversations, too. She’d spend half an hour chatting about what she had for lunch and only tell me at the end that someone from the hospital called the home phone and left me an urgent message.

“He said you’d found a boyfriend, and you weren’t going to come home anymore,” Mom says.

Okay, that is bad.

But maybe he only said that because I hadn’t come home for so long and he wanted Mom to stop nagging him to find me.

“When did he say that?”

“This morning. He said he saw your boyfriend at the hospital.”

Shit.

“What else did he say?”

“He said you were trying to hide your boyfriend from us. But you’ll introduce us, won’t you, honey?” Mom asks.

“I don’t have a boyfriend, Mom. Ray was lying to you.”

“He also said you’d say that.”

Damn it.

“What else did he say?” I ask.

“Oh, I don’t remember, honey. I’d ask him, but he’s not home.”

I pull the phone away from my ear for a second to check the time on the screen. We haven’t hung the clocks we bought yet, so we've been relying on our phones to tell the time.

It’s about noon. Ray’s usually still snoring in his bed. What’s he doing out so early?

“Where is he?” I ask as anxiety grows in my chest.

“He said he was going to see you.” Mom’s tone is casual, but her words chill me to the bone. “Oh, you should call him, honey, and tell him you’re at your friend’s place. I think he was going to the hospital.”