Kissing My Dad's Friend

“Come on,” he murmurs. “We can come back here for sunset later. I get off around 6, not sure about you?”

“Same.” I smile, as we work our ways back over the dunes.

Puerto Rico is our first deployment, after another hurricane swept through just a couple of weeks ago. The devastation it left behind is heartbreaking, as is the plight of many of the people who need our help here. But being here with Russ, doing everything we can to save the lives of the people who were injured in the hurricane, or by debris falling afterward, or from electrical burns or flooding after that… it’s where we’re supposed to be. How we’re meant to give back to the world that brought the two of us together.

“Do you ever think this is what your dream was about?” I ask quietly, and then thumb over my shoulder toward the beautiful, sad, empty beach. “That time you told me you dreamt about getting me on a beach all alone with you…”

He chuckles. “Don’t be silly. I told you. That beach had warm water, none of this Atlantic Ocean surf.” His arm, still wrapped around my waist casually, squeezes me tight. “Someday we’ll go find that beach together, though. I promise.”

I smile up at him, so broad it makes my eyes crinkle. I love when he talks like that. When he reminds me that we have our whole lives ahead of us.

We reach the main road. One end of it is set up with makeshift cabins for us, the crew here to help. The other end holds the big white medical tents, all marked with Red Cross flags. Doctors Without Borders didn’t exactly pan out, at least not yet—it turns out they have a crazy long wait list. But Russ and I are both on it, together. And I think in the meantime we wound up doing the next best option.

When we reach the medical tent compound, which in and of itself almost looks and operates like a miniature hospital, sprawled between tents instead of in fancy office building wings on the Upper West Side, Russ gives my ass one last hard slap.

I laugh and reach over to try and slap his back, but he’s already out of reach, waving over his shoulder at me. “Remember, date night tonight,” he calls before he ducks into the far tent, the one marked Surgical over the flap in bright red Sharpie.

As if I could forget.

Still shaking my head and grinning a little, I duck into my own tent. The wing set up for caring for the patients in recovery after surgery. The nurse whose shift is ending as I duck inside takes one look at my face and rolls her eyes with exaggeration.

“Let me guess,” she says, her smile only a little bit rueful. “That sexy older man of yours woke you up with a little breakfast in bed… or, wait, no.” She squints closer at me. “Breakfast sex in bed? You have that glow.”

I snort and waved her off. “Oh, please.” But I can’t really deny it, either. Before my walk and Russ’s shower time, we did enjoy ourselves a bit…

“Girl, you really have life figured out,” she insists, still chuckling and shaking her head, even as she passes her chart over to me to start going through the patients list.

The rest of the day passes in a pleasant, if hectic, blur. We have a pretty damn good day today, actually. We don’t lose anybody, which is always a good sign. And two of our patients who have been flat on their backs ever since the hurricane first hit, due to the severity of the injuries they sustained when their house collapsed over their heads, are finally able to take their first wobbling steps toward freedom.

It’s days like today that remind me I did the right thing in coming here. And that, no matter what, I’m following my heart. You never know when a hurricane could explode right in the middle of your life. You never know what the future holds, either. So you can’t afford to just wait around for life to get on the same page as you, or for your dreams to finally be within easy reach.

If you wait for your dreams to come to you, it will never happen. You need to go out and catch them yourself. Which is exactly what I came to Puerto Rico to do, and exactly what I’ve been able to learn how to do since I arrived. With Russ at my side, we can accomplish any dream we set our minds to.

By the end of the day, I’m aching from head to toe, but I’m happy, too. Even happier when I wash my hands in the sink out back of the tent complex, then get to step into the warm stream of my twice a week warm shower. I sigh with relief, sticking my head under the heated current and basking for a moment in the marvels of modern life. The rest of the week I’m stuck with freezing cold water, not the drinkable kind either, and our showers can only last a minute max. Right now I have five whole minutes, which feels luxurious.