The emergency room had been quiet.

Busy by anyone’s standards, just as it always was, but eerily hushed. I felt it as soon as I walked through the doors. The usual bubbly welcome from the night receptionist was tonight a tight, sad smile as she buzzed me through and pointed wordlessly down the hall.

The surfer intern looked up from a tablet at the workstation. “It’s room four,” he said, and it occurred to me that I’d never seen him without a laugh on his face. His somber eyes scared me, and Mindi’s words came back to me: “He just had...a little accident on his way to your event. Could you come down here when you can...?”

I should have known better. To Jesse and the rest of this staff, anything that didn’t involve a fatality was a “little” accident.

I held my breath when I reached the room, and then swung into it, steeling myself for the sight of trauma. Almost four years with an ER attending and I didn’t even know what exactly that meant, but in the instant before I could survey the room, a vague image of panic and gushing blood came to me, maybe from Grey’s or, reaching way back into my understanding of what his job entailed, ER. 

Instead, there was nothing but calm. He was asleep, attached to a just monitor and an IV. The only blood I could see came from a pair of cuts on the left side of his face. His eyes had black-blue wells around them and his nose was swollen and dark.

So that meant what? A concussion?—a broken nose?—a scar or two?

I breathed.

Another of his interns was there, sitting in an ugly green armchair with an enormous textbook sprawled across her lap. This one was Mindi, I thought. The one who had called me half an hour ago. The one who had sounded so timid as she asked me to come.

I surveyed the room a second time.

His tuxedo wasn’t there. He had been on his way to the benefit, so he should have been wearing it. A hospital gown would have been excessive for a concussion or a couple of broken ribs, wouldn’t it? And his glasses—they were on the table by the bed. He hated his glasses. The only time he ever wore them was to walk from the bathroom to the bed before he went to sleep. I didn’t even know until that moment he kept a spare pair at the hospital.

The intern stood up. 

“Caylie. Hi. I’m Mindi...?” She took a step toward me, her hand outstretched.

I stared through her as we shook. She was familiar in a vague, forgettable sort of way.

“How are you?” She tried to smile.

My eyes went back to his glasses. They weren’t even folded, like someone had put them there in case he wanted them when he woke up. They were upside-down, one of the arms straight out, the other folded in partway. Exactly the way he put them on his nightstand when he set down his book and turned out the light. 

“Where are his contacts?”

I chewed my thumbnail, feeling flakes of fresh nail polish on my tongue as I waited for her answer.

Her eyes showed no understanding. “His...what...?” She followed my gaze until we were both staring at the brown frames, neither of us sure what sense it made.

“Oh, um, he wanted them out. He had somebody get his glasses from his locker. Is that...okay?”

I shrugged vaguely.

“Okay.” Her voice was low. “Here, come on. Let’s take a walk.”