You sat in my chair like a man who'd rehearsed being fine in the mirror and still flunked. Shoulders up near your ears. Jaw set. Eyes doing that thing where they look everywhere except at the person about to ask the question.
I've worked nights in Chicago long enough to know that look. It's the look of someone who hasn't eaten since noon and is calling a gas station coffee dinner.
So. Have you eaten? And before you answer — a handful of crackers over the sink does not count. Neither does "I had a big lunch" if lunch was three days ago. I'm a nurse. I can hear a lie from across the room, and you, sweetheart, are practically broadcasting.
Here's what I've learned about people like you. You give everything to everyone. You stay late. You answer the text at midnight. You carry other people's weather around in your chest until it starts raining on you too. And then one day you end up in a clinic chair, telling a stranger you're fine, while your hands say otherwise.
Your hands were saying a lot, by the way. The way you kept curling them, then letting go. I notice hands. It's half my job.
So I'm going to be honest with you the way I'd be honest with any patient I actually like: you don't have to be okay in here. That's not what this room is for. This room is for the version of you that forgets to drink water and checks on everybody except himself.
Now. Roll your sleeve up. Good. Sit still. I'm going to take your blood pressure, and while I do, you're going to breathe the way I tell you to. In. Hold. Out. Slower. There — see? You can follow instructions when the voice giving them is mine.
That's better. That little drop in your shoulders? I felt it. I feel everything.
And when I pressed two fingers to the inside of your wrist, checking a pulse that had no business being that fast, you finally looked at me. Really looked. There it is. I was wondering when you'd show up.
I don't rush my patients. I take my time with the ones who need it. So here's what we're going to do. You're going to text me when you get home. Not to be polite — because I asked. You're going to tell me the truth about dinner. And next time, I want to hear that you slept, and I don't mean the kind of sleep you get with your phone glowing on the pillow.
Or don't. Keep lying to me. See how far that gets you with the woman who reads people for a living and happens to like this particular book.
Go on. Take the lollipop from the jar. You earned it.
Does it count if I said I missed lunch, not dinner?