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Emma waited just outside the bathroom door and stared at the clock. 7:45a.m. Only 15 minutes left of another long night shift. One of Dr. Al-Hashimi’s changes since coming on board had been instituting more overlapping shifts for the nurses to ease the handoff between day to night and back again. That, along with one of the nurses going on maternity leave and another quitting unexpectedly, meant they needed another body on the night shift. She had volunteered. Still the newest on the roster, and one of the few without kids or a partner or even a pet, Emma felt like she should. Prove that she could be a team player. It had been two months since she switched. Her sleep schedule was still a mess, she was exhausted all the time, and it certainly didn’t help her quest to build a social life in her new city.
The bathroom door swung open, and an aging man, wispy white hair scattered across his head and poking from his nose, emerged with a cup quarter full of yellow liquid. He handed it to Emma.
“Is that enough?” He grumbled.
“Definitely, you’d be surprised by how little the lab needs for a sample.” Emma smiled brightly and led him back to his bed. She dropped the cup and returned to the hub.
“Okay, I finally got Mr. Hoffner’s UA sample. We’re still waiting on the insulin order for the DKA patient in North 2. Do you need anything else from me?” Emma told Perlah, whose eyes were trained on the computer.
“No, no you’re good. Go home.” Perlah didn’t look up; her brows were furrowed and lips pursed.
“Okay…. just let Dana know I’ve handed off.” Perlah blew out a sigh and nodded, but didn’t respond. Emma took this as her cue to leave, and she headed toward the break room to grab her lunch box.
When she opened the door, the lights were off. Dana was sitting at the little table, head in her hands, and Dr. Al was standing next to her. Emma did a dead stop, worried she was interrupting something. “Sorry! I’ll come back,” she exclaimed, moving to leave.
Dana turned to look through her hands. “It’s fine, kid, come in. I’m just not feeling good today. Little migraine.”
“Little? You got so dizzy you almost fell over in the middle of the floor,” Al-Hashimi said quietly. She turned to Emma, “She refuses to be checked out or prescribed anything—triptans, Ubrelvy, even Zofran.”
“Those just replace feeling like shit this way with feeling like shit another way,” Dana murmured.
“Glad you’re such a proponent of modern medicine.”
Dana had her head back in her hands, the butt of her palm pressed into her eyes. “Tried ‘em all. They don’t work for me. Seriously, I just need to sit for a bit. Then I’ll be back out.”
“I told you, you need to go home. I’m calling one of your daughters to pick you up.”
Dana huffed, “No. They’re working.”
Emma, who had closed the door to block out the noise of the ED, said gently, “I’m just getting off. I can take you home.”
Dana groaned. Al-Hashimi looked between them and said, “Either Emma takes you home or I’m calling someone. You choose.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose hard. “Fine. I’ll go with Emma.”
***
Dana sat in the passenger seat of Emma’s beat-up Ford, the side of her head pressed against the cold window. One hand covered both eyes. Donnie and Emma had needed to walk Dana to the car, each of them with an arm wrapped around her slight waist to keep her moving straight. She had protested the whole time, even as her knees swayed with each step.
Emma drove silently, following the final directions on the map to Dana’s home. She pulled up outside a two-story bungalow with white siding and a concrete porch. The door was painted a rich blue.
She reached over to lay a hand on Dana’s shoulder. “We’re here,” she whispered.
Dana lifted her hand off her face, eyes blurry, and squinted against the grey light of the winter sun. “Thanks, kid. I appreciate it.” She moved to open the car door, but Emma was faster, turning off the engine, swinging her own open, and running around to meet Dana before her feet could touch the ground.
“Hey, let me help you,” Emma grabbed Dana’s elbows, stabilizing her as she stepped down onto the concrete.
“I’ve got it.” But Dana still felt unsteady on her feet. Her head was so heavy, as fogged up as the sky, and a dagger of pain pressed insistently behind her right eye.
Dana had gotten her first migraine soon after she hit puberty, and they came and went in waves after that—sometimes one or two a week and then none for months. With each child, they became less frequent, and she hadn’t had a single one since hitting menopause. So when she woke that morning to the old tension running along the right side of her neck and a creeping nausea, she told herself that she had just slept poorly and it would go away soon. It hadn’t. By the time it was 7:30a.m., the fluorescent lights of the ED were splitting her skull open and the vertigo had started. Al-Hashimi had been right; when she had stood up to look at the board, the room had spun and her body almost followed the rotation right down to the ground.
Now here were Emma’s steadying hands, warm through the fabric of her scrubs, asking Dana to surrender against her. Dana did her damndest to keep her weight centered on her own two feet as they walked to the front door. She fished in her bag for her keys and tried to slot it into the keyhole, but her hands were shaking. Emma’s fingers wrapped softly around hers to guide it in and turn.
Once the door was open, Dana peeled out of Emma’s grasp. She took the few steps to the sectional in the center of the living room and sat gingerly, letting her head fall back onto the cushion, eyes closed. Emma looked at her small body folded into the couch, the tension in her jaw and the tremble of her eyelids. She felt heavy for her; for the physical pain that was waging a losing battle against Dana’s immovable stubbornness. The same stubbornness Emma had witnessed since her very first day—Dana’s tendency to evade and deflect gestures of care; to build up high, barbed walls to hide what Emma sensed must be a deep well of grief.
She went to the window and closed the curtains, and the room darkened. ”Thanks, hon. Go home and get some rest,” said Dana, head back and eyes still shut.
Emma took a few steps further into the house and looked around. “What are you doing?” Dana’s voice was gruff.
“Nothing. Just…” Emma started toward the archway off the back of the living room. Dana turned her neck to follow and immediately regretted it. A shot of pain hammered into the base of her skull and the room started rolling. She groaned and slammed her eyes shut again.
A few moments later, she heard running water, more footsteps, and then felt a warm hand on her shoulder.
“Can you drink some water?” Emma’s voice was barely a whisper, like she knew any hint of volume would set off a wrecking-ball in Dana’s cranium. Dana looked down and saw Emma kneeling in the darkness, holding a glass with a metal straw. Her eyes, always so wide, were tender and lucid. Dana reached for the glass, but Emma held on too, helping Dana bring it up to her lips and take a few sips. She hadn’t realized how cottony her mouth had been.
Dana gave a flat smile. “I’m fine now.”
Emma didn’t stand up. Instead, she produced a wet washcloth, folded it, and pressed it against Dana’s forehead. It was cool on her skin, and the sensation made Dana have to hold back a whimper. She felt a hand cradle the back of her head, guiding it slowly forward, and then the coolness was gone from her forehead and on the back of her neck instead. Emma maneuvered her head gently to the back of the couch again.
Dana held the air in her chest for a moment. “That’s nice. Now go home.”
“Just let me do a few more things,” Emma whispered.
“I’m not an invalid.” Dana sensed a rustle and movement, but she couldn’t bring herself to look. The compress was soothing on her neck and her stomach was beginning to settle.
“I know.” Emma’s voice was above her now, and suddenly fingers were combing backwards through her hair, palms resting just above her temples.
Dana opened her mouth to tell Emma to stop, but the girl had started applying pressure with her hands, and it was like the blood throbbing painfully through her arteries was being cut off, offering sweet reprieve to the swollen vessels.
“Fuck,” Dana sighed. Emma smiled above her. She could see Dana’s shoulders ease and the muscles of her open neck soften.
“Which side is it on?” Emma whispered.
Dana’s jaw tensed back up. “You don’t gotta do this.”
“I know,” Emma said, continuing to massage her fingers into pressure points on Dana’s scalp, feeling the thin blonde hairs shift and catch under her nails.
“I don’t need you to do this.”
“I know,” she repeated.
“You’re being stubborn,” Dana said.
Emma scoffed, “So are you. Now which side is it on?”
Dana hesitated, unwilling to yield to the hands in her hair but even more unwilling to pull them away. “Right,” she finally responded.
Emma slid her right hand under Dana’s neck, under the compress, and searched for the muscle at the base of her skull. She pressed it firmly with her middle finger, and Dana gasped.
“I’m gonna touch your face too. Just tell me if it doesn’t feel good, or I’m pressing too hard, okay?” Emma whispered. She brought her left hand to Dana’s forehead, tucked her index finger into the crook between the eyebrow and tear duct, and applied a light pressure.
Dana blew out a stream of air. It felt so good she could cry. In fact, it felt so good that her eyes were actually prickling and starting to well behind the lids. Stop. It was enough for Emma to see her like this, fragile and drained. She would not cry over something as trivial as a migraine. Emma started to massage down Dana’s neck with both hands, and the burn in her eyes got more intense. She would not cry over this, her grad RN’s insistent, nurturing touch.
Emma saw a salty bead gather right below where her index finger had been. She didn’t say anything. Just kept working her hands into the tight muscles. She could feel Dana tense as she moved lower, into her slope of her shoulders. That’s fine, Emma thought, I have all the time in the world. She kneaded and worked the knots under Dana’s skin with delicate persistence until she felt them concede. Until she felt Dana’s stubbornness, her barby walls, start to concede with them. Her chest was rising more slowly, and the tear had dried on her eyelid.
“Why don’t you lay down?” Emma whispered, and the thought of letting her body slough off its weight broke down Dana’s last defense. She nodded and eased herself onto the couch.
Emma guided a throw pillow beneath her head and came around to sit on the chaise side of the sectional, where she could reach Dana again. She threaded her fingers back into the fine locks, running her pads slowly from temples to the back of Dana’s skull. Dana’s breathing matched the rhythm. The pain was still there but duller, and the vertigo had stopped. Her body was becoming heavy with the comedown from the intense pain and Emma’s touch.
“You have magic hands,” Dana murmured as sleep washed over her.
Emma heard the shift in her breathing, saw the muscles finally relax completely. She knew she should stand up and let herself quietly out, but her fingers wouldn’t stop stroking over Dana’s scalp. Emma nestled further into the couch cushion. It had been a long night. A long six months of her first nursing year. She hadn’t felt this relaxed since before she first stepped into the PTMC. Feeling Dana slowly become pliant, supple under her touch had done that, and she wondered what it would be like to end every night like this—running her hands through Dana’s hair as they let the tension of the day unfurl.
***
Dana woke to a hand twitching against her head. Bleary eyed, she looked up and saw Emma curled against the corner of the couch, asleep in her scrubs. She was clearly dreaming, since the hand kept quivering and her eyelids were fluttering rapidly.
Dana looked at her watch. 1p.m. Middle of the night for the young nurse. Emma looked more peaceful than Dana had ever seen her. All the worry in her brow gone, no anxious hands wringing into each other. It crossed Dana’s mind, still sleep-hazed, that Emma looked beautiful. She felt another tremor from the hand on the pillow and moved her cheek to rest against it.
***
Emma woke with her face pressed into rough fabric. A plaid blanket she didn’t recognize was covering her. She rolled over and there was Dana, sitting with her back against the other arm of the couch, reading a book. Emma bolted up.
“Morning, kid.”
Emma felt warmth rush into her cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I must have just… let my eyes close, I don’t know. I’ll leave now.”
Emma started shucking off the blanket, but Dana stretched her legs to nudge her with her toes. “Don’t worry about it. You had a long night, even longer with having to play nurse for me too.”
Emma swallowed, “What time is it?”
”’Bout four o’clock.”
”Oh my god, I slept through the whole day? Shit, I’m sorry.”
Dana just smiled, “You hungry? I’ll make you breakfast.”
They sat at a wooden table, scuffed and stained with water rings, in Dana’s kitchen. Emma was wearing one of Dana’s sweaters and an old pair of sweatpants. She spread butter on her toast and topped it with the eggs that Dana had scrambled for her while she was showering. She took a bite and realized, as it hit her empty stomach, that she hadn’t eaten anything after she had gotten off that morning.
”So, you get migraines too or something?” Dana asked, as she sipped a mug of ginger tea.
“No, but my sister gets them really bad. Ever since she was young. I would take care of her when my mom and grandma were at work.” Emma’s smile was bright in the afternoon light. “Actually, that’s one of the things that made me think about nursing. I like taking care of people, especially when you can’t always see their pain.”
Dana felt her pulse in her stomach. She didn’t know why. “You’re good at it. High patient satisfaction score from me at least.”
Emma laughed and looked down, and Dana’s chest tightened deliciously.
“So, how you liking the night shift?” Dana asked.
“Oh, I hate it. Like so much. I feel awful all the time.”
”Yeah, I could never get used to it either. You gonna switch again when Anne Marie comes back from maternity?”
”I hope so.” Emma’s eyes probed and searched her own, seeking a soft place.
”Good, need you and your magic hands back with me.”
Emma felt her heart smack up against her throat. She wanted to say ‘Anytime, whenever you need,’ but thought better of it. She settled for holding Dana’s gaze, watching the flecks of green reflect the sunlight, and hoped Dana could read what wasn’t said in her soft, warm smile.