Trespassing on Happiness

The merlot tastes liked cherry, plum, and the first kiss of summer. It splashes like the mountain lake lapping at my pedicured toes. In the distance… between the twisted cedar and the wild ferns, a man approaches on a white stallion.

Somewhere gentle music plays.

I sip my sweet wine and shield my eyes from the sun to see him. Hmmm, tall, dark, and handsome! How are you?

Wait. This is a private beach on a private island. I got here on my kayak, and I'm certainly trespassing.

"No, please! Don't let me disturb you." The man stops his horse. "It's such a beautiful summer day, and you look like you're enjoying yourself."

The gentle music grows louder. Since I'm staring up into beautiful hazel eyes where time doesn't exist, the music is annoying.

"I'd enjoy myself more with your company." I offer him the cup of wine. "It's merlot."

He slides off the horse and onto the beach blanket beside me. We share the sweet wine, and the heady heat of the summer wafts over us. The world is scrumptious, so fruity, and delicious. We talk about— what else? — his horse. Purebred. Prize horse at the Kentucky Derby. Always stealing first place, so his name is Lucky Bandit. Do I want to see how fast he goes?

That prickling melody bursts my ears, but I ignore the sound and let him help me astride Lucky Bandit.

Like riding lightning. Powerful muscles warm beneath me, strong arms wound around me. Lucky Bandit gallops so fast. The man holds me so close. The wine lingers like a kiss, even in the tempest wind of my racing thoughts. Run away, yes, run away from… that music.

Stupid, tinny, mockery-of-tranquil music. Evil melody that—

Wakes me up.

Bathed in the blue light of my phone, the shadows on the ceiling look like teeth. It's in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, in the middle of the worst year. All I want to do is run away back into that dream. Run away from masks. Run away from the routine of death and sadness.

Instead, I answer the phone. "Mornin,' Mr. Bugs."

My supervisor, Gary Bugslowski, answers with an apology. I don't listen; I just extract myself from my cocoon of warmth. This is normal now. As normal as algae on my kayak and bugs in my merlot. When my phone rings in the night, I go to work.

"Don’t worry about it, Bugs.” I’ve laid out a bright and colorful scrub, but the pictures of cute high heels look like blood in the darkness. “We’re all doin’ out part. I’ll see you at six when your shift—”

“Oh, I’ll be in early. Gotta bring my hero her breakfast!”

“Call it a date, Bugs.”

Bug’s voice is so gentle and calm, even now. He stays on the phone longer than he needs to. In better times, we might joke about patients misbehaving. Like when someone threw a bedpan at me or when someone vomited in his bucket, and he hadn’t realized until he put the mop in. Once, we planned on going to the spring wine festival together. Like an actual date. Maybe…

But that wine festival had been in April of 2020. No time to fall in love when the world shuts down.

I rely on the dim blue light of my phone to check my bag of necessities and to practice my smile in the mirror. Today will be better than yesterday. If I cling to that hope, long enough, maybe it will be true. Maybe, this will be our last case. Maybe, I’ll get a raise and vacation. Maybe, the doctors will give me a gift card to that fancy winery.

My car, more jarred than I am to be awake this early, rattles down the icy gravel hill of the trailer park. It puffs up the mountainside without enough heat to defrost the windows. At the top of a mile-high hill, I pass the big houses with the best view of the Poconos mountain. These are people who own private islands and nice cars. None of them are awake in the dead hours before dawn. They complain about staying at home, safe with their husbands and children and—

These thoughts are bad for me. I want to scream, but instead, I take deep breaths and roll down the window. Let the cold morning air slap me awake and dry the tears of frustration I refuse to cry. The wind’s roar overtakes me. Where’d that dream leave off? Tall, dark, and handsome and merlot…

His yacht— reasonable-sized, not one of those showboats that never leave the bay— speeds us into a romantic night. It’s called Vega, named after the brightest star in the Lura constellation, and I marvel at its grandness. The water shimmers as we speed away, wind whipping our hair. A heron lands on a buoy with a fish in his beak.

Oops, I forgot to grab breakfast.

“May I take you to dinner?” My dream man, the owner of a private island, a yacht, and a racehorse, murmurs in my ear. “My chef is the best in the area. What should he cook for you? Florentine steak? Carbonara and truffles?”

“How about both?”

I melt into his arms. My senses whirl with the scent of lilac and clove. He kisses me, fervent, wordless. I’m hopelessly drawn to him. Like rain to a parched field, I drink him in. So warm, so natural to smile, to kiss. My cares race away. I am happy beyond measure for these few stolen moments on a perfect day.

But Vega, like Lucky Bandit, is not fast enough to outrun reality. The dream ends when the road does at the hospital.

Two rooms need to be cleaned—two more deaths.

I do my job, cheerfully as possible for the ragged nurses and the red-eyed patients. Everyone awake in this terrible pre-dawn darkness deserves a smile.

As soon as I finish the first room, the nurses bring in a new patient. I move onto the second room, and I try not to think about who was here before. Try not to think about the person who is waiting to be wheeled in here. Whose family will crowd around the too-small window? Will it be a wife watching her husband through the fogged glass? Will it be a child— no, these thoughts are bad for me.

It's while I’m on my way to the vending machine to buy a coffee that reality catches me. Maybe it’s the sleeplessness. Maybe it’s the chemicals. But suddenly, I can’t remember the last time anyone who wasn’t hospital staff walked out of those rooms alive.

I can’t catch my breath, but I keep walking. My chest heaves, and my body aches, sore from grief. I run past the breakroom and then the nurses’ station. I smile and wave, and they don’t have time to notice the strain at the corner of my mouth and the desperation in my eyes. One of them remarks, it’s nice to have such cheerful housekeepers before she dives back into their charts.

The utility closet is dark when I lock myself inside and sink to the over-turned bucket. This is my place to sit for a minute without the beeping and the gray lights and the hushed voices and the ragged breathing. This is my quiet darkness for falling apart. My breath heaves in ugly sobs, and my eyes burn with tears.

Now, how about that dream? Tall, dark, and handsome. Starlight-yacht. Prize-winning horse. Private lake-side island. Glass of merlot.

I fight my own lungs, trying to steady them. Is this what it’s like? For the people in the isolation room, gasping and— Stop thinking about that!

Someone knocks on the utility door. “Honey, are you in there?”

Oh God, no. I don’t want Bugs to see me like this—a wreck, crying on a bucket. I pull myself together, straighten my brightly colored scrubs, so he doesn’t see… I have to smile. I have to be clean and pretty, or—

He knocks on the door again. “I can go away, too, if you need a minute.”

“No, it’s okay, Bugs.” I suck in a breath that coils in my throat like a trap. But I’m smiling when I open the door.

My supervisor stands with a bag of donuts in one hand and a box of coffee in the other. He’s not tall, the hospital lights make everyone pasty, and handsome isn’t the right word for anyone who spends as much time as us with blood and vomit and—

“Morning, Bugs! I was just catching up—” My voice betrays me and croaks with fresh tears. “On my beauty sleep.”

He smiles gently.

And I fall apart.

I stand there inside the closet, watery and useless, and simply cry.

Over his blue paper mask, Bugs’ brown eyes widen. Oh, he’s disgusted with me now. I’m weak and ugly-crying and he—

He drops the bag and the boxed coffee, and he hugs me.

This is the first time in over a year that someone has touched me. My own family is afraid to be in the same room with someone who works at a hospital. We should not be hugging. We should be six feet apart. I’m not wearing my mask. I’m crying on his scrubs.

But my hands have already wrapped around his neck, and I can’t make myself let go.

His gloves hiss on my scrubs as he rubs my back. “It’s okay. Let it out, honey. You’re okay. We’re almost through this.”

I nod into his shoulder. Got to be strong. I’m just tired and hungry and—

When I try to let go, he keeps holding me. So, I stay until the whimper in my throat softens, until my hectic breathing becomes deep inhales.

Then I see the two foiled-wrapped sandwiches.

“You brought me a sandwich?”

“I did. Breakfast for my hero. You said it was a date, and I won’t let you back out now. No matter how hard you cry.”

We sit on plastic chairs, a few feet away from the dumpster, where cigarette butts and candy wrappers litter the ground. But downhill, below the highway, there is a tiny pond with a tiny willow tree.

“I can’t wait for spring,” Bugs hands me a sandwich. “When it gets warm again, and I can go fishing. Do you like to fish?”

I unwrap breakfast. “Catch and release only. And I need someone else to do the release part. I don’t like touching the fish.”

Bugs laughs.

The eggs are cold, but the bagel is still wonderfully buttery and greasy. It helps me swallow the lump in my throat.

“I knew you liked to kayak, but I didn’t know you fished. We should… maybe… go fishin’ sometime on my boat.”

“What’s your boat’s name?” It’s a stupid question. He certainly doesn’t have a fancy enough boat to name it.

“I call it…” Bugs scratches his neck sheepishly. “What’s up Dock?”

The laughter explodes out of me, and he laughs too. It’s such a silly, stupid thing, not even all that funny, but today in this cold, awful world... we needed to laugh.

“They didn’t have no orange juice.” He reaches into the bag. “I hope you don’t mind grape.”

It comes in a little kid’s carton. But the juice is fresh and sweet. It flows by my throat like nectar and washes away the last of my tears. “This is perfect.”

“It’s no pinot-greg-io, but…” Bugs trails off.

He looks away, embarrassed, and I know he’s about to talk about work, about how reliable I am, about how things will be better.

“It’s perfect.” I take his hand. “Better than merlot.”

He blushes, but he doesn’t take away his hand.

We sit in the frost spring morning and watch the sun rise.

And I am happy beyond measure for these few stolen moments.