by Holly Rayner
We enter the ballroom to enthusiastic cheers—most of the guests have beaten us there, and are ready with cocktails and champagne in hand.
“How did this happen?” I ask Luciano. “We left the chapel before everyone else, didn’t we?”
“I suspect our driver took the scenic route,” he murmurs back.
A waiter approaches with a tray of drinks and we each take one.
“We should circulate,” I say. “Greet our guests.”
Luciano nods agreement, and we begin to make our way through the room. He introduces me to a bartender named Maggie, who clasps my hand and reassures me that I’ve landed myself “a prince of a fellow.” Farther on, we come across Luciano’s friend Nick, the magician who liberated us from our handcuffs. He’s sitting at a table with some of my favorite customers from the body shop who have known me my whole life, the table covered in beer bottles. The little gathering of men wishes us an inebriated “congratulations”, and I smile.
Just as Luciano’s aunt Marina is embracing me, his uncle Adalberto looking on, my mom sweeps Luciano into her arms, kisses his cheek, and welcomes him to the family. He handles this outpouring of affection impressively, thanking her for everything she did to help make today wonderful and insisting that she save a dance for him later. “I bet you could show me a few things on the dance floor,” she grins, and I feel a flushed confusion of embarrassment and pride.
Just as I’m starting to feel exhausted from enthusing at everyone around us, the DJ taps his microphone and informs us that dinner is being served and we should all take our seats. Luciano and I are at a small table toward the front of the room where we can be seen by almost everyone but still converse in relative privacy.
“Before we begin,” the DJ says, “we have a special gift for the bride and groom.”
I look at Luciano, feeling a shiver of apprehension. We’ve had enough surprises.
“Do you know what this is?”
He only shrugs.
“As many of you know, this is the second marriage between Dani Bell and Luciano Oliveira,” the DJ says, and I feel my face grow hot. “The first marriage was held in the very same chapel as the one today. And although the bride and groom sadly have no recollection of the blessed event”—He pauses for laughs, which are abundant—“there is one place that the night’s proceedings are well preserved, and that is the chapel’s video footage.”
The room darkens and a screen right behind me lowers. Automatically, I turn to face it, scooting my chair back so I can take it in.
And there we are. Me and Luciano.
We’re clearly drunk. I stumble on the mat as we come through the door and almost fall on my face. He catches me, eases me back to my feet, and makes a production of ensuring that I’m all right. It’s over the top, but more than anything, it’s sweet. I watch as he walks me over to a chair. His body language is clear enough. He’s insisting that I sit down. Eventually, I do, and he sits beside me until we are called from the foyer into the main chapel.
We stand with our arms around each other’s waists as we recite our vows. I can see now what Jack Borman was talking about. There’s a closeness there. We’re so at ease with each other. Part of that is the alcohol, no doubt, but there’s something more. I recognize my own body language, the comfort I have being close to him. It’s the same comfort I feel, now, after a year-long engagement. It was present all the way back then, on that very first night.
I feel Luciano take my hand, but I can’t look away from the screen. This is captivating. It’s magical. It’s like finding an old friend.
The DJ is still talking, filling the air with platitudes about me and Luciano and how we were meant to be, made for each other, but right now, nobody else but the two of us exists. I look away from the screen and into his eyes. How far we’ve come since that moment. How much has changed.
And yet, fundamentally, how much is exactly the same.
The dinner plates are cleared. The cake will be served in half an hour, the DJ says, and before that, we have time for some dancing. He calls Luciano and me onto the floor.
The song he plays for us is one I don’t know. I asked Luciano to choose for us. It’s sung in Portuguese, so I don’t understand the lyrics either, but I do understand the commanding way Luciano takes me in his arms and sweeps me around and around the dance floor, passing every table.
“What’s the song about?” I ask him.
“Love,” he says simply.
“I wish I spoke Portuguese. It’s such a beautiful language.”
He kisses me. “We have the rest of our lives.”
“To learn Portuguese?”
“To do anything we want. You and me. Together.”
The DJ invites all the married couples in attendance to join us on the dance floor. I see my dad take my mom’s hand and lead her over. Sandy tugs Ian out of his seat and drags him out, too. All around us, married couples with their own unique partnerships join us in a dance.
I’m struck by the feeling of unity, the sense that we all belong to the same group now. I am like these people. We’ve all committed our lives to another person, to a partnership, and this dance brings home to me what a commitment that is. It’s the biggest thing we’ll ever take on, most of us, loving someone like that. I’m overcome with pride and excitement just thinking about it.
The rest of the night is absolutely perfect. Surrounded by loved ones, Luciano and I dance in each other’s arms until the lights are turned on and we’re informed it’s time to go. Our final dance of the night is a slow one, and we turn leisurely in one another’s arms. I rest my head on his chest and enjoy it, thinking of nothing more than this moment.
When it’s over, we make our way outside to a waiting car. A valet gets out of the driver’s seat and Luciano tips him. I pause to admire the car—it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, absolutely one-of-a-kind.
“What is this?” I ask.
“It’s a custom build, for your wedding present. Now, get in.” Luciano gets into the driver’s seat. “Our flight to Portugal leaves in a couple of hours. We don’t want to be late for our honeymoon.”
I’m speechless about the car. I don’t even know what to say, so I just ask, “We’re going right to the airport?”
“Your luggage is in the trunk.”
“I’m still in my wedding dress!”
“Don’t worry—we’re making a stop.”
Five minutes later, he pulls up outside my parents’ hotel. When we get to their room, my mom hustles me into the bedroom to help me change and Dad puts a pot of coffee on. By the time I’m changed, he and Luciano are already discussing Thanksgiving plans. They hug both of us as we walk back out to the car.
Not for the first time, I feel as though I’ve been married to Luciano for years. I’m so exquisitely comfortable standing here with him and my family. And yet, it’s all still sparkly and exciting. As we get into the car—my beautiful, perfect wedding gift—and drive away, I feel confident that there are still many, many amazing adventures ahead.
The End
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Dr. Single Dad
Copyright 2018 by Holly Rayner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Even with the gel comfort insoles in my shoes, my heels ached. Fifteen hours on your feet would do that. I was supposed to
be off at four, but Ashley had the flu and Liza had a death in the family, so I'd volunteered to pick up the slack. The overtime pay definitely sweetened the deal.
Plus, I liked working late enough to see the patients in the morning. I stopped into their rooms several times throughout the night, of course, but no one wanted to talk at two in the morning. But, by ten, I brought the kids who were well enough to eat Jell-O cups to hold them over until breakfast at eight. And for the kids who weren't well enough to eat, I had sticker packs. Their smiles made my job worth it, and I didn't get to see their smiles working the night shift.
“Is it strawberry?”
I bent down to hand a cup to Alice. She’d been in the hospital for two weeks while we tried to get rid of the infection in her lungs. It was her longest stint in a few years, and she was eager to leave. Unfortunately, with cystic fibrosis, she’d be back eventually. It wasn’t a question of if, but when.
I nodded. “Isn’t it always? I know what your favorite flavor is.”
She grabbed it from my hands and peeled off the aluminum lid.
“Sugar-free,” I mouthed over Alice’s head to her mother, who was looking bleary-eyed on the cot next to her daughter’s hospital bed. Sarah gave me a sleepy smile and slipped her feet out from under the blankets and dropped them on the cold linoleum floor.
I’ve always felt bad for the parents of the children on my ward. The kids are the ones who are sick, and they obviously deserve my attention, but they are doted on day and night by everyone—doctors, nurses, family members, friends. The parents are the forgotten ones in the equation. Of course, almost all of the parents I’ve ever met love their children beyond words and are solely focused on getting their child well, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t hard to miss work and social functions to sit in the hospital with their child.
The hospital can often feel separate from the outside world. While you’re there, it feels like life pauses. But it doesn’t. Life carries on, and for the parents of children who are terminally ill, they have to learn how to balance hospital life with outside life, and taking care of their sick child while not neglecting their healthy children. In moments when they think their child isn’t looking, I see the stress of it all on their faces. So, it’s my goal, every day, to lessen their burden.
“How is your pain feeling this morning, Alice?” I asked as she slurped a big glob of Jell-O into her mouth. “On a scale of—”
“One to ten, I know,” she said, rolling her little eyes playfully. “I’m a two.”
“Just a two? That’s great.” The night before, she’d said she was a six. After hours of coughing up phlegm, her muscles were sore, and her throat hurt. Most adults would have said they were a nine, but Alice was tough.
She nodded. “No coughing yet today, and my mom gave me a back massage a little bit ago that helped.”
I smiled at her mom and then back at her. “Well, you have the world’s best mom.”
Alice agreed with a firm nod, and her mom reached across the small gap between their beds to tug on a strand of her daughter’s red hair.
“Well, I think having a super nurse like Nurse Jess helps a lot, too. Huh, sweetie?”
Again, Alice agreed with a smile and I winked at them both.
“I bet I can go home today,” Alice said excitedly. She tucked her knees underneath her, sitting up in her bed, one of her pillows tumbling to the floor and knocking her IV line.
I bent to pick up her pillow, hating that I couldn’t agree with her. That I couldn’t celebrate with her. I’d spoken to the doctor the night before, and Alice had a long way to go before she could leave. Her white blood cell count was still too high, and her lung function wasn’t where the doctor wanted it to be.
“Let’s just wait and see what the doctor says, okay?” her mother said, squeezing Alice’s shoulder and pulling her blankets over her legs.
I changed out her saline and antibiotic bags, erased my name from the dry-erase board, and wrote the name of the day nurse who would be there to take care of her for the next twelve hours.
Then, I did the same in the next ten rooms—handing out treats, asking for a pain number, and changing the name on the dry-erase board. It was monotonous, but it was how I’d ended all my days for the past ten years, and I now found the routine quite therapeutic. It was the only routine I could count on, as a nurse. The rest of my shift couldn’t be predicted.
I stepped into the last room and was met with a wall of a man in front of me. I jumped back, startled, and then realized it was Mr. Peterson, Henry’s father. He held out his hands to apologize.
“Sorry,” he mouthed, wincing a bit. “He’s asleep.”
I peeked around Mr. Peterson’s shoulder and saw Henry asleep in his bed, thin hands folded on top of the covers.
Usually, I had to wake up patients to check their vitals and adjust their medications regardless of whether they were sleeping or not, but I’d been in to see Henry just an hour ago. The chemotherapy was making him nauseous, so the little bit of food his parents had been able to get him to choke down had come right back up.
“My shift is over, so I just need to change the board,” I whispered, pointing to the whiteboard in the corner.
He turned sideways and let me pass. His wife was sitting in the chair next to the bed, a book open in her lap, though she wasn’t even pretending to read it. She was staring at Henry’s face.
I waved to her as I left, but instead of waving back, she stood up and followed me into the hallway, her husband just behind her.
“This is normal, right?” she asked, hitching a thumb over her shoulder towards her son’s room. “The getting sick and not eating?”
I nodded. “The chemo will make him seem much worse, but that’s just it doing its job.”
Mr. Peterson huffed out a small laugh. “It all feels so backwards. For my kid to be throwing up in the hospital and that to be a good sign…”
Mrs. Peterson rubbed a hand down her husband’s arm, squeezing just above his elbow. He smiled down at her, but there was no joy or happiness there. I recognized the expression as one shared between people who couldn’t do anything else.
The Petersons thanked me for helping them through the night and then slipped back into Henry’s room, going back to watch over their incredibly unwell son with the small comfort that it was “normal.” Mr. Peterson’s expression was the same one my parents had worn when my brother was in the hospital. They had smiled in that blank kind of way when the doctor had told us that my brother’s addiction was up to him to get under control. We could be there for him, but we couldn’t make the decision for him.
Greg’s overdose had been normal, according to his doctors. A lot of addicts overdosed after rehab. He’d gone cold turkey in his rehab program, so when he got out and used again, his tolerance was lower than he realized. He almost died. The only reason he didn’t was because his roommate got off work early. He found Greg slumped over on the couch, a pill bottle on the table in front of him.
That wasn’t normal. It certainly didn’t match the picture I had of my brother—the boy with messy brown hair and a big, cheesy smile. When we got to the hospital, he was unconscious and pale, shadows pressed beneath his eyes like stage makeup. He looked half-dead. Not normal.
I’d viewed the scene from two perspectives: as his sister, and as a nurse. On one hand, I thought of all the overdoses I’d dealt with when I’d worked in the emergency department for a few years. I thought of the sad, broken people I’d helped bring back to life, and those who were too far gone. I always gave each patient my all, but at the end of the day, I’d shake my head at the idea that people would choose to treat their bodies this way. That they would pump themselves full of poison for a high.
But, on the other hand, I saw my baby brother hooked up to machines and an IV. I knew Greg had made the same choices, but try as I might, I couldn’t lump my little brother in with those addicts. His circumstances were different, right?
When Greg moved in with
me, his drug counselor told me how likely a relapse was. He told me that Greg would fight his addiction every day for the rest of his life. It was heartbreaking news, and it took everything in me not to push the counselor out of my house and slam the door in his face.
I knew the parents of children on my ward had to feel the same way about me, sometimes. They probably wanted to push me from the room when I told them we’d have to up antibiotic dosages or they’d have to spend another night in the hospital or when I kicked the child’s friends out because visiting hours were over. I hated being the person to deliver bad news, but I would rather be the person to do it than someone who didn’t care as much as I did.
It was the same way with Greg. As much as I wanted to pretend everything was fine, I would rather be the person he could depend on than have him crash with a friend who wouldn’t look out for him.
I resisted the urge to grab a coffee on my way out of the nurse’s lounge. I knew it would only keep me awake once I got home, and I wanted to spend every possible hour I could sleeping.
“You finally leaving?” Ciara asked, grabbing a patient’s file from the organizer in front of her and handing it to a passing nurse without a word. I loved the way the nurse’s station ran like a well-oiled machine.
“I might fall asleep in the parking lot,” I joked. “I think my feet are bleeding.”
Ciara groaned in sympathy. “I have four more hours before my shift is over. Next time Ashley leaves us in the lurch like this, she better have the plague.”
I laughed and waved as I slid my identification badge through the card reader and the double doors opened. “I’ll see you all after I’ve had ten hours of sleep.”
