A HEART FOR THE CEO

I'd been in the hospital for twelve minutes when Sofía caught me in the hallway.

"Laurita, my love, my life, my soul sister."

"No."

"I haven't even asked for anything yet."

"It's already a no."

She latched onto my arm like a leech. Sofía was pretty in that functional way pretty women are when they know exactly what it's for: she bombards you with those rescued-puppy eyes, you stupidly give in, and the next day you find three of her shifts on your schedule.

"Cover for me tonight."

"Sofi, I just got here, I haven't eaten, I've got cramps that could let me diagnose myself with cancer."

"Family emergency."

"Which one?"

"My grandmother."

"Your grandmother's been dead since the retirement home."

She blinked and tried another.

"The other grandmother."

"Also dead."

"Damn it, Laura, you remember everything."

"That's why I win."

She gave me her little-dog eyes and I sighed, because I knew I'd lost before I answered.

"One hour. Cardiology. It's dead up there, you just sit. I'll buy you breakfast for a week."

"Two weeks."

"Done."

And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, was the shitty decision that changed my life.

Cardiology was another planet. ER is chaos, everything beeps, everything bleeds, everything screams; upstairs was a morgue with air conditioning. Quiet halls, dim lights, nurses who nodded at you like nuns in a convent. Just breathing made me sleepy.

The floor supervisor, a Diana something with a Good Friday face, handed me the patients with the solemnity of someone handing over a last will and testament.

"Rosa. Seventy years old. Pacemaker this morning. Discharged tomorrow. Charming."

"Good."

"Ethan Cavalier. Thirty. Heart transplant. Sedated. If a donor doesn't come this week, he won't make it to Monday."

"Shit."

"Yeah. And don't say that around the mother. She prowls the floor with a handbag worth more than my car and the eyes of a platinum-card Medea."

"Cavalier like the plaque in the lobby?"

"Cavalier like everything."

Great. My quiet night was keeping a rich man company while his mother gave me the side-eye. Perfect.

I started with Rosa and fell in love with her in three seconds. She told me about her grandson, her new phone, the dance she was going to record so all of Puerto Rico could watch her rise from the dead. I asked her to send me the video, changed her IV, fluffed her pillow, and walked out in a slightly less ugly mood.

Then I went into the other room, and there was the mother.

Expensive coat, handbag clutched in her lap like she was protecting it from me, that polite smile women rehearse in the mirror. She stood up the moment she saw me.

"Come in, dear. I was just leaving."

She left.

On the bed was a man. Blond. Handsome enough to make you feel stupid for looking too long. Intubated, sedated, with that peaceful face the universe hands out on purpose to the wrong people, so some random nurse ends up finding them on a shift that wasn't even hers.

I didn't fantasize. I'm not that kind. I opened his chart. Congenital heart defect, on the waitlist since February, critical stage. Clinical translation: this boy is dying and we're keeping him professional company in the meantime.

I did my job — meds, IV, vitals — smoothed his sheet, and before walking out, like an idiot, I said:

"Good luck, friend."

I didn't know that line was going to charge me interest.

I went down to the cafeteria. I'd promised coffee to Mia, the new nurse who still looked at the hospital like someone staring into a maze with no way out. I took the stairs because the elevator was jammed all the way up, and two floors are nothing for someone who runs twelve-hour shifts between dying patients.

On my way down I passed through pediatrics. That's where Alex worked — my boyfriend, pediatrician, two years together, handsome and polite and boring. I was bringing him an extra coffee because sometimes a girl does dumb shit like that.

The pediatric nurses knew me, nobody stopped me. His office door was half open.

I pushed it.

The office was empty, but from the bathroom came a sound. A very specific sound, the kind a woman recognizes even if she's never heard it live.

The smart thing would have been to leave.

The smart thing has never been my thing.

I walked in.

He had his back to me, pants around his knees, ridiculous in that undignified version every man takes on in that position, only more so. And her, with her legs wrapped around him, her face turned toward the door.

Sofía.

My best friend. The one with the family emergency.

She didn't flinch, didn't cover herself, didn't get off the sink. She raised an eyebrow and smiled at me sideways, a smile that didn't say caught, it said finally.

I didn't scream, I didn't cry. I left Alex's coffee on the edge of the desk because I'm that much of a fool, that polite, that well-raised, grabbed mine and walked out past the cartoon giraffes stuck to the walls.

By the time I got back to cardiology I'd pulled myself together. Years in the ER teach you one thing: you don't cry in the hallway because you don't have time. I handed Mia her coffee, told her the donuts had run out before I got there, and she didn't notice my hand was shaking.

I called my mom.

Eight rings. Voicemail.

Strange. She never slept before eleven, the TV kept her company late. I thought: she must've passed out on the couch. I dialed again. Nothing.

I did my rounds. Rosa was asleep, Ethan breathed to the rhythm of his machine, and a pinch in my chest crawled up my back. It wasn't pain. It was a warning. I ignored it, I blamed Alex, I blamed Sofía, I blamed the night.

I drank some water.

Then the intercom sounded.

"Nurse Mendoza. Emergency room."

Mia looked at me.

"You're not on shift in the ER."

"I know."

I rode the elevator down with my arms crossed, bracing against something I still couldn't name.

The ER was the usual zoo: a drunk strapped to a gurney, a father screaming in Chinese at a nurse who didn't speak Chinese, a paramedic parked wrong. And my boss, Dr. Ramírez, stepping out of a cubicle with blood on his coat, and Carla behind him with a face like the end of the world.

"Mario? You called me?"

Ramírez breathed in deep. He was the kind of man who breathes in deep before saying things you don't want to hear.

"Laura. There's no pretty way to say this. Your mom is in surgery."

My pulse stopped. I mean it, two seconds without a pulse.

"What?"

"Hit by a car near her apartment forty minutes ago. Black sedan, didn't stop. Severe head trauma, but she's stable."

I clung to "stable" like a junkie to a last fix. Carla wrapped me in a short hug, the kind nurses give each other, the kind that says: you know what's coming, brace yourself.

"Come on, sign the admission."

I signed whatever they put in front of me while my phone kept lighting up in my pocket with the eight unanswered calls to my mom — a cruel joke from the universe.

The surgery lasted two hours, which I spent in a plastic chair playing at not thinking. When the surgeon came out, Dr. Miguel, he came alone, with no one beside him, and that's an answer before the answer.

"Laura."

"Doctor."

"She came in alive, but her brain shut down on the table. No response to stimuli. No activity."

I sat down because my legs wouldn't hold me, and Carla grabbed my arm.

"Are you sure?"

"The tests were run. She's breathing only on the machines. I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's not going to change."

I took two deep breaths. I'd done it a thousand times with other people's families in hallways like this, but now it was my turn to be the family.

"Can I see her?"

"Yes. But there's something else: transplants is asking. They've got a compatible recipient in this very hospital. I'm not saying anything. I'll just leave the paperwork."

Compatible. In this very hospital.

Something cold dropped inside me. It wasn't pain — that was already settling in layers — it was something else, the kind of thing an ER nurse learns to recognize before she can name it.

I went into the room. My mom was breathing on the machine, a bruise cut across half her face, and she had that absurd peace of broken dolls. I talked to her, I told her about Alex, and I almost laughed, because it was the story I always made her laugh with after every disaster: mom, you're not going to believe this.

This time I told it without getting her laugh back.

When I stepped out into the hallway, a woman was waiting for me.

The one in the expensive coat — Ethan Cavalier's mother — who wasn't tending to her son but waiting for me.

"Miss Mendoza. Could I have a word?"

It wasn't a plea: her voice was an appointment. And I, without knowing it, had been on that schedule for half an hour.