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Five minutes later she emerges, her wet hair in a twisty bun. She wears light blue pajama bottoms and a pink tank top. She claps her hands together. “Those seven-layer bars should be ready to eat now,” she says, all sweet and innocent.

Soon, we sit down with our glasses of milk and her treats, like a good boy and girl.

As I watch her nibble on a chocolate-chip-covered corner of a bar, I wonder if she was thinking about two unknown guys in the shower.

Or if she’s like me, and got off to her roommate.





16





From the pages of Josie’s Recipe Book



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Josie’s Magic Amnesiac Seven-Layer Bars





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Ingredients

? cup unsalted butter, melted

1 ? cups graham cracker crumbs

1 cup finely chopped pecans (can substitute walnuts)

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

? cup butterscotch chips

1 cup sweetened flaked coconut

1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk





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When you really need to take your mind off someone, I highly recommend seven-layer bars. The taste is so intoxicatingly delicious that it is quite possibly the closest substitute for . . . Well, look—let’s just say these bars are some kind of sublimation.



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Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In small bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs and butter; mix well. Press crumb mixture firmly on bottom of baking pan.



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Pressing firmly makes me focus all my energy on cooking. Not on how much I’m looking forward to Chase coming home. Not on how much I’m enjoying living with him. Not on how much I liked rubbing his shoulders the other week. Gah. I messed up the recipe. Be right back.



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2. Layer in remaining ingredients; press firmly with fork. Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumb mixture.



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Baking is therapy. It soothes me. The times when dating in New York City has been weird and frustrating and disappointing, at least there’s something I can do well. I can mix and create, and turn ingredients into something tasty. Something that makes people happy. Honestly, I suppose that’s all I really want in life. To make someone happy. Even better if that someone makes me feel that way, too.



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3. Bake twenty-five minutes or until lightly browned. Cool. Cut into bars.



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Serve to your roommate with a straight face as if you didn’t just imagine him grabbing you, touching you, sliding into you, and pounding you hard under the hot stream of water in your shower. No, I swear I didn’t fantasize about every naked inch of him, and he’s not the reason I had to bite my lip to keep from screaming out his name.



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4. Have a second helping.





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Well, I did say the bars were sublimation.





17





The red line flattens. Anguish floods my bones. Sorrow drowns my blood.

The patient is gone.

We lost him, a thirty-four-year-old man named Blake Treehorn.

All the medicine, all the paddles, all the speeding ambulances, all the nurses and doctors here at Mercy, and we couldn’t save his life.

I exhale heavily. One of the nurses makes the sign of the cross. Another runs her hand gently along the patient’s arm. I look at my watch and confirm the time of death.

“One thirty-five p.m.,” I say, and the nurse records the information in his chart. I scrub a hand over my jaw as a profound sense of both sadness and failure digs deep into my flesh. I’ll be signing his death certificate shortly.

David, another ER doc who worked to save him too, claps me on the back. “We did our best,” he mumbles.

“Yeah.”

That’s the thing. We did. The paramedics barreled in fifteen minutes ago with a man who worked at an office building ten blocks away. During a routine Wednesday afternoon meeting, Blake clutched his chest and complained of pain. He collapsed seconds later, and his coworkers called 911. He’d been fading when he arrived, and we’d fought like hell to save the guy. Thirty minutes later, he’s dead in his early thirties on a hospital bed in an emergency room in the middle of Manhattan.

“Life is short, man,” David says, his tone heavy.

“It sure is,” I say with a sigh.

I’ve lost patients before. Every doctor has. Last year in Africa, we said good-bye to more people than I wanted to count. It’s part of the job. I get that, and I can live with it. It’s what I signed up for.

But I’m only human, and I’m not as steel as I pretend to be. This one hits me hard. Blake was young and healthy. I heard one of his coworkers say he’d gone running with him the other morning.

There’s no time to sit with these churning emotions, though. When the charge nurse informs me there are multiple gunshot wounds coming in, I have to pretend I’m Teflon.

That’s how the rest of the afternoon unfurls. Like a parade of pain and heartache. No sex wounds, no amusing tales, no naughty moments that make for funny stories with friends. It’s all too fucking real. One of the gunshot victims dies from blood loss. A patient who seemed to be improving after coming in yesterday with a stroke passes on.