“In a New York Minute”
Camille
About Three Years Earlier
“Nope, never married. Sweet of you to say I’m pretty, though. It doesn’t always feel that way. I just had a baby, about nine months ago.”
She sat up suddenly, her face splitting open with an excited smile just as she grabbed her forehead and swore. “Ooooh…damned headache. Sorry.” But the smile remained. “Show me a picture; I love babies.” Her smile was magnetic.
I almost felt sorry for her. I rolled my stool over to the stretcher that held her diminutive form, wetting a cloth with cool water and smoothing it over her brow. “His name was Amos, and I wish you could’ve seen him. He was beautiful.” Her face broke, and there were immediately tears spilling from her dark eyes.
“No. Oh, no.” She looked at my name tag, sitting up when she did. Her arms came around me without an ounce of hesitation. “No, Camille, that’s too cruel. Not a baby.” She embraced me, and her tears wet my shoulders.
She sat back abruptly, drying her eyes on the starchy sheet covering the hospital stretcher. “I’m so sorry. You really don’t need that.” She pursed her lips and swallowed hard, collecting herself. “Just tell me that your baby daddy is a wonderful guy and totally supportive. Great girl like you, I’d put money on it.” She swallowed again, hard.
Gah. I could hardly stand it; I actually felt bad for her. I grabbed her hand. “I don’t even know how to tell you this, honey, but I was attacked. No baby daddy. But I have beautiful friends who saw me through, and I’m okay. Really, totally fine. I have my friends and my job. That’s enough for me.”
She looked stricken. Silence. She didn’t speak. Deafening silence. Finally, her slim hands clasped mine. I didn’t even know this woman, but she’d reached toward the center of me instead of chatting about weather and traffic. There was something authentic about her that saw what was inside me, tattered and raw. The clock ticked audibly for several seconds before she spoke.
“Enough. That’s enough for you.” She was quiet a few seconds more, and I couldn’t breathe easily, looking back at her. She instinctively understood a basic truth about me. I waited expectantly.
Her tone was even and held no anger or judgment. “So you’re ready to call it quits? Cash out?” Her eyes were soft, but she looked a little sad. “You’re how old? Twenty-six?”
“I’m twenty-five.”
“Mmmm…” Her eyes were steadfast as she sat back on the stretcher, shifting to find a more comfortable position. “Well, I don’t know you, and you certainly don’t know me.” She squinted at my name tag again, suddenly grinning. “Camille. But, of course, you can see why that makes me the perfect person to advise you on the important things in your life, can’t you?”
She was plainly uncomfortable, so I was on my feet, repositioning her on the stretcher with a few extra pillows and a blanket on her left side. I moved my stool, so I sat almost nose to nose with her. “I actually don’t see why you’re finding yourself cast in this role, but I’ll bet you’re gonna share.” Now I was grinning along with her. “Feel free to enlighten me.”
She struggled up onto an elbow. “Because I’m the keeper of an important secret of the universe passed on to me by an august and revered elder. And—this is crucial—you’ll never see me again. So I’ll feel great about helping you, and you’ll never feel guilty about ignoring my sterling advice.” We both burst into belly laughter at that, all the heaviness instantly dispelled.
Her laugh was medicinal in itself, just like a child’s. She continued to shift uncomfortably although the smile never left her face. I noticed her pulse rate had increased on the monitor, but everything else looked perfectly fine. CT would be calling for her soon.
Her eyes studied me. “I don’t know why, Camille, but I have a strong urge to tell you about a lesson I’ve learned over and over in my life. I won’t bore you with the whole backstory, but the gist is this: when everything around you says you should give up…try once more. These trials you’ve been through, these terrible tragedies, Camille. They’re difficult, so difficult. But not impossible to surmount. You have to leave yourself open to hope, to love. That’s what Rhiannon always says.”
My head popped up, mouth open. “Wait a minute. Who might Rhiannon be? That’s a pretty unique name.”
She smiled back. “My parents are consummate hippies. Like ‘look it up in the dictionary’ grade hippies, and lots of hippie children call their parents by their given names. That’s what I’ve called my mother since I was a little tiny girl hippie. And Rhiannon always says that giving up is almost never the answer. Leave room for the possibility of love. Try once more.”
My eye caught the sparkle of an unusual ring on her left hand; she followed my gaze and held it out. The ring wasn’t like any I’d seen before. “It looks like you took Rhiannon at her word. It’s beautiful. Like it’s from another time—an antique.”
She stared lovingly at it and then back at me. “It is an antique. Good eye. He picked it not knowing what I wanted.” She laughed a little and took in a quick breath. “Hell, I didn’t know what I wanted. Not in a ring. Not in love or a relationship. But I didn’t know because there’s no way I could’ve known love until I knew him.” Her eyes rested on the ring, and she smiled. She shifted on the stretcher.
I frowned and decreased the angle of the stretcher, propping her hips with an additional pillow. “I feel like you’re getting more uncomfortable while we’re talking.” I cocked my head and studied her. “Is anything hurting? Your head? Chest? Anything?” Her medical history was clean as a whistle, completely unremarkable.
She waved her hand and rolled her eyes. “A little headache, nothing at all really. I’m just tiring of my stay in your ER, despite your charming company.” She smirked. “I hope you’re not offended.”
“Nothing my bruised ego won’t recover from, I’m sure.” Relieved, I gathered a huge pile of expired supplies I’d sorted while we were talking. “Look, I’m going to go check on the status of everything out front. I’m expecting CT will be cleaning house and calling for you anytime now, so why don’t you try to grab a few winks before they do?” I moved the nurse call light onto her pillow, squeezing her hand in the process. “Call me if you need anything, but I’ll be back in just a few minutes to check in on you, okay?” I dimmed the lights on the way out and went to find Viv.
I found her, along with Luckie and Anna shoveling their way through the remnants the day had deposited all around the nurses’ station and in the front supply closets. The place looked like a war zone. I added my big box of expired supplies to the pile. “Does anyone have supplies for the Haiti mission? I’m starting a new box.” A large group of the docs and nurses made semi-annual trips to an orphanage in Haiti for medical missions. Expired, unopened supplies were in high demand.
Sam stuck her head around the corner. “I’ve already got a huge box about half full in the back utility room. Just throw your stuff in there. I heard they’re organizing another trip this fall; I may see about getting time off.” Then she was gone.
I added my supplies to the stockpile rapidly taking over our already limited space and made a mental note to call nursing services about some offsite storage for our charitable endeavors. Sighing, I also noted that my “mental note” capacity seemed somewhat overburdened. Better to write a note in my office.
Having accomplished these few errands, I returned to the “back corner,” fishing my phone from a crammed pocket to investigate the holdup in CT. As soon as I pushed the door open, however, I dropped the phone into my pocket and quickly eased the earpieces of my stethoscope into my ears, crossing the room briskly.
The air in the room had shifted in the few minutes I’d been away. The light-heartedness exuded by the sweet young woman I’d left lying on the stretcher had been replaced by an obvious restlessness I’d learned not to discount. Her eyes darted anxiously, and her breathing was noticeably labored. I listened to her heart and lungs, my lips pursed with concern. I was about to ask her a few basic questions, but she spoke first, and her tone demanded my attention. “I’m so glad I let myself hope. Life without love is not enough, Camille.”
The cardiac monitor alarm showed rapidly escalating tachycardia, or increased heart rate, just as she raised her head from the pillow slightly and grasped my hand, pulling me urgently toward her. “Just…Camille, please listen to me.” She paused, focusing on taking in a breath. “When you give up, it’s over. Try once…more.” Her brow knitted a bit, and one small hand flitted to her chest. Then she smiled a drunken little smile right at me. “I’m pretty sleepy now.” Her pretty, dark eyes fluttered shut, and mine flew to the cardiac monitor, which registered ventricular fibrillation, just as it screamed a loud alarm into the silence of the room. I slammed the code button on the wall.