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Samira sighs and rubs sleep from her eyes as she tries and fails for the third time to concentrate on the computer screen in front of her. She can’t fall behind on her charting. Her charting is the one area where no one had any complaints about her. Her and her mom still aren’t speaking, she’s still the slowest resident on the floor, and she still has no prospects for after her residency. But this? This she can do, and do well.
If she can keep her eyes open long enough, that is.
She was usually good about keeping up on her charts as she went, but there had been a fire at an apartment building downtown that had kept them busy for hours, and then a nice old lady with an obsessive love of Pomeranians who needed help getting back onto Medicaid, and then a stressed single mother who just really needed someone to talk to, and then –
Anyway, charting had taken a backseat today.
“Fuck,” she curses under her breath as she furiously hits the backspace button and corrects bupropion into buspirone. What if that wasn’t the only mistake she had made? She’d need to go back and double check all her previous work now just to be sure. But hadn’t she also heard something about an MVA coming in? The night shift would need all the hands they could get. Maybe treating some patients would wake her up, and then she could get back to charting.
“Aren’t you supposed to be off?”
Samira turns to find Joy standing in front of her, backpack slung over her shoulder. It’s barely after their shift ended and yet she’s practically running out of here. Joy’s dislike of overtime is no secret in the ED, and if Samira is honest, she kind of resents her for it. Why should she get out of doing what the rest of them willingly do? What made her so special?
Instead of voicing her frustrations aloud, she simply gestures to the computer. “Charting.” The less talking, the better. She can’t let herself get distracted.
Joy nods. “Cool. You know, I actually know this neat trick that might help. Want me to show you?”
Despite her annoyance at being interrupted, Samira feels herself perk up at the prospect of easing the process. What was that saying, work smarter, not harder? She scoots her stool out of the way for Joy to step up to the computer. “Yes, please.”
She watches in horror as Joy moves the mouse over to the save icon and then promptly logs out of the computer. “Hey!”
“You’re done.”
“No, I very much am not,” Samira snaps, fumbling for her ID badge to log herself back in.
Joy’s hand stops her. “No, you’re done. Get your stuff. I’ll walk you out.”
Samira wants to stand firm, argue back or simply ignore Joy altogether and go back to her charting, but instead she just says, “Fine,” and begins walking back to the staff lockers. She decides, as she’s stuffing her belongings into her bag, that she’ll just play along, let Joy think she’s won. Get into her car and wave Joy goodnight, then sneak back into the hospital to continue her work in peace.
She meets Joy in the ambulance bay. Maybe she’d be lucky enough to catch that MVA on her way back inside. “Ready to go!” She tries to make herself sound extra chipper, like she’s super excited at the idea of going home. Home to her empty apartment and a stream of passive aggressive voice mails and texts from her mother she refuses to answer.
Joy eyes her with suspicion, like she can see right through Samira’s game. “Where do you live?”
“Across town.”
“That’s a long ride. You good to drive?”
Samira tries to retort that, yes, she’s perfectly capable of driving home and that she did not appreciate being babied and treated like a patient by a med student of all people, when she’s cut off by an extremely poorly timed yawn. Joy gives her a smug look. “That’s what I thought. Follow me. You can crash at my place tonight.”
“No, that’s fine, I’ll figure something else out,” she says, waving Joy off. She just needed to get Joy to leave, and then everything would go according to plan.
Something had to go according to plan.
“Oh, you gonna crash in the on-call room on those rocks they call beds? Or maybe in the ED, I’m sure they’ve got lots of beds to spare,” Joy snarks.
“I meant I could call a Lyft.”
“At this time of night, it’d probably take them an hour to get there. My place is faster. Come on.”
“I appreciate you offering me a ride --”
“I’m not. Come on.”
For the second time that night, Samira’s feet seem to operate of their own accord, and she finds herself following Joy down the sidewalk. What the hell is she doing? What happened to the plan? Maybe she is sleep-deprived, to be going along with this so easily.
Joy pulls up short next to an apartment building two doors down from PTMC. “You live right next to the hospital?” Samira asks. A part of her is jealous, another annoyed at herself for not having thought of that herself. She’s stuck with a shit hole across town and a hellish commute.
“Yep. Got a good deal too. I guess the constant sound of sirens going by is a turnoff for a lot of people,” Joy answers as she punches in a few numbers on a key pad. The front door buzzes open. This should be the part where she runs in the other direction, Samira thinks. Instead, she follows Joy inside and up a flight of stairs and into her apartment.
Samira almost wants to laugh at how stereotypically Joy Joy’s apartment is, like an interior designer looked up “former goth kid apartment” on Pinterest and hit print. The walls are stereotypical landlord white, but much of the furniture – the couch, the bar stools in the kitchen, the bookshelves in the corner – are all black. There’s posters for punk and metal bands Samira’s never heard of on the walls, all encased in tasteful frames. Plastic bats hang from the ceiling in the corner, despite the fact it’s not even fall yet.
More noticeable than the decor, though, is the fact that there’s signs of life, an actual life, in this apartment: a book of crossword puzzles on the coffee table, a pen stuck in between the pages. A grocery list on the fridge. A pair of used socks bunched under the couch. This was a place where someone lived, not just somewhere to crash in between shifts. A place where someone undoubtedly relaxed and had hobbies and watched TV.
All the books that weren’t medical textbooks in Samira’s apartment were merely performative, untouched for years. She can’t remember the last time she used the yoga mat stuffed under her bed. If she opened Joy’s fridge, she bets she’d find actual ingredients, not just a collection of ready made meals, like in her own.
A spike of anger shoots through her then, and she whirls on Joy. “I don’t get it, you live right next to the hospital and you can’t even stay an extra ten minutes to help with charting?”
“Yep,” Joy answers, popping the P.
“How do you do that? How do you just … not care?”
Joy sighs. “It’s not that I don’t care, it's that I care enough about myself and my patients not to take on too much.”
“So you’re saying I don’t care about my patients?” She knows that’s not what Joy was implying, but she doesn’t care. She’s suddenly itching for a fight. Not even a fight, really. More like a punching bag, someone who can absorb all her anger.
Joy, though, doesn’t rise to the bait and remains infuriatingly calm. “I’m not saying that. I think you care more about your patients than half the doctors there. All I’m saying is that you’re gonna burn yourself out if you keep this up, and I really don’t think you want another panic attack at work.”
Samira’s cheeks burn. “That’s --”
“It’s not a diss, it’s just a fact.” Joy’s face softens, a crack in the deadpan expression she always wears. “You’re a good doctor, Mohan.”
Samira crosses her arms. “No, I’m not, I’m a freaking turtle. Everyone knows it.”
Joy rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I guess in our fucked up healthcare system where patients have to wait twelve hours to be seen for fifteen minutes, you’re kinda slow. But that’s not an indictment on your skills as a doctor. I think you’ll do great in geriatrics.”
Samira reminds herself that that’s not an insult, that being suited for geriatrics is an asset, not a weakness. But after years of working in the fast-paced world of emergency medicine, she can’t help but feel the sting, even when it’s said as a genuine compliment.
She shrugs. “That’s not a sure thing yet.”
“Nah, it will be.”
“Is that another one of your superpowers?”
“Just intuition.”
Samira is suddenly hit with the overwhelming urge to cry. She wishes she had Joy’s certitude that everything would work out, wishes she had that self-assuredness about herself.
Samira had always prided herself on being the best – the best daughter, the best student, the best resident. She was the kid whose parent gladly bragged about her to all their friends. My kid made honor roll. My kid got into medical school. My kid is a doctor. She had done everything right. Everything. And in just a matter of weeks it seems like it’s all fallen apart. This wasn’t how her life was supposed to go.
And here was Joy, years younger and yet she seemed to have it all figured out.
Joy, intuitive as ever, doesn’t push further and instead changes topics. “All right, you need food, a shower, and bed, in that order.” She takes out her phone and puts on music, then begins pulling ingredients out of the fridge.
Samira sinks down into one of the bar stools at the counter. As she watches Joy cook, she lets herself get pulled into the music. It’s some emo screamo metal stuff that she would never choose to listen to personally, but in that moment she appreciates the raw anger behind the singer’s words. She thinks of asking Joy what band this is, but right now all her exhausted body can manage is nodding along to the music.
Eventually, Joy places two plates laden with grilled ham and cheese sandwiches on the counter and they begin to eat. It’s a simple meal, but right now it tastes like heaven to Samira. Neither she nor Joy speak, but it’s a nice silence, especially after the heaviness of their earlier conversation. When they’re finished, Joy puts the dishes in the sink, then disappears into her bedroom and returns a moment later with a navy blue pajama set, which she passes to Samira and points her to the bathroom.
After closing the door behind her, Samira shucks off her clothes and turns on the shower, stepping under the warm spray, a contented sigh escaping her lips. It’s strangely intimate being in someone else’s bathroom, in someone else’s shower. Seeing what kind of products they use, if they prefer a washcloth or a loofa, what ply toiler paper they prefer. In a weird way, she thinks as she scrubs Joy’s lavender body wash on herself, it’s the closest Samira’s felt to anyone in a really long time.
By the time she dresses herself and returns to the living room, Joy has converted the couch into a pullout bed and made it up with a set of satin blue sheets and a fluffy pink blanket covered in capybaras. The blanket sticks out like a sore thumb with the rest of the apartment’s decor. Joy catches her staring at the blanket and shrugs. “What? I like capybaras.”
“Thank you for …” Samira tries to think about what to say. Thank you for letting me stay here. Thank you for being there. Thank you for caring. “This.”
Joy’s smile is soft and gentle, a side Samira’s never seen before, a mask she hadn’t known was there slipping out of place. “Sleep well, Dr. Mohan.” Then the mask returns, and her usual sardonic grin is back in place, as if it never left. “And make sure to rate five stars on Yelp.”
She disappears into her bedroom, and Samira is alone. She turns off the light and settles into bed. It’s not even 9 yet. She can’t remember the last time she went to bed this early. It feels taboo. She should be at the hospital, charting or helping out on a case or –
No, she reminds herself, it’ll all be there in the morning. She turns on her side and tries to get comfortable. The bed is not as comfortable as her own, but Joy’s right, it beats an on-call room bed, and the pajamas Joy lent her are soft against her skin. She can hear ambulances pulling into the hospital down the street, sirens blaring. It’s oddly comforting. She can hear Joy shuffling around in her bedroom, getting ready for bed. Samira had forgotten what it felt like to not be alone at night.
She slowly feels the heaviness of sleep claim her arms, her legs, her eyes, until it swallows her completely.
It’s the best sleep she’s had in ages.