And the age-old question I’ve been asking myself since I decided on my dream comes rushing back: How am I supposed to be an effective nurse, how can I care for some of the most critical patients, when I fear them dying?
Death, loss, tragic or otherwise, it’s a part of the profession. You see it nearly every day when you work in a hospital, and I’ve seen it more than once as an EMT. My coworkers, Judy, and most if not all of the nurses and doctors I’ve worked with on transfers when I ride up to the hospital in an ambulance are so accustomed to death, it doesn’t much faze them anymore.
But I, for some reason, just can’t get past it. How do I give my all to a profession, to saving the lives of others, when I know that in a lot of the cases, the outcome won’t be positive?
Why can’t I admit that this unnerves me so much? I think because if I do, I’ll be admitting that I’m not fit to be a nurse. I’m not fit to be in a field where we are forced to cut a piece of our souls out to give the medical care someone might need, even if it doesn’t necessarily save their life.
I stare at the blinking cursor of my Word document for far longer than I anticipated to, until the clock reads an hour or so later that all I can do is stumble into bed, defeated by the essay once again.
10
Kennedy
In the end, Rachel and I affix Bi’s pom-poms to the school banner hanging over the glass-walled office of the principal.
Technically, Rachel does it because no way in hell was I sneaking into the school at six a.m. to pull that prank. But it had its desired effect, the round of applause by those students who know about the ongoing joke. The school week, aside from the prank, has gone on uneventfully. The three of us, and their boyfriends, eat breakfast at our usual table in the cafeteria, text secretly in classes, gossip during gym, and just do general high school kid stuff.
I meet them at Angelo’s, the local pizza place, to do homework. Which really means Bianca fills us in on her boyfriend spelling the alphabet in her … um, private places. Apparently, this is a thing. Not that my inexperienced ass would know. I feel like such a fool now, having waited all this time for Everett. Not that I would have been letting a guy draw the ABCs with his tongue, I’m definitely not ready for that, but I could have been dating. I could have been kissing. I could have trained my mind not to think about the boy next door.
Even though I try with all my might, I still look at the closed curtains of his windows in the shadows of my room. I haven’t seen him since he threw me over his shoulder that night of the barn party and nearly kissed me in the woods. I thought he was going to fulfill his promise right there, and I wasn’t drunk enough to forget the way our bodies touched.
But, my life doesn’t revolve around that any longer. It can’t. So, I go about my regularly planned life. And that means that at the end of every day, we attend cheer practice.
Rach lies on the bleachers after practice ends, a lollipop in her mouth, while Bi takes out a bottle of nail polish and sets to painting her fingers candy apple red. I just shake my head, directing my attention back to the binder of choreography I’ve been mulling over before our season even started. We have about a month before our first cheer competition, and we’re slowly but surely putting together a kick-ass routine.
As much as our high school, and the parents of the football players who come to the games, thinks that the cheerleading squad is just a bunch of skinny girls wearing a lot of makeup and shaking their chests—we’re not. Our practices are focused, our strength and endurance can measure up to the best wide receivers on the football team, and we put together a mean tumbling and stunt routine to compete against the top high schools in the state. Last year, we were runner-up at the state cheerleading competition, and stamped our tickets to the nationwide competition in Disney World.
It’s my job as captain to formulate a difficult and show-stopping routine, combining tumbling, a prideful cheer, and death-defying stunts. The music has to be perfect, it has to pump up the crowd and make them think what we’re doing is easy, when it’s totally not.
Though the last of the warm days are upon us, and the sun is setting earlier than it did during the hot summer break, the sky is turning a burnt orange and the breeze is comfortable. It’s just the three of us, not wanting to drive home yet, riding out the last year of high school as long as we can.
“So, can we discuss the elephant sitting on the town of Brentwick?” Rachel yawns, stretching out until her shirt rides up over her impressive abs.
“I wasn’t aware there was a zoo animal sitting on the town.” I chuckle, making a swipe across my page with a red pen.
Bi shoots me a look. “She’s talking about you and Everett. Or are we just going to keep on pretending that the soldier next door who promised to kiss you hasn’t returned home and then dragged you into the woods at the barn party?”
I’m so damn shocked that my typically flighty, unconcerned friend just smacked me with a two-by-four of honesty. Seriously, I drop my pen and stare at her, my jaw nearly on the turf I’m sitting on.
Rachel pushes up suddenly, her elbows resting on her knees. “Yeah, I can’t do this anymore. We’ve been keeping our distance on the subject for what feels like a fucking eternity, and I’m done. Did he fuck you against a tree? Did you whisper sweet nothings? Did the war turn him into a beast, all that pent-up sexual tension unleashing on you? God, tell me it was the last one. Make my dreams come true.”
Honestly, I’m so stunned, I can barely roll my eyes at Rachel’s ridiculous fantasies.
Bianca nods emphatically. “Please tell us you guys have snuck out and like done it in one of your backyards or something!”
“You think that if I lost my virginity, I wouldn’t call both of you immediately after?” I give her a knowing look, and they shrug their shoulders.
“You know, I thought you’d be freaking out way more than you have since he came home,” Bianca points out.
“I am freaking out.” I sigh and realize I’ve been waiting to get this burden off my chest. “I just … I don’t know how to talk about it. I feel like I’ve spent years gushing to you guys about ‘when Everett comes home’ or this fairy tale that’s always been in my brain.”
“And we’ve been wholeheartedly beside you. I mean, some of the things he wrote you, the way he used to look at you, hold you … it’s obvious there is some off the charts chemistry there.” Rachel gives me a thumbs-up.
Bianca flutters her eyelashes. “Right? And the serendipity of it all, it was just too good not to root for.”
“Did you just say serendipity? Jesus, you guys are both freaking me out even more.” I shake my arms, as if I have the heebie-jeebies.
“We’ve been waiting eons for this info. Neither one of us wanted to come on strong, because you tend to shell up. Especially when it comes to Everett. Come on, give us the details. How do you feel? You’ve obviously seen each other.” Rachel gives me the knowing look only your best friend can give.
Closing my binder, I send a thanks up to the universe for giving me the two very best friends a girl could ever ask for. They know me, enough to lay off the Everett gossip until he’d been back for a while and I could get my head around it. Not that my head is anywhere near around what he’d said to me or how harsh he’d been, but at least I had time to process by myself.