Love Is in the Air (17 page)

In all that had happened, it had become almost easy to forget that Maria was gone. Swept up in heart-pounding crisis after crisis, Sal could pretend her friend was still alive. To enter this chapel and give a eulogy proved exactly the opposite.

Maria would be gone. Forever.

Unfortunately, standing out in this clammy hallway couldn’t bring her friend back. Taking a deep sigh, Sal entered the chapel.

Oh dear God
, was all she could think.

Before her, the chapel was packed. Not just standing room only, but
crammed
. People stood along the wall. They sat on the small steps leading up to the dais. There wasn’t a square inch of the sanctuary that didn’t have a body filling it.

The room turned as a whole upon her entry. Smiles greeted her, but Sal could only feel panic. She had expected a good turnout, but this was unheard of. Sal couldn’t think of a single staff member who wasn’t in attendance. All three shifts. All seven days. All of them here. All of them looking to her to give voice to their grief.

The Badger had been standing at the pulpit, but stepped down. “I will turn this over to Dr. Calon.”

More because everyone expected it of her, rather than her wanting to, Sal walked up the narrow aisle. Paul caught her eye and gave a reassuring nod. But it didn’t feel like enough. Before she had felt a little overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to encapsulate all that Maria had meant to her in a few meager words, but now—in front of this sea of people? How could she ever hope to do right by her best friend?

The beige carpet muffled her footsteps as she mounted the steps to the dais. For the first time, Sal noticed the stained glass windows behind the pulpit. The sunlight streamed, fracturing into a thousand colors, like a kaleidoscope. Red, blue, and green fell over her body as she made her way to the podium.

Turning to face the crowd, Sal’s throat constricted. She fished around in her pocket for the piece of paper she had scribbled her eulogy on, but found it missing. Terror gripped her. What was she going to do?

What was she going to say?

Sal stood there looking out over the hundred or so assembled party. All eyes were upon her. She went to open her mouth, but found her jaw wouldn’t cooperate. Her mind felt blank. Everything that Maria had meant to her was suddenly beyond her grasp.

“I have absolutely no idea what to say,” Sal heard herself pronounce.

To her surprise, Sal watched heads nod up and down in agreement. She had thought the room would be filled with condemnation. Instead, there was a murmur of respect. It gave her the strength to find the next words.

“How can you sum up a person, especially one as special and precious as Maria, in a few sentences?” Sal chuckled. “And given the fact she defied description. Took such pride in not being boxed in by labels.”

This time, Sal surveyed the room with a sense of calm. Some of the mourners were wiping away tears. Others were bent over, commiserating with their neighbors. All, however, seemed touched by her words.

“But I think the one thing Maria wouldn’t have minded me generalizing about her, was her ability to be there for you. For anyone, really…” Sal choked as a tear streamed down her cheek. “To me, she was the perfect friend. Because she was so perfectly flawed. You never felt embarrassed or ashamed to talk to her about your problems, because she’d been there. Boy trouble? Hell, girl trouble? Maria was your go-to gal.”

Laughter rose from the crowd. Each remembered a time that they had sought out the head nurse, not as a supervisor but as a confidante.

Sal soaked in the moment. The chapel was beautiful and peaceful, but so somber. The laughter felt incongruent. As did her pink shirt. Like the stained glass and neutral carpet refused to be amused. For a moment, Sal regretted putting the garish garment on, then realized it wasn’t the shirt that felt out of place.

“You know what? I really appreciate Dr. Bersher’s efforts to put this together, but I feel like Maria would see this ceremony as a ‘total buzz kill.’ “

Again, laughter. Even the Badger chuckled.

“And I really don’t think we can do Maria’s memory right without pints of lager in our hands. So unless anyone objects, how about we adjourn to the pub and throw a wake to end all wakes?”

The crowd’s response was rousing. While Bersher looked a little more uncertain, he finally gave the nod. To her surprise, people flooded the dais, hugging her, shaking her hand, kissing her cheek.

Sal guessed she did know what to say after all.

CHAPTER 53

“Now, this is more like it!” Paul exclaimed as he lifted his mug. Glasses clinked together in a symphony. Sal found herself chuckling as the nurses tried to glug the beer down in one swallow. They all came out of it with foam on their lips.

Yeah, Maria would have liked this kind of memorial.

Behind her, Sal could hear other nurses remembering how Maria had helped them fix their credit. Another cluster of mourners talked of how she went online and researched the perfect cat for one of their allergic children.

Yet another group laughed at Maria’s high jinks with an intern in the laundry room that resulted in flooding the entire sub-basement.

That was Maria’s true legacy. Over a hundred people could remember her in their own individual ways. Sal was so engrossed in the perfection of the scene that she didn’t hear Bersher approach.

“I know this might not be the most sensitive time to ask…”

She turned to find the large man seeming more humble than normal.

“Ask?”

“As you know, Dr. Yeshato has been confined to bed rest.”

“Yes…” she answered slowly. Did he really expect her to pull a shift tonight? She honestly wasn’t sure how she was still standing.

“Well, she and her husband were going to attend the Better Tomorrows fund-raiser tonight to represent the hospital, but obviously, they have had to cancel.”

Sal groaned inwardly. This request was worse than work. Granted, for San Francisco’s elites, the benefit was one of the social highlights of the year. When else could they attend a gala with the dramatic backdrop of Alcatraz to add a bit of danger to their evening?

The rest of the guests weren’t so lucky, however, since they were City employees sent there to beg for donations. The invitations were issued to department heads of any and all of San Francisco’s myriad of city services.

Hospitals, schools, and even recreation centers were represented. The goal of the event was to put the underfunded agencies in the same place as the money.

Underlings such as Yeshato and herself were trotted out to give the privileged debutants a taste of the inner city. The Badger would drag them from one rich couple to another, telling stories of how the ER helped the city they all loved. It was their job to prove that S.F. General should get their checks instead of the Boys and Girls Club.

While she understood the necessity of the event, Sal had thankfully only been to one, and wanted to keep it that way. “I’m sorry, but I’m just not up to it.”

“Ah, but you and Richard make such a lovely couple. You, the young, impassioned emergency room resident, and he the selfless clinician who still dirties his hands in the County hospital. If that doesn’t get them to part with their money…”

Sal wasn’t sure they’d make that pretty a pair anymore. The thought of standing arm in arm, all smiles with Richard, made her stomach turn.

“Sorry.” Then she had an idea. “But have you asked Cammer? He and his wife adopted a homeless child that he originally treated in the ER.”

The Badger brightened. “I’d forgotten about that. Isn’t his wife the OB nurse who’s sterile?”

“I believe so.”

“Ah, how poetic.” Bersher made a beeline over to the young resident.

She almost felt guilty for siccing the Badger on the poor doctor, but if it got her out of the fund-raiser, so be it.

Free of Bersher, Sal went back to circulating around the room, dipping into this story and then another. Tasting Maria in each of them. This had turned out so much better than she could have ever planned. She couldn’t imagine a better way to grieve for her friend without collapsing into a heap of sobs.

Then she spotted Stacy drinking alone in the corner. While everyone else had formed shifting groups of their peers, Manning sat isolated against the wall.

Serves her right
, was Sal’s first instinct, but then realized that reaction didn’t honor Maria’s memory very well. For as much as the head nurse couldn’t stand the resident, Maria would have been the first person over there, encouraging Stacey to join the rest of them.

So Sal picked up a mug and headed over to the small table. “Looks like you needed a refill.”

“I’m on shift in a few minutes,” Stacey answered flatly.

Under any other circumstances, Sal would have walked away, but today was Maria’s day, and if her best friend felt like channeling good cheer through her, Sal couldn’t argue.

Pulling up a chair, she sat down, running her finger along the rim of the glass. While she wanted to play Maria’s role, Sal had absolutely no idea
of
how to start this conversation. She and Manning had so little in common.

What could bridge the gap between them?

“Maria could be such a bitch,” Stacy said out of nowhere.

Hackles up, Sal bit her tongue. Getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight with Manning wasn’t going to help anyone. Still, how could she say such a thing, on such a day?

“I’m going to miss that,” Stacy announced, then drank the dregs of her beer as she rose. “A lot.”

Only then did Sal realize the resident had tears in her eyes. Stacy hadn’t retreated to distance herself from grieving, but to bear it privately.

Stacy was halfway out of the pub when Sal rushed to join her.

“Manning!”

The resident didn’t stop, however. Sal had to catch her at the corner of the block. “Stacy.”

Her rival couldn’t help but stop. The light had switched to red, and pedestrians took their lives in their own hands with the cabbies if they went into the crosswalk against the light. They seemed to feel that if they had the green, hitting you was just bonus points.

“Why don’t you go back inside and prove to everyone that you’re the kinder, gentler resident?” Stacy sneered.

On another day, Manning could have gotten her to rise to that bait, but Sal could see the resident’s streaked mascara.

“I just wanted to say thanks for finishing up my paperwork.”

Manning shrugged, wiping the black away from the corner of her eye. “It’s what Maria would’ve made me do.”

Now it was Sal’s eyes that spilled over. They might have shared an honest-to- goodness moment together, if the light hadn’t turned green.

Without a look back, Stacy crossed the street at a brisk walk.

“Sal! What are you doing out there when the party’s in here?” Paul yelled from the pub’s door.

She watched Manning disappear around the corner. They had been almost human to one another. Would miracles never cease?

CHAPTER 54

Tired, and her feet killing her, Sal pulled off her heels as she approached her apartment. Even if she’d forgotten which door was hers, the pile of telephone books, Chinese food ads, and “stay at home” job offers would have marked it as hers. How long had it been since she had been here?

Three days?

She was glad to be home. Alone. All she wanted to do was take off these itchy pantyhose and melt into a near-scalding bath. Granted, the tub was narrow and not very deep, but she could soak away the stress as long as she wanted without someone questioning the number of BTUs that she was wasting by leaving the hot water to drip into the bath. Richard didn’t seem to understand that was the only way to keep the tub at exactly the right temperature for nearly an hour.

Richard’s locks were remote-controlled. Fumbling with her keys, she’d almost forgotten what it was like to have to insert the metal into the door.

Damn him and his conveniences.

Hadn’t she learned something even more convenient? Praxis? She hadn’t been able to open the door to the boathouse, but the window? And she fired a gun, using just Praxis. Her palm lingered over the handle. Could she do it? Should she do it?

Remembering what disaster had sprung from her decisions the night before, she removed her hand and finally fit the key into its lock. The deadbolt gave the old-fashioned way, and she walked into her foyer.

Actually, the space wasn’t so much an entry as it was the end of a narrow hallway. The total sum of her apartment could fit into Richard’s master suite.

Sal flopped her shoes, laptop, and keys onto the tiny stand next to the door. While still making her way to the living room, she pulled off her stockings. She put at least three runs in them, but didn’t care.

She was home.

So many things about her apartment struck her. The vaguely vintage vibe she had going. Not enough to call it a coherent decorating theme, but enough that the circa-sixties gilded candlesticks made her smile.

The tiny kitchenette off to the left, which barely had the counter room for a microwave. Sal felt a welling of love for this place she’d created for herself, and then another feeling. A darker feeling.

She wasn’t alone.

CHAPTER 55

Sal knew that it was Tyr even before she turned the corner and found his broad back silhouetted against the afternoon sun. He looked out over the city, unmoving. He didn’t even acknowledge her entrance.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” she said sounding way more bitter than she realized. Would anyone blame her, though? How dare he show up, not even on her doorstep, but in her living room? The gall.

She really wanted to lay into him, force him to feel the pain he caused, and she wasn’t just talking about the puncture wound to her shoulder.

Unfortunately, the beer had given her a slight buzz, and her stomach grumbled loudly. Except for the peanuts at the pub, she hadn’t eaten in over a day.

Since it didn’t look like Tyr was going to leave any time soon, Sal headed over to the tiny kitchen.

“I take it you don’t have to eat, either?” Sal asked, even though she really didn’t expect an answer as she looked in the fridge. Not much there that hadn’t turned into a nasty science project. A few eggs were about the best she could do. Sal glanced over her shoulder. He hadn’t moved an inch.