The Reason

Harlee’s P.O.V.

I look in the mirror and frown. I’m dressed in my royal blue scrubs and have my blonde hair pulled back like I do every day for work. I’m not frowning at that. I’m frowning because I look older than twenty-three. I guess life does that to you.

I’m a nurse in the emergency department at one of the busiest hospitals in Los Angeles. I went to nursing school right out of high school and graduated a year ago. I love the fast pace, but when people die, no matter how hard we try to save them, it can suck the life out of me. Hugging their family members while they cry, scream, or, in one case, faint, I can’t help but go through the emotions with them. Some people say I should toughen up and not have such a bleeding heart, but it’s who I am.

I head outside of my apartment and go to the bus stop a block away. I hate driving in LA traffic, and the hospital is only a thirty-minute bus ride away. It’s Friday night, so I know it’s going to be busy. I could have transitioned to the day shift by now, but I prefer the night.

As I ride the bus, I begin thinking of the past. I was put in the foster care system when I was thirteen. My mom left our apartment one day and never came back. I still went to school and ate what little food we had, but I couldn’t pay the bills. When rent wasn’t paid, the landlord banged on the door and, when he found out I was alone, he called the police. I didn’t know where my mom was, and I never knew my dad, so they put me in foster care. Being with foster parents was a lot like being with my mom; I was either ignored or beaten for no other reason than because they wanted to.

I didn’t make friends easily because I didn’t want to explain why my parents never came to the school or why I couldn’t have anyone over to my house. However, when I was a sophomore in high school, I had a huge crush on a boy in my grade. His name was Tucker Gaines. He had black hair and piercing gray eyes. I would dream about him, and then one day out of the blue, he started talking to me. We ate lunch together every day, and he would drive me home from school. After a couple of weeks, he asked me to be his girlfriend, and, of course, I said yes. We spent every minute we could together, and for a while, I felt like maybe my life wasn’t completely hopeless. One night, he took me to see a movie, and on the way home, he drove out of the city to a place that looks out over LA. It was beautiful. It was there that he talked me into going all the way. We had kissed and touched each other up to that point, and I thought we were in love. That was all a teenage dream.

The next day, he didn’t show up to take me to school, and when I got to homeroom, everyone laughed as soon as I walked in. I didn’t understand what was going on until Laura Moore, a girl who had been bullying me since my freshman year, came over with a smirk. She showed me a picture of Tucker and me having sex in his backseat. The picture was taken outside the car. I ran out of the room crying and tried to keep my head down the rest of the day. I thought maybe Tucker didn’t have anything to do with it, but at lunch, he came over to my table with Laura, her minions, and his friends. He said that it had all been a bet to see if I would let him take my virginity. He said Laura was his girlfriend, and I was nothing more than a stupid bet.

I was heartbroken. I didn’t want to believe him because all the time we spent together had been incredible. How could he have faked everything? However, as the days passed, I realized I was a fool because he never apologized or spoke to me again. The first time I let someone get close to me, Tucker trampled on my heart as if it meant nothing. The rest of high school was a nightmare. Laura and her friends got more aggressive in their bullying, and Tucker joined in a few times. I did everything I could to stay clear of them, even eating my lunch hidden in a stall in the girls’ bathroom, but they still found ways to hurt me. The last day of high school was the best day of my life. I skipped graduation and just picked up my diploma from the school office. I didn’t want to see any of those people ever again.

I knew I wanted to be a nurse, so I started taking prerequisites at a community college and then transferred to a four-year college after being accepted into the nursing program. In college, I kept to myself, just like I had all my life. I didn’t want a repeat of high school.

Some people may think that bullying is harmless, but for the person being bullied, it affects their everyday life even past high school. I was told how ugly and useless I was by my mother, foster parents, and bullies in school, so much so that even now, when I look in the mirror, I find flaws with myself. I still won’t let anyone get close to me, and I’ve never accepted a man’s invitation to go out. All I can hear is the laughter from high school in the back of my head. It still haunts me at night.

To everyone else, I may be a joke, but to my patients, I am the person holding their hand when they are going through some of the most terrifying ordeals of their lives. One of the reasons I became a nurse was to make a difference in people’s lives, and I hope, with one patient at a time, that I’m doing that.

I get off the bus outside of the hospital, and as soon as I walk in, I know it’s going to be a long night. The waiting room is so full that some people are standing along the wall. I go past them to the back and put my things in my locker before clocking in.

“It must be a full moon tonight,” Norah, one of the nurses who works nights with me, says.

“It sure seems like it,” I reply, smiling slightly. I like working with her because she’s nice without being nosy.

The night begins passing quickly as soon as we get to work. In addition to all the people in the waiting room, the ambulances seem to be coming nonstop.

“Harlee, can you meet the next ambulance at the door? The patient was riding a motorcycle and was hit by a semi. He’s alive, but the EMTs said he’s unconscious,” Reuben, the charge nurse, says. He’s somewhere between fifty and eighty. No one knows for sure, because he’s worked at the hospital forever.

“Sure,” I reply, putting on gloves and running with Dr. Howard toward the ambulance entrance. We get there just as the ambulance pulls up. The EMTs jump out and pull the man on the stretcher out of the back.

“Was he wearing a helmet?” Dr. Howard asks as he begins assessing the man. His face is a mess, his clothes are torn, his right arm and left ankle both look broken, but I’m sure there’s a lot more going on that we can’t see. The EMTs run with us inside the hospital, and we take him into a back room so we can undress him and do a thorough assessment. We transfer him to a hospital bed and get started.

“Yes, but a bystander said it fell off when he was sliding under the truck.” As I carefully begin cutting away his clothes, I see something that looks familiar. There’s an eagle tattoo on his abdomen. He has lots of other tattoos, but I’ve seen this one before. I look at his face, but I can’t be sure.

“What’s his name?” I ask as I continue removing his clothes. My hands shake slightly as I wait. I already know the answer, but I need them to say it.

“Tucker Gaines.”