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and feel the comfort of my bare feet on the carpet before falling onto my bed. I lay there for a minute knowing I can’t fall asleep in my clothes, but enjoying the soothing coolness of my quilt against my skin and through my clothes.
    When I get up, I do something I haven’t done in long time. Opening the bottom drawer to my dresser, I remove the false bottom and take out the box I have hidden there. I leave the gun in the box but pull out the rest of the contents and set them on the bed.
    “Hi Dad,” I say with a sigh, brushing my thumb against his face on the picture in my hand. “I miss you a lot.” I pick up another picture, this time of both my parents, and turn it over. Me and Bob on our 5 th anniversary. Veronica on the way! “I miss you, too, Mom.” I open the gold locket hanging from an extra-long chain and smile at the pictures of my dad and me. She wore this around her neck until the moment she died. Stupid cancer.
    I put everything back in the box and hide it again in the bottom of my dresser drawer. I try not to visit too often because I can’t have the walk down memory lane cloud the mind of my life now, but…a girl needs to see the face of her mommy and daddy every once in a while.
     
    *****
     
    I have two patients, both of which were here during my last several shifts. Patient one is a 300 pound woman in her 40′s with multiple medical problems. She’s on a ventilator and in a coma so I wasn’t expecting her to have gone anywhere unless she died. She has a history of spiking temps to 107 and is on 70% oxygen. We’re basically keeping her alive until her mother can get here in the morning.
    Patient two is a man in his 50′s with an infected toe. He came to us in the Critical Care Unit because his blood pressure in the ER went to 70 one time, which made the doctors worry about sepsis. Every vital sign that he had taken in Critical Care Unit was normal and stable. We’re monitoring him, but I suspect he’ll be gone soon.
    “I have six meds due for my coma patient at 9:00 pm. I had problems getting one of those meds from the pharmacy and it looks like the other staff nurse did, too! Geez! What is going on down there,” I rant to Mercy. “Tonight, I checked as soon as I got here and it’s not there! I’m going to have to re-order it now! I wish those pharmacy techs would get their heads out of their asses!”
    “Whoa! Did you run out of Nutella or something because you are seriously on edge tonight!” Mercy has a look of shock mixed with you better calm the hell down on her face.
    “Sorry…I’m just distracted and I’m pretty sure the med situation, at least during my last shift, is my fault,” I tell her apologetically.
    “What’s on your mind?” Mercy rolls a chair next to me at the nurse’s station and slaps the charts in her hands down. “Spill it!”
    “I don’t know…” I begin. “It’s so dumb, but…I’ve been thinking about that guy Landon.”
    “That’s not dumb. From what Grace said, he was totally hot. And if you know him from the dance studio, it sounds like you’ve already got something in common,” she says.
    “It’s not really about him, although, I wouldn’t say no to him if he asked. I’m distracted by being distracted by him,” I tell her with some trepidation. She’s only a few steps below Carina when it comes to matchmaking.
    “Finally! Maybe you’ll stop going out on one or two dates before you
    find something terribly wrong with the guy,” she says with a glowering eye.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say wryly, pretending to go back to my paperwork.
    “Oh really? Mark?”
    “His feet were ridiculously small for a man that tall.”
    “Steven?”
    “He had matching tattoos with his mom.”
    “Paul?”
    “He always smelled like baby powder. What man smells like baby powder?”
    “Andrew?”
    “He wanted to wear his ex-girlfriend’s yoga pants out to dinner on our second date because, and I quote, my package