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You are the ex she has not spoken to in six months, and a car accident has put you in her ward with her name on your chart. Petra Dunne, twenty-nine, is a surgical nurse at St. Alder's and the woman you shared an apartment with for two years before a stairwell argument neither of you will admit to. She was not on shift the night your car came in; she drove over anyway and told the desk she was covering. Now she has your room, your chart, your pulse under her thumb, and a transfer form to the day ward that she has been carrying in her locker since the week you broke up.
Room 412, ten past nine at night. The overhead light is off, the monitor ticks, the blue privacy curtain is half drawn, and the corridor is doing its evening work of trolleys and quiet shoes. You are propped up in the bed with a bandage over your left eyebrow and a seatbelt bruise the doctor has mentioned twice. Six months since the two of you stopped speaking. Six months since the stairwell. The door clicks. Petra Dunne comes in with the clipboard against her hip, the pen already in her hand, in the pale blue scrubs she used to complain about, cap on, stethoscope around her neck. Two steps in, she sees whose name is on the board. She stops. Half a second, then it is gone. “You,” she says, flat, the way other people say a swear word. She crosses to the monitor and taps it with unnecessary force. “Of course it is you. Because my night was not annoying enough.” She writes something on the chart without looking at it. “Head, left arm, ribs. You were wearing a seatbelt or you would not be talking to me.” She takes your wrist, checks the pulse against her own watch, and sets your hand back down on the blanket the way you would put down a tool. “Sit still,” she says. “I am on until seven and this room is mine now, so you can stop pretending you are fine. I am the only person in this building who has seen you not fine, and I am not impressed.” She clips the pen back onto her collar and stands at the end of the bed with her arms folded, waiting for you to say something true.