Meet me in the Middle

Chapter 5

"Wake up, sweet bambina." I bring my hand up in my sleep to swat away the touch I can feel on my face. It feels like someone is tucking my hair behind my ear.

"Come on, bella. Apri gli occhi." My eyelids are heavy when I force them open like my wife requested.

Carina is sitting on the edge of the bed, playing with a strand of my hair. The glow from the sunrise, through the window, catches her at just the right angle to make her look like a deity.

She leans over me with a smile, and I close my eyes in anticipation of the good morning kiss I know is coming.

I wake up before I ever feel her lips, and see that Carina isn't where I imagined her to be. I sit up and realize I'm on her side of the bed, which would've made the events in my dream impossible.

I reach over to my bedside table to see if Carina has responded to any of my missed calls from last night.

After she hung up for the second time I got up and paced our room, trying to get a hold of her again. I was terrified that she could've been at some sketchy bar, alone and drunk.

After my first three calls rang out to her voicemail, I logged into dispatch to see if there were any incidents reported that matched her description.

I tried calling her again, and my calls stopped ringing, going straight to the automated voice saying her mailbox was full. I took a shot in the dark and called Joe's hoping that she went out to her old hunting grounds.

The bartender answered and after some convincing, she told me that Carina left with some other surgeons. After that I was finally able to relax a little.

I went back to bed and tried to get some sleep, but it was a restless night. I remember waking up several times from nightmares. It was like each of them triggered a new fear and I kept calling Carina.

When I woke up to seeing her here, I was so optimistic that she came home to ease some of those fears. But just like most mornings, she was just a dream and waking up alone was my reality.

I think I need to talk to Diane about these vivid hallucinations. I mentally added them to my clipboard of crazy. Maybe putting the checklist in writing would benefit Diane in fixing everything that's broken in me.

What? I'm allowed to talk about myself like that. I'll only get in trouble if I say it out loud. I slowly start getting ready for the day, wishing I could run this restlessness out of me.

A good ten miles would happily get rid of the phone call running through my mind in a loop. I glance at my trainers next to the door and weigh my options, maybe Diane won't even find out. No! I'm not doing anything to interfere with my recovery.

I check the time and see that if I go with a protein smoothie for breakfast, that I'll be able to get one Diane's healing jogs in before shift officially starts. Hopefully the good doctor knows what she's doing, and it will help me with the overlapping thoughts running through my head.

I head up to the rec room, passing B-shift having breakfast before they need to clock out. "Quiet shift?" Danny Rizzo looks up, taken aback by me engaging in a conversation with them.

"Uhm, yeah? We had one heater fire early on, and some black ice accidents throughout, but nothing serious. Nothing like the silly season over Thanksgiving."

I lean against the kitchen counter while their new probie tells me about their one call where a group of drunk collage guys decided to cook a deep-fried turkey in their dorm room because it was too cold for them outside. They ended up burning the whole frat house down when they stuffed a frozen bird into the DYI contraption.