Page 20 of Time for You

“Dr. Griffin?” Hannah prompted. “What do you want us to do?”

Adrenaline flooded Daphne’s veins as she tried to breathe through the panic, the beeping of the machines reminding her of the incredibly high stakes. She wished there were someone else around—Ellie, the chief resident, literally anyone else—but it was just her.

Her, the nurses, and a coding patient. She made her choice and sprang into action, forcing aside the second-guessing clawing at her gut.

The room turned into a hurricane of activity, with Daphne standing in the center of it.

It was, theoretically, the sort of moment she was supposed to want.

This is what people in Emergency Medicine liked to do, what they went into it for. It was what she went into it for.

But an hour later, with the patient sent up to surgery but still unlikely to make it much longer, Daphne sank to the floor.

She didn’t even have the energy to go hide in the closet like she usually did.

She just slid down the wall and hid her face in her hands, trying to keep from sobbing.

Telling the patient’s family that they were “doing what they could” in the most comforting way possible had felt like swallowing knives, because she could tell the wife knew.

She knew her wife wasn’t going to make it, but she was going to cling to the gossamer thread of hope Daphne was dangling, because in the end it was all they had.

That woman’s face, drawn and grey, kept hovering behind Daphne’s eyes.

No amount of digging the heels of her palms into her eye sockets could get rid of it.

It was there, along with the pained cries she knew would follow when the surgeons came down to give her the news Daphne knew was coming.

A car crash, with those injuries—you didn’t come back from that.

They could keep her going, maybe for an hour, maybe long enough that the wife could get upstairs to say goodbye, but the finality of all of it threatened to swamp Daphne.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t prepared for this.

It was something everyone going into medicine knew, because the entire reason people became doctors was to fight against the inevitability of death.

Daphne couldn’t have gotten through med school without knowing that part of her job would be delivering hard news, sometimes devastating news, and she’d lost patients before.

But for some reason this patient, on this day, was just too much.

Daphne gave herself five minutes to drown in self-pity, then dragged herself upright. She had a shift to finish, after all.

Daphne made it through the rest of her shift, but how, she couldn’t say.

She could have sworn she heard the anguished cries when the surgeons told her patient’s family she didn’t make it, even though that wasn’t really possible.

The waiting room was upstairs and the emergency room was its usual cacophony of noise, but she knew when it happened all the same.

Henry was sitting on their couch, reading a book, when she came home. “How was work?” he asked conversationally. “Ellie’s out for the night. She said not to expect her back until tomorrow.”

Daphne nodded, her throat suddenly thick. Henry had turned back to his book, but when she didn’t reply, he looked up. “Is everything okay?”

Is. Everything. Okay. Daphne shook her head, the tears burning her eyes. She blinked rapidly. “It’s nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Henry said softly. “What happened?”

What happened. Two words, and she shattered. That was when the sobs came. They started in her chest, clawing their way to the surface with serrated, tearing gulps.

She didn’t even realize he had stood up, but then suddenly he was holding her, letting her cry against his chest. “It’s okay,” he murmured into her hair. “It’s okay.”

Daphne shook her head again, her face rubbing against his shirt. “It’s not,” she keened. “And it won’t be.”

He curled his hand protectively around the back of her head and tucked her under his chin.

The grief kept swamping her; one wave would recede, and then the next was on top of her before she could catch her breath.

And through it all Henry held on to her; somehow understanding that if he let go, she’d drown.

Slowly he coaxed her onto the couch, tucking a blanket around her legs.

Daphne kept weeping, but the worst of the storm had passed, replaced by an endless flow of tears.

She furiously wiped at her cheeks, while Henry bustled around the kitchen.

He joined her on the couch a little while later with a cup of tea that he pressed into her hands over her objections.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, even though she’d been insisting as much for the past five minutes to no avail.

“I’m sure you will be,” Henry said quietly. He nodded toward the cup of tea. “And that will help.”

“You’re unbelievably English sometimes,” she said with a weak smile.

A grin flickered across his face. “I’ll have you know I’m Scottish,” he protested.

“Like I could forget,” she replied. She wiped another tear from her cheek and sniffed.

“Drink your tea,” Henry said. “I promise it’ll help.”

She didn’t really feel like drinking or eating anything, but the warmth of the mug was making her hands feel less shaky, so she did as he said.

It wasn’t anything special, just the tea Ellie had grabbed on their grocery run a few weeks ago, but warmth bloomed inside her as she swallowed.

Daphne hadn’t even realized she was cold.

“It does,” she said over the rim of the mug.

“Imagine that,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Daphne shrugged and stared into the mug.

“It was just a bad day. Nothing I can’t handle.

” The lie felt thin and flimsy on her tongue, but now that the worst had passed, she felt ashamed.

These sorts of days were something she had trained for, and she knew that even the most hardened emergency doctors had days where it hit them hard.

There were steps for her to take, a routine to let the grief flow through her until she felt more grounded.

She had helped her friends through these moments before, and knew exactly what she needed to do.

But even when she’d tried to reach for those tools on the way home, she hadn’t been able to touch them.

“It must be hard, seeing death so often,” Henry said, and his blue eyes were so soft, so understanding, that she had to look away.

“It’s not easy,” she admitted.

“In my time, there’s a lot more death. It’s different here, I think. People—see it less.”

“It’s my job to see it, though. Or fight it, I guess, but sometimes we lose, even with all our skills and technology,” Daphne said, swallowing back a sob that threatened to reemerge.

“It doesn’t make it easier, though,” Henry replied. “Death is death, and seeing it hurts.”

The tears pricked her eyes again. “It does, yeah.”

Henry gave her another one of his long, searching looks. “I don’t think that’s what hurts you so much, however.”

“Of course it is. Today was—awful.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Henry hastened to say. “I meant it’s not the only thing upsetting you.”

“What else would it be?”

There he went again, searching her face like he wanted her to say something specific. Absurdly, she thought about the fact that he was leaving soon, and her stomach twisted. “You’re not happy, Daphne.”

“Of course I’m not, I’ve been sobbing on you for the past hour.”

“That’s not what I meant. Your job—you’re not happy in it.”

Daphne snapped her head up. “Of course I am. It’s what I’ve worked for my whole life.”

“You’re half right,” he said, and she felt a surge of her old irritation with him. He was looking at her like he knew something she didn’t, and the arrogance she thought he’d left behind was back.

“Oh yeah? Please, enlighten me,” she said.

“You worked for this job your whole life, but you’re miserable there. And I know, because I was miserable at mine.”

Daphne blinked. “You were?”

His smile was sad. “We never really talked about it. But yeah, I never liked it. Or don’t, I guess. I still never know what tense to use, but imports was never very interesting. It’s a lot of lists, and weighing things, and comparing the weights to the list, and counting. I bloody hated it.”

“I guess—I just assumed you guys didn’t think about it like that, back then.”

“You thought we didn’t have hopes and dreams in the past?” he asked, amused.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant—it didn’t sound like you had much choice. Your dad’s firm, and all.”

“And I didn’t. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have liked to have a say. But that’s not really the point—the point is, I know what it’s like when your job is slowly draining the life out of you. I know, because I’ve seen it in the mirror, and I see it on you now.”

Suddenly, the tears were back. Daphne tried to rub them away, but they just kept coming, thick and hot down her cheeks. “I can’t hate it. I worked too hard to hate it,” she said, hiccuping. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s what you want now,” he said softly.

Henry leaned forward and used his thumb to catch a tear.

He traced her cheekbone, cupping her face for a moment before leaning back.

“I know from what you all have said that it’s expensive to become a doctor, but you can’t let that keep you in something you hate. Not if you have another choice.”

“I don’t hate all of it. I like being a doctor, I really do.”

“But not the kind of doctor you are.”

The words hung between them. Daphne would’ve thought someone saying that would send her into a spiral, but instead, she felt calm. Like she could breathe for the first time in years. Like the room had finally stopped spinning. She nodded. “No. Not this kind of medicine.”

“So quit.”

Daphne stared at him. “You cannot be serious.”

“You don’t have a family to provide for, and you’re bright. I’m sure you could find something else.”

“But I don’t want something else. I want to be a doctor.”

“Do you?” he asked mildly.

“I do,” she repeated. “I just think I need something quieter. Something where I can talk to patients more, so when things go wrong, I’m not just a stranger giving them the worst news of their life. But it’s not that simple.”

“Why isn’t it? You’re still in training, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but the process is really complicated. There’s interviews and Match Day and I’d have to give up a year, go back and start over.”

“A year, or the rest of your life. Doesn’t seem like much of a competition,” he said, and even though Daphne didn’t think she had any more tears left to shed, she started crying again.

She crumpled against him, and once again Henry held her through the storm, his arms safe and comforting even though she’d barely ever touched him before.

Dimly she wondered about that, what had changed that his previous reserve had gone by the wayside.

But the bigger part of her was just glad to have someone to hold on to as the world completely reoriented around her.

“You can do it, Daph,” he said into her hair. “You’re stronger than anyone I’ve ever met.”

She shook her head against his shoulder. “If that were true, I wouldn’t be thinking about leaving.”

There was a long, heavy moment of silence. “Sometimes, walking away is the hardest thing you can do.”

Henry shifted, drawing her further across his chest and wrapping his arms more securely around her.

The tears had started to ebb, but exhaustion rolled through her.

The stress of her shift and the emotional turbulence made her eyelids heavy, and Henry’s steady heartbeat and warmth melted her last shreds of awareness.