Panic begins to work its way through my body.
My heart thunders in my chest.
M
y pulse races.
Sweat trickles down my temples.
With force and quick reflexes, I rip my sheets from the bed and scream. “Elijah! Elijah, where are you?” My fingers once again brush across the cold, bare spot next to me and my screams escalate to shrieks. “Elijah! Elijah, where are you? Where did you go?”
The door to my room flings open. It lets out a loud bang as it crashes into the wall. A soft light filters into the room and all I see is white. White walls. White floors. White sheets. A young woman dressed from head to toe in a cotton periwinkle ensemble rushes toward me. All of her blonde hair is piled on top of her head in a bun.
“Where is he?” I cry choking on a sob stuck in my throat. “Where is my Elijah?”
“Hush, now.” The young woman has a slick yet soothing voice. “You don’t need to worry about such things, Adelaide. You need your rest.” She eases me back into a lying down position and smoothes my hair back away from my face.
“Just tell me where he went,” I plead. “Please.”
“Can’t you please tell me where he went?” I ask a hint of hopefulness in my voice.
“No,” she says flatly, pulling the sheets up over my chest.
“Why not?” I don’t understand this cruelty. This woman has to know where he is. She just has to. And how could she keep his whereabouts from me? Can’t she see his absence is tearing me apart?
“Because I don’t know.”
She’s lying. I know she’s lying. “He didn’t leave word?”
“No Adelaide. He did not.”
Now I know she’s embellishing the truth. My Elijah would never go somewhere without leaving word. “I don’t understand,” I mumble.
“Adelaide.” The woman’s voice is stern. “Stop worrying and rest.” She puts her back to me and walks to the door.
I slink down into my sheets as she pulls the door closed. I wait for sleep to come, but it doesn’t so I listen to the soft blend of voices coming from right outside my door.
“I can’t do this anymore.” It’s the woman who was in my room. Her voice has taken on an emotional tone. “I can’t be her nurse anymore. Every time I hear her call his name it breaks my heart.”
“You can’t just quit being a nurse to the patients you’ve been assigned to,” another woman with a deeper voice chimes in. “You were warned not to get attached to the patients during clinicals.”
“Well, I can’t help it okay!” my nurse snaps. “Her life has been so tragic. So sad and brutal. A person has to have ice in their veins to not feel for someone who has been through so much. One of these days, I’m going to tell her the truth.”
“You can’t!” nurse two cries out. “Have you lost your mind? You know what will happen if you do! We’ve been warned! We can’t tell her anything!”
“I don’t care.”
“If you value your job at all, you will.”
There’s a brief moment of silence.
My nurse speaks up. “So let them fire me then. Let them fire me for wanting to not keep one patient in the dark.”
“It’s not a good idea, Maggie.”
“I disagree, Rhea. That poor woman has suffered long enough. I’ve listened to her cries. Comforted her when she’s had nightmares about her past. Watched her hopeful eyes while she watches the visitors come and go and watched her sink into a deep depression when he never shows up.”
“Maggie, you can’t.”