Sacred

1

Maybe the hardest confession isn't "I love you."

Maybe it's, "I'm sexually attracted to you."

After years of calling him my best friend, laughing through every season of life together, and pretending everything was enough... I finally looked at him differently after he said those words.

Funny how the person I thought was either too Catholic or potentially gay had been quietly thinking of me all along.

We met during the pandemic in 2020, had mild symptoms and were both sent to the same COVID isolation hotel (our nearest quarantine facility at that time) which was the best this country could do during the early waves.

He was a firefighter who tested positive (or was a close contact), and I was a nurse working at a private nursing home near the Rimini coast, also tested positive. Rimini is a common vacation destination, therefore the place was already always full with people.

But when COVID happened, most of us were just stuck there.

I remember our first encounter without really knowing how each other looked like because we were wearing masks. He kept saying "Buongiorno" every morning, and I ignored him. I just lost a colleague.. and I was too drained and the last thing I wanted was to make small talk. I knew his name was Damiano, but I never introduced myself.

I guess talking and joking around is always his way of coping with uncomfortable situations.

I just wanted to be left alone. I wanted him to shut up.

One morning, he left an extra espresso near my door after meal delivery and I accidentally knocked it over, causing it to spill on me. And that was it. I screamed at him to go away and he finally stopped coming over to be nice with me.

When 14 days were over, we went back doing our own things separately, even though occasionally we would bump into each other during handovers.

Shortly after, he went to Milan where the case was severe.

I was sent to Milan too after that. It was chaos.

Every shift felt like waiting for the next phone call. Every headline came from Milan or Bergamo. Every ambulance siren sounded heavier than the last. I stopped counting the days and started counting the beds we still had left.

Somehow we unexpectedly ran into each other during a patient handover between emergency responders and hospital staff. He was a temp, and wasn't gonna stick around. He removed his helmet and pointed at me, "You."

I was barely looking up from the patient's chart. Also, I didn't recognize him. He recognized me from my voice and my violet hair. I had my face shield on.

Then, I saw his eyes.

I used to think his eyes were just brown because I had only observed him indoors. In the right light, I realized they weren't. Hazel. Warm, changeable. Impossible to ignore.

"I'm sorry, I don't remember your name," I said, with a grin.

He grinned back. That's when we properly introduced each other.

"Samara," he repeated my name. "I don't think you're originally Italian?"

"No, I'm from elsewhere," I stopped it right there because we both had to get back to work.

However, he showed up again later on after his shift was over just to sit at the hospital cafeteria with me. He came in still wearing traces of his shift, light brown curls on his head still messy from the helmet, jacket slung over one shoulder, the kind of tired that sat deep in the bones.

He knew I was exhausted too.

For a moment, neither of us spoke. Strange, because he was always the conversation starter.

Then, he nudged my cup of coffee slightly. "Still doing that thing where you forget to eat?"

I smiled. I only had 15 mins. "My blood runs on caffeine."

He leaned back in his chair. "That sounds dangerous."

"So is everything lately." I stirred my coffee like it was my lifeline.

That made him quiet for a second.

"Yeah, I know."

We exchanged numbers, but neither of us texted first for weeks.