When I went home that night, I opened the front door of my apartment and ran into Todd. "Hey!" I greeted him.

"Hey, Sabs," he smiled and gave me a hug. Todd looked like a less handsome version of Chris Evans with a prep-school haircut. He is a genuine and kind person, and I couldn't be happier for Rebecca or more excited about them being married. I was just wary of being alone.

"Is it moving day already?" I asked, sounding sadder than I wanted.

"It is!" Rebecca sang as she walked out from the bedroom holding a swollen garment bag. She handed it to Todd who left to pack it in his car. "I'm glad you're here. Don't forget, my dress fitting is next Thursday after work, and then it's three weeks before the housewarming slash engagement party." I looked at her as she blabbed. My eyes burning with tears while she busied herself with folding together the tops of more meticulously labeled boxes. "So you should check your schedule soon to make sure you'll be off on time, and—"

"Becca," I tried to interrupt her.

"—It's probably best to send out the invitations this weekend so we can get a headcount for the party."

"Becca."

"The house can fit forty people, but if we want to do speeches—"

"Becca!" She turned and looked at me with confusion. "Are you going to miss me at all?"

She tilted her head and smiled. "I'm not leaving, Sabs. Just going up the street." She came over and wrapped me in a hug. "We have a spare bedroom dedicated specifically to you, whenever you want it."

That made me happy, but I cried anyway.

After a long weekend of moving, the apartment was an empty shell of what it was before. Missing furniture, empty kitchens and closets . . . The quiet, disorganized emptiness that came with her absence reminded me too much of when my mother died. I was thankful to be able to go to work and be around people there at least.

I walked into Ziggy's room to find him checking himself out in his full-length mirror. It took me a moment to notice that his head was clean-shaven. He ran his hands against the crown of his head. He had a great head shape, and the strong jawline and facial features to pull it off. He looked as good as I expected.

"I was right. You look pretty hot bald, Zig."

"No I don't. I look like a fucking cancer patient," he said, turning to me with a smirk. I was happy to see his spirits were still high.

"Are you ready to go again?"

He sighed. "You know, I used to be really fond of that phrase before chemo."

I shook my head at him while I fought my smile. "You never stop do you?"

"I miss them saying that, too."

I hated myself for laughing. "Oh my God, are you ready or not?"

"I guess," he said with a dramatic huff. "But I'm bringing toys this time."

"Huh?" He held up a camera and some accessories I couldn't identify. "Those are not the kind of toys I was thinking of."

He chuckled. "Sorry for keeping it SFW, Nurse Brennan."

"Let's go."

We got settled in the room, and I got Ziggy through the discomfort of getting his port attached to the chemo. When it was over, he picked up his camera to help him relax. From my position perched on the plush arm of the lounge chair, I stared through the window at the waves. The sky was hazy, giving the morning sun a softened glow. Two people walked together in the sand. Small and far away, it was still easy to see they were holding hands. For some reason, I felt alone again. I sighed, wondering when I would stop gravitating to my sad thoughts.

I looked over and watched Ziggy fiddle with the lens of his retro-looking camera. He lifted it to his eye, and after more adjustments, snapped a few shots. "It's gorgeous here, isn't it?" I asked him to break the silence.

He turned and his eyes drifted over me. "I've seen better." He lifted his camera and the shutter sounded.

I gasped. "Don't!"

"Don't what?"

"Don't take pictures of me! I look like a mess." I self-consciously fingered my failed attempt at a beach wave. I heard the shutter again. "Ziggy!"

"I'm sorry, I'll stop." He held up his hands to placate me. "I didn't think you would hang out with me every time."

"I can leave if you want me to."

He laughed. "I didn't say that."

"You're handling everything amazingly right now, but it will get harder. Dr. Mathews assigned me to your case so you'd have a constant."

"He said you helped diagnose me."

"I didn't. I mean, I suggested that your fainting spells were misleading and that I was afraid that you might have something more serious like cancer, but I had no idea that's what it actually was."

"Well, regardless, you figured me out better than Dr. Smith." That wasn't difficult. "Why are you not a doctor?"

I sneered at him. "Is there something wrong with being a nurse?"

"No! I just meant . . . I don't know what I meant."

"You caught yourself being an asshole. Kudos on your growth." He because the one with the sneer. "To be honest, though . . . I was accepted into medical school, but life kind of forced me in another direction."

"How so?"

"That's a long story."

He gestured around to the IV and the practically empty room. "I have plenty of time."

He wasn't going to let it go. "Okay, well . . . My parents got divorced at the beginning of my undergrad. I decided to stay here with my mom and my dad moved away to be with my sister and my nieces." I skipped over the angry arguments and pain that came from those decisions. My relationship with Natalie was still tense because of it. We could barely stand to have a conversation longer than fifteen minutes unless it was a holiday or one of the kids' birthdays. "When mom got sick, I was the only one still here, so I decided to delay going to med school to take care of her myself." I skipped past the emotional parts.

"But then you never went?"

"No. I decided it wasn't what I wanted. I switched majors, graduated, and immediately took a job in a trauma center."

"That sounds intense." His genuine curiosity was flattering.

"It was. It's so fast-paced with almost no downtime. I remember my first day I was rushing from one case to another, code after code. I was finally able to slow down,  thinking it was my lunch break, and they told me my twelve-hour shift was over."

"Goddamn," he looked at me with impress. "How long did you do that?"

"About a year. After I passed my test, I moved to hospice care and worked there until I came here a couple months ago."

"Hospice? Was that not depressing?"

What I wouldn't say was that I had spent a lot of time in hospice with my mom. The nurses there helped me just as much as they did her. "It was rewarding in a lot of ways. I worked there thinking I would use the downtime to go back to school. But the more I worked with patients, the more I felt that doctors were there for medicine, and the nurses were there for the people," I mused. He gave me a sheepish grin. "That came out a lot cheesier than I meant, but whatever. I'll probably change my mind one day and go back to school to become a Nurse Practitioner."

"Whether you do or not, everything you've done already is impressive to me. I never even went to college."

"Not at all?"

"No. I'm just a poor kid from Long Beach. I worked two jobs during high school to afford my first camera, and shot my friends' weddings for free to learn the craft."

"Really?"

He cracked a smile. "No, I'm from West Hollywood and was taken on as a protégé for a popular fashion photographer. But the other story sounded dramatic, didn't it?" I shook my head at him. He really had me going. "My story isn't that interesting."

"I think I'd like to decide that for myself," I said. He grinned and looked back through his viewfinder. "So far, the only thing I've figured out about you is that you're a loner."

"Yeah, I guess I am."

"Why is that?"

He shrugged. "Only-child syndrome or something? I've always been on my own. Then I think I developed trust issues along the way."

I watched as he distracted himself with cleaning his lens. "You said your dad passed away when you were a teenager." He nodded. "Do you think it's because of that?"

"Oh, definitely," he smiled at me. "My parents got a divorce, too, when I was thirteen or fourteen. My dad kind of skipped town for a few months after that."

"That's kind of shitty."

"It was. My mom took it pretty hard and fell in with the wrong people. She started doing some serious drugs with friends and eventually got hooked on heroin. Compared to her, my dad seemed like a saint, so when he came back, I forgave him pretty quickly." His mouth twisted. "He died a couple of years later and the courts assumed I would want to be back with my mom. I was old enough to make my own decision, so I chose emancipation."

"Holy shit. Really?"

"They didn't give it to me. She got clean before they tested her, and she had never been arrested. According to the courts, she was a perfect parent. And for a while, she kind of was."

The thought of him being passed from one unreliable situation to another made me sad. Nothing in life is predictable, but to learn that so young couldn't have been easy. "That explains the trust issues."

"Right?" he agreed. "I'm convinced people only need you when they can use you for something. Then they leave."

"I don't think that's true," I said.

"When is it not?" he challenged me with a playful grin.

"When someone loves you." That seemed far too sincere coming from me. I look to Ziggy and he stares at me as if he's waiting for the punchline. His smile slinked across his face. We both burst into laughter.