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Cassie’s phone buzzes in her pocket as she’s trying, and failing, to find the source of the bleeding in a man’s abdomen. He was a mess, so it was no wonder it was so hard, but no matter how diligently the nurses suctioned and retreated and irrigated, the blood was just everywhere. Walsh was giving her the look, the one that was telling her to throw in the towel, but she couldn’t. This man probably had a family, people who were expecting him home or expecting a call to say he reached wherever he was going safely. Even if he didn’t, even if he was alone in the world, he deserved a chance. And that meant ignoring the fact that Dana finally got back to her, hours later. She’d let herself be annoyed by that later, might even give her shit for leaving her in agony, but not right now.
“Suction, right there.” She nods down, and the suction is right there, and she sees the slightest pulse of blood before her field is obscured again but that’s all she needed. “Walsh, it’s a nick in the inferior mesenteric artery. Need an extra pair of hands.” She barely has the words out before she’s there, helping, and they move together. It’s touch and go, but the bleeding stops, and his blood pressure stabilises, and Walsh is looking at her as she escorts the man upstairs for surgery like she’s never seen her before.
“That was good luck.” One of the nurses says to the other, slightly out of breath as she rips off her gown and shoves it in the over-full bin. “I thought he was a goner, for sure.”
“Nah, that was skill.” The other replies. She pats Cassie’s shoulder as she leaves the room, heading over to a cluster of staff lining up for CPR, changing out like clockwork. Cassie rips off her PPE and heads to the next ambulance, and she does it lighter than she had been, because she knows now that Dana’s okay. That everything’s fine. That she wouldn’t turn around and be faced with the love of her life bleeding out on one of beds, that they wouldn’t be forced to treat on of their own. She knew, realistically, something like this would eventually happen. A call would come in alerting them to someone who might vaguely resemble Dana’s description, and Cassie would spiral. The same way she spiralled when she saw kids who looked a little too close to Harrison come in, until she realised it wasn’t him. The panic that only came with loving someone so much, the thought of them being hurt caused actual pain. Maybe she’d even tell her about this tomorrow night, and they’d laugh about it, about how she overreacted. Until then, until she could hold her and feel the warmth of skin under her hands, she’d remember how empty the world had been, for the few hours that she didn’t know.
Just when it felt like it would never end, it does. There’s no more sirens, there’s no line. Those who needed to go upstairs, either to surgery or to ICU, were already gone. Those who needed to go downstairs to the morgue were being prepped. Those left in the ED were relatively stable, and it started to feel like they had a handle on it. Everyone had started to look around the department, as though they were noticing the shift too. No more running, just the swift tempo of footsteps they all picked up within a week of being in emergency medicine. Cassie approaches Shen for more marching orders while he’s busy draining a bottle of water like it’s going to grow legs and run away from him if he doesn’t finish it in the next ten seconds. He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand before tossing the bottle into the trash.
“Looks like it’s finally over.” He huffs through a laugh, and already he looks more at ease. There was no point during the night where it looked like he didn’t have complete control, but he hadn’t had the same level of calm she’d seen before, even during PittFest. Maybe it had something to do with the extra resources, the other attendings to bounce ideas off of, or maybe it was something else. Cassie didn’t know the night shift crew that well, not like she did her dayshifters.
“You know, most people would kill you for that.” She leaned against the nurses station, stretching out her back. “It’s a good thing I’m not superstitious.”
“Too smart for that?” He shoots back a smile.
“Too old. Can’t be fucked with any of that nonsense. Don’t ask my opinions about star signs, either. Apparently that makes sense, with my moon being in Capricorn, or whatever she said.” She in this case, being Dana's youngest, Sarah, who had once spent a night going through, in painstaking detail, every aspect of Cassie’s birth chart. She’s about to move on to the next task, because there was always something that needed to be done, when another ambulance stretcher barged through the doors at mach speed, flying down the hallway towards them, neither EMT really looking at the world around them, both of them focused entirely on the patient. Cassie met eyes with Shen, and they both jogged towards it, but the first thing she could see was the white sheet under the patient was soaked with blood. Theresa guides them towards the freshly cleaned trauma one, and it won’t stay that way for long by the look of it. Cassie’s only a half-step behind the stretcher as they pull in, gown and gloves already on, glasses in place. They pull up next to the bed, and they all get into position. Shen’s up by the patient’s face, and she thinks she hears him curse under his breath, but there’s no time to question it because the EMT is talking as he removes his monitoring.
“Difficult extraction. Lost her airway on the transfer so we had to intubate, uncontrolled haemorrhage, we think from the left femoral, pressure unreadable, lost radials as we came through the doors. We didn’t get a name or any details.” The EMT barks. They all jump into action, gloves snapped on, grabbing at the soaked sheet and lifting, practically dragging the patient onto the bed. Cassie’s down by the feet, and in pushing away the sheet, she stops. She wanted to think that the whole world froze, too, but they were still moving, shouting orders and numbers that she knew the meaning of but sounded like a foreign language to her now, like the two weeks she’d spent in France as a kid, visiting extended family. Words had reached her, but they weren’t right. This wasn’t right either, as they shouted about estimated blood loss, and cutting off her scrubs to visualise the area, and transfusions. She was going to take Dana to Paris. They’d talked about it. Her mind wanders as she looks down at the leg, the familiar scrub pants that end in the black and white sneakers, the one with the right kind of arch support that makes her knees hurt less. They were new. It’s easier to look at the shoes, then to look up at the thigh and the steady gush of blood.
“It’s too high for a tourniquet.” Shen pushes her with his shoulder, his hands too covered in blood to risk touching her. “McKay, I know. I know. She’s your friend. You have to put pressure on the wound. Can you do this?”
“Yes.” She jumps forward, snatches the lap pads and presses down hard on Dana’s thigh. Last time she had her hands on Dana’s thighs, it was feather light touches and scolding for teasing. This was rough, putting her whole weight behind it even as her eyes blurred with tears. Dana wasn’t her friend, but there was no time for the correction now. Not when Shen had to be focused on saving her life. She looks up, just a quick glance before the nausea takes over and she has to look out the window, but Dana’s face is pale, almost grey, with a purple bruise along her right temple. What hurts more than that, though, is the tube just past her lips. It looked wrong. Distorted her face. Cassie bit back bile and redoubled her efforts, but the pads under her hands were already soaked with blood, and she could see it leaking out from between her fingers. “Where’s… Where’s Walsh?”
“Up in theatres. She knows.” Shen looked between Dana’s face and the monitor, a deep frown pulling at his eyebrows. He knew her too, she remembered. Would have spent a decent amount of his early shifts with her. Most people here did, because she was part of the very structure of the building. It was hard to walk a foot in this place without seeing Dana’s fingerprints on it, no one person spared. “Someone needs to call her husband.”
“They’re separated.” She snaps, muscle memory over rational thought. That didn’t change anything, and in the heat of the moment no one seemed to notice the tone, the snap, paying no mind to it. Dana would have been mortified, if she could hear. But she can’t hear her, and she doesn’t react, and that’s what breaks through the haze, makes it real. Because if there was even a shred of consciousness left in her, Dana would have reacted, and she didn’t. “It’s… Her daughter, Hannah, she’s the medial proxy. Call Hannah.”
“You heard McKay, someone get Hannah on the phone.” Shen curses under his breath again. “Pressure’s dropping, we’re losing her. Fuck. Get Walsh on the phone, too.” They’re all bustling around her, throwing out ideas and squeezing in blood, bag after bag after bag, but it’s no use. Eventually, the monitor starts to scream, and someone starts compressions, and Cassie feels the bed jolt with each one, but she doesn’t move. She doesn’t look up, but she doesn’t move. They cycle out, and meds are given, but eventually there’s no blood to carry them and no circulation to disperse them and they can’t shock without taking the pressure off the wound and then it’s an argument between Walsh and Shen she can hear over her shoulder and then it’s over. It stops. Everyone stands back, and the room is silent but too loud, too bright, and the only one left by the bed is Cassie.
“No.” She presses harder on the wound, locks her elbows and presses. A strangled moan, near animalistic, is ripped from her chest as she looks around at her colleagues with wild eyes, a silent plea for them to come back, to fight, because they had to. They had to. This couldn’t be the end, not like this. Not now. They hadn’t had enough time. “No, no, no, no, no. Please, God, no.”
“Time of death… Two fifty seven.” Shen sniffs, then rips off his PPE. Other join him. Cassie doesn’t move. If she moves, she’s admitting it. Admitting there’s nothing left to do. Admitting she’s gone. The blood is still warm, she can feel it through her gloves, so there has to be something, anything, that they can do. She’s saved so many lives, why… Why not her? Why couldn’t she save her, too? “McKay… Cassie, come on.”
“Please.” She doesn’t know who she’s begging to. Not God, because a merciful God would never have let this happen. Dana was the one who still went to church, still wore her cross. Cassie could count on one hand the amount of times she’d attended a service. Was this a punishment? Tears started to fall down her cheeks, fogging up the protective glasses, and she still didn’t move.
“Cassie.” Shen put a hand on her shoulder, but when the light tug didn’t move her, he grabbed the back of her gown and pulled, and her hands were so wet that despite scrambling, she couldn’t keep her grip, and stumbled back a few steps. “She’s gone. You have to let go.” She can’t breathe. Her lungs refuse to expand, refuse to take in air in a room in which Dana won’t. Except she must be, because she’s sobbing. Awful, broken things that rip their way through her like they want to cause her pain. Theresa clears the room, apart from Shen, and closes the blinds. Turns to face her. Cassie can barely see, hands outstretched in front of her, gown drenched red, shoulders shaking. Theresa is quick, but methodical. Strips off the gloves, then the gown. Then takes off her glasses. Rips open a packet of gauze and uses it to wipe Cassie’s face, and the rough material drags across skin but she doesn’t care.
“Sit with her.” The night charge pulls up a chair, tucks it right next to Dana’s face. Pushes Cassie into it when it’s clear she’s not going to move on her own. She’s eye level with her, able to study her side profile, and from this angle the only thing that looks out of place is the tube.
“Can’t we take the tube out?” She asked. Her voice cracked half way through, because she didn’t want this to be the last image in her head. Dana’s face, half obscured, and it looked like it hurt. Cassie’s eyes filled with tears, and she turned to Shen.
“We can’t, McKay. You know we can’t. For the medical examiner.” He puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezes. She can’t quite feel it, because it doesn’t feel attached to her. It’s just a thing in her periphery. “I’m sorry.” Theresa leads him out, too. Leans against the wall.
“I have to stay. No one alone with the body. You know the drill.” She’s stood in a place where, when Cassie turns back to Dana, she can’t see her. Stays so silent that eventually Cassie forgets that she’s there. Dana’s hand dangles off the end of the bed, and Cassie captures it in both of her own. She’s cool, but not cold. Like she’s just come in from outside, and she thinks if she pulls the hand close she’d be able to smell the nicotine on her fingers. There’s specks of blood across the fingertips, and she that’s all she can smell it as she brings the hand up to her mouth, pressing a kiss to her palm. She didn’t kiss her, when they said goodbye. They’d been stood in the middle of the department, dancing around the words they said freely on their time off, which means the last three words Cassie would ever say to Dana were not the right three words. She’d never be able to hear them again. She should have done it anyway. Damn the gossip, and fuck being private. She should have kissed her. Now this was the most she was going to get.
“Fuck.” She gasps out, grasping at the hand, a finger even drifting to her wrist. It’s delusion at it’s base form, refusing to accept all the evidence in front of her, that maybe the machine were wrong, maybe Shen was wrong, maybe there was still something there, just a flutter of a pulse, but that was enough to keep going. But there’s nothing. Nothing Cassie can even pretend is a pulse. The delicate web of veins are stark on her thin wrist, and still.
“Dana and I started on day shift, you know. Orientation at the same time. A million years ago. I swapped to night shift when my husband died, because it was easier to avoid the quiet moments than it was to deal with them.” Theresa is still behind her. Cassie doesn’t turn to look, just stares at Dana's side profile. It’s an ugly, mean thought, but her first reaction is to be jealous that Theresa at least gets to be called a widow. There’s a word for it. What word did she have, when it was her girlfriend, the one most people didn’t even know she had? This was loss without name. “One of the orderlies, he does nights too. We kept it quiet, because you know what this place is like. When I finally told Dana, she said she already knew. Said she saw it in my face, even if we only saw each other for twenty minutes at handover a couple times a week. Said it had been a long time since she had seen me happy.”
“Why are you telling me this?” She doesn’t have the energy to care if it sounds callous. She just wants a moment alone, to be able to say all the things she didn’t say last time. She has to say the words, because maybe, just maybe, there was a chance Dana would be able to hear them.
“Because I didn’t know what she meant, until a couple months ago. Until I saw her happy again.” Theresa steps forward, hand between Cassie’s shoulder blades, rubbing a comforting circle. Cassie’s not sure why, until she feels warm drops hit her thighs, and realises she’s crying again. “I’m gonna guess that was you, right?”
“I hope.” All Cassie knew was that life had never felt lighter than when it was her and Dana. Even if they were just doing the dishes, or the laundry, or the grocery shopping. That Harrison said it was more fun when they brought Sarah and Dana to the museum. That her dad said she looked younger, and Chad was furious because he couldn’t work out what was different and everyone refused to tell him, much to both of their amusement. That part of her enjoyed sneaking around at work, pulling her into a storeroom just to kiss her, because she couldn’t wait another six hours. That she liked having something that was just hers. That Dana fit into her life, filled the cracks with gold until it was beautiful and shining. That was a rare feeling. And now it was gone.
Cassie stepped out when the team cleaned Dana up to prepare her for the family visiting. Family. That word didn’t include her. It was Sarah, and Hannah, and Benji. Naomi and her parents too, eventually, but they were too far away to see her here. Maybe that was better. They’d see her after the funeral home spent the time to make her look perfect. Like she was sleeping. The thought made bile rise in the back of her throat, because she knew what Dana looked like when she slept, and there was no way that anyone would be able to replicate it. There was still a few hours left of her shift, but no one seemed to care that she went directly to the break room, threw herself into one of the chairs, and stared at the plastic of the table until her eyes burned. Every time she blinked, she saw Dana, pale and… She couldn’t think the word. So she stared at the table hard enough to not think it. Then, finally, when that wasn’t working, she pulled out her phone. Harrison would be asleep, but her dad would wake him up for her, for this. She had to hear his voice. She wouldn’t tell him, not until she was home, and fuck she wasn’t sure she was able to do that, but… She couldn’t wait that long to hear him, to know there was still something left in the world for her.. Except when she opened her phone, she saw three missed calls from Sarah, the latest from only ten minutes earlier. She hadn’t felt her phone vibrate, but she couldn’t feel much of anything around the hole in her chest. Sarah was older than Harrison, but still young enough to have been hit hard by the separation, by having to shuttle from one place to the other. Cassie had pulled her aside one day, when she came to babysit Harrison, and told her that if she ever needed to talk, she’d always be there to listen. Now, she supposed, it was time to act on that promise. She hit the first message, not because she wanted to hear it, but because she had to. It was her penance.
“Cassie? It’s Sarah. I mean, you’d have my number saved so you know, I don’t know why we always start messages like that. Anyway, mom didn’t pick me up from dad’s even though it’s her night, and I was wondering if she was still at work? She was talking about doing some extra hours. Call me back. Or get her to call me back. Thanks!” Sarah sounded… Worried, but not overly. The kind of worry that makes a person feel insane for even thinking it. Cassie scrolled down, hit the next one.
“You’re probably at work too, so you can’t answer either, but this is kind of weird. She normally sends me a text if she’s going to be late. Can you let me know if she’s still there?” Shorter. More panicked. Less sure of herself, and the reality she’d created that Dana was safe, at work with people who cared about her, at the same time Cassie was crafting a reality where she was home and in bed. Neither of them were right. She wanted to stay in this world, though. The one where it was all a bad dream, a hallucination. Where it wasn’t real, and she’s the one stuck in limbo while her mind created one of the worst possible scenarios for her to live out. But she doesn’t get to do that. There was still one more message, sitting there, staring at her. There was a gap of a few hours between the last one and this, and on the screen it looked so small, but so much happened within it. Cassie’s finger hesitated over the message, before finally forcing herself that last millimetre.
“Cassie.” Sarah’s voice is thick. She’s been crying. She knows. “Hannah’s picking me up. She said you’re already there. We’re on our way, okay? We’re on our way.” God, she sounded like Dana like that, close enough it made her heart freeze. She’s about to lock her phone, because otherwise she knows she’ll seek out the photos in her camera roll, the ones that won’t help right now, when she sees a single text. She opens it, looks at the time it was sent. It’s the text that lulled her into a false sense of security, the one that made her think, just for a little while, that everything was going to be alright. It’s a fucking promo text for a sale from a website she used years ago. Cassie throws her phone across the room, because even the sight of it is offensive. She’s on her knees a moment later, finger running over the crack in the screen and holding it close to her chest.
Theresa only comes into the break room to tell her that the kids are there. Cassie only has moments to pull herself together, to swipe the backs of her hands under her eyes and clear her throat. She won’t look anything close to okay, but for the circumstances, it’s enough.
“Kid.” She opens her arms and Sarah’s right there, tucked under her chin, body shaking. She rubs her back while she sobs into the front of her scrubs, face buried in them, practically holding her up. She risks a glance around, mostly because she expected Benji to be there, and he thinks they’re just friends, so she needs to keep her cool. She looks past her, past Hannah, but she doesn’t see him down the hall. With Kiara, maybe? Or Shen? Parking the car, surely. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s not coming.” Hannah has a blank look on her face, shoulders stiff. She’s dressed in pyjamas, with a winter coat thrown over top, and her feet shoved into shoes that don’t seem to fit quite right. Holding it together for Sarah, but her eyes were red-rimmed and glassy, and her voice had almost no tone. “Said they were nearly divorced, so he doesn’t want to. Not like he can make any decisions anyway, so what’s the point in having that argument?”
“Okay.” It’s not okay, she wants to scream. It shouldn’t be an argument. They’re his kids, he should be there to support them. That was the woman he spent over thirty years with. Surely, that was worth the trip. But he wasn’t coming. Fine. That was fine. Cassie was used to stepping in where Benji wouldn’t, or couldn’t. She kept one arm around Sarah as she led them towards the viewing room. “You need to know that everyone did everything they could to save your mom. I was there, they really tried. And I have to warn you that… It’s not like the movies. They don’t look like they’re sleeping. And if you go in, or if you don’t, there’s no correct choice, and she would support you either way.”
“I have to see her.” Sarah pulls herself closer, fingers twisted in the fabric of Cassie’s clothes, like she could feel her pulling away the closer they got to the viewing room. “You’ll come in with us, right?”
“If you want me to.” Because, God, she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to see her face again, like that. Didn’t want to see how they’d pulled up the sheet to just under the chin, to hide the injuries underneath that she knew were there. But she could never tell Sarah no, and now was no different, so she prepared herself for the sting, and tried to hide her reluctance. The new grad nurse Theresa charged with standing at the door stepped aside, and Cassie swiped them in. Even for a hospital, the viewing room was cold. With the girls on either side of her, she takes a step back, until she’s pressed up against the wall. She wouldn’t leave the girls alone to do this, but she can’t be any closer, not without feeling like the world was going to close in on her.
“Mommy.” Sarah’s voice is so small, and wobbles all the way through the world. She reaches out for the sheet, but Hannah reaches her before Cassie can even take a step forward, grabbing her wrist and pulling her away. Dana’s eldest stood with her back iron-rod straight, and while she may have favoured Benji in looks, the personality that bled through was all her mother. Sarah reaches out with her free hand, brushing the hair off of Dana’s forehead, flinching away when she touches skin. “She’s so cold.”
“I know.” Hannah whispers. In the silence of the room, it still carries. “She can’t feel it, Sarah. She’s somewhere better.” Somewhere better. Cassie cringes at the thought. If this was a fair world, that better place would be her bed, the two of them wrapped in the sheets and each other, sharing words and kisses interchangeably until the sun went down. They’d be cooking together in the kitchen and working out where their shifts overlapped for the next week. Or maybe they wouldn’t be together, but she’d always be a text away, something Cassie would read in her sultry voice, the one she saved only for their time together. She couldn’t imagine a place better than that.
“Are grandma and grandpa going to see her like this?” Sarah goes to reach out for Dana’s face again, then stops. She grabs Hannah’s hand instead and Cassie can feel the bone crushing squeeze from where she’s standing. “What about Naomi?”
“I don’t know. Depends when their flights get in.” She swallows, glances back at Cassie, before eyes meet the wall instead. “How long are they going to keep her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t… I didn’t ask. I can go and ask, if you want.” She takes a step towards the door, because she would have taken any reason to get out of that room and held it with both hands, because her self-restraint could only last so long before she started to break down, and it didn’t need to be about her right now, it needed to be about the girls, and Dana would want her to take care of them. Someone had to, and if their father wasn’t going to step up, then Cassie would. But she couldn’t do it if she was a sobbing heap in the corner.
“No, Cassie.” Sarah breaks away from Hannah’s grip, grabs on to Cassie so hard she’ll have bruises in the morning. Her eyes are wide, a flash of white in the slightly dim room, and it’s panic. Pure panic. And suddenly Cassie can’t leave, no matter how much it hurts, because the kid needed her to stay. She takes a deep breath through her nose, and walks back towards the bed with Sarah.
Kiara took Sarah to the break room almost as soon as they left the viewing room. The whole reason she’d come in early, when Cassie was almost certain the hospital wouldn’t pay overtime for her. Tried to take Hannah too, but she shook off the gentle hand on her arm and stormed outside instead. Cassie was torn, for a moment, between staying wth Sarah or following her out the door. At the end of the day, Sarah wouldn’t be alone inside the Pitt, everyone would make sure of that. She ushered Sarah off, then jogged out the front doors. She couldn’t see her at first, but there was no worry lodged in Cassie’s chest this time. Hannah wouldn’t leave her sister behind. She turns the corner, and sees her there. Pyjama pants sticking out from under a well made coat. Cigarette in hand. Any other circumstance, Cassie would have made a joke about like mother like daughter, or does your mother know. Now, she just stands with no real idea of what to say. She’d been so focused on chasing, she didn’t think about what she was going to do when she caught up. They weren’t close enough for her to offer comfort. She didn’t even know what the older girls knew. Had Dana mentioned her name? Mentioned a friend from work who she saw pretty often? Was Cassie a known entity?
“Your mom… She, um… Everyone loves her. Hard not to.” She tucks her thumbs in her scrub pockets. The early morning air is freeing, and she hadn’t thought about the coat in her jacket until now. The morning shift would be coming in soon. Fuck. Someone would have to tell them. Maybe that explained Kiara’s early morning appearance, too. “She probably doesn’t tell you a lot about work.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes are unseeing, a thousand miles away, movements slow and jerky. “I was gonna go into nursing. She told me not to. As much as she ever said.”
“Sounds like her.” She grimaces. Did she sound like some vague acquaintance, grasping hard for meaning where there wasn’t any? “Sarah, she babysits Harrison sometimes. My son. And we, uh… Well, I’m a single mom, and it was nice to have a friend who gets it…”
“Mom told us. Me and Naomi. She didn’t want Sarah having to keep secrets from us.” Hannah takes a drag of the cigarette before handing the pack to Cassie. She doesn’t do anything with it, at first. But then, fuck it. Maybe it would help. “Didn’t say a lot about that, either. But she told us enough.”
“I get if you don’t want me around.” She couldn’t say that it wouldn’t hurt, but she’d understand it. She had no idea what she’d do, if she was in Hannah’s position. She probably wouldn’t handle it with as much grace. Hannah just shakes her head, and looks up at the sky. Puffy white clouds that look like something out of an old painting across a sky that goes from purple to pink, like a bruise. She sighs.
“Sarah likes you. I wouldn’t take that away from her.” Own opinion seemed to be set, then. Cassie nodded, dropping the cigarette and crushing it under the heel of her sneaker. She should go back inside, be waiting there when Sarah came out of the staff room.
“Thanks.” She hadn’t even considered that. Benji would have full custody, now. Could be three years before she actually got to see her again. That cut through the composure she’d carefully built like a wrecking ball, and she turned away as her eyes filled with tears. The smoke filling her lungs helped. Gave her something else to do. When she’s sure her face is dry, she turns back. “Nothing happened while they were still married. I don’t know if that matters.”
“Not really. Mom and dad should have gotten divorced two decades ago. They never should have had Sarah, but because they were both so stubborn and so fucking catholic, they really thought another baby would fix everything. Having to organise two sets of holidays every year would have been a fucking cakewalk, compared to dealing with them together.” Her shoulders drop., and she lets out a bitter laugh. “Maybe if she’d met you earlier. Whatever. Whatever. It doesn’t even matter now. None of it fucking matters, because she’s… She’s…”
“Yeah.” Cassie couldn’t say it either. Slowly, like she was approaching a wild animal, she lifts her arm, puts it around Hannah’s shoulders. She thinks Hannah might shrug her away, but she doesn’t. She leans, just a fraction, into the touch, dry face turned to the sky. She’d have to break, eventually. Cassie only hoped she wasn’t alone when she did.
Cassie gets home at six fifty five, almost an hour before she was expected. She left the Pitt at six thirty, without telling anyone where she was going. She’d walked the girls back to Hannah’s car, and instead of going back in had driven away herself, pulled out of the carpark like the hounds of hell were chasing her. Driven home only half aware, glad she took the side streets where she didn’t have to worry about much. Pulled into her carpark with only the vaguest idea of the journey that brought her there. At the time, it had felt equal parts cowardly and victorious. Getting to escape before the fallout hit, before she’d have to stand there and comfort other people, help keep them together. Dana was loved, so loved, and that was a good thing, but it would lead to grief that filled the hallways, and Cassie was already feeling choked by it. But now, sitting in her car as the windows slowly fogged up, she was realising she hadn’t really thought it through. The idea of telling the people they worked with that Dana was gone was awful, because she could picture their faces, see the reactions in her mind. But that had an end point. She’d pat people on the back, give out hugs easily and pass around a box of tissues. But they were all adults, and all knew that the job didn’t stop for anyone. They’d all pull it together and push it down and get back to day to day life, and she’d get to leave. She didn’t get to leave this. Harrison would still be asleep. Saturday morning, and nowhere to be. She’d have to wake him up. And then she’d have to tell him. The radio played some bland pop song she didn’t know the words to, cars passed her in the parking garage. She sat. If she went inside, she had to tell him. Except… Well, she entertained the idea of not. Of telling him that her and Dana didn’t work out, that there were no hard feelings but sometime these things happened. He’d understand, because this wasn’t the first time this happened. Chloe wasn’t the first to wear a stupid fucking bonus mom t-shirt. But she won’t do that, because it’s not fair, to him or to her. It’s not a solution, it’s a bandaid. Fuck. She wants to scream, and hit the steering wheel. Full crash out, Javadi would call it. But she doesn’t have the energy. Maybe it would come later, but for now she was just numb. So she sits. Watches the clock tick forwards. Five past seven. Ten. Fifteen. Minutes pulling her away from the last time she saw Dana, mercilessly marching on because it can only go forward. Minutes counting down before she has to go inside, because she can’t hide from it forever. Eventually, it’s closer to eight than to seven, and she has to go in. She takes trudging steps towards the door, slides her key into the lock. Opens the door to the dark and quiet, the peace she’s about to shatter.
The days after are a blur. Robby gives her the week off, because even without being told he knew, and Cassie doesn’t get out of bed for the first three days. Harrison, her beautiful boy, crawls into bed with her, lets her hold him while she cries. When she stops, they talk about her. About the memories they’ll cherish. It’s his first time dealing with death like this, and down the track she’ll be proud of him for the way he’s handling himself, but right now all she can do is press a hand to her sternum and muffle sobs with her pillow. Her parents bring her food. She doesn’t eat as much as she should. By day four, she knows she’s spent as much time as she can allow like that. Life didn’t end for her, it just left her behind, and she still had to catch up. She still had responsibilities, and still had to keep moving. So she does. She showers, and washes her hair, and brushes her teeth, and emerges from the bathroom at least looking like she’s putting the pieces back together. Hannah sends her the details for the funeral, and Cassie realises the body must have been released by the medical examiner, then has to sit down because she thought of Dana as the body. She replies that she’ll attend, because of course she will. It will hurt, and she doesn’t even know what she’s going to say to people when they ask how she knew her, and she doesn’t know how to plan for that, but she has to go. With permission, she shares it with Robby, who shares it with the rest of the department. He asks her how she’s doing. She doesn’t answer. What was she supposed to say? That she wants to lay in the dark for another week, another month, another year. But she can’t, because she worked too hard for everything she has to let grief take it away, so she keeps moving instead, even though it feels like she’s lost a limb. Does she just say she’s doing okay? Is she supposed to lie? Saying nothing seemed kinder. Chad takes Harrison for his agreed upon custody time, and when the apartment is silent she doesn’t know what to do with herself. So she deep cleans. Scrubs the grout in the bathroom and wipes down the skirting boards and cleans out the fridge. Gets on her hands and knees to clean the oven, and when she’s finally bone tired, she collapses on the couch and has another dreamless sleep. Sun rises, and sets, and time passes, and she tries not to think about it, because thinking about it wasn’t helping, but not thinking wasn’t helping either, and maybe nothing would help. Maybe all there was to it was to survive every day, to push through again and again and again because there wasn’t another option.
The funeral feels like a million years later. Cassie feels like she’s lived a hundred lives between that day in trauma one, and standing in an auspicious church in a simple black dress, holding Harrison’s hand so tight he winces. She tries to remember the last time she stepped foot in an honest-to-god Catholic Church, and comes up empty. But she passes the threshold and doesn’t catch fire, so that seems like a good first step. They’re early, people only just starting to mill around the first few pews, so Sarah sees them almost immediately. She runs the length of the church and throws herself at the two of them, face already wet with tears, hands trembling.
“I’m glad you’re here.” She whispers. Cassie wants to reply, but her eyes are stuck on the shiny wood of the coffin sitting at the front of the church, so covered in flowers that it’s almost buried under them. Dana was in there. The lid was closed, and Cassie breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been having nightmares of having to approach, having to walk up and look in and see her there, having to turn around and walk back to her seat. Still, she doesn’t want to walk a single step closer to it. Sarah has other plans, though. She pulls them both forward, towards the people, and this isn’t what Cassie planned. She was going to sit with the rest of her colleagues, and lose herself in the faceless crowd of people who knew Dana Evans, charge nurse of thirty years. Tell stories of being an intern, already set apart by her age, and how Dana had made her feel at home. And it would be close enough to the truth that she didn’t think lightening would strike her down for it. But Sarah herds them into the front two pews, the ones for family. Cassie makes eye contact with Dana’s mother, a proud looking woman with white hair and calculating blue eyes that look her up and down, and quite clearly don’t know where to fit Cassie into what she knew of her daughters life. There’s a brief flash of panic, and Hannah must see it because she leaves the conversation she’d been having with another unfamiliar face and puts a hand on her grandmothers elbow.
“Grandma, this is Cassie. She’s… She was mom’s friend. Mom and Cassie met at work.” Hannah looks back to Cassie with a carefully curated neutral look. Cassie wasn’t about to say anything that contradicted that, even before she saw the same expression Dana used to keep people in line worn by her daughter.
“Sarah babysits Harrison. I… We were close.” She shakes the woman’s hand, and tries to think of something to say. Anything. Her mind is blank, though, because over her shoulder is a large pasteboard with a photo of Dana. A celebration or something, because she’s dressed in a beautiful dress and beaming at the camera. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Yes…” Her mother replies. “You’re a nurse?”
“Doctor.” She keeps a tight hand on Harrison’s shoulder, but he doesn’t say anything. Hasn’t said anything since they left the apartment that morning. Just a few hours. A few hours, and they’d be able to leave, and put the whole day behind them. God, her dress felt too tight, and her shoes pinched her feet, and none of this felt anything close to alright. She glances back to the door, sees Robby’s head towering over the group of people in front of him. Dana’s mother has already left the conversation, floating around the front of the church like a ghost, so Cassie turns to Sarah.
“Honey, I know you think you’re doing the right thing. I know. But it’s going to be better if Harrison and I sit with the people from work, okay?” Because this was too much. Too much. She couldn’t have one foot in each life, it had to be all or nothing. Either she was Dana’s friend, or her partner, and one of those options would turn the day into a spectacle, and there was nothing Dana would have wanted less. At least, Cassie thinks. And she can’t ask, or can but won’t receive an answer, so she has to go with her gut.
“But I want you here.” She sounds younger, still a baby despite her height, and her eyes fill with tears again. Cassie pulls her into a hug and kisses the top of her head while she still can, before pulling back.
“I’ll be here. Just a few rows back, okay? And I’ll come and find you after the service, before you leave.” She pushes all the sincerity she can muster into the sentence. “It’s how it has to be, okay? You know the drill, Sarah. Just a couple hours, and I’ll be right over there.” She steers Harrison out of the pew before she can second guess herself, and marches directly to Robby, like that could protect her. They stand awkwardly in front of each other for a moment before he pulls her into a bone-crushing hug, and she’d mentally prepared herself for the fact that people liked to hug at funerals, but this felt different. Her breath hitched, and she held herself there for a beat longer than necessary so she could pull her face back together.
“You good?” He asked.
“As good as any of us.” Every face she passed seemed to be some variation of devastated. Each one with their own stories, their own memories, their own reasons for attending. She recognised some from the photos on Dana’s wall, profiles from Facebook, from stories Dana shared with a laugh and a gleam in her eye.
“Yeah.” Robby sighed, rubbing down the length of his face with the palm of his hand. “The others are coming. Gloria got most of us the morning off.”
“How good of her.” The words come out acidic. “Let me guess, she’ll get a plaque on the wall, too.”
“It’s already up.” He’s grimacing. Just another picture he won’t look in the eye. He must want to pull that wall down brick by brick. “Shen told me what happened.”
“Assumed he would. Do we have to talk about it here?” She hoped not. She hoped he’d have the insight to see that this was not the time, and definitely not the place. He was her boss, at work, but here they were on even enough ground.
“Guess not.” He looks across the church. She sees the moment his eyes stick on the photo. “Get us seats, I’ll go outside and wait for the rest of us.” He’s running from it, and she lets him. Her and Harrison sit about halfway down the church, enough empty rows in front of her to insinuate they were close, but not close. Far enough away that she doesn’t have to look. And deep enough into the pew that when the pall bearers carry the coffin out, she won’t have to fight the urge to reach out and touch it, one last time. The church around her starts to fill, and Cassie retreats to a place inside her mind where she can’t feel anything at all.
Once it’s over, after the hymns and the eulogies and too much fucking chanting, they all mill about outside, and Cassie’s holding on to the last of composure by a fucking thread when Victoria takes Harrison by the hand, casually leads him away. They make eye contact over his head, and Victoria nods. Cassie just needs a moment to herself. She peels away from the group, standing on the curb and rummaging around in her bag. She doesn’t hear footsteps approach until a shadow crosses over the bag and she looks up.
“You want to talk about it?” Robby asks. Cassie lights a cigarette. She doesn’t even enjoy them, but the smell is familiar and she needs something to be able to cope, and this seems like just about the healthiest option she can face.
“Not really.” She keeps an eye on Harrison from a distance, but Victoria’s talking to him, positioned herself between him and the road, and she knows she can let go for a moment. Except now the tears don’t seem so close. She’s empty. It would creep up on her later when she’s laying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Or when she’s cooking dinner. Or driving. That was the thing about grief, it sprung out of the bushes like a villain, just when she thought she had a hold on her life, had an idea of how to move forward, knocked the wind out of her like a punch to the gut. Robby knew. She guessed that was why he came to talk to her, instead of anyone else.
“You’ll call me, when you do?” It’s phrased like a question, but Cassie knows better. She nods, not trusting her voice, and after another moment of silence, Robby leaves. She sees him catch Collins by the elbow, leaning down to whisper something in her ear, and the hot flash of anger in her chest makes her look away. It’s unfair. She doesn’t care. Eventually, the cigarette’s burning her fingers and she lets it go. Grabs Harrison, because she doesn’t want to be there anymore, and they make a break for it. She takes him for ice cream instead of going directly home, and they sit in silence while they eat, until he turns to look at her, looks up at her with such a soft face.
“Why couldn’t we sit with Sarah?” He asks. He hadn’t questioned her in the church, and she reminds herself that she had to be thankful for that, that he just trusted her. She sighs, wiping her fingers with the napkin, and thinks about her answer.
“Sometimes things are complicated. People… They have different aspects of themselves. They don’t tell everyone everything. You know things were difficult, with her and Sarah’s dad. Her parents, they needed an easy day. So we gave them an easy day. It was being kind.” It was a cop out and she knew it. But it seemed to satisfy Harrison’s curiosity, at least for now. One day, he might get it. One day, when he was older, she’d sit him down and explain that things with Dana had never been straightforward, and she wouldn’t have had it any other way, but it meant there was more grey in their world than black and white. Maybe she was being kind to herself, too, because she needed something easy, just for now.
At two am, the morning after the funeral, she wakes up to see her dress on the floor, the crumpled black material taunting her from the open wardrobe, and that’s when it hits her. She wants to get drunk. So drunk she can’t remember her own name, or the exact shade of Dana’s eyes. So drunk she falls asleep, and dreams of nothing at all. Every time she thinks she’ll just walk down to the nearest liquor store, she hears Dana’s voice in her head, calling it a slippery slope. Sees her brushing her teeth after coming home from the bar, where her and the other nurses had decided to unwind after a shift, because she didn’t want to kiss Cassie with the taste of whiskey still on her tongue. She stands at the door of Harrison’s room instead, and watches him breathe for the better part of an hour. She clawed her way back to okay once upon a time, just for that face. She can do it again. But there’s still all that anger, and grief, and sadness, just swirling around in her chest and it makes her want to vomit and she needs to get it out and she doesn’t know how, until she stumbles back into her room and sees the dress again, and suddenly that’s what’s wrong with the world. Not the unfairness of losing Dana, not the unfairness of not being able to talk about it, not the fucking cosmic joke of finding someone she truly loved and losing her only a fraction of the way into the time they were supposed to have. No. The dress was the problem. So she grabs the seam ripper from the little sewing kit she kept in her bathroom, and started at the hem. Speared the sharp end through the fabric and tugged until she could hear it rip, then dropped the tool and used her hands for the rest of it and claws at it until the fabric gives, and gives, and gives again, tugging the dress into pieces on her floor. It’s a mangled, unrecognisable mess, by the time she’s done with it. Cassie kicks it into the corner and crawls back into bed.
It’s only a day after that, that Cassie has to return to work. Robby tried to ask her if she needed more time off, but there was no amount of time that would soften the blow of walking in to the same building she met Dana in, and know that she wasn’t there. Avoiding it wasn’t going to help, and changing residency programs wasn’t an option, so she donned her scrubs and made the familiar drive, and told herself with every mile that it’s what Dana would have wanted. Dana, who never backed down from a fight, who never stopped working towards the things she wanted, who loved and hated that place in equal measure, in a way that made them all better. Cassie walks into the Pitt, one coffee in hand. The whole place looks the same, and she knew it would. One death wouldn’t change the DNA of a building, it wouldn’t leave a visible mark. It doesn’t feel fair, but it’s the truth. Someone else was already filling the role she left open. Someone else would be hired to fill the hours left empty. Numbers and calculations and budgets and nothing human left in them. The charge nurse desk looks the same, from this angle, but as she walks around, she sees that Dana’s photos have been replaced. Instead, it’s the card from her funeral, taped there. The same one Cassie had on her dresser. She kisses her first two fingers, nails bitten to the quick, and presses it to the photo, feather light. And that’s all she does. All she can do.
“Cassie.” Theresa leans on the other side of the desk, looks her up and down. Cassie knows she doesn’t look great. She’s lost weight, and the dark circles under her eyes are deeper than ever, and she didn’t even really try to look anything above presentable. But she was there. “Good to see you back.”
“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath, lets the antiseptic fill her lungs. She can see the department start to wake up, dimmed lights being brightened and nightshifters rubbing their eyes. She looks at trauma one, forces her eyes to focus on it, to really take it in before she has to close all that off, and leave the memories at the door. Then she looks back at Theresa. “Night shift wouldn’t suit me.”